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Pros And Cons Of Rene Descartes

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In Meditation I Descartes wanted to discover if anything is absolutely certain. His goal is to secure a stable, certain foundation for knowledge. Descartes method is to doubt everything that can be doubted and see what certain knowledge really is. Descartes had to destroy his whole foundation of knowledge, by doing this he had to doubt everything he believed and his opinions. He had to discover a new foundation that could survive his doubts and skepticism so that he could have a perfect certain foundation of knowledge. Rene Descartes said “If I am able to find in each one some reason to doubt, this will suffice to justify my rejecting the whole,” (Introduction to Philosophy, pg. 50) Descartes had to examine each of his beliefs individually, …show more content…

In Meditation I, Descartes gives three methods of doubts, these three arguments are Sensory doubt argument, dream doubt argument, and deceitful god or evil genius doubt. Descartes sensory doubt argument is about how his senses have deceived him so he should not trust them. Descartes says “ but it is sometimes proved to me that senses are deceptive, and it is wiser not to trust entirely to anything by which we have once been deceived.” (Introduction to Philosophy pg.5o) There is also a contrast between appearance and reality, he argues that what we see and feel is merely appearance which we perceive as “reality.” An example of appearance/ reality distinction is phantom limb experience. Which is when someone has a missing limb but they think they can feel their missing limb. Descartes second argument is the dream doubt argument, which he argued that it might be possible that everything he perceives might not be real but might be from his imagination, i.e. dreams. Descartes made me really think when he said “But in thinking over this I remind myself that on so many occasions I have in sleep …show more content…

Descartes is correct, that senses do deceive us in some cases. But his skepticism about this is questionable because one is able to see through deception, which avoids one from being deceived. Our senses might be reliable but they are far from perfect. I don’t think Descartes argument completely justifies his degree of skepticism with the sensory doubt argument. I don’t completely doubt my senses because they occasionally fail me because I can see through the deception most time. An example is things in the distance look smaller than they actually are which is true. The same goes for his dream doubt argument, because I can distinguish my world when I’m awake and when I’m dreaming. The external world is supposed to be whatever exists outside of your own mind. The skeptics say that there are things in the external world but you can’t know whether there real or not. I don’t know if we can have knowledge of the external world because you can only know your internal world. I think I can tell the difference between my dreams and the real world which I feel Descartes skepticism somewhat fails. I don’t agree with the evil genius because I don’t think there is something out there that is trying to deceive my views of the world. I feel like Descartes arguments are somewhat reasonable but they are not 100 percent enough to create complete

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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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“Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” (Descartes). By this, he means that our perceptions are deceptions created by our senses to trick us into believing that we are awake and going about our day when in actuality, we are dreaming and the world around us is an illusion. Hence, we shouldn’t trust our senses to give us any true knowledge of the world because it may always be deceiving us. It is true that senses can deceive, however, for us to know that our senses are deceiving us, we must differentiate between reality and what is deception.

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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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Descartes begins his Meditations by putting his former beliefs to the test by thoroughly questioning them with the essence of doubt. Descartes divides his doubting into three

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Descartes begins his argument by comparing the dreams he could have to the dreams of a madman. He says he has similar experiences as one would except of a madman why asleep, if even sometimes more outlandish ones (Descartes, 13). He goes on to describe how his dreams in the past contained events that are hardly different from the time he considered himself to be awake. Theses help to support the claim that there is no way to tell whether or not he is dreaming or awake. This defines Descartes’ first premise to be “If you cannot distinguish between the time when you are dreaming and the time when you are awake using the sense, then the sense can be doubted.

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Rene Descartes was a great philosopher who is known for creating systemic doubts of the world around us. The purpose of the perpetual doubts was to scrutinize any belief and statements that an individual view as truthful. Descartes writings have been the backbone of arguments for skepticism since they were first brought to light, in particular skepticism born about the existence of an external world. In his first meditation Descartes introduces the idea that we cannot know for certain about the existence of an external world since he explains how he cannot distinguish dreaming from waking life in occasion, therefore, all the experiences he beliefs to be of waking life could be nothing but a mere dream. Descartes bases his argument on the fact that there is no feature that can shows us and give us the certainty that waking life is different from dreaming.

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His methodological doubt was centered on his desire to examine ideas and concepts to which he thought to be true and to sift out those containing any amount of doubt. Descartes wanted to first consider what is meant when we as individuals say we know what reality, being, and existence is and that we must be able to justify knowledge in order for it to be truthful. His philosophies were based around the fact that we cannot claim anything as concrete without justification. His process started out with the doubting of all knowledge followed by the classification of beliefs by common characters. He would then apply a skeptical hypothesis for each followed by another much stronger hypothesis.

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In Descartes’ First Meditation, Descartes is trying to establish firm foundations for knowledge; in doing so he adopts ‘The Method of Doubt’ where he tests knowledge by subjecting them to sceptical arguments. There are three main arguments considered by Descartes in the First Meditation, ‘The Argument from Sensory Error’, ‘The Argument from Dreaming’, and ‘The Argument from the Possibility of a Deceitful God’. In Descartes’ ‘Argument from Sensory Error’, he says “Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my sense. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”.

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Meditation is the introspective process that involves the mind turning back in and upon itself, removing itself from the material world and focusing its attention inward. Descartes employs meditation to detach the minds from external influences, to think and analyze philosophy from the original foundations. This brings us to Descartes First Meditation, with the introduction of the method of doubt, he presents his philosophical project and claims that in order to complete his project he needs to question the truth behind all his beliefs. He attempts to accomplish this impossible feat because as he’s aged he has realized the false foundations that he has held onto thus far and the ideas he’s built on them. To be able to tear down these beliefs,

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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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Explain Descartes’ method of doubt. What is Descartes purpose in exercising this method? Descartes begins Meditation I by stating that in order for him to establish anything in the sciences that was constant, he would have to start from the foundations of all knowledge. By claiming this, he is adopting skepticism which is not him rejecting his beliefs, but doubting them.

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However, Descartes accepts that humans can be wrong by relying on their sensory knowledge, though mostly on small objects in life. Because the senses can be incorrect, skepticism states that it isn't what Descartes searches for. Descartes tries to reassure himself, saying that it his sense must have some truth, since he is not a mad person. However, mad people are certain that what they see is real, and Descartes has just proven that his sensory knowledge can be wrong at times, so skepticism states that he can never be sure that he isn't insane. Skepticism also doubts whether people's lives are dreams or not, as people can confuse their dreams as real

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According to Descartes, the only thing we can be certain of is that fact that we think, and with the ability to think, he has the knowledge of God’s existence and therefore the realization that material objects exist (Moore, Bruder 99). Descartes uses the example of the wax to demonstrate how the mind and our thoughts are more reliable than our body and senses. He argues that when the wax is both in liquid and state form, the qualities we perceive by our senses are different in both states, but by using our mind and judgment, it is still the same wax (Skirry). This indicates that the senses are not enough to understand everything around us because what we can be certain of is what is in our minds. Therefore, Descartes would assume that using

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God’s existence underwrites my perception. If I perceive something very clearly, they know that it’s true. But sometimes I can see only my judgments, which sometimes can be doubted. I can keep my judgments because God is not a deceiver and I did distinctly perceive something. Therefore clear and distinct ideas must be true, and so out sense must be generally reliable.

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