Meditations on First Philosophy by Ren Descartes - Essay Example

For the first mediation, the philosopher realizes that throughout his life he has accepted great many falsehoods as truth and based since he judged their validity through his senses. However he has realized that his senses are not objective and can easily be deceived or manipulated, thus for him to find the ultimate truth that cannot be questioned, he needs must deconstruct everything he has learnt so far. He decides them to demolish all his former beliefs and assertions upon which doubt can be cast and start afresh with, what he can be sure can be verified as true beyond any doubt.

However, the mediator does not examine for doubt his former believes individually, he puts them together and questions their authenticity by introspecting on the method by which he formed these conclusions. Ultimately, he realizes that the conclusions on which he has based opinions were formed by means of senses he admits that human senses are on the large quite sturdy. At most, they are only likely to misconceive when it comes to small far away object; he acquiesces to the fact that his senses have in the past played him false on several occasions.

Bearing that in mind, he concludes that t would be unwise, nonetheless, to trust wholly anything has proven capable of deception in the past. Ergo, Descartes creates enough reason and justification to put into doubt what he has learnt through the five human senses, which are also the primary method by which scientific data is collected. As he is creating this line of thought, the philosopher seated by the fire realizes that by virtue of the fact he can feel the warmth of the fire and determine that he is awake and alert.

However, this reasoning is easily challenged under the theory of doubt; he says that although he uses the fire to determine he is awake, even when he is dreaming, he experiences similar sensations to the ones he is currently feeling. Descartes also argues that even in matters of simple arithmetic and geometry, it is possible to be misguided and deceived; he presumes that since he at times assumes that others may be wrong in a matter in which they believe are right, such may still be applied to him by a higher being.

As such, it is possible when he adds two and two to find four or when he counts four sides in a square; it is possible he is being deceived. The superior being in this case would be God who is supposed to be all good and all-powerful; if his existence is real, then it translates that the simple perceptions such as arithmetic problems should be real. However, that would only be true under the premises that God does indeed exist and possess the aforementioned attributes, the other option would be that God is capable of deliberately deceiving us or that he does not exist.

Under the premises of his nonexistence, it would then mean that man is controlled and manipulated by another being, which postulates could be an evil genius, as opposed to, a supremely good God or possibly in his place. He thus determines that in consideration of such occurrences being true, in his mediation he would suspend his believes on the authenticity of even these elementary truths. Such are the basic parts that make up the universe such as colors shapes and numbers viewing them as “nothing but bedeviling hoaxes of my dreams”, which the deceiver can lay snares for his skepticism.

The second mediation serves to develop