Descartes
Essay title: Descartes
Descartes ignored all he believed to be true. He believed that if any belief can be doubted it is not certain, making it unusable as a foundation. Descartes jettisons any information, knowledge, or truths that are based on his senses. He applied the “Dream Argument,” (19) where he stated that based on the senses alone, there is no definite way of proving that you are dreaming or awake. Therefore, any truths based upon the senses are unreliable and doubtful. Descartes turned to why and how his senses were deceivable.
Descartes spent Meditation One attempting to disprove his fundamental beliefs. First, Descartes doubts that he is able to trust his senses because they are occasionally wrong. An example of this is a longed haired person that may look like a woman from a distance, but as you get closer you realize that it is really a man. The dream argument dealt with telling if one is asleep or awake. According to Descartes, there is no way for one to tell whether he or she is awake or not. We decide what is real and what we can sense. The problem is that your brain can trick your senses. What you believe is there may not in reality really be there. Dreams can many times feel quite realistic in nature. Since one cannot trust his or her senses, one can conclude that there is no way to determine whether he or she is awake or asleep. However, he admitted that there were certain “truths” that were consistent with whether he was awake or asleep. Mathematics and logic are ideas that hold true regardless of the situation For example, two plus three equals five and a square has four equal sides. These beliefs remained constant in all states of living.
In regard to dreams, Descartes spoke of what he called the “Evil Demon”. His “Evil Demon” argument was that one is being tricked by an outside source. This outside source has the ability to control all of ones senses. One has no power at all to stop this evil demon from putting ideas into your head. If the evil demon can control all of ones senses, nothing one senses or believes is present. Due to this, is it possible that a person has not done anything? What are you truly doing? There is a possibility that I dreamed writing this entire paper. My senses told me that I physically typed this paper. Was this all a dream? There were various background noises that distracted me while I was compiling this paper. Did I actually hear those noises? Descartes thinking is complex and really makes a person think of whether they dreamt or actually experienced a particular event.
Descartes disproved these beliefs by abandoning the idea of a supremely good God. He had believed in god all his life. He brought up the argument of a different kind of God. This Gods sole purpose was to deceive Descartes. Descartes argument for the existence of God is then: if God is all perfection, existence is perfection. Therefore, God exists. Despite his many efforts to remove all imprecise information from his thoughts, Descartes proves that God has some shortcomings, which have been pointed out over time. One problem was his idea of God. In order to see where the inconsistency lies, we must refer to his understanding of certainty and ideas, mainly methodic doubt. Ideas are concepts that resemble things outside of ones self. Using Descartes own logic one can see that these ideas can be doubted. Why was God not doubted? Descartes formed an idea of God as an infinitely good being. He had to discover this idea within his own mind. According to his principle of universal doubt, he cannot simply know whether his conception of God is correct or incorrect. In other words, this idea was considered false until proven otherwise. Since, the idea of God is in doubt, the trustworthiness of ones reasoning must also be in doubt. Another problem with his proof was that he used his powers of reason without first proving that they were beyond doubt.
Gods infinite perfection was made certain to Descartes through the very same capacities that he has not proven trustworthy. Descartes didnt trust his senses, yet he believed God existed through his senses. Descartes accepted the reliability of his ability in proving the existence and