The Dream Argument Analysis

In order to attain true knowledge, Descartes realized he would have to throw away all of his previous notions of truth and knowledge and start again from the original foundation of his knowledge. This foundation was that of sensory perception; Descartes did not believe that the information that we receive through our senses could be trusted, because they are often quite deceptive. Descartes plants the seed of doubt in the senses, and then throughout his meditations shows what he knows to be true. The following essay will describe how he comes to establish the truths at the start of his proof, the consequences of the proof and some of the flaws in his argument.
To start his proof, Descartes begins by analyzing all of his basic beliefs. The Dream Argument is the first that Descartes uses to cause his reader to doubt the senses. Descartes begins to question whether he is truly sitting next to a fire in his home, or if it might be possible that he is actually being deceived. Descartes realizes that there has in fact been multiple …show more content…
The problem that I perceive is that, if God exists, he does seem to allow humans to believe ideas that are not true, so by Descartes reasoning, a perfect God does not deceive humans on purpose, but still may allow for us to think and see things are not true. Therefore, the existence of a perfect God would not mean humans are correct about the ideas they have. Secondly, Descartes does not fully convince me that he has done away with the possibility of an “Evil Genius”. In Descartes’ proof of God, there is still the possibility that an evil being put the idea of a perfect God into his head. If this is the truth, Descartes still cannot be certain of anything and would not be able to continue his proof. I would say that Descartes proof is solid for the most part but does have a few