Decartes_Meditations

Decartes Meditations In Descartes’ first meditation, he becomes skeptical of all knowledge he has acquired through his lifetime. The substantiality of the falsehoods he has accepted as true became unbearable and he found it necessary to demolish everything and start from scratch to find some foundation, if any, to then base his knowledge claims on. He realized that the majority of knowledge was based on his sense perceptions, and that these perceptions can be dubious at times, such as when a straight oar appears bent in water. Through this method of doubt that all his knowledge could be called into question, he set aside everything as if it was wholly false. By this, Descartes hoped to find at least one foundational, indubitable truth, an Archimedean point if you will, or if not to find that there is in fact no certainty. In his tribulations he found that in fact it was impossible to doubt the existence of your thoughts, and from this it was not possible to doubt that you exist. Further, he believed that because he could doubt that the existence of his body, but not his mind, it must be that mind is not descartes, meditations, wax, body, descartes’, understanding, mind, god, fact, thing, premises, premise, first, different, reasoning, one, further, senses, same, piece, now, existence, distinct, claims, believe, argument, understand, true, touch, through, thoughts, things, something, refers, knowledge, extended