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My aim today is to redress a certain picture of Descartes's conception of the soul, one which

makes it equivalent to a mind, a substance constituted wholly by self-aware

thinking, the introduction of which, as a well-known text for claims, shifted philosophical

interest in self-knowledge from ethical matters to epistemological and metaphysical issues.

The picture of Descartes' conception of the soul, which I will oppose, contains several strands,

not all necessarily interconnected.

As a somewhat general level, it tends to go together with a view that Descartes was an epistemological

foundation list, with the most basic foundation provided by the co-hito.

I think I exist, which is taken to be unquestionably certain. It also includes two claims proposed by different commentators

in varying degrees of strength, that the mind is incorrigible regarding its own contents,

and that it knows or at least is aware of all its contents.

Jonathan Bennett, who is particularly radical in this respect, writes of the mind being, for Descartes,

infallible and omniscient about its current activities. Some find Bennett's claim rather exaggerated.

For Descartes, they hold achieving certainty about

our own states is difficult, psychologically taxing, strenuous. Still, these are merely qualifications

of the Cartesian doctrine, that the mind's contents are readily available for its introspection,

which, when careful, different degrees

...