Analysis On Descartes Meditation One Essay Research

Analysis On Descartes Meditation One Essay, Research Paper

Mark Bailey

I am going to discuss Descartes Meditation One: Concerning those things

that can be called into doubt. I will analyze and explain what Descartes was trying

to do, and explain why (In my personal opinion) that this is nothing but a few

wordy paragraphs that have no real value or point to them.

In Descartes first meditation he discusses that he has come to the

conclusion that many of his beliefs and opinions he had as a child are doubtful.

Descartes decides that in order to find out the ?truths? he must disprove his current

?knowledge.? Descartes goes about this by trying to disprove the principles that

support everything he believes in, using his Method of Doubt. Descartes Method

of doubt is his way of doubting everything that has even the slightest possibility of

not being fact. Descartes does not necessarily doubt everything that he brings up.

Descartes does believe that whatever can not be doubted for the slightest reason

must be true. For that reason is why I think that his argument is weak, and I will

explain later why I think that this is the case.

Descartes spends meditation one trying to disprove his fundamental beliefs.

First Descartes doubts that he can trust his senses because they are occasionally

wrong. An example of this are a longed haired man may look like a woman from

far away. Descartes then states that there are no definitive signs for him to tell

weather he is awake or asleep. Since he cannot trust his senses he concludes that

there is no way to determine whether he is awake or asleep. But he admits that

there are certain ?truths? that are consistent weather he is awake or asleep. For

instance two plus three equals five, and that a square has four sides in his sleep,

and while conscious. To disprove these beliefs Descartes abandons the idea of a

supremely good God like he has believed in all his life and brings up the argument

that God is an all powerful, all clever evil genius who?s entire purpose is to

deceive Descartes.

With these three arguments, each larger than the next, Descartes is satisfied

that he has adequately disproved the previous argument. Since he has done this he

is now ready to lay down a new foundation of knowledge and find the ?truth.?

This passage reminds me of the movie ?The Matrix?, in that God acts as the

computers did in the Matrix. Descartes is trying to free his mind as Neo had to do

because the computers only let Neo see what they wanted him to by altering his

senses, just like Descartes believes God is doing to him.