The Third Meditationations: Narrative In Descartes Third Meditations

Third Meditation: Narrative 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. The second meditation starts out by questioning the existence of him. He uses Archimedes famous saying “he could shift the entire earth given one immovable point”. Because, he can doubt anything and everything then he has to find a point of absolute certainty, so he can change his foundations. He wants to find out one thing that is certain and true. So, he began to question his very own existence. He questions the intention of god so, is god truly benevolent or is he a trickster. Then he goes on to think that he exists because he thinks he is the only thing that is thinking, because the ideas are being implanted, something and

The third meditation starts with a bit of reviewing with what he discussed in the first two meditations. He is still doubting everything else that is around him, but is convinced/he knows that he himself exists. He is trying to find certainty of what he knows is an undisputable fact. He comes up with the fact that he exists, because he is a thing that thinks. He decides to further examine himself so he comes up with an idea of what he is “I am a thing that thinks, i.e. that doubts, affirms, denies, understands some things, is ignorant of many others, wills, and