accord, offering many interesting and cr Historical Look at Natural Landscapes ucial objections to the Meditations, the first of which concerns the argument that the mind and body are really distinct (seen in the Sixth Meditation), so much so that the mind can exist without it. Arnauld probes the inference from our ability to clearly and distinctly conceive the mind and body as separate to them actually being separable: claiming that supposing he knew for certain t Historical Look at Natural Landscapes hat a right angled triangle can be drawn within any semicircle, no matter which point it starts to be drawn from, hence that the triangle formed by the diameter and the angle of the semicircle is right angled. In spite of this, he may doubt that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to he squares on the other two sides, perhaps going so far as to convince himself of some fallacy. But now, if he were to use the skeleton of Descartes’ argument, he may appear to have confirmed his false belief, for if he were to ‘clearly and distinctly perceive’ that the triangle is a right angled one, but doubt the square on the hypotenuse as being equal to the squares on the other two sides, it can therefore be shown t Historical Look at Natural Landscapes hat it does not belong to the essence of the triangle that the square on the hypotenuse equates to the squares on the other two sides[15]. Descartes doesn’t allow for the potential of an additional property to be discovered, and with this example, you would be left with a right angled triangle that didn’t follow Pythagorus’ Theorem. One could only suppose Descartes’ reply to follow along the lines of claiming that he does not clearly and distinctly view the triangle as being right angled, but to do this would illustrate Arnauld as having a clearer perception of his own mind and nature than Descartes over the nature of the triangle. Whether this tears down Descartes’ position is tricky to answer, what can be stated however is that we can clearly and distinctly understand the triangle in this geometric construction to be right angled Historical Look at Natural Landscapes  without being aware that the square on the hypotenuse equates to the squares on the other two sides[16]. This can be likened to perceiving the mind clearly and distinctly without doing so to the body, thus clearly and distinctly perceiving the mind to exist without the body[17] (Van Cleve, 1983). Returning to the case of the ‘right angled triangle’, such is the only thing perceived clearly and distinctly where we are oblivious to note that it is re Historical Look at Natural Landscapes presentative of Pythagorus’ Theorem, whereas the mind can be perceived in such a way without the body and vice versa. In order to reconcile a more workable criticism, Arnauld would have to somehow prove that he could clearly and distinctly perceive the right angled property of a triangle which does not align with Pythagorus’ Theorum, a conclusion impossible to reach, laying the groundwork for his later comments on Cartesian dualism. Arnuald notoriously departed from the backbone of Descartes’ position, the rejection of the union of the mind and body making it possible for them to exercise causal action on one another, for a person’s body cannot act causally onto his mind, and had a degree of diffic>