Essay Comparing Descartes Meditation And The Experience Machine

Philip K. Dick, a well-known author with many scholarly related awards, once said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn 't go away.” When reflecting on philosophical questions and their reality that one asks on a daily basis, one must start by finding the origin of the questions through several readings. These readings involved both, Descartes’ Meditation and Other Metaphysical Writings and Robert Nozick’s The Experience Machine. With close analysis, these two works of literature helped aid the answer to, “Why are questions of “ultimate meaning” important?” Using specific arguments from these sources, the answer to this fundamental question has been answered in the text on several occasions. Questions of “ultimate meaning” are important because they assist the conclusion of desires, thoughts, and confusion. The focal point of both pieces of literature is the question, “what is really real?” which has answers waiting upon discovery. Really real is those concepts or material that can be touched, experienced, and carried out in a life. To begin, in Descartes’ Meditation and Other Metaphysical Writings, Sixth Meditation followed the philosophical question …show more content…
This analysis began with the quote, “First, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them. In the case of certain experiences, it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we 've done them” (Nozick 311). This can both ask and answer the question of reality because the action of doing something is physical and our drive to do this “something” is a real event. Also, with the machine, man can easily argue the point that they want the experience; a physical outcome is more pleasing than a theoretical one. The want to do something goes far beyond the made up sense of completely something that not really