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Descartes First Meditation Essay

1503 Words7 Pages

Introduction Rene Descartes, French philosopher ambitiously sets out to prove once and for all that we must cannot believe our senses, because those can deceive us. As he reflects, he found himself misled regarding to matters that he thought he was certain. In the First Meditation he rebuilds his knowledge from the ground and accepts those claims what happen to be true through a process of sceptical doubts. This essay will describe and discuss the concepts were presented in his book. I will examine his ideas based on my own experiences and the Matrix. The Dreaming argument Descartes – in his First Meditation - suggests that he sleeps and there are many occasions when he thinks he is awake and “sitting by the fire” although …show more content…

Based on this, I am drawn to the thought that “dreaming” world is essentially dissimilar from the “waking world”. I might be not able to know if another exterior world exists, but I can perceive the diversity between the “dreaming” and the “waking” world. The Evil Demon Argument Descartes in his meditations introduces the Evil Demon argument, which in he suggest the existence of an evil demon, controlling our life and placing the concept of evil “method of doubt”. He does not believe in an optimal God rather than a malign demon “all powerful and cunning” impacting and deceiving us, and parallels in movies like the Total Recall and the Matrix. According to these films and his theory, we could be in a created world and even if we feel everything normal -walking on the street, talking to our friends- we still can be influenced by these Evil Demon. Descartes invokes a mathematical exercise to prove his theory: 2+3= 5, what seems valid. Although, if the arguments is true we cannot be sure that the mathematical rules are still valid, because there are external powers controlling and deceiving our brain. This is Descartes' first observation where not our body is

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