Descartes Meditation On First Philosophy Analysis

Descartes is now clear on his perception of God so he looks at material things. He points out that a body must exist in reality, because for him to dream about his body, it must exist before he would know what to dream about. So although he can perceive qualities of material things, he is still confused about some things because of is imperfect perception. He concludes that the senses are meant to help him get around in the world, not to lead him to the truth. ( SparkNotes Editors, 2012 )

Moreover, Descartes relies on having a thorough knowledge of mind and body. We may conclude with Descartes that thought is necessary to having a mind, and materiality is necessary to having a body, it does not inevitably follow that there is an entity whose sole nature is to think. Descartes is limited by his subjective viewpoint that it could not be the case that extension could be another property of mind. He needs to prove the stronger argument that it is not possible for the mind to have extension as one of it’s properties. Descartes tries to make this proof in his Divisibility Argument:

     On the journey to find truth to base all thought upon, Descartes explains his first step in doing so. “Never accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.”(Kolak, Pg.228). Assuming that everything you see is fictitious, Descartes believed he had no senses at all; “body, shape, extension, motion, and place are unreal.”(Weissman, Pg.23). Our senses have failed us all at one point or another in our lives, so why use the senses as a base for thought? The most famous quote and philosophy by Descartes in history ever, “Je pense, donc je suis, cogito ergo sum” (Durant, Pg.639). “I think, therefore I am” was the first step towards a basis to understand truth, and leaning away from truth through the senses.

The last step in Descartes argument says if he cannot tell whether he is dreaming, then how can he trust any of his senses telling him about the environment? To know anything about the external world on the basis of his sensory experiences, it seems like

     This is where the wax argument comes into play. All the properties of the piece of wax that we perceive with the senses change as the wax melts. This is true as well of its primary properties, such as shape, extension and size. Yet the wax remains the same piece of wax as it melts. We know the wax through our mind and judgement, not through our senses or imagination. Therefore, every act of clear and distinct knowledge of corporeal matter also provides even more certain evidence for the existence of Descartes as a thinking thing. Therefore his mind is much clearer and more distinctly know to him than his body. At this

As the first “premise” of his proof Descartes makes a very important distinction between the various types of ideas. The first type of idea he discusses is ideas that are images of things. This type of idea, when thought of, is apprehended as an object of my thought, but there is something more embraced in the thought than merely the representation of the object. Now if these ideas are considered only in themselves, and are not referred to any object beyond them, they cannot, properly speaking, be false. This even applies to the will and affections, a second type of idea, for although I may desire objects that are wrong, it is still true that I desire them. The third type of idea is that of judgement. Descartes goal in this classification is to find in his mind which of the ideas are the proper bearers of truth and falsehood. Considered in themselves, ideas are not false nor are desires. The only place where mistakes can be made is in making judgements. As Descartes says, “And the chief and most common mistake which is to be found here consists in my judging that the ideas which are in me resemble, or conform to, things located outside me.” Descartes further classifies his ideas by their origin: those that appear

Descartes starts his distinction of mind and by writing of his senses, that he has

Descartes has said the senses (sentiens) are a part of the process of thinking (cogitans), now he clarifies what he means when he speaks of the senses in the remainder of the text. Yet I certainly do seem to see, hear, and feel warmth. This cannot be false. Properly speaking, this is what in me is called 'sensing (sentire).' But

As Rene Descartes did, he determined that because he is a thinking being, then he must exist. This is because he is able to understand and to even dispute most ideas. Too, if something transforms while viewing it, like the wax that Descartes describes, then the change is just a matter of our senses and the way in which we perceive the item as it changes within its environment. A question or criticism that I have about Rene Descartes’ writing is that he states that if one does not have senses then what will be true ( ). However, then how can somebody who is blind, deaf or paralyzed be certain that something is true with the senses that they are lacking? Using Rene Descartes’ example of the wax, an individual cannot be certain that it is still the same piece of wax after it has changed its form if that person cannot see or

Descartes explains that the “ideas or thoughts of these things were hovering before my mind”, not perceptions of things existing outside of him (Descartes, 24). It follows that he cannot come to know of things for certain through sense perception.

He finds it plausible that we are all living in a dream and we have never experienced reality. He can no longer give any credence to his senses and finds himself in a place of complete uncertainty. Descartes comes to the conclusion that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than his own mind. He has discovered that even bodies are not accurately perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination, and are only accurately being perceived by the intellect. He also realizes that they are not distinguished through being touched, smelled, or tasted, but by being understood alone. (An apple is an apple because our mind tells us that it is an apple.) It is the faculty of reason that gives the knowledge and lets the mind know the truths and essences of objects. Descartes assumes that all of us can be decided by our senses, someone can see something far away, and then discover that is not what we thought it was. Or even a oar when is immerse half in water attempt to be bent, but instead is straight. Descartes think that we cannot always be sure of what we sense, and gives the example of himself seated by the fire.

It can easily be agreed that senses can deceive. His arguments, however, only hold up with regards to very few abstract concepts. With regards to a concrete concept such as the existence of a physical structure, his theory is negated. Being awake and aware of reality or being asleep dreaming, while in some ways can be considered abstract, can also be confirmed simply by the reality of human capability and facts that can actually be proven, such as a TV character being fictitious. For these reasons as explained previously, I reject Descartes theory that all sense experience is subject to

Before these changes were apparent, Descartes pointed out the difficulties of relying on the senses, of the physical body. In section 31 of Meditation two, he says that the perception he has, "is a case not of vision or touch or imagination - nor has it ever been, despite previous appearances - but of purely mental scrutiny". Descartes shows that our senses cannot be used to have knowledge of things in the external world, and that knowledge of these things must come through the mind alone.

Through The Mediations, Rene Descartes invites us along his path of thoughts as he develops his philosophical outlook on life. From the start, Descartes ponders the certainty of any knowledge he holds, as well as the soundness of its source. He questions his knowledge of anything and everything, even deeply questioning if he truly exists at all. The 17th century philosopher sought to distinguish how he knows what he does; ultimately challenging whether it is the senses or the mind that serves as the more desirable source of knowledge. Descartes believed that in order to truly make this discovery he would need to start from what he believed to be the foundation of things, removing all knowledge he believed to know up until this point and challenging the idea that it is our senses that justify the knowledge we hold. Ultimately through various arguments Descartes’s deemed the senses to be the more unreliable source for one to use to obtain knowledge of their surroundings and life in general.

Descartes theorized that in order to acquire knowledge, there essentially is some rational technique for attaining it, and that the expenditure of the senses, or any other individual capability was not a dependable basis. In his third meditation he says, “I know that even bodies are not perceived by the senses, or by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone (69). As a rationalist Descartes supposed that this withstood identically for everyone, that all people have rational learned concepts. He assumed that knowledge of external things was a result of only the cognizance, and not the senses. Descartes also anticipated that the entire universe was scientifically logical, and that everything could be comprehended by deduction.