Descartes Dream Argument

French philosophy René Descartes is considered by many to be the father of modern philosophy. Contributing especially to the branch of epistemology, Descartes’ notorious book Meditations on First Philosophy, was of monumental importance to the debate surrounding the foundations and accuracy of knowledge and ontology. In the first chapter, or first Meditation, Descartes calls into doubt all of his previous beliefs and all he used to consider legitimate knowledge. He does so, however, with the intent of establishing actual, certain knowledge. His interest is not in finding something that is true beyond any reasonable doubt, but beyond any conceivable doubt. Descartes begins by calling into doubt his empirical, a posteriori knowledge. Firstly,
Nevertheless, it does so in a very different way. Instead of claiming that our sensory experiences are sometimes wrong and that our sensory equipment can be faulty and misinterpret reality, the arguments for dreaming claims our sensory equipment is not adept enough to distinguish such reality. So it is not the case that an object we observe from afar has, in reality, a different size, but that all we experience all together is false. The dream argument implies that all of the empirical knowledge and experiences we had so far, could be distorted, and furthermore, it entails that there is no way to know if that is the case or not. A person who is asleep cannot always tell he is
When it comes to rational knowledge, however, the matter is much different. That is because a priori knowledge involves necessary truths. Following the example given by Descartes, regardless if we are awake or not, it is inconceivable to imagine a square that has more than four sides - since a square, by definition, is four sided. So Descartes claims that although the dream argument provides a conceivable reason as to why he can conceive empirical knowledge to be potentially false, rational, “transparent truths” (such as mathematical knowledge), are harder to disproof. Even in a dream, mathematics cannot be doubted. With that in mind, Descartes begins to sketch arguments that call all his a priori knowledge into doubt. He provides three different, albeit similar, claims where mathematical knowledge could conceivably be false. The first argument concerns a deceiving God. Descartes writes how God, the creator of the world, is so omnipotent, that God possesses the very ability to manipulate Descartes’ own rational capacity. Therefore, a deceiving God could be tricking Descartes’ mind into believing false mathematical, a priori