Descartes Meditation One Essay, Research Paper

Mark Bailey

I am going to discuss Descartes Meditation One: Concerning those things

that can be called into doubt. I will analyze and explain what Descartes was trying

to do, and explain why (In my personal opinion) that this is nothing but a few

wordy paragraphs that have no real value or point to them.

In Descartes first meditation he discusses that he has come to the

conclusion that many of his beliefs and opinions he had as a child are doubtful.

Descartes decides that in order to find out the “truths” he must disprove his current

“knowledge.” Descartes goes about this by trying to disprove the principles that

support everything he believes in, using his Method of Doubt. Descartes Method

of doubt is his way of doubting everything that has even the slightest possibility of

not being fact. Descartes does not necessarily doubt everything that he brings up.

Descartes does believe that whatever can not be doubted for the slightest reason

must be true. For that reason is why I think that his argument is weak, and I will

explain later why I think that this is the case.

Descartes spends meditation one trying to disprove his fundamental beliefs.

First Descartes doubts that he can trust his senses because they are occasionally

wrong. An example of this are a longed haired man may look like a woman from

far away. Descartes then states that there are no definitive signs for him to tell

weather he is awake or asleep. Since he cannot trust his senses he concludes that

there is no way to determine whether he is awake or asleep. But he admits that

there are certain “truths” that are consistent weather he is awake or asleep. For

instance two plus three equals five, and that a square has four sides in his sleep,

and while conscious. To disprove these beliefs Descartes abandons the idea of a

supremely good God like he has believed in all his life and brings up the argument

that God is an all powerful, all clever evil genius who’s entire purpose is to

deceive Descartes.

With these three arguments, each larger than the next, Descartes is satisfied

that he has adequately disproved the previous argument. Since he has done this he

is now ready to lay down a new foundation of knowledge and find the “truth.”

This passage reminds me of the movie “The Matrix”, in that God acts as the

computers did in the Matrix. Descartes is trying to free his mind as Neo had to do

because the computers only let Neo see what they wanted him to by altering his

senses, just like Descartes believes God is doing to him.

The reason why I don’t particularly like this essay by Descartes is because I

feel that his argument is weak and ridiculous at the same time. Descartes claims,

or at least says for purpose of argument that in order to find the real truth he must

not trust anything that he was taught or knows because his senses deceive him.

Fine lets assume that our senses do deceive us, and that there really is a big, all

powerful, evil genius of a God. It would be impossible to ever find out the truth

and thats what bothers me about this argument.

Our senses deceive us. Everything we see, taste, smell, hear and feel are all

false. If this were the case it would be impossible to ever find out the “truth”

because every piece of information and every belief, thought, and emotion comes

from one of our senses. And if on top of that, if God was all powerful and

deceiving there would be absolutely nothing we could to obtain the truth.

Something that is all powerful, has control over every thought, belief and idea that

we have. And if Descartes believes this then he must believe that this deceiving

God is putting the idea in his brain that if he ignores his senses he will obtain

truth. If his God is deceiving and all powerful then he will never discover truth.

Descartes tries an alternative way to look at reality, the initial idea and the

concept as a whole (looking at reality from a different perspective) is a very

interesting one. But the way he goes about explaining it was not particularly

impressive. There are just too many holes in his explanation and he constantly

contradicts himself and his points seem to work against themselves, as opposed to

supporting his hypothesis. I also am not a big fan of Descartes wordy self

examining style of writing. It is often very hard to understand, and the concepts

that he is trying to get explained could be explained a lot more clear.

In conclusion I feel that Descartes First Meditation has a good and

interesting central core to it. But the way he went out and attempted to prove his

points was very disappointing. He had too many contradictions and a terrible style

of writing on top of it (In my opinion.) I do not like nor do I agree with Descartes

First Meditation.

* The reason I decided to write on this topic is because Descartes was the hardest

philosopher for me to understand. And once I finally understood his argument and

was able to look through all of his wordiness, I was so angry that I spent such a

long time to understand a weak argument I decided that I would writ a paper on it.

That is why I am so critical of him.

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