Descartes Meditations Analysis

Descartes wrote his meditations with the intention that the reader would read it as if they were the person. Descartes asks me to doubt everything because what if everything we think we are is not real and we are in an illusion.
The First Meditation is entitled "What can be called into doubt." It opens with the Meditator reflecting on all the things he believed were true but may turn out to be false and the body of knowledge he built up from these illusions. Descartes was the first to educate others on the confusing question of how we know with certainty anything about the world around us. In order to determine whether there is anything we can know with certainty, he comes to the resolution that he has to sweep away all he thinks he knows, start from the foundations of things, and then build his knowledge up again. What he is suggesting is that in order to see if there is some belief that cannot be doubted, we should temporarily pretend that everything we know is questionable. He has freed himself from all worries so that he can destroy his opinions on things. Since he cannot go through all of his knowledge one by one to define which ones are true and which are false, he doubts the general principles. The idea that he eventually finds is that the doubt’s possibility can never be entirely ruled out.
The general principle in which he built his beliefs about the world was that whatever the senses told him about the world was true. Descartes says everything that we have accepted as true has been learned through our senses. Then he argues that sometimes the senses can deceive, but only with objects that are very small or far away. Later this led to be false. If you were asked why you believe that there is a car in front of you, you wo...

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...n as a justified belief. But to say that our beliefs are justified, we have to be able to base them on a belief that is definite. This belief could then provide a firm foundation on which all following beliefs are grounded and could be known as true. If we believe in God, we have a certain knowledge that you know you are right and that what you learned has no flaws. The point of doubt is to arrive at certainty. Ultimately, however, he realizes that he cannot doubt his own existence. In order to doubt or to think, there must be someone doing the doubting. He may be deceived about other things, but he cannot help determine that he exists. When we think, we are thinking things or minds, regardless of if we have bodies. In fact, the body I experience as my own is not an essential part of me because I can doubt its existence but I cannot doubt the existence of my mind.