Rene Descartes Rhetorical Analysis

He gives another scenario of when he lies in the bed he can dream that his he is sitting by the fire with is nightgown when in fact there is no such event he is undressed in the bed. This reinforces that idea one cannot trust what one is experiencing to actually be real. What proof can one bring that one awake other than oneself “just knowing”. This is the point Descartes wan to call to attention.

In Descartes’ First Meditation, Descartes’ overall intention is to present the idea that our perceptions and sensations are flawed and should not be trusted entirely. His purpose is to create the greatest possible doubt of our senses. To convey this thought, Descartes has three main arguments in the First Meditation: The dream argument, the deceiving God argument, and the evil demon “or evil genius”. Descartes’ dream argument argues that there is no definite transition from a dream to reality, and since dreams are so close to reality, one can never really determine whether they are dreaming

Descartes’ Dreaming Argument comes from his thinking that there is no way of knowing if you are sleeping or if you are awake. To know something is to have no doubt of a fact, it must be a justified true belief. To be justified it must hold logical reason, you cannot state something is true without evidence. In order for it to be true it is not enough to justify it, but it must be justified with true facts. Finally, you must believe it, in order to know something it must be true in your mind. As a result Descartes doubts his consciousness as he cannot truly know that he is awake. This spurs Descartes to question if any perceived knowledge of reality is really true. Descartes calls his senses into questions as he notes, “it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” and therefore concludes that as a result it is prudent, never to trust his sense. In

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

While it can be said that premise 1 is true, many people disagree strongly with premise 2. Descartes claims that we cannot be certain that we are not dreaming, but our dreaming experiences and our waking experiences are dissimilar. Our dreams often do not make sense and do not fit into a consistent and comprehensible timeline of events unlike our waking experiences. Even in circumstances where dreams are vivid and seem real for a short period of time, we are able to recall these dreams and acknowledge that they were not real life events. On the other hand, this view can be challenged by recognising we appear to be awake when we think about our dreams, but Descartes objective is to make the reader consider if it is possible that even the process of waking and reflecting upon a dream is part of the dream itself, thus reinforcing the idea that we are unable to differentiate between dreaming and being awake. The final limitation of this argument that I would like to discuss within this essay is its paradoxical nature. Although the premises of this argument appear reasonable, the conclusion seems ridiculous. While the conclusion does follow from the premises, creating a valid argument, the conclusion remains arguably unacceptable.

Descartes dreaming argument suggests that perhaps our senses cannot be fully trusted because we cannot be certain we are not dreaming, and this means we therefore cannot be certain of anything. His evil demon argument is similar but uses the idea of an evil demon deceiving you instead of your senses. These sceptical arguments mean that we cannot be certain of anything at all for it may be happening whilst we are dreaming, or we are being tricked into thinking it is happening. I do not agree with Descartes because I feel that I can be certain I am not dreaming, and I do not believe that other supernatural creatures; such as an evil demon exists.

In his First Meditation (Feinberg & Shafer-Landau, 2001) Descartes explored his ideas regarding knowledge and skepticism, which led to him developing ideas based around the certainty of his experiences. From this he developed his first argument: the dreaming argument.

One of Rene Descartes’s most famous arguments, from his not only from his first meditation but all of the meditations, is his Dream Argument. Descartes believes that there is no way to be able to distinguish being in awake from being in a state of dreaming. In fact you could actually be in a dream right now. Rene Descartes’s theory that one is unable distinguish being awake from dreaming, as interesting as it is, can be at times a little farfetched, along with a few contradictions to himself, Descartes’s dream argument does not entitle himself to any sort of claim.

But in order to further clarify this "thing that thinks,” he admits that there is always the possibility that he may be dreaming or deceived by an evil demon, since he is something that also imagines and senses seen. (13,15). He elaborates on this idea that if he is after

The First Meditation of Meditations on First Philosophy, subtitled "What can be called into doubt," opens with the Meditator reflecting on the number of falsehoods he has believed during his life and on the subsequent ability of the body to deceive him. Seated alone by the fire, he resolves to demolish former opinions and rebuild his knowledge on more certain grounds.

Dream Skepticism has been debated largely since Descartes’ projection of those ideas. Descartes believed many irrational thoughts in relation to dreaming, which proposed ideas that nobody at his time had ever seen before. Descartes’ challenging of the traditional ideas and proposing new ones in which challenged the minds of the individuals, as well as trying to convince the masses that dreaming had some sort of value for an individual that would carry on into his conscious world. Throughout these different ideas lied his main notion: the dreams produced in the human brain while unconscious are not false or fiction, rather, they present the truths that lie in our very minds and therefor should hold value to the dreamer himself. Descartes believed

I mentioned Rene Descartes earlier in my writing and want to unpack his thinking a little more. In “Meditation on the First Philosophy,” Descartes starts to question whether he can really tell the difference between being asleep and being awake. He says the following: “Let us then suppose* that we are dreaming, and that these particular things (that we have our eyes open, are moving our head, stretching out our hands) are not true; and that perhaps we do not even have hands or the rest of a body like what we see. It must nonetheless be admitted that the things we see in sleep are, so to speak, painted

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.

He then begins to address the problem of imagination. If he realizes that things are around him, that rules out the possibility that he is imagining such entities. He says that imagination is not essential to his existing, so he removes himself from these thoughts.

Descartes firstly argues, in his argument from occasional deception, that because his senses have deceived him previously then it is logical for him to not trust his senses. "But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once"(R&R,242). He then shows how he is often certain that he is awake when instead he is dreaming. "How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events – that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire- when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!"(R&R,243). Descartes claims that there are no obvious indicators that would suggest that we are dreaming, meaning that there is no way we can be absolutely certain that we are awake, or even have been awake our entire lives. This argument leads Descartes a step further, he questions whether anything around him is real at all, and not some illusion created for