Descartes’ Meditation of First Philosophy
Descartes was a mathematician, scientist, and philosopher who aimed to lay a new basis for philosophy as an intuitive thinker. His aim as a philosopher was to go beyond epistemological skepticism to arrive at a secure foundation of knowledge. Descartes thus takes a radically skeptical position as his underlying assumption placing all his thoughts about the external world into doubts. Descartes starts by doubting and rejecting everything in the world as real, then resorts to find a truth that will be impossible to challenge. While Descartes makes it possible to believe in God as a perfect being present in controlling humans, there is no proof that God exists. According to Descartes, it is impossible to have an idea of a perfect supernatural being without there being one. Thus, I would object that, if someone like Descartes can doubt whether they have a body, yet they cannot doubt that they exist; therefore they who are doubting and thinking are not physical and are not a body; thus having doubts about the body should lead to doubting self. In this paper, I will explain Descartes’s theory of the foundation of knowledge and discuss an objection to the theory which concerns the connection that exists between the mind and body.
Descartes forms his theory from the fact that he has had many untrue beliefs and thus no longer believes in anything. He decides not to think not just as a basis of preventing false believes but to reveal the truth without any error. Thus, to avoid any false beliefs, he starts by doubting every belief that he has had to avoid being mistaken. The “Evil Demon” thought experiment allows for the consideration that the experiences of the external world are being fed to humans by the evil demon and therefore are all illusion. Thus, according to Descartes, all claims of knowledge must be traceable to more uncomplicated that cannot be doubted. Descartes denotes, in his first meditation, that ideas that are clear and distinct must necessarily be real.
The importance of the human mind, which is the second meditation, Descartes explains that he is confident that he exists as long as he has that thought. According to him, this thought is real even in his dreams or even if he were to be deceived by the evil demon. Anytime one has ideas, the views exist and doesn’t matter where they come from. Descartes thus insists that he is more of a mind and not a body. Hence, Descartes’s famous phrase Cogito ergo Sum, which means “I think therefore I am.” There is no possibility to doubt that there are thoughts, and they originate from somewhere.
The fact that he is a thinking thing, Descartes is confident that he has ideas, and one of the ideas is God. He has a view of God as something infinite, all-knowing, and perfect. However, the question is, where did Descartes get this idea? He is sure that he did not just invent all the thoughts, and thus they must have just come from God. Descartes claims that a cause must exist as real as the effect. If a course is as practical as the effect, then there must be a course of the existence of the physical body. Therefore, in meditation 5, Descartes examines the difference between what can be perceived about material things and what cannot. He claims that things that can be distinctly perceived are their mathematical or calculable properties, including length, breadth, depth, shape, number, and motion. Mathematica thus gives ultimate access to reality and knowledge foundation, and therefore it is essential to be sure of God’s existence just as one is confident of pure mathematics.
The truth that there is established self-knowledge of God’s existence, even though one need not believe everything that the senses tell them, means that there should exist no reason to call things in the physical world as doubt. Everything understandable and not comprehensible is made precisely that way by God. As aforementioned, it all starts as an idea; and the amount of objective reality that an idea contains, according to Descartes, is solely determined by the foundation of the actual amount of truth that the object presented by the view contains. He thus confirms in meditation four that ideas come from intellect, and their origin cannot be from anything.
Objection
Descartes needs to make it clear how he bridges the inferential gap between mind, which is the thought and body, which represents reality. Descartes argues for mind and body in the fourth mediation that what is understandable and perceived distinctively must be true. Descartes’ solution of the mind and body interaction is insufficient since he claims that the fact that everybody knows something about interaction, then people experience it all the time; this includes the mind and body connection. A mind cannot be understood the same as the body because first, it is impossible to understand the mind in motion or shape, and secondly, a body cannot sense anything on its own. Thus, human beings are required to be a combination of the mind and body in the essence that the choices in mind can cause motions in the body, and movements such as those in the eye send sensations to the mind.
Descartes, however, argues against this that it is nature that makes him avoid things that produce pain and follow those of pleasure. He goes ahead to say explain that the origin of truth and deception lies in the good and bad use of the abilities given by God; one can go astray if they allow their free will to pass judgment on the things that they cannot truly understand. The simple truth that Descartes theory proves is that if a person can perceive that the mind and body are two different things, then this means that they are; since what one thinks turns out to be the truth. I can only conclude that two things are said to be identical if they instantaneously share the same qualities.
In conclusion, Descartes’ philosophical goal is to prove the existence of things that were only clear, correct, and logical in his thoughts. Descartes wrote these meditations to please both religious beliefs and science; in that, the idea of the mind being immaterial gives religious belief a credible position and the body existing as physical supports scientific reasoning. However, Descartes concludes that our senses are entirely reliable even if they are inclined to error. The errors can be corrected through the use of memory and reflection.