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Descartes First Meditation

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The philosophical theories of Descartes can be considered very wild yet also well thought out. He begins his meditations with a desire to possess a firm, absolute scientific foundation for what he believes is the truth; however, in order to do this, all foundations of belief that can be doubted must be rejected, and the truths that are left can be considered absolutely certain. Using the example of a dream, Descartes reveals it is plausible that everything the senses reveal to him have the potential to be a simple illusion created by a clever being; thus, through this realization, all of Descartes’ beliefs about the world are tainted and cannot serve as a basis for his scientific truth. Descartes leads into his next meditation with the belief …show more content…

God can not be a deceiver because he is a perfect being. It is then declared that because one’s faculty of judgement comes from God, no mistake can be made as long as it is used. Because this is not an infinite faculty, mistakes will be made when one judges something he does not know. Some may argue against the existence of God saying if he created us, we would be perfect. This is when the subject of free will is brought up. Because God gave man free will, an infinite thing that surpasses the finite intellect, man possesses the capability to imperfect himself through self-deception. With this information it is suggested that if something is known with absolute certainty, it can not be mistaken because God is not a deceiver; this, the way to avoid mistakes is to limit one’s claims to knowledge to things that are known clearly and …show more content…

Imagination is a faculty that we use for picturing what we’re thinking about. Using the example of a triangle, one imagines a figure with three sides, but he uses his intellect and understanding to see a chiliagon, a figure with a thousand sides. Imagination is not essential to our mind, but understanding is. The intellect belongs to the mind while the imagination may belong to the body. This distinction allows one to see the difference between mind and body. Things are sensed through the body, but concepts are understood through the mind. Although these things are very different, they are joined. Descartes uses this to eliminate doubts from certainty about material objects. It becomes apparent that it is known for certain that one can still exist without the body. Nature is God’s order and because God is not a deceiver, nature, pertaining to our composite minds and bodies, is never wrong. Descartes concludes that by using more than one sense and memory, one can avoid errors of the senses. By getting rid of the excessive doubts, one can trust the truth of his own ideas as long as the senses, memory, and understanding are all consistent with one

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