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Personal Response to Descartes' First Meditation Rene Descartes represents an intellectual transition from Middle Ages into the modern world more than any other figure in the seventeenth century. Descartes represents world revolution in the seventeenth century as it found the reflection in the intellectual sphere. And as any revolution, it (Descartes philosophy) is made of the parts consisting of medieval concepts which became obsolete (i. e.
mainly on Aristotle's metaphysics), and on the other hand it is a philosophy of the new time in which there are a lot of innovations, many new ideas. Among all the works of Descartes his "Meditations on first philosophy" is not much of interest though it is popular in modern schools. This work is most of all connected to Middle Ages, with proofs about existence of the God. In "Meditations on first philosophy" Descartes reflects on the God whom he sees in the spirit of Aristotle. Descartes understands the God as a not-created conceiving substance. This substance is conceiving as her subject and objects coincide, are identical.
Descartes discerns that during his life, he intermittently believed some false points, and their falseness influenced other beliefs he build on their basis. His main goal was to organize the beliefs he had, to leave all he considered to be false, and to accept only those he can confide as absolutely trustworthy foundation: some points which contain the real truth. Descartes found his believes in his feelings. Therefore he always was thinking over the question if it is possible to trust his own feelings. First he noticed that when he couldnt view the surroundings well, his feelings could deceive him. For example, if the illumination was poor or the things were too tiny or very far from him.
That gives Descartes a motive to disbelieve some of his thoughts based upon feeling, the thoughts he got when the viewing were not proper. Descartes marks that very often while dreaming people think that they do not sleep. Therefore Descartes comes over with the idea that people can't ever understand whether or not they are dreaming: ... at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep.
Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about it more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. So, Descartes' idea appears to be that for any knowledge you may get, regardless of how much it seems to specify that you are wakeful, it would also be probable for you to get that knowledge in your sleep. There is no check you can use to decide whether or not you are just sleeping and see dreams or you are awake. It does not matter what check you use, the probability will always be open that you are simply dreaming that you completed the check, and that it gave you the results it revealed.
Here we can make a conclusion that according to Descartes, we cant know if we are dreaming or we are awake. The dreaming case leaves open our belief in broad truths about the humankind (the idea that there are material objects that they move in different directions, etc. ) Also, the dreaming argument does not give Descartes grounds to distrust his beliefs about mathematics. So Descartes goes on looking for further arguments for doubt. He continues to ask: What if God was misleading him? What if very powerful evil demons were misleading him? In his work Meditations on first philosophy Descartes shows very interesting approach to the discussion on the topic of God existing.
This philosophy is interesting; however I cant but say that while deciding on something it is necessary to settle on some more probable points by excluding the non-realistic ideas.
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Research essay sample on Meditations On First Philosophy Seventeenth Century
