We Exist By Rene Descartes

René Descartes claimed that we should throw away all of our opinions and beliefs of the world because we can easily be deceived into believing the wrong things. The only claim that we can be sure of is that we exist. He based his argument on the possibility that we could be tricked in three different ways. We can be misled by our senses, our lives could be a very vivid dream, or we could be fooled by an evil demon. In this essay, I will argue that our knowledge of arithmetics and geometry will always be certain, even if we were under any of these three influences. In addition, I will explain how Descartes claim that we our senses could mislead us and that we are in a dream-like state is not possible. Descartes purposes that we need to dismiss all of our impressions and …show more content…
The fact that we are able to think, leads us to conclude that we certainly exist. Even though I agree with his famous saying: “I think, I exist” (Descartes 53), I still argue that we cannot be deceived about the concept of arithmetics and geometry. It may in fact be true that my vision would fail to show me distinct numbers of something, but the concept of (X) amount of things cannot be changed in my mind by an outside force. Since “counting” is the action of thinking in a numerical form, then the numbers derived from this act would be incomprehensible unless the concept is recognized as existing and true. Other simple natures such as shapes, can be substituted for “numbers”, if we follow the same line of thought. Again, if I were deceived into believing that the triangle in front of me is a square through optical illusions, but I cannot create the idea of a square when in fact does not exist in reality. Thus, the concept of these variables are ontologically dependent bodies because its product is certain whether or not these objects exist in