Meditations Essay, Research Paper

Meditation One

Here Descartes is talking of the difference between mere opinion and strict absolute certainty. To establish this he must first attack all principles which supported everything that he once believed in. He examines all those beliefs that require our senses or that were passed down to us in theory. He questions, whether our senses are true indicators of what they represent. By inspecting the reality of dreams, he comes to the conclusion that our senses are prone to error and thereby cannot reliably distinguish between certainty and falsity. He bases his arguments on the opinion that it’s not completely necessary to explore each and every aspect of a whole to deduce that something is false, because he only needed to know that one aspect of the whole was false, to rely on the base that everything else is false too. By using doubt as his tool he makes the assertion that all his former beliefs are false.

Meditation Two

I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind”. Before written, is the conclusion of Ren? Descartes to his meditations, he thinks, he doubts, so know he assures himself that he exists. He’s not certain if there’s a higher power or god of any kind that makes him think, but since all he’s accomplished with these meditations, is to question everything, including his own emotions, feelings, senses and every aspect of thought that he has known all his life, he now comes to the conclusion that even that is not certain, so in order to believe in his existence, he thinks of himself as an entity who thinks, and because anything that thinks exists by pure rationality, he must exist as well, but, this brings another uncertainty, does he think for himself, or does a higher power think for him, making him non existing, and again after long thoughts, he arrives at the conclusion he came to at the beginning of his meditation. Even if a higher power thinks for him, he in fact is thinking and to think he must exist first, therefore “I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind”