Descartes Meditations
Descartes’ Meditations is a discussion of metaphysics, or what is really real. In these writings, he ultimately hopes to achieve absolute certainty about the nature of everything including God, the physical world, and himself. It is only with a clear and distinct knowledge of such things that he can then begin understand his true reality.
In order to acquire absolutely certainty, Descartes must first lay a complete foundation of integrity on which to build up his knowledge. The technique he uses to lay this base is doubt. If any belief can be doubted it is not certain, therefore making unusable as a foundation. Descartes starts by looking at our usual sources for truth. Authority, ...
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that based on the senses there is no definite way of proving that you are dreaming or that you are awake. Therefore it is possible that everything we believe is false, making the senses an unreliable source. Upon establishing this, Descartes doubts the existence of a physical or external world. Despite that he has an idea of things in the world, he has no definitive way of knowing if they exist beyond his own mind. Another foundation that he tries to confirm is mathematics. But he soon realizes math’s truth isn’t completely reliable because of the ‘Demon Hypothesis’, which acknowledges the possibility of an all powerful, malicious being that is deceiving him about everything, including mathematics. As a result, Descartes ponders the possibility that he has no way of being completely positive about anything, even is existence.
It is only after some deliberation that he comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to be incorrect about everything because ...
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that the mind and the body are not only separate, but competent of independent existence. Other positions are that of the weak dualist, who feels that while the mind and body are metaphysically distinct, they cannot exist independently of one another, and that of the materialist who deem that only physical things and physical procedures exist, while the mind does not. Beliefs of this nature are brought up in relation to Descartes’ question of what makes a thing particularly itself through time and change. For him, it is the mind/soul that exists through time and change.
Hoping to discern the existence of anything else aside from himself, an immaterial substance, Descartes ...
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"Descartes Meditations." Essayworld.com. October 16, 2006. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Descartes-Meditations/54039.
"Descartes Meditations." Essayworld.com. October 16, 2006. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Descartes-Meditations/54039.
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