Rene Descartes Meditation 1 Analysis

Rene Descartes lived in an era of geniuses. He was born in La Haye, a small town in Touraine, France. He was the first modern philosopher. He made major contributions to anatomy and physiology, optics, mathematics, and philosophy. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes’ first meditation is Meditation One, concerning about the things that can be called into doubt. Descartes wants to show that beliefs based on sensory data are not certain, thereby establishing the superiority of the understanding in acquiring knowledge (Cahn 499). In Descartes’ Meditation One, he developed a “Method of Doubt.” Descartes developed some arguments to illustrate his points. Descartes applied senses argument, dreaming argument, and evil demon/genius argument …show more content…
He argues that, “I will suppose not a supremely good God, the source of truth, but rather an evil genius, supremely powerful and clever, who has directed his entire effort at deceiving me.” He believes that there is a possibility that evil genius is deceiving him. On the other hand, he is thinking it could be a God who is deceiving him. For example: as we know 2+2=4. But, we don’t really know if it is actually 2+2=4. Descartes said it could be true, if God is telling us or might be deceiving us. It might be the devil who is deceiving us to believe that 2+2=4. However, we don’t have any reason for to be accepted if it’s actual or …show more content…
The strengths of his arguments are the examples he uses. He uses example for every single argument he argues. His situations are absolutely accurate and I totally agree with him. He gave us examples how the senses can deceive us, which makes his arguments stronger. We cannot rely on our senses because we cannot trust them. His method of doubt is persuasive to me because I could not be more agree with him with senses argument. I have experienced that my senses have deceived me many times. We cannot trust what we see because even sugar looks like salt. His dreaming argument is accurate because it has happened to me. I remember I have dreamed about the things that I did when I was awake so I was confused that the things I dreamed were a dream or my waking life. His arguments made me think and I questioned myself that the life I am living right now is my waking life or just a dream. Dream and waking life can have the save content. For example: there was a time when I had trouble breathing, but I was sleeping. I was not able to breath in my dream, when I suddenly woke up I was having trouble breathing in real too. So, I didn’t know which stage I was on. Was it real or I was just dreaming? So, how we would know the