Analysis Of Descartes Mediation Of The First Philosophy

Descartes’ Mediation of the First Philosophy is a turning a point of modern day philosophy. Descartes questions Aristotle’s beliefs on the human nature, and the concept of all our knowledge comes from our senses. Descartes’ argument on the account of human nature was that it is composed of two incompatible substances, mind and body. Mind obviously being something immaterial and body being something physical. It has to be said that there is so much to be said about this issue of dualism. Descartes attempted to provide certainty to our knowledge and account of human nature. His process of reasoning begins with avoiding reliance of our senses that we must begin with finding a truth with complete certainty to qualify as knowledge. Presenting against

Descartes uses a system of systematic doubt; instead of refuting each and every one of his beliefs individually he decides to go straight to the principles on which all of his former beliefs are rested. Descartes targets the beliefs on which all other beliefs rest, to then maintain only beliefs which are “completely certain and indubitable”. So he begins by asking himself, where does he get a majority of his knowledge? And he realizes it’s from his sense. So he further questions whether our sense deceive us, and the answer is yes. There are certain things we have vivid experiences of, but Descartes argues that those too can deceive us because we can have very vivid dreams and yet those are not real either. So he doubts everything we can observe with our senses, because sometimes they deceive us. Descartes says to never trust a deceptive source, because there could be an evil demon. Perhaps there’s some way that we’re being deceived by everything around us, “I shall suppose that some malicious, powerful, cunning demon has done all he can to deceive me” (Descarte 15). So in order to show that we can be certain about our beliefs, Descartes begins by denying his entire existence and the existence of everything else in order to start afresh. We must get rid of all our beliefs for the purpose of building something

Ideas, and the will by themselves cannot be false, but it is in our judgments that error occurs. Ideas can be present within a person, accidentally caused, or constructed by a person’s mind. Ideas are not anything, and they all come from something. There is always ‘some first idea’. The idea of God is what remains. God is understood as an infinite, independent substance that created anything which exists. Therefore, “from what has been said, I must conclude that God necessarily exists” (Descarte 32). God is then responsible for his production and preservation, because God is .the ultimate cause. My thought of the necessity of God’s existence is brought by God’s existence. God’s existence underwrites my perception. If I perceive something very clearly, they know that it’s true. But sometimes I can see only my judgments, which sometimes can be doubted. I can keep my judgments because God is not a deceiver and I did distinctly perceive something. Therefore clear and distinct ideas must be true, and so out sense must be generally reliable. Descartes realizes that through this process of reasoning being by doubting beliefs, finding one certain truth resulting in the relationship between body and mind, and discovering the existence of God that he has a “better knowledge of myself and the author of my origin” (Descarte 61). Descartes argues that he can never rashly