Descartes' View: Meditations on First Philosophy Edition

Descartes' View
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Descartes proposed his philosophical thoughts based on metaphysics with six meditations that are more like principles that also distinguishes the mind from the body. Additionally Descartes used the meditation genre to propose his philosophy in an era where there was spiritual reformation. The meditations were proposed as a way to gain understanding and provide a philosophical foundation, allowing Descartes to reject and doubt what he already knew as gained knowledge and no longer expressed skepticism. He further goes on to use the analogy of a dream to question his existence, and he had to be sure that his thoughts were not a dream. This review on the strengths and weaknesses of the six meditations in Descartes’ book Meditations on first philosophy and relation to human nature. In this paper, I shall argue that Descartes the methodic doubt establishes the foundation of his meditations, where the meditator gains knowledge, but then Descartes’ fails to support his claims with real-life situations.
Descartes’ first meditation is the methodic doubt, as he becomes certain that he exists and this lays the foundation for other ideas in his philosophical work. Descartes is right to highlight the need to debunk falsehoods that have been believed, since for one to get knowledgeable they must question rather than accept ideas. This approach allows Descartes to question his assumptions that have largely been a result of their senses and gain knowledge. However, what one believes may be deceptive as it is what they have learned. The fist meditation captures some aspects of human nature where senses can be deceptive, but this is not always the case. Despite providing examples where senses trick the mediator into believing some untrue things, Descartes uses this notion to argue that senses inevitably deceive humans, who have to question everything. There is a weakness to this thought since sense do not necessarily deceive people, ince when one identifies them they can correct them People who have long held certain opinions, but as they gain more knowledge they can separate truth from belief when they are doubtful and skeptical about different situations [Meditation (12)].
Descartes is at times unconvincing in his attempts to show that one cannot see through deception. For one to determine that their senses deceive them they are more likely to identify that a deception actually occurs through errors, but there is no way to know whether God is the one deceiving human beings. Human beings may recognize when they are being deceived and avoid deception all together, bit relying on one’s senses is no guarantee that there will be able to uncover deception. Skepticism allows people to question what they believe, while in reality people doubt even what is knowledge. Additionally, Descartes argues that to establish certainty then one must exercise methodic doubt, but even when one is skeptical about a belief this does not mean that it does not constitute knowledge just because there are doubts surrounding the belief. Nonetheless, Descartes points out that anyone seeking to gain knowledge should not be inspired by doubts related to vulgarity at any instance [Meditatio...