Preliminary Interpretation of Descartes' Meditations René Descartes was a revolutionary figure in the 17th century during the renaissance period, at a time when the way people viewed the world was changing dramatically. In the past people had described things using a mixture of colour, hot, cold, sweet tasting, hard (secondary qualities) and distance, velocity, time, mass and acceleration (primary qualities). But in a time of dramatic change, mathematical science was, through mathmaticalised theories and predictions of measurable quantities proving primary qualities to be more reliable and efficient than secondary qualities. A now scientific, world seen predominantly by primary qualities left no place for secondary qualities. Descartes was in the forefront of renaissance maths, natural philosophy (physics) and wrote many books on geometry and astronomy among many other subjects. However in his book 'Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings' he attempts to maintain his place as a mathematical scientist yet find a place for the secondary qualities, afraid that science will sweep them away. The place he finds for these secondary qualities is as part of the thinking substance. Descartes begins the first meditation of 'Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings' by introducing reasons why we can doubt everything which we have come to believe, even those things which we seem most sure are correct. "Some years ago I noticed how many false things I had accepted as true in my childhood, and how doubtful were the things that I subsequently build on them" As children we learn and accept many things without really looking deepe... ... middle of paper ... ...rstanding to examine something and receives no sign that it is false, then he has no reason to doubt that thing. Descartes concludes the meditations by saying that since God is not a deceiver, then, if we use our senses, memory and understanding carefully then we will never be wrong in our judgements. However the fast pace of life does not always allow us enough time to judge things carefully enough therefore the nature of human life often leads us to be mistaken. "For the fact that God is not a deceiver it follows that, in such cases, I am completely free from error. But the urgency of things to be done does not always allow us time for such a careful examination; it must be granted, therefore, that human life is often subject to mistakes about particular things, and the weakness of out nature must be acknowledged."
Rene Descartes’ third meditation from his book Meditations on First Philosophy, examines Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to explore Descartes’ reasoning and proofs of God’s existence. In the third meditation, Descartes states two arguments attempting to prove God’s existence, the Trademark argument and the traditional Cosmological argument. Although his arguments are strong and relatively truthful, they do no prove the existence of God.
In Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes does and experiment with wax to try to prove that things actually exist in this world. This essay is going to prove how we can tell that things actually exist and what can perceive the wax.
The book entitled Meditations on First Philosophy is a philosophical treatise of Rene Descartes. It is first published in 1641 in Latin. Then, it is translated to several languages such as French in the latter years.
René Descartes’ argument that he does not know his piece of wax through his senses is rather straightforward. First, his sensory perceptions of the wax are its color, scent, sound, texture, temperature and the like. However, these purported properties of the wax are not constant; if the wax is brought close to a flame, its color, sound, texture and all the rest will change. Nevertheless, Descartes claims, no one would deny that the object now by the fire is the same wax that was first away from the fire. Descartes implies that it is evident and obvious that the wax, though its appearance to the senses is wholly changed, is still the same wax. Let us grant this. Because the wax is still the same wax even after all of its sensory properties have changed, the essential properties of the wax—those primary properties which define what the wax really is—must not be found among it’s sensory properties, as these have changed, but the essential properties have not.
Throughout Descartes second and sixth meditations there seems to be a tension rising between the fact of whether or not the mind and body are distinct. By analyzing both meditations it appears that Descartes’ perspectives are contradictory of each other and need to be further evaluated in order to reveal his true meaning. By saying, in the second meditation, that we perceive things by means of our intellect alone, and in the sixth meditation, that we do not perceive pain by means of the intellect alone but rather by an intermingling of our intellect and our senses, Descartes brings forth the questionable tension. By examining each meditation, I was able to determine what I believe that Descartes truly meant and was able to critically evaluate his material in order to conclude that it is our senses that inform us of what is happening externally, but it is our mind and intellect which perceives and organizes the information that we have received.
The first meditation focuses on doubt. As it starts Descartes’s is having doubts on all of his opinions, knowledge, wisdom etc. He ends up deciding that instead of doubting opinion by opinion, it will be easier to doubt the foundation from which the opinions have been built on. Then he says that not to trust, ones senses because they can be wrong. Descartes provides examples like dreaming, god or painting a mermaid (based on the senses, but not proven to be true referring to mermaid). At first he thinks only complex things can be questioned not simple things. But, upon further examination he realizes that he can doubt simple things. So he uses examples to show why he can doubt things.
In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes narrates the search for certainty in order to recreate all knowledge. He begins with “radical doubt.” He asks a simple question “Is there any one thing of which we can be absolutely certain?” that provides the main question of his analysis. Proceeding forward, he states that the ground of his foundation is the self – evident knowledge of the “thinking thing,” which he himself is. Moving up the tower of certainty, he focuses on those ideas that can be supported by his original foundation. In such a way, Descartes’s goal is to establish all of human knowledge of firm foundations. Thus, Descartes gains this knowledge from the natural light by using it to reference his main claims, specifically
In Descartes Third Meditation, he establishes arguments to prove the existence of God. Descartes believes in “Cogito Ergo Sum” this means I think therefore I am. The “I” in this sentence means the soul. Descartes believes the existence of the mind is better known than the existence of the body. If my soul thinks then I exist. The Cogito proves the existence of self or the mind; this is not the same for the theory of God. Descartes has two arguments in the Third meditation. The arguments are the cause of his idea of God and the cause of his existence now.
Philosophers look for knowledge and seek to know what they do not know. For knowledge to be accepted as a fact, it has to be true, believable and justifiable. Skeptical argument is the one that is doubtful and subjected to questioning. Descartes’ skeptical argument in Meditation I is the dream argument and evil demand argument. The former explains the unreliability of people’s senses and provides access to internal resemblance to the physical world. It is the inner representation of the world. This means that basic beliefs are not true when people dream as the physical appearance of something is not equally the same in dreams and in reality.The thing one is dreaming about may lack some qualities in the physical arena but possess them in a
Initial answer: My initial answer is to the question of whether scientific knowledge should be based on observations is yes, observations are to be the basis of all scientific knowledge.
Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six different steps that he named "Meditations" because of the state of mind he was in while he was contemplating all these different ideas. His six meditations are "One:Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", "Two:Concerning the Nature of the Human mind: that it is better known than the Body", "Three: Concerning God, that he exists", "Four: Concerning the True and the False", "Five: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and again concerning God, that he exists" and finally "Six: Concerning the Existence of Material things, and the real distinction between Mind and Body". Although all of these meditations are relevant and necessary to understand the complete work as a whole, the focus of this paper will be the first meditation.
In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes makes a point that there is a distinction between mind and body. It is in Meditation Two when Descartes believes he has shown the mind to be better known than the body. In Meditation Six, however, he goes on to claim that, as he knows his mind and knows clearly and distinctly that its essence consists purely of thought. Also, that bodies' essences consist purely of extension, and that he can conceive of his mind and body as existing separately. By the power of God, anything that can be clearly and distinctly conceived of as existing separately from something else can be created as existing separately. However, Descartes claims that the mind and body have been created separated without good reason. This point is not shown clearly, and further, although I can conceive of my own mind existing independently of my body, it does not necessarily exist as so.
Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.
In Descartes’ meditations, Descartes begins what Bernard Williams has called the project of ‘pure enquiry’ to discover an indubitable premise or foundation to base his knowledge on, by subjecting everything to a kind of scepticism now known as Cartesian doubt. This is known as foundationalism, where a philosopher basis all epistemological knowledge on an indubitable premise.
Throughout the six meditations on First Philosophy, French philosopher Rene Descartes seeks to find a concrete foundation for the basis of science, one which he states can only include certain and unquestionable beliefs. Anything less concrete, he argues will be exposed to the external world and to opposition by philosophical sceptics.