Descartes' Meditations
Descartes, during Meditations, aimed to rid himself of all knowledge
that could be doubted. He used the analogy of a rotten apple in a
barrel, in which all apples must be removed and checked in order to
determine which apples should be kept. Descartes stated that, like the
rotten apple, one might also, at times, acquire erroneous information.
This error in information can therefore lead to incorrect knowledge.
According to Descartes' way of reason, if a fact can be doubted then
it cannot be held as certain truth, therefore may be disregarded.
Since Descartes aimed to find true knowledge, he wanted to make sure
that he had a strong foundation onto which he could build up certain
truths. This is known as foundationalism. The argument that all human
animals are born with a tableaux la raza (blank slate) onto which
information is built or 'inscribed', is the metaphor for the
accumulation of knowledge. The inscription is thought to be a
posteriori since knowledge seems to be largely based on one's
experiences. Descartes argued that this inscription can sometimes be
faulty and therefore what one accepts as being knowledge may be
questioned. In Meditations Descartes tried to ensure that his tableaux
contained certain truths, he therefore used doubt, as a sieve, to
achieve this.
Scepticism played a large role in Descartes' quest for certain
knowledge. He constantly questioned accepted truths, this meant that
he never accepted facts based purely on assumptions. For Descartes a
conclusion was not valid unless it was supported by evidence. It must
be stated, at this point, that Descartes was not a sceptic, he in fa...
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...ed by any
other factors, for Descartes', subjects that are influenced by this
realm seem to be the best sources of true knowledge.
At the end of Meditations 1 Descartes is still seeking for certainty.
Hitherto it is yet unclear whether such level of comprehension can be
achieved. Descartes does successfully make one question every aspect
of one's beliefs. It may be that one lives out one's life according to
facts that are untrue. Whether Descartes was right or wrong is beside
the point, it does not affect the way one carries out one's existence.
If a whole species, for example, accepts a fact as being true surely
it must have some truth because of that species' perception of the
fact. One can compare it to the blind leading the blind. The majority
usually prevails, if no one knows otherwise the fact will remain true.
In Meditations, Descartes brings doubt to everything he believes because it is human nature to believe that which is false. He states that most of what he believes comes from the senses and that a lot of times those senses can be deceived. His conclusion of doubting everything is based on his example of a basket of apples. It goes as follows; you have a basket of apples but you fear that some apples have gone bad and you don't want them to rot the others, so you throw all the apples out of the basket. Now that the basket is empty you examine each apple carefully and return the good apples to the basket. This is what he does with his beliefs, he follows and keeps only those beliefs of which he is sure of. Our beliefs as a whole must be discarded and then each individual belief must be looked at carefully before we can accept it. We must only accept those beliefs we feel are good.
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.
Throughout the meditations Descartes refers to clear and distinct ideas. Descartes first introduces doubt to the reader by saying that one cannot trust these clear and distinct ideas. “I have noticed that the senses are sometimes deceptive; as it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those that have deceived us even once.” (Descartes, 60) He introduces doubt through the senses, dreams, and through the possibility of an evil genius at work. For instance he states that “There is no sure sign that I can tell that I am awake. If there are no sure signs that I can tell that I am awake then there is reason to doubt I am awake. Therefore there is reason to doubt I am awake.” (Descartes 60)This is how Descartes shows that we may be dreaming even though during these dreams we can experience authentic truths. He also he goes on to state that, “If there is reason to doubt that I am awake then there is reason to doubt that I am sitting by the fire. So then there is reason to doubt that I am sitting by a fire even though I see and feel a fire.” (Descartes 60)This Descartes believes could be true because there may be an evil genius at work, whose sole purpose is to put his entire effort...
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
Descartes’ dream arguement that he engages in within the ‘First Meditation’ is very complex and tends to have readers feeling skeptical if they are truly awake and no whats going on in the world around them, or if they are actually just dreaming. His arguementcan be both easy to understand as well as breaking down claims to know certain things going on around the world. Descartes describes how people believing they are awake and not dreaming right now may be shaken and wary. At first glance, it came to my perspective that Descartes is delusional to believe that one might believe that they are dreaming and are not awake. I believe this because when one wakes up in the morning they are awake and no longer dreaming, when they open their eyes they see the world and they begin to once again exsist within the world, therefore to be dreaming is not certain and therefore would not make sense to a regualr person. Descartes highlights in his defense the lack of insight a person has in the condition when dreaming, while not awake. In “First Meditation”, Descartes states:
Meditation four describes how Descartes knows that God exists and that God will not deceive him. As stated in meditation five, God has allowed Descartes the knowledge and wisdom that he needs. By believing in God, knowledge will always be given to him (45). An interesting concept here is that if God cannot deceive then why do bad things happen such as cancer or natural disasters and why has God not allowed his believers the knowledge in which to fix these issues. According to Descartes, before he had believed in God, there was limited access to knowledge. That statement, however, can be critiqued based on the idea that before there was the idea of God, humans were able to create and live on Earth without needing to think that a superior being
At the start of the meditation, Descartes begins by rejecting all his beliefs, so that he would not be deceived by any misconceptions from reaching the truth. Descartes acknowledges himself as, “a thing that thinks: that is, a thing that doubts, affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things” He is certain that that he thinks and exists because his knowledge and ideas are both ‘clear and distinct’. Descartes proposes a general rule, “that whatever one perceives very clearly and very distinctly is true” Descartes discovers, “that he can doubt what he clearly and distinctly perceives is true led to the realization that his first immediate priority should be to remove the doubt” because, “no organized body of knowledge is possible unless the doubt is removed” The best probable way to remove the doubt is prove that God exists, that he is not a deceiver and “will always guarantee that any clear and distinct ideas that enter our minds will be true.” Descartes must remove the threat of an invisible demon that inserts ideas and doubts into our minds to fool us , in order to rely on his ‘clear and distinct’ rule.
Not only did Descartes set aside all of his previous knowledge, but he also set aside all knowledge he had gained, and that he continued to gain from his five senses. He would not believe what his eyes saw, or what his hand felt, because he could not yet determine his senses as giving him knowledge that could be turned into certainties. He did not have any reason to believe that he could rely on his senses. Descartes doubting of his senses also caused him to reject any knowledge that he had gained through life experience. Most of the knowl...
In the first meditation, Descartes makes a conscious decision to search for “in each of them [his opinions] at least some reason for doubt”(12). Descartes rejects anything and everything that can be doubted and quests for something that is undeniably certain. The foundation of his doubt is that his opinions are largely established by his senses, yet “from time to time I [Descartes] have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”(12). First, Descartes establishes that error is possible, employing the example of the straight stick that appears bent when partially submerged in water, as mentioned in the Sixth Replies (64-65). Secondly, he proves that at any given time he could be deceived, such is the case with realistic dreams. Further, Descartes is able to doubt absolutely everything since it cannot be ruled out that “some malicious demon … has employed all his energies in order to deceive me” (15). The malicious demon not only causes Descartes to doubt God, but also sends him “unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom or swim on the top”(16). Descartes has reached the point where he must begin to rebuild by searching for certainty.
In Meditations on First Philosophy, it is the self-imposed task of Descartes to cast doubt upon all which he knows in order to build a solid foundation of knowledge out of irrefutable truths. Borrowing an idea from Archimedes, that with one firm and immovable point the earth could be moved, Descartes sought one immovable truth. Descartes' immovable truth, a truth on which he would lay down his foundation of knowledge and define all that which he knows, was the simple line "Cogito ergo sum": I think, therefore I am. This allowed for his existence.
While on his journey to reveal the absolute truths and debunk anything that could be considered doubtful, Descartes’ experiences using this form of skepticism has allowed him to
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.
Unlike one of empiricism’s major tenets, Tabula Rasa, or blank slate, Descartes believed that the mind was not a blank slate, but actually came pre-loaded, if you will, with ideas, which are part of our rational nature and that our rational nature allows us to grasp . Descartes begins his journey deep within his own mind by claiming that all truths can be conceived by thinking about them. He calls his method cogito or pure reasoning. His famous words “I think, therefore I am,” describes the way that he thinks the mind is the true reality with the rest of reality being an extension. His example to prove thi...
We must resist the urge to accept the things society has imposed on us and call these things to doubt. Through our own reasoning we should decide for ourselves whether we agree or disagree with what we have been told. I agree that all the knowledge we have gained outside of things passed down has been discovered through the use of our senses. I do not believe that it is necessary or even possible to call absolutely everything to doubt and I believe that we must carefully reflect on things instead. Descartes claims to call everything to doubt, but Descartes did not do such because this is an impossible task. I do agree that we possess the ability to find truths in reality, but unlike Descartes, I believe we can do such through the careful use of our senses. We can not depend entirely on our senses because they fail us at times, but our senses can aid in discovering the truth if they are used correctly. Through the use of both our mid and our senses, we possess the ability to understand the world that we live in. Although Descartes’ idea of an evil genius seems like a paranoid fantasy, it clearly propose some valuable and revolutionary
Descartes is clearing away all knowledge that can be called into doubt. By doing this he hopes to create something real and lasting in the sciences, a foundation to build on. This indisputable fact will become the starting point or origin of all other true knowledge he can build upon it. He starts the first argument by attacking the very beginning of knowledge, human senses. Descartes states, "Surely whatever I had admitte...