Renee Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

The first thing that we will discuss is the project the Descartes assigns himself in the first meditation. Descartes has a realization that many of the things that he accepted as truths in his past have actually turned out to be false. This realization

My intent in this essay is to illustrate that the arguments regarding the existence of God and the fear of deception in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, are quite weak and do not justify his conclusions. To support these claims, I will begin by outlining two specific meditations and explain the proposed arguments. Later, I will critically analyze his arguments, revealing unjust conclusions. Doubts surrounding the text include the suggested characteristics of God, the condition of perfection, and the nature of deceit. A wrap up will include a discussion on whether or not Descartes (also referred to as Renatus) succeeded in his project.

In order to understand Descartes’ way of thinking, it is crucial to note his education. He received a sufficient education in mathematics and science which led to his rejection of scholastic philosophy. He was not only taught about old philosophers such as Plato and Epictetus, but there was a recent philosopher [according to his time] named Montaigne who was a

In Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes philosophies made a substantial advancement in enabling us to understand the world around us by querying many of the Aristotelian doctrines that are still being discussed in philosophy today. He attempts to answer the question; can you fully trust your senses? Descartes uses methodological doubt, which is a process of being skeptical about truths of someone’s belief to revoke from his senses. In Meditation One: Concerning Those Things That Can Be Called into Doubt, he argues that people cannot rely on their senses for full truths. Descartes says we must question everything and doubt everything because everything in this world is subjective as opposed to objective. He begins to argue by saying how when he was a child he believed certain things to be true but then later found out the real truth. Within his first meditation he uses an example of dreaming to prove how our senses deceive us. In Meditation Two: Concerning the Nature of the Human Mind: That the Mind is More Known Than the Body, Descartes starts off by questioning God and Heaven and provides another example of the ball of wax to support his ideas of how our senses cannot be fully trusted. Descartes does a fantastic job proving that the mind and body are disconnected and therefore we cannot trust our senses.

In the “Second Meditation,” of “Meditations on the First Philosophy,” Descartes contends that, even if a “malicious deceiver” was purposefully attempting to trick him, one thing is “necessarily true”. “I am…only a thing that thinks…a thinking thing.” From this, Descartes asks, “What else am I?” His answer is that he is not just a body, or a “…thin vapour which permeates the limbs…” He is something, which is identical with his awareness of himself yet, what that is, he is not sure. Accordingly, Descartes can only make judgments about the things known to him, because judgment is thinking, and thus, he knows that he exists. This, for Descartes, is the first thing he can be certain of, that he does exist, as something that thinks.

In Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes does and experiment with wax to try to prove that things actually exist in this world. This essay is going to prove how we can tell that things actually exist and what can perceive the wax.

Seeing as corporeal objects are tangible in our world, we can doubt their existence, but cannot dismiss what they are constructed of. Through this, Descartes shows that mathematics cannot be doubted. In any reality, two plus three makes five, and a square does not have more than four sides. Descartes then argues that the only subjects that are subject to deception are that of corporeal nature, like physics, astronomy, medicine, etc. He says this because tangibility can be manipulative and deceitful, but we cannot deny the foundation of tangibility, those being quantity and size. Descartes then concludes that the foundations that are universal across disciplines and cannot be doubted, are that of arithmetic, geometry and so on to hold true. D=Thus, non-composite disciplines, that are the foundations of corporeal things, are true as they leave no suspicion of being false.

Rene Descartes’ third meditation from his book Meditations on First Philosophy, examines Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to explore Descartes’ reasoning and proofs of God’s existence. In the third meditation, Descartes states two arguments attempting to prove God’s existence, the Trademark argument and the traditional Cosmological argument. Although his arguments are strong and relatively truthful, they do no prove the existence of God.

In this paper, I will discuss Descartes argument on a perfect being. In the reading “Meditations on First Philosophy” Descartes presents this argument; “Cogito Ergo Sum” or in simpler terms “I think, therefore I am.” During the creation of this argument, Descarte was going through this phase where everything that could be doubted meant that the object didn’t exist. For example, say you are watching a candle burn/melt, you can’t prove if the candle truly exists or if it’s just something that has been created out of a dream. Another example would say your looking in a mirror you don’t know if it’s really you, which means there is no proof that you exist; for all you know you could be possessed by a demon that is messing with your senses making it impossible for you to establish what is real and what is not. With this argument, it seems like it means that he doesn’t exist, but because he knows he can think and doubt this and that, it makes him real. Hence the saying, “I think, therefore I am.”

Descartes theory was that the mind and soul were two different things. They were separate from each other. He believed that the body was an extension, something that only does physical things. According, to Descartes the body was not made for thinking. Thus,

Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six

In the meditations, Descartes evaluates whether or not everything we know is a reality or a dream. Descartes claims that we can only be sure that our beliefs are true when we clearly and distinctively perceive them to be true. As the reader analyzes the third meditation, Descartes has confirmed that some of his beliefs are in fact true. The first is that Descartes himself exists. This is expressed in what has now become a popular quote known as the “Cogito” which says, “I think therefore I am. His second conclusion is that God exist and that he is not a deceiver. Descartes then presents his arguments to prove the existence of God. He argues that by nature humans are imperfect beings. Furthermore, humankind could not possibly be able to comprehend perfection or infinite things on their own. He writes, “By the name of God I understand a substance that is infinite, independent, all-knowing, all powerful, and which myself and everything else…have been created.”(16) Descartes uses this description of God to display the distinction between God and man.

Secondly, Descartes, by embarking on this reconstruction of his thoughts, hopes to find a stable basis for the sciences. Since Descartes was trained as a mathematician, he likes to find proofs for ideas, so that he can know them with absolute certainty. Initially, he believes philosophy to be the basis for the sciences “insofar as they [the sciences] borrow their principles from philosophy.” However, he concludes that philosophy cannot be the basis for the sciences, saying, “one could not have built anything upon such unstable foundations.” Now, he has to find a stronger foundation for the sciences and it is only through the reconstruction of his thought that he is able to do this.

Descartes believes that knowledge comes from within the mind. This is a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. While seeking true knowledge, Descartes writes his Six Meditations. In these meditations, Descartes tries to develop a strong foundation, which all knowledge can be built upon. In the First Meditation, Descartes begins developing this foundation through the method of doubt. He casts doubt upon all his previous beliefs, including “matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable [and] those which appear to be manifestly false.” (Descartes, p.75, par.3) Once Descartes clears away all beliefs that can be called into doubt, he can then build a strong base for all true

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) contains six Meditations. In the first two of these Descartes addresses doubt and certainty. By the end of the second Meditation Descartes establishes the possibility of certainty by concluding that he is a “thinking thing” and that this is beyond doubt. Having established the possibility of certainty, Descartes attempts to prove the existence of God. The argument he presents in the Third Meditation for the existence of God has been nicknamed the ‘Trademark’ argument. This argument deals with types of ideas, of which there are three, a principle called the Causal Adequacy principle, and a sliding scale of reality. The argument concludes that the idea of a God that is a perfect being is an innate idea that is real and was caused by God and therefore God is real. This argument will be explained with the greater detail in the next paragraph. In the Fifth Meditation Descartes again addresses the existence of God with an argument for His existence. This argument is a variation of St. Anselm’s ontological argument. This argument is also framed around his theory of ideas, as well as his principle of ‘clear and distinct perception’ and is explained and discussed in paragraph three. The paragraphs following these will discuss how convincing these two arguments from Descartes are and will deal with various objections. Many of these objections are strong enough that it will be clear why Descartes’ case has failed to convince everyone.