Abstract

ABSTRACT According to the canonical reading, the mathematics that is the target of the stage of doubt in which Descartes resorts to the hypothesis of the deceiving God is the mathematics according to the Cartesian conception, that is, a mathematics conceived as knowledge constituted by clear and distinct ideas and, for this reason, doubting mathematical knowledge is doubting the truth of clear and distinct ideas. Although the plausibility of this interpretation has already been established, based, above all, on the passage in which Descartes in the Metaphysical Meditations introduces a possible distinction between, on the one hand, sciences such as physics and, on the other, mathematics, my objective in this text is to discuss what would be the conception of mathematics considered in the First Meditation and to suggest that this doubtful mathematics cannot be an example of science constituted by clear and distinct ideas, which implies that clear and distinct ideas would not be called into question by resorting to the hypothesis of a deceitful God. The hypothesis to be supported is that, instead of clear and distinct ideas, the Cartesian doubt, in all its stages, including the stage in which Descartes resorts to the hypothesis of the deceiving God has, as its target, the abstractive process that, according to the scholastic of Aristotelian inspiration, is the first of the cognitive operations and whose fundamental principle is that all and any knowledge, in one way or another, depends on matter.