Meditation+One

Descartes starts his meditations by trying to wipe the slate clean of everything he knew before.

When studying Descartes’ First Meditation you must be aware that the **sceptical steps** he takes are part of a larger plan.

What is this plan?

Descartes uses his radical sceptical steps to **search for certain knowledge** (knowledge we can say, 100% is 'true').

When Descartes calls his beliefs into doubt, what he achieves is to give reasons for being uncertain about them. **It does not require proving any of them false, just being unsure is enough**.

The method of doubt is **undertaken to get rid of old and bad opinions** and to withdraw the mind from the senses so as ultimately to achieve **certain truths**.

“I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last” When Descartes talks of **establishing a foundation, he is concerned with a metaphysical theory of the nature of reality**. His concern about the senses was not that they are always wrong, but that they are not the right source for metaphysical knowledge. The truths of metaphysics can be gained only through what philosophers later called a priori reason.

**Descartes does not inspect each of his beliefs one by one but rather looks at the principles that his beliefs are based upon**. Descartes was questioning basic Aristotelian philosophy, that there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

**a**. __Mistrust of the senses – or sensory fallibility__.

Descartes first argument for doubting the senses arises from their **occasional deceptiveness**. An example he gives in meditation 6 (VI) is of a square tower appearing to be round when viewed from a distance. Remember that the smallest chance of deception is enough, in the eyes/mind of Descartes, to discredit the belief.

**b**. __The Dream argument__.

**Descartes understood that objects we see up close and in good light could not be really doubted**. Could he really doubt being seated next to his fire writing his ideas down? He states only someone deranged would doubt the senses on such occasions. However, Descartes points to having vivid experiences of touching objects right in front of us, even though the objects are not actually present and perhaps do not exist. **In dreams, we can have the experience of seeing things up close, yet they are not actually there**. There are never sure signs of distinguishing waking states from dreaming states if both experiences of objects are as vivid as the other. The argument, if accepted, establishes that we might be mistaken on any given occasion about the actual presence of a whole scene or episode in our lives/memory.


 * c**. __The Evil genius argument__ (or 'we're all living in the Matrix').

Descartes provides us with the analogy of a painter, which counters the dream argument. Even if we cannot be certain that any particular experience presents us with existing objects, **the objects that we dream of are like paintings, which must have be painted in the likeness of actual real objects -** the objects we dream about must actually exist somewhere! Descartes assets that eyes, the body, distance, numbers are such examples and accordingly real and so exist.

Simply put, the addition of 2 + 3 = 5 and the fact that a square has four sides are true whether we are awake or dreaming.

Descartes then provides the reader with an argument that calls even the truths of mathematics into doubt. What if an omnipotent God made me the kind creature I am? A God who is bent on deceiving me?

“ some **evil genius** not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colors, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself I order to lay traps for my credulity;”

**Faced with this argument the reader of Meditation 1 has now a radical sceptical method that has placed all human beliefs doubtful**.