 In the early modern period a variety of explanatory roles were assigned to attention by a number of different writers. Descartes’ Meditations provides one prominent example. The result of Descartes’ First Meditation—that everything can be doubted—is in apparent tension with his Third Meditation’s claim that clear and distinct ideas are beyond doubt. Descartes introduces a claim about attention to resolve this apparent conflict. He says, in reply to the seventh set of objections, that it is only when we pay attention to them that clear and distinct ideas provide a place where doubt does not take hold: