Descartes Argumentative Analysis

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Before exploring philosophy, one may expect to gain insight in the questions of our world that are so incredibly multifaceted resolutions seem unattainable. All people throughout history have attempted to ask life’s most difficult questions such as implications of the soul, the meaning of life, human reasoning and many others. This pursuit of definitive answers to life’s intangibles is what sets us apart from many other species we coexist with, and some may say it’s part of our nature. Descartes displaces trust in our unceasing uptake of stimuli from our environment, and peculiarly, assigns absolute truth to a concept with variables that are not quantitative. In Meditation II we are introduced to the wax argument where Descartes compared two …show more content…

Since he has data within the confines of reality he assumes it to project the same outside the confines of reality. However, there are many issues with these findings. He states the more objective reality something has the more formal reality it has as if the more I believe something to be true the more it is true in the external sense. However, we see time and time again that our beliefs can sometimes be wrong, I may have an idea my significant other is unfaithful but just because I have the idea of it is not proof that my significant other is unfaithful. So, the points on the graph can dip and rise such that the relationship between formal and objective reality are not so tightly bound. Also in addition to there being a wider spread of data points, what Descartes is demonstrating by measuring two points within the confines of reality and estimating relationships outside the observable range. In math, this phenomenon is called extrapolation, and is subject to inaccurate causations and meaningless results. A common example of an extrapolation error where one assumes a continuous positive trend is the act of watering a plant, the more water given to a plant the more it tends to grow, however, if there is too much water given to the plant is it quite likely it will die. Therefor it is just as likely, and perhaps even more so, that the relationship between formal and objective reality not only has a looser correlation but can either reach stagnation or

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