Descartes Meditation One

Descartes' Meditation One


     Being a foundationalist, Descartes needs to destroy the foundations of

his beliefs so that in his Meditations he will be able to build upon new

foundations of undeniable and self evident truths. In order to do this Descartes

must first find a valid argument that will allow him to doubt his foundation

beliefs and in turn doubt what is considered to be reality. He begins by first

noting that one can not trust their own senses, because we can be deceived by

our sciences. An example of such would be if one looks at an optical illusion,

they are seeing something that is not really there, and therefore are being

deceived by their sense of sight. But this is not enough to justify doubting all

things, so Descartes offers a different approach, the Dream Argument.

     The Dream Argument is essential in because it allows one to logically

question not only the senses but their surroundings and actions as well.

Although one can doubt that what they see or hear is not really as is perceived;

a person can not deny that they are for instance, standing, thinking about how

their senses are deceiving them, with their feet planted on the ground, in their

bedroom, feeling a little tired and so on. Only if one was, as Descartes writes,

“..insane, whose brains are impaired by such an unrelenting vapor of black

bile..” that they believe they are something other than what they are, would one

doubt reality, without an argument. The argument is as follows: If the

experience of a dream is indistinguishable between that dream and reality; and

there is no test to differentiate between dreaming and awakens, then one must

doubt the world outside their minds. This is so because even if one believes

they are awake and perceiving  their surroundThis is ONLY a preview of the article. If you would like to view the entire document, you must subscribe to Electronic References. Please register below now!


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