Decartes Meditations

5 Pages 1295 Words

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 body since one has a property the other lacks. To see Descartes’ reasoning we need to analyze this claim known as the argument for the distinctness of mind and body, or dualism.
This line of reasoning is mainly based on Descartes’ understanding of himself and his body. First, certain terms need to be understood to conceptualize these ideas. Extension refers to spatially extended, tangible, physical, or material, which in Descartes’ argument refers to a body, which is spatially extended and occupies a space which excludes all other bodies, and can be perceived by sight, smell, and touch. Essence refers to a property that is essential to that thing’s existence; without it the thing would cease to be the same thing. Distinct refers to something that is understood as entirely different from another thing. For our purposes it would refer to ...