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René Descartes First Meditations

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In the 1600s René Descartes, a philosopher and all around scholar, had decided to to take some time off from his life in general due to something which can be considered a question of his own faith. For some time, Descartes had been intending to go on a vacation for a very specific reason which wouldn’t be truly relaxing. During his holiday, Descartes aimed to literally destroy everything he believed in, he wanted to do this because he wanted less uncertainty in his life about what he wished to believe. He broke down several subjects in his first meditation, which included all five of his senses, doubt over what is, or is not, a dream, and whether or not his god, or someone more intelligent than him, is deceiving or tricking him. His reasoning …show more content…

One of the arguments is the aforementioned deceitful god argument, it was changed to a deceitful genius in order to prevent any objections raised by the church. In this scenario, Descartes supposes that since he believes in god who is all powerful, then it is entirely likely that god could be altering his perception of the world. This argument is later discredited by Descartes himself who believes that god wouldn’t deceive him, but when he considered it, the purpose of that argument is to introduce the possibility that literally, everything save for his existence, is false. Another argument that Descartes postulated was that there is a possibility that despite feeling awake one could be, in reality, dreaming. He says this because in the past he had …show more content…

I agree fully that there is a possibility that my senses could be incorrect, this has happened to me an unbelieveable amount of times in regards with my phone not ringing when I could have sworn it did. Not only do I recognize that my perspective may be inaccurate, but others may be as well. I also accept that there is a possibility that I’m dreaming even as I write this paper. I’ve had the same experience many have had where I go through my morning routine only to find out that I was only dreaming. Additionally, the mind has a way of explaining things that don’t make sense away in dreams; typically, if I notice something is slightly off in a dream I will probably ignore it and accept it as is. I don’t really accept his theory of a god lying to me because I’m an atheist. I also find it unlikely that someone is orchestrating a whole world for me to live

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