Rene Descartes Meditation Theory

Descartes’ main goal with his first meditation is to provide a new foundation of the sciences. He claims that the foundation of the sciences lies within our minds and is exclusive of our senses. To prove this theory, Descartes uses the method of logical doubt, in which he states “if I am able to find in each one some reason to doubt, this will suffice to justify my rejecting the whole” (Descartes, 6). This means that, if he can find the slightest doubt regarding a fact, he can therefore can conclude that it is not true. However, Descartes does not reject every single aspect, but rather the basic foundations. First off, Descartes starts by attacking our senses. Descartes says that our senses do not give us the absolute truth of things and could be deceiving us, “ the sense sometimes deceives us concerning things which are hardly perceptible…”(Descartes, 7). Descartes claims that our senses only give us the basic knowledge of things or objects, which can openly be doubted because we do not know if the objects really do exist by solely trusting our senses. Although Descartes says to doubt our senses, he emphasizes that the mental images of things …show more content…
A dream, according to Descartes, is composed of complex elements, while our imaginations tend to consist of simple elements. However, Descartes thereafter debunks this argument, due to his reasoning that we understand the simple elements, and his evil demon argument. For example, it is a commonly understood that 2 plus 2 is equal to four and that a square has 4 sides. These are evidences, however we do not know if they are absolutely true. Descartes argues that an evil demon or evil teacher could have put these ideas in our mind to make us think that they are true, when in fact they could be