Descartes' Meditation One
Being a foundationalist, Descartes needs to destroy the foundations of his beliefs
so that in his Meditations he will be able to build upon new foundations of undeniable
and self evident truths. In order to do this Descartes must first find a valid argument that
will allow him to doubt his foundation beliefs and in turn doubt what is considered to be
reality. He begins by first noting that one can not trust their own senses, because we can
be deceived by our sciences. An example of such would be if one looks at an optical
illusion, they are seeing something that is not really there, and therefore are being
deceived by their sense of sight. But this is not enough to justify doubting all things, so
Descartes offers a different approach, the Dream Argument.
The Dream Argument is essential in because it allows one to logically question
not only the senses but their surroundings and actions as well.
English: René Descartes, the French philosopher, ...
René Descartes
René Descartes at workAlthough one can doubt
that what they see or hear is not really as is perceived; a person can not deny that they are
for instance, standing, thinking about how their senses are deceiving them, with their feet
planted on the ground, in their bedroom, feeling a little tired and so on. Only if one was,
as Descartes writes, "..insane, whose brains are impaired by such an unrelenting vapor of
black bile.." that they believe they are something other than what they are, would one
doubt reality, without an argument. The argument is as follows: If the experience of a
dream is indistinguishable between that dream and reality; and there is no test to
differentiate between dreaming and awakens, then one must doubt the world outside their
minds. This is so because even if one believes they...