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Descartes First Meditations: Can We Really Trust The Five Senses?

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Is it real or not… In this paper I will be writing about my initial glance of Descartes Meditations. As I was reading the first meditation I came to the realization of that the willingness of Desecrates not to rely on his five senses is setting him up for failure. So therefore my first question is can you always trust your senses? Another thing that I will be trying to accomplish in this paper is the examination of Michael LaBossiere criticism of Descartes’ 1st Meditations. LaBossiere critics on the fact of that although sometimes you senses do deceive you, not trusting them at all, would be as if your were refusing safety ropes while climbing a mountain. The question that I will look to examine is whether or not LaBossiere argument is an …show more content…

He then goes to say that we should be able to trust our senses as long as we are suitably curious. At first glance to me it seemed that he wants us to trust are senses but not trust them too much. LaBossiere then goes into the analogy of a safety rope while climbing. Saying that although theses ropes do occasionally fail, but as long as we are suitably careful we should be reasonably safe. He later goes on to say that to doubt our senses is like refusing to use the safety rope while climbing up the rock. I agree with this statement because it would be foolish for us to completely disregard and not use are senses at all. There are many examples of when our senses have come to our rescue and have saved our lives. For example there was a time when I was kid and I smelt something burning and as if the room was getting hotter. If it weren’t for me realizing these things the kitchen probably would have ended up catching on fire. I could go on and on about how using are senses have helped us but then we would be losing the focus of LaBossiere argument of Descartes 1st meditation. He then goes on to say how because of his reasons stated above; Descartes argument does not justify his degree of

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