Meditation 1 Descartes

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Recommended: Analysis of Descartes' method of doubt

In meditation 1, Descartes introduces us to the concept of "doubt". He begins to question everything and test his beliefs by doubting to know what is certain and what is not. If we can doubt a belief, subsequently it’s not definite, therefore, it’s not knowledge.

First, he noted that we cannot judge anything with respect to our senses because senses can turn out to be mistaken, one can be deceived by his senses; things are not always as they seem to be. And it is true, you can witness a scene from far away, you’d thing it’s something and it turns out to be the other.

He then moves on to dreaming, sometimes when we dream, we represent to ourselves all types of crazy things. But many times we dream the most mundane things. Yet ‘there are no conclusive signs by means of which one can distinguish clearly between being awake and being asleep’. So how can we distinguish between what is a dream and what is reality? Which is also true, how do you know that you’re awake and not dreaming meanwhile in a dream, everything seems to real.

Decartes doubts himself and him as a human being. There's no capacity for imagination when we devoid our senses because, in the process, we devoid our bodies, therefore thinking is what only remains. Decartes disapproves and disagrees skepticism, there must be a proof. The mind can …show more content…

So he exists because he's thinking. He says and to quote: "I am precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is, a mind or intellect, or understanding or reason - words of whose meanings I was previously ignorant. Yet I am a true thing and am truly existing; but what kind of thing? I said it already; a thinking thing". If we stop thinking, there's nothing! For Descartes, the essence of human existence is thinking. To think is to exist. To be a human being is to be capable of thinking. Furthermore, when a person is conscious of his own thinking, this means he’s conscious of his own

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