Exploring Skepticism in Descartes' Meditations One

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Meditations One, written by Descartes, is a philosophical journal with a purpose of obtaining certainty on all of his beliefs. There are three stages in this paper that Descartes touches on, all having to do with skepticism. The first touches on how we rely on our senses to tell us information, but it could be possible that our senses are deceiving us. So, he says not to trust our senses because they could be completely wrong from what is actually real. His second point is how this could all be a dream, and that our senses tell us things, but they could be fooled because none of what he thinks is happening around him is actually happening in reality. Conversely to this point, he states that things like science and math cannot be altered …show more content…

As I grew older and began to fathom just how insanely large our universe is, and I began to doubt my prior belief. In my mind there was no way that with the billions and billions of galaxies all holding their own planets, some very similar to Earth, that there was no other life forms out there. The standards for which I live by to evaluate whether or not I should believe in something involve a two factors. One of the factors is whether or not there is solid, undeniable proof that a said belief exists, and if there is then I have no doubt not to believe it. However, if there is not solid proof, I may still believe it if there is enough convincing evidence that it is very possible for this belief to exist. An example of this, in my mind, include God and, as stated above, extraterrestrial life forms. These standards in which I live by both relate to and differ from those of Descartes. They relate to Descartes in the sense that we both work off of what our senses tell us. However, they differ because Descartes goes into more depth by saying how we should doubt everything because it all could be a dream or our senses are deceiving us, whereas I just do not believe that is an

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