Descartes Meditation Six Analysis

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But, simply refuting Descartes’s example is not enough to shake his justification for trusting that he is in fact awake and can distinguish his being awake from dreaming. To further discredit this notion as it stands at the end of Meditation Six, one could consider the case of some extended dream-like scenario. Whether it be a comatose state or the somewhat more outlandish scenario of the Matrix (well, at least a Matrix without glitches and escapees which could tip one off as to its distinction from true reality), such a scenario poses a serious problem for Descartes’s reliance on the consistency indicator. While one is in some extended dream or coma state, there is really no particular reason as to why the dream (or dream-like) experience …show more content…

In fact, just after making his point on consistency, Descartes states that “for from the fact that God is not a deceiver it follows that in cases like these I am completely free from error” where these cases which Descartes alludes to are those in which, when perceiving things, “after calling upon all the senses as well as [one’s] memory and [one’s] intellect in order to check them, [one] receive[s] no conflicting reports from any of these sources” (Descartes 62). So why, then, should the objection be considered in the first place if, given that the arguments from Meditations One through Five are assumed to be successful, Descartes has a fairly clear rebuttal that follows right after establishing the objected to material? Well, one must consider that it is the conclusion that consistency leads to indicating reality which is the error being made by Descartes, which in no way relate to God’s not being a deceiver. Perhaps, though, it is simply the non-corporeality of one’s apparent originator of sensory ideas that simply couldn’t occur because of God’s not being a deceiver. Yet, Descartes does not call into question that one dreams and that one, while dreaming, does not distinguish the experience from waking, and that it is only upon

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