Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

This week Dean Greg Faye visited our class and discussed what it means to be human from the perspective of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. His visit brought up many interesting and challenging points along with some of the comments from the students. He uses Descartes’s theories of philosophy to try to make sense to us what exactly a human being is. Although I found some of these theories to be impractical. Dean Faye made it so even though we may have questioned these points that we still put them into consideration. The first concept he uses is Descartes idea of doubting everything we know and completely starting over with a clean slate. He does this by doubting his senses and Faye uses this example of him holding up his five fingers and asking how you can doubt he has five fingers. This whole concept just made me frustrated because it is something impossible to try to make sense of. Therefore, bringing up the point that philosophy would never be a choice of career path for myself because it’s this never ending fundamental of theories and questions. I feel when you question

He’s notion on this is that it is our minds that make us human our thoughts, being able to think, and understand to doubt. This to Descartes is what makes us humans and this I was able to make sense of and also understand better. I find it difficult to be able to label and characterize a human being because there is so much that goes into what it means of being a human. We’re not just one thing or even a thing at all in my opinion. For an example a thing is an object like a lamp it’s just an object it doesn’t have a mind or can think. A human though as Descartes describes has a mind that allows us to be aware and awake and this is what separates us from objects because we are able to think for