Descartes Chapter 1 Analysis

This essay attempts to explain Descartes’ epistemology of his knowledge, his “Cogito, Ergo Sum” concept (found in the Meditations), and why he used it [the cogito concept] as a foundation when building his structure of knowledge. After explaining the concept I give a brief evaluation of his success in introducing and using this cogito as a foundation. Finally, I provide reasons why I think Descartes succeeded in his epistemology.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes takes the reader through a methodological exercise in philosophical enquiry. After stripping the intellect of all doubtful and false beliefs, he re-examines the nature and structure of being in an attempt to secure a universally valid epistemology free from skepticism. Hoping for the successful reconciliation of science and theology, Descartes works to reconstruct a new foundation of absolute and certain truth to act as a catalyst for future scientific research by “showing that a mathematical [rational-objective] physics of the world is attainable by creatures with our intellectual capacities and faculties” (Shand 1994, p.

As with almost all of Descartes inquiries the roots of his second argument for the existence of God begin with his desire to build a foundation of knowledge that he can clearly and distinctly perceive. At the beginning of the third meditation Descartes once again recollects the things that he knows with certainty. The problem arises when he attempts to clearly and distinctly understand truths of arithmetic and geometry. Descartes has enough evidence to believe these things, but one major doubt is still present; the possibility of God being a deceiver. Descartes worry is that all the knowledge that he possesses through intuition could potentially be false if God merely chooses to deceive him. So in order to have a clear and distinct perception of arithmetic truths (and other such intuitive truths) Descartes delves into the question of God’s existence (and whether this God could be a deceiver or not).

Finally, a further problem with the argument is the false analogy Descartes creates between the standards of quality of architectural works, and the quality of fundamentally different varieties of works, such as those concerning philosophy. These are all serious issues with Descartes’ argument that a work is more perfect when it is created by one person rather than many, and they completely undermine his reasoning. While it is beyond the scope of this evaluation to either confirm or deny Descartes’ conclusion, it is clear that the argument he presents in support of it is not valid. Descartes begins his argument by asserting his conclusion that a work is more perfect when it is created by one person rather than many, and then offers evidence to support this conclusion.

In Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method he expresses his disappointment with traditional philosophy and with the limitations of theology; only logic, geometry and algebra hold his respect, because of the utter certainty which they can offer us. Unfortunately, because they depend on hypotheses, they cannot tell us what is real, i.e. what the world is really like. Therefore Descartes suggests a method of thought combining the consistency of mathematics but based on natural truths about what is real, basic knowledge which could not be wrong (like the axioms of geometry). He calls into question everything that he thinks he has learned through his senses but rests his entire system on the one truth that he cannot doubt, namely, the reality of his own mind and the radical difference between the mental and the physical aspects of the world.

In a quote previously shown, Descartes claims that his idea of a perfect being comes from God. Descartes also believes that the idea

The argument Descartes makes about the existence of corporeal objects because they were created by a good-natured God fails. The sixth meditation deals with the proof of the physical world and corporeal objects and the real distinction between the mind and the body. Descartes says that if one can conceive of something without contradiction, then that thing is possible because it is possible for God to make that thing happen. A clear weak-link in the argument is that firstly, how does Descartes know that God is real? Moreover, how does Descartes know whether God is good? Using ontology, Descartes defends God’s existence due to his nature. Descartes believes that God is a supreme being that holds perfection. He assumes that his existence is

The mythical phoenix is born in the ashes of its mother once she has been consumed in flame, becoming stronger than she ever was. In Discourse on Method, Descartes hopes to destroy the conventional understanding of philosophy that has been followed throughout the ages, and in doing so establish his own philosophy as the new convention in the ashes of the old philosophy. In this paper, I will present Descartes’ findings of instability in philosophy and distaste for the way people learn as his motivation for undertaking this reconstruction of his thoughts, finding a firm and lasting basis for the sciences as his end goal for the reconstruction, and his rules for conducting thought and code of doubt as the way by which he hopes to achieve

When you first read the fourth meditation, Descartes starts off by looking back on all the certainties that he has created so far, one of them being that God does in fact exist, He is not a deceiver and that God created him so therefore he is to blame for all of his capabilities including his faculty of judgement. Descartes seems to be satisfied with the convictions that God exist and that He is not a deceiver, however, he starts to dig into the conflicts with the third; that, “if everything that is in me comes from God, and he did not endow me with a faculty for making mistakes, it appears that I can never go wrong” (Descartes) this problem is also known as the “Problem of Error” he then begins to try and find a solution to this issue. His first attempt to finding a solution is by reasoning that God created him as a finite being and that he exist simply as an intermediate between what he calls “nothingness” and God.

Before diving into a critical examination of these two issues, it would be wise to first discuss the basis of Descartes’ philosophy. Descartes begins his discussion of mind

In A Discourse on the Method, Descartes attempted to prove the existence of God in a priori manner. He did not trust his own senses when trying to prove the existence of God and therefore he relied on the ontological argument. By making the same assumption made by Anselm, which was that an ontological argument assumes that existence is a predicate of God, Descartes is able to conclude that ‘God exists’ is true by definition because the subject ‘God’, who already contains all perfections, already contains the predicate – exists, which is a perfection. Although this may be perceived as a strong claim to believers, many such as Gaunilo would have disagreed. Descartes postulates his argument in the fourth part of his Discourse in order to try and prove the existence of God. One must discuss why one feels Descartes attempted to do so and exactly how convincing his claim is. However, before one can understand his claim, it is important to grasp an idea of the background that Descartes was writing from when he wrote the Discourse and the meaning of proof.

During the period of enlightenment and scientific discovery of the 17th century, differing concepts of the scientific method emerged. Amongst these, René Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton had some of the more prominent ideologies. Through The Discourse On Method Descartes describes his rules for “discovering the truth”(Sherman. P.74) based on his mathematical background. Many of these are based on logical deductions and examining individual sections of a hypothesis to determine their truths. A few decades later, Sir Isaac Newton published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy containing the results of his mathematical and scientific work. To arrive at the conclusions, which Newton had, he came up with his “four rules for arriving at knowledge”(Sherman. P.76). While these methods have had a positive impact on many great minds, the nature of Descartes’s and Newton’s methodologies threatened the church as it promoted critical thinking and independence from the Roman Catholic Church.

With the emergence of the scientific revolution in the 17th century, views of society and nature were transformed throughout Europe. There were great developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, and chemistry. The world and its views were changing, and with that change, came a new change in thought, a new change in philosophy. Apart from ancient Greek philosophy, which was centered on finding order in a vast variety of things by searching for a fundamental amalgamating principle, Descartes sought to establish order via some fundamental division. Descartes understands and expresses that what we know about our mind is more definite than what we know about the world outside our mind. Descartes’

Moreover, in order for Descartes’ method to discover a great way for seeking the truth of things, he based his method on the geometrical style, which entails clarity and certainty of things. In geometry, Descartes finds the notion of clear and distinct ideas, which are considered clear and distinct because they are simple and unquestionable truths, and also they could be easy understood. In addition to it, he finds this method to be promising because he comprehends geometrical figures to be absolutely evident, not probabilistic. The fact that Descartes was looking for a method that will help him to find the truth of things encourages him to look for a method with the properties of logic, mathematics and geometry, but obviously excluding their defects. He just set out four rules rather than a large number of rules: 1) to never accept anything as true unless it is so clear and distinctly, meaning there is no minimum doubt; 2) to reduce every single complex

Descartes’ wasn’t happy with scholasticism at all now, and his newly sought interest in beginning with new foundations and schools of knowledge show the scientific context of the time. These ideas were that it was