Carriero

For lack of time, only a very selective collection of interesting quotes:

Let's refer to the entity whose existence was demonstrated in the cogito passage as the cogito being. This locution is intended to leave open whether it is a substance or an accident (e.g., perhaps a power of a substance). (81)
... I don't believe it is supposed to be clear yet [i the Second Meditation] whether the being is an autonomous substance in its own right, or merely a power of some more basic thing, although, to be sure, we seem to be headed in the direction of the former view. (93)

It is sometimes assumed that when we learn in ¶ 6 that the cogito being's essence is to think, we know enough to conclude that it is a self-sufficient thing (a "substance"), capable of existing independently from body. I don't think that is correct. (83)

And although Descartes is not explicit about this, I take it that the "logic" of the full human being--the "logic" of what Descartes sometimes calls the man--is supposed to work differently: through having a body as a component, the human being comes to have a shape, location, color, and odor. So I (unrestricted), that is, the human being, have shape and color, whereas I (qua cogito being) do not. (89)
When Descartes writes that his essence is precisely to think, he is not saying that the essence of René Descartes is only to think; rather, he is saying that the essence of René Descartes insofar as he is a thinking thing is to think. (90)

... I will use the expression cognitive agent (even though the being undergoes things as well as does things): the being "which is real [res vera] and really exists [vere existens]" (¶6) uncovered in the cogito exercise is a genuine actor, complete with things it wants to do (to judge truly, with certainty) and things it wants to avoid (error, doubt). (94)

On "praecise tantum":

... praecise, which means cutting away from, tends to run in the other direction, that is, taking us away from a thing's complete metaphysical structure to merely some part of or aspect of it. So, as noted above, we cannot conclude from Descartes saying X is praecise Y that he holds that X is fundamentally just Y or really just Y; rather, to say X is praecise Y means that on a certain partial or incomplete view of X, it is Y. (94)
Descartes will need to persuade us, then, that the thing we have been talking about since the cogito passage and whose essence we have been exploring has a certain metaphysical robustness or reality. (96)

About VII 29 ("this is properly what is called sensing"):

And sensing taken in this way, that is, cutting away (praecise) from whatever else happens when the cognitive agent senses, is nothing other than thinking. (103)
In other words, the "as it were sensing" and "seeming to sense" function as tags to identify a certain sort of activity or passivity, an activity or passivity that belongs to the cognitive agent. (104)

The meditator is not yet in a position to say that sensation can be reduced to thought; she does not know enough about ctual sensation and imagination (105).

Skipped parts that do not currently interest me.

On the Sixth Meditation:

Descartes is picking up that question, "What is a human being?" now. I see it as the main topic of the Sixth Meditation. (360)
It is true that I am, on Descartes's view, a composite entity, ... (360)
... our basic cognitive purchase on the union is given to us through the senses ... (362)

The most fundamental difference between us and the animals is not that we are conscious and they are not, but rather that we are rational and they are not (it is possible, of course, that the former difference might be thought to follow from the latter one). (366)

Around 375: Descartes takes imagination, as a matter of fact, to involve the body; but the mind does not need imagination in order to think.

Paraphrasing Descartes' argument for distinctness:

Body does not belong to the essence or nature of the mind, and mind does not belong to the essence or nature of body. Since there is no essential dependence of mind on body, and no essential dependence of body on mind, mind and body are two independent realities, and since this is so, God has the power to create the one without the other. (379)

... that God could make the cognitive agent exist, with its nature intact, without any other being is enough to show that it is a substance ... (386)