Descartes and Meditations
There are many things that have occurred in my life that was questionable. Questionable in a way that doesn't make sense to why of if they even occurred. I often wonder what is the porpoise of my existence or that of anyone else's. A better question would be if I do even exist. There must be some thing out there that can explain everything, but I do not access to that something so I must try to form my own opinions. There is only one thing that I can be certain of, that one thing is that I am thinking being and I do exist somewhere. It is possible that I do not even have a body. It could be possible that I could just be a brain in a jar somewhere that thinks I am still alive. I could have been made to think I have this body and that I am actually here typing down my thoughts in this computer that could possibly not even exist. The reason I think that is because there is no way to prove that I am actually here on earth living among other beings. This could all be a dream or I could actually be in a comma thing that I am still a functional human. Another side could be that how can I prove that I don't exist. How can I deny that this is my body and I am at a real computer typing out me thoughts? How can I deny that I am a twenty-two year old man trying to finish out school and carry on the rest of my life the way I choose to? Although how can I prove that I am even awake at this moment and this is not a dream. However dreams have never been as clear as this reality, usually in a dream I do not have complete control of my actions as I do at this moment. How am I even sure that the things that I have learned
though out my life are even true or have I been learning false information. ...
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...ure that is tricking me into thinking that I am this human being with a body witch has sight and is capable of sense. I will never be sure of any of these thoughts until I retain full knowledge of everything.
As I sit here typing out my thoughts on my own existence, I still have not come up with a real explanation. I must exist because I am having my own thoughts and I don't think that any one or thing is controlling my thoughts. I just wish that there was some way I could prove this. All I seem to have done is to type out a bunch of questions that no one has the real answer to. One can give an argument that he or she exist by telling me reasons but how would I know that they are telling the truth. That could even be something that is trying to hide the truth for some reason that I may never know. I do know that all I have done here is raise more questions.
Descartes second argument for proving God’s existence is very straightforward. He has four possibilities that created his existence. Through process of elimination he is left with God being his creator.
In conclusion I am left pretty much in the same place as I have started. It is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God philosophically. For every philosopher who publishes his or her opinions on the subject, three more are there to tear it down. In the end I think it is best that man does not figure out the answer to this lifelong question. Some things are better left unanswered.
In this essay I will be examining the logical impasse of not being able to attain certain knowledge without accepting the certainty of his sense of reason the meditator faces in meditations on first philosophy and discuss possible interpretations of the text that would explain the meditator’s use of circular argument.
If it’s your imagination or an illusion. The difficulty is that he cannot be certain about his sense
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.
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:
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
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.
Who am I? What am I? Where did the world come from? These questions about existence just keep lingering in the mind of an intellect, a thinker who has the courage to demand for an answer that would satisfy his wonder. But how is it to exist? Who then give the gift of existence? As man has started to question, he has just given a proof as a statement of ignorance. That man has the capacity to inquiry.
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.
How do we know that we exist? You cannot prove you exist, as well as, you cannot prove anyone else in the universe exists. The main idea existentialism focuses on is the question “If it wouldn’t exist without us, does it exist with us even though it is subconsciously in our minds?” Once you begin to understand how existentialists think and perceive life in general, there is a new outlook on Leo Tolstoy’s work. Repeatedly throughout The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ivan Ilyich is struggling to accept his fate. He is determined to find a meaning to his life before it’s too late. He is frozen between what is real and what was just an illusion in his mind. In the book, What is Existentialism? By William Barrett, Barrett goes on to say “In a story by Tolstoy, ‘Ivan Ilyich’, the hero lies on his deathbed facing for the first time the prospect of his own death… ‘all men are mortal, Caius is a man, therefore Caius is mortal.’ Precisely – Caius was mortal, but who was Caius? Caius was not he, Ivan Ilyich, who had had that childhood, those parents, this particular life.” When it comes to ourselves, we often have a hard time facing the one true fact- everything that lives must eventually die. We have a hard time connecting this to ourselves, with our own experiences and memories. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is realistic- Leo Tolstoy vividly predicts popular beliefs and questions before these beliefs are known.