Rene Descartes True Or False

Descartes starts off by saying that all the old opinions and beliefs that he had accepted as true were actually false. They were highly doubtful and he took time out of his retirement to reexamine them. He said that there was no need in proving al his old opinions wrong, but it was not necessarily wrong to believe in them either. Descartes says that beliefs are received from your sense and sometimes these senses mislead us, and because of this deception, it is hard to put total confidence in those sense or beliefs that some from your senses. Descartes says that there is no other information source, or hardly any other, that give you direct information like the senses, which is why it is almost impossible to doubt them. Descartes goes on to describe himself sitting there next to a fire and the fact …show more content…
Even the colors of dreams and paintings are real because they cannot be made up or original. Things such as Astronomy, Physics and Medicine are based off of composite objects and are of doubtful character, while things such as Arithmetic and Geometry are based on simple, general objects. He gives the example that you always know that 2+3=5 and there are 4 sides to a square, for it is not possible for them to be false. Descartes then talks about how God created him, but how does he know that God actually created anything around him and that he is not just being deceived, or everything else is just a perception of the mind? How do we know we are not being deceived each time we add 2+3? Or count the sides of a square? He then questions whether or not God deceives us, but then says that he is good and would not do that, except for sometimes. Descartes says that however we were made, we are the imperfect enough to be the “constant victim of deception.” Descartes ends by saying that he became his own deceiver by believing that his old opinions are all false and