Meditations on First Philosophy

Before The Meditation In our daily lives, a great many of us assume without a shadow of doubt the plausibility of things, which with closer inspection, are usually found to be plagued with incongruences that only a great deal of discernment provides the means that enable us to know what it is that we really wish to know. In the search for certainty, it is true for anyone to derive knowledge from their immediate experience, which is in part used as a sense experience. However, it is also true to…

Descartes persists, especially in “Meditation One,” that the senses are easily tricked and that one could not know, with absolute certainty, that they display reality. In this film, every dream the subject is immersed in is nearly indistinguishable from reality by all five primary senses. Despite knowing this fact, at one point, Dominic Cobb questions the reality of seeing his deceased wife at a crucial point in his mission. This also draws from “Meditation Six,” in which one often cannot…

Rene Descartes and John Locke are regarded as the first early modern philosophers. Both were in search for the answer to the same question in metaphysics and epistemology, what is knowledge? However, in search for the answer to this question, both philosophers differ in terms of their answers. They’re answers contradicted, and they critiqued one another on their own propositions. The rivalry between rationalism and empiricism emerged within epistemology. In what follows, I will be comparing…

French philosophy, was known as “the Father of modern philosophy”. With his formidable and broad knowledge, Descartes fostered his desire to seek for only true beliefs that were certain and indubitably true. In his work, the Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes reiterated his intellectual process of doubting and questioning all the essences of corporeal and intangible issues in order to accept only what was genuinely certain. Descartes had two most famous studied: the first…

The real proof of existence Descartes built his philosophy from the very bottom. He took nothing for granted. “I think therefore I am” is not the beginning of his philosophy; it is the first important conclusion on which he builds his further meditations. But what if the whole proof of existence starts with wondering? Descartes didn’t write anything about wondering in his “Discourse on Method”, but he gave it a big part in his meditations and in “The Passion of the Soul”. So what if he just…

This essay will aim to discuss René Descartes arguments on the first philosophy, by looking at his Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641. A summary of Descartes’ arguments will be given by focussing on the first, second, fourth and sixth meditations. Thereafter I will state whether or not I found Descartes’ argument convincing or not. In the first meditation, Descartes states what one might doubt. He starts his argument with that of dreams, and the objection thereof. Descartes…

‘Meditations’ Review Rene Descartes’ meditations made me remind ‘Great Instauration’ of Bacon. Both of them wanted to strip an old and false knowledge and to gain a new and certain knowledge. However, the way to approach their goal is pretty different. Descartes, in the first meditation, explains that he studied a variety of studies during his lifetime, and judges the studies; ‘For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors…’. An interesting point is a conclusion of his skeptical…

his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes explores many subtopics in the overarching theme of metaphysics, defined by Oxford Dictionaries as the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance,…

(Markie, 2017). This school of thought also encompasses a posteriori thinking. The term a posteriori refers to drawing conclusions only after having experienced something through the senses. These are the bases of Hume’s understanding of knowledge and philosophy. In his work, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume discusses his empiricist theories of knowledge and understanding. His main argument is that all thoughts and conclusions that people draw about the world are derived from two…

so how could he have created an imperfect being capable of error? Descartes ponders this concept further in both his Meditations and Principles of Philosophy where he approaches this problem two different ways that have similar conclusions; human error is the product of confusion and privation. In his Meditations and Principles of Philosophy Descartes addresses human error by first considering his relationship to God and how God could create…