Ki Essay, Research Paper

Descartes Meditations

By: Glen Szabo

E-mail: GandRCaboy@AOL

Glen Szabo Intro. To Philosophy Descartes Paper Due: 11/10/99 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, which is churches, parents, and schools, he says, are not reliable sources for truth because time shows we all die, and that we are eventually proved wrong, much in the same way the accepted truths of science have changed dramatically over the course of history. Also, he considers the generally excepted view that our senses dependably report the absolute nature of reality. Like authority