Knowing and knowing in Descartes

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the vocabulary of knowing in Descartes’ Meditations. It offers a detailed and in part sequential examination of his use of cognitio (and the related verb cognoscere) and scientia (and the related verb scire) in the Meditations. This shows that the distinction between the two words is not simply conceptually important, as some commentators have argued, but that it is essential to his mode of operation in the Meditations. In particular, it is argued that his use of the distinction confirms a certain interpretation of his defence against the charge of circularity.