Descartes Meditation One Essay -- essays research papers

Descartes Meditation OneBeing a foundationalist, Descartes needs to destroy the foundations ofhis beliefs so that in his Meditations he will be able to build upon newfoundations of undeniable and self evident truths. In order to do this Descartesmust first find a valid argument that will allow him to doubt his foundationbeliefs and in turn doubt what is considered to be reality. He begins by firstnoting that one gouge not trust their own senses, because we piece of tail be deceived byour sciences. An example of such would be if one looks at an optical illusion,they are seeing something that is not really there, and therefore are beingdeceived by their sense of sight. But this is not enough to justify doubting allthings, so Descartes offers a contrastive approach, the Dream Argument.The Dream Argument is essential in because it allows one to logicallyquestion not only the senses but their surroundings and actions as well.Although one can doubt that what they see or hear is not rea lly as is perceiveda person can not deny that they are for instance, standing, thought about howtheir senses are deceiving them, with their feet planted on the ground, in theirbedroom, feeling a little tired and so on. Only if one was, as Descartes writes,..insane, whose brains are stricken by such an unrelenting vapor of blackbile.. that they believe they are something other than what they are, would onedoubt reality, without an...