Can someone explain Descartes’ clear and distinct principle in depth? I am reading his Meditations, and find the explanation presented there to be short and inadequate for such a bold claim. I would also appreciate if someone could present counter-arguments for this principle as well.
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By asking this question it's clear that you couldn't form clear and distinct principles from reading Descartes' Meditations, but on the other hand, as mundanely known linguistically, clear and distinct principles are contrasted with or opposed to those unclear or confused principles, ergo you've already formed a clear and distinct principle as your personal private criterion to tell them apart to satisfy your hoped or anticipated fitting answer...– Double KnotCommented Jan 31 at 5:36
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See Descartes’ Method and D's Epistemology– Mauro ALLEGRANZACommented Jan 31 at 6:49
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You should make the question more specific unless you want long-winded commentary that can be found in encyclopedias. Here is the outline of his argument, SEP, C&D Rule. The main objection goes back to Arnauld and is known as the Cartesian circle. An even more obvious objection is that he weaves the world out of them, but, in hindsight at least, some of his "clear and distinct ideas" are clearly and distinctly wrong.– ConifoldCommented Jan 31 at 7:27
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Meditations, III: "all the images of corporeal things [...] I will consider them as empty and false; and thus, holding converse only with myself, and closely examining my nature, I will endeavor to obtain by degrees a more intimate and familiar knowledge of myself. I am a thinking (conscious) thing, that is, a being who doubts, affirms, denies, knows a few objects, and is ignorant of many, although the things which I perceive or imagine are perhaps nothing at all apart from me [and in themselves],..." 1/2– Mauro ALLEGRANZACommented Jan 31 at 8:54
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2/2 "... I am nevertheless assured that those modes of consciousness which I call perceptions and imaginations, in as far only as they are modes of consciousness, exist in me." First step: the information I receive from the senses are not reliable but my own existence as a "thinking thing" is certain.– Mauro ALLEGRANZACommented Jan 31 at 8:56
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