René Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

In Meditation Two of René Descartes’ Meditation on First Philosophy, he notes the sight of “men crossing the square.” This observation is important as Descartes states, “But what do I see aside from hats and clothes, which could easily hide automata? Yet I judge them to be men.” This is an important realization as Descartes argues that instead of purely noticing the men through sight, it is actually “solely with the faculty of judgement,” the mind, that perceives and concludes that the thing wearing a hat and clothes are men. I argue that this view of the outside world by Descartes is incomplete as his idea of “I” is faulty, as well as having a misunderstanding on the importance of the senses.

I believe that this is a clear and distinct interpretation of his dream argument. It breaks down Descartes’ dream argument and points out the premises that lead to his conclusions. Every valid argument must have a conclusion that is directly derived from its’ premises. In order for an argument to be sound, the premises and conclusion must make logical

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.

Descartes converse the possibility his whole life could be a dream with no real world that he may be waking up to. Descartes discussions that the images we have in our dreams are images that we previously had experience with in our ‘waking life’, they are images we are familiar with. These images are not certainly something have seen before, but rather, a part of that real thing that we know that make another image that we have not seen before. The dream argument sends messages that the senses are not dependable, and we can be misled easily by them, consequently, we cannot rely on our senses for our beliefs. This is shown in the First Meditation, “As I think about this more carefully, I realize that there is never any reliable way of distinguishing being awake from being asleep. This discovery makes me feel dizzy, which it reinforces the notion that I may be asleep!”(58, Mediation One)

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.

Descartes opens Meditations on First Philosophy by telling us that in order to purify our knowledge from falsehood we must become radical skeptics, and question everything we know as we clear our minds from what we believe to be true. Descartes soon realizes that this is a major problem. Because if he is doubtful of everything, there is nothing to be known as true and he would have no foundation to build his thoughts off of. Pondering this, he came to realize that he himself must be real because of his ability to think and to doubt. He then concludes that his sensory perception as well as imagination cannot be trusted because it is impossible to determine reality this way. In dreams, our sensations are seemingly true, but they are actually false. As for our imaginations, we can conjure up a plethora of impossibilities, so it obvious they cannot be considered reliable. After studying honeycomb wax, he determines that his intellect is the only mental property that can be trusted to produce clear and distinct truths.

René Descartes was a 17th century French philosopher. Descartes is responsible for many of the pieces that most modern universities study. His work has withstood the test of time, and for good reason. One of his earlier pieces, titled the “Meditations on First Philosophy”, Descartes fights with solving what is true. He wants to know more about himself and what makes him who he is. Through his senses, he is able to help solves some of his arguments, but later determines that his senses can indeed deceive him at times. His senses also do not help him solve some of the more daunting ideas. Throughout the Meditations, Descartes longs to prove the existence of God for himself. The existence of God validates his arguments and beliefs. His primary goal is to prove what really exists and what is true knowledge all of the time.

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

The Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes is a thorough analysis about doubt. Descartes describes his method of doubt to determine whether he can truly know something. One of his major arguments is the proof of the existence of God. In this paper, I will attempt to unravel the flaws in Descartes proof that God exists.

How do you know you are not dreaming in this specific moment? Or that you are actually living a real life rather than being in a virtual reality simulation or an illusionary world being deceived by a demon? The answer is you don’t. There is no certain way of knowing if you are dreaming or living, unless you believe in an almighty God who does not deceive.

Renee Descartes, a French philosopher who spent a majority of his time in the Dutch Republic, is said to be the father of modern philosophy due to his outstanding achievements in the field. Of all of his texts, Meditations on First Philosophy, is considered the standard for any philosophical enthusiast or aficionado. In this piece of work Rene Descartes states “For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, I lack something and that I am no wholly perfect, unless there were some idea on me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects?” Through this quote, the evidence of an apparent influence of Plato and his philosophies can be seen while taking an apparent hold and integrating itself

Often, we do not even remember our dreams and wake up with a blank slate. There is a concrete difference between being awake and asleep. You are aware that when you are awake, that is your reality. A dream is just a falsified version of reality. The thought that all of reality could be a dream in Descartes’ mind is troubling.

René Descartes was the first philosopher, who formulated the idea of solitary self. In my opinion, to understand why he developed his radical individualism, we need to know what was happening at this time. The things middle ages or so called «Dark Age» have changed a lot of things in all areas of life. With years passing by people met the Renaissance, the Reformation, urban Capitalism and overseas territories and people. Uncertainty among many Europeans is the result of this all cultural and social changes.

On Meditation 1, the philosopher Rene Descartes centers on the idea that senses can not be trusted. Since in the past senses deceived him and let to false beliefs. Therefore his main concern is to erase all of the false beliefs he held to be true by analyzing and questioning which of them should be unreliable. Descartes, then, creates a new belief system in which all of the beliefs are correct.

     Descartes brings up the possibility that perhaps at this point, right now, he is dreaming. A person who is dreaming may have difficulty differentiating between the dream and reality. Descartes says “How often has it happened to me that in the night I dreamt that I found myself in this particular place, that I was dressed and seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressed in bed!” (Descartes, p.76, par.1) According to this idea, I may believe, even now, I am dreaming, this not my body, and I am not writing this paper for philosophy but I am really lying in bed somewhere sleeping. This dream hypothesis would invalidate the beliefs that are based on internal sense; for if you are dreaming then what you believe to be your awareness of self is truly false. You may say that everyday life exhibits a smoothness and understanding, which dreams do not. Dreams have little rhyme or reason; while life experience is orderly and controlled. However, this scale of measuring the differences of coherence between dreams and reality is unreliable. Sometimes dreams are incoherent and sometimes they appear to be real.