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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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Descartes 'Argument From Past Failure'

1301 Words | 6 Pages

This is evident through arguments such as “The Argument from Past Failures”, “The Argument from Madness” and “The Dreaming Argument”. In Descartes’ famous “Dreaming Argument” Descartes argues that “there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.”, giving an example where he thought he was sitting next to a fireplace, unaware he was actually in bed dreaming (13). This argument challenges the idea of the senses again as it presents the idea that we can never know if what we are currently experiencing is real as we may be in a dream. Proving that there is no way to differentiate between reality and a dream, resulting in the idea that our whole life may have just been a dream, Descartes provided a counter argument to elaborate on the “Dreaming Argument” known as the “The Painting Analogy”. This analogy explains how like a painting and painter, dreams derive their material based on experiences we have while awake (13).

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1382 Words | 6 Pages

Dreams are defined as a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during sleep. Psychological studies show that dreams only occur during certain stages of sleep. However, Rene Descartes, a French philosopher argues that the sensations felt in dreams are indistinguishable from the ones we feel in real life. In Descartes Meditations I, Descartes talks about the dream argument in which he introduces the following premises. 1.

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An Analysis Of René Descartes Mediations On First Philosophy

1654 Words | 7 Pages

Notre Dame ID: 902008117 In René Descartes ' Mediations on First Philosophy, Descartes abandons all previous notions or things that he holds to be true and attempts to reason through his beliefs to find the things that he can truly know without a doubt. In his first two meditations Descartes comes to the conclusion that all that he can truly know is that he exists, and that he is a thinking being. In his third meditation, Descartes concludes that he came to know his existence, and the fact that he is a thinking being, from his clear and distinct perception of these two facts. Descartes then argues that if his clear and distinct perception would turn out to be false, then his clear and distinct perception that he was a thinking being would not have been enough to make him certain of it (Blanchette).

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357 Words | 2 Pages

He first goes on to note that the senses can deceive us, and that things are not always just as they seem at first glance to be. He claims our senses can deceive us and our very own perception of reality or what events are happening around us can be false. We may believe that what we are experiencing is true, but who’s to say that we are not actually living some other existence but our sense of reality is deceiving us. Descartes then goes on to mention the dream problem, where he goes on to say that we may dream of the physical world but who’s to say that we are not imagining our very existence. Can we truly distinguish everything we know or perceive to be true from our dreams and imagination, and possibly doubt that anything physical truly exists, that there is an external world at

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Descartes Non Deceive God Analysis

726 Words | 3 Pages

Descartes assumed first that it was God, who deceived us, but with the conclusion that God is all-good, he instead conclude that an evil demon exist. This evil demon possess the same power to deceive us, which God also would possess. God is perfect. Since humans have the ability to think of a being more perfect then themselves, then this being must have planted the idea in our mind. With the knowledge now that God is existing, perfect and is a non-deceiver – due to him being all-good –, Descartes can now move on to explain why material objects

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403 Words | 2 Pages

A particularly interesting aspect of Descartes’s skeptical argument is the dream argument and, by extension, the evil demon argument. If we follow the dream argument to its conclusion and become skeptical about the existence of the external world and our ability to draw knowledge from our senses, a troubling conundrum arises. If we consider it impossible to distinguish reality from dreaming and we also consider that a test to differentiate between the two states cannot be reliably performed, then let us imagine a hypothetical scenario where a person is awake and dreaming for an equal amount of time. How, then, do we draw a distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness? Between the sleeping dreaming world and what we consider to be the

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Descartes In The Movie 'The Matrix'

312 Words | 2 Pages

In the movie The Matrix you can clearly understand how the points that Descartes makes in his meditations stand out in the movie. The first point that Descartes makes is that he believes that he is living his life in a dream and that everything that he sees around him is not real. The second point Descartes makes is that he believes there is a higher power, which is God who makes him, understand his knowledge more clearly. The final point that Descartes makes is that there is an evil demon that deceives his thoughts because he believes that God would not do such a thing as deceiving him.

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1919 Words | 8 Pages

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884 Words | 4 Pages

For how he can be certain that 2+2= 4 and not 5, how can he know for sure that he is not being deceived into believing the answer to be 5 due to a demon. But even if an evil demon did indeed exist, in order to be misled, Descartes himself must exist. As there must be an “I”, that can be deceived. Conclusively, upon Descartes’ interpretations we can come to decipher that in order for someone to exist they must indeed be able to think, to exist as a thinking thing.

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Descartes First Meditation Analysis

997 Words | 4 Pages

The idea that if one can comprehend something in a dream, it therefore must exist in real life. The fact of this is that we know no positive transition between our dream state and the state of reality, and since dreams are so similar to reality, one can never tell when they are truly dreaming. Descartes demonstrates this idea with his own experiences, “How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events-that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire – when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly awake” (Descartes 145). By using simple experiences like these Descartes is able to emphasize that when a person is dreaming, they do not usually know they are dreaming, and the sensations they experience are as real as if they were awake.

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685 Words | 3 Pages

The first thing he does is doubted what the senses give us. However, Descartes pushes his doubting one step further by doubting whether we are actually awake. In the dream argument Descartes is saying that he often experiences the sensations of dreaming while he is awake. From reflecting on this he comes to the conclusion that if he can falsely perceive himself to be awake while he is dreaming then he can falsely believe he is dreaming while he is awake. So, he can never actually know when he is awake or dreaming (Windt).

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1520 Words | 7 Pages

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1528 Words | 7 Pages

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722 Words | 3 Pages

Rene Descartes is considered as one of the most important founders of modern day philosophy. His greatest contribution to philosophy is his meditations. This paper aims at establishing what wax represents in Descartes meditations. In his second meditation, Descartes introduces the idea of wax freshly obtained from honeycombs.

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The poem “Richard Cory” by Ewin Arlington Robinson is one that I and many others can relate to in one way or another. Whether they relate to Richard Cory, who has it all or the townspeople wanting more. The theme we see in this poem is that money does not buy happiness. It tells the story of a wealthy man that everyone looks up to but little do they know he has issues of his own. The people are so blinded by his fortune that they don’t notice his sadness that drove him to suicide.

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