First Meditation What Can Be Called Into Doubt Chapter 1 Summary

Renee Descartes was a famous French philosopher, scientists and mathematician in the 17th century and became known as the “Father of Philosophy.” At the time, the church had ultimate authority in Europe. Descartes wanted to establish a different philosophy based on experiments and testing ideas, rather than theological beliefs. One of Descartes most famous books is called “Meditations of the First Philosophy”. The first chapter of this book is entitled “First Meditation: What Can Be Called into Doubt”. He starts this chapter by acknowledging that some of the concepts that we use to believe are not true, and uses this first philosophy to challenging our most basic ideas. He does this because he does not want to challenge each of his beliefs
individually. Descartes wanted to find a foundation of knowledge that is so secure it can stand up against the doubts of the strongest skepticism through methods of what he defined as radical doubt.
He starts to doubt our most basic ideas by first examining how we receive most of our information, which is through our five senses.
According to Descartes, we should not fully trust our senses because we have seen that some our senses can deceive us. For example, when an object is far away and we mistake it for something else other that what it is, our sight has deceived us. Another example he’s referred to is how a stick may look bent when its underneath water, but when it surfaces its straight. But for the most part our senses are reliable, and certain things we experience are difficult to doubt such as our existence. For example, it would be hard for me to doubt that I am actually typing this paper at this very moment. But Descartes brings up a valid argument that I may only be dreaming that I am writing this paper, and it may not actually be happening. But if we are dreaming we can still in fact say that our dream corresponds to something real. Descartes also realizes this and uses an example of a painter. A painter can paint anything that he imagines, even if he decides to paint a mermaid. Even though a mermaid is not real it is comprised of a women and a fish which are real
objects.
While is it completely legitimate for us to reject the existence of a mermaid, we have to acknowledge that there is something real that these ideas come from. Even if we want to doubt what we are experiencing right now than to assume that maybe I am dreaming about writing this paper. But our mind is similar to the painter; it cannot create something out of nothing. Our mind creates thoughts and images based on a real experience. Our perception of reality is made up of ideas we sometimes take for granted which are also referred to as composite ideas. These composite ideas are made of fundamental principles that are difficult to doubt.
Thereafter, Descartes introduces the notion of God. If God exist and is all powerful, then he is capable to allow us to believe that basic principles such as geometry and algebra are not in fact true. For example, God is capable to allow us to believe that two plus two equals five even if it does not. This should also mean that God has the power to make our perceptions not align with reality. Descartes responds to his colleagues, who believe that God is essentially good and would not mess with our thoughts in this way. He says that if it was against god’s goodness to allow us to be constantly deceived, wouldn’t it also be against Gods goodness to allow me to be deceived sometimes. Whether you believe in God or not it does not matter, because if you consider the ability to be deceived by somebody to be a defect then we are all the more susceptible if our origin is not all powerful. But if our origin is all powerful then that all powerful source is powerful enough to deceive us. He then turned to an all-powerful demon as his answer for deception. This demon’s sole purpose was to trick Descartes about everything he thought he knew.
The second meditation begins with a review of the first meditation, but instead of continuing with his logic that we cannot be certain of anything he instead questions his existence.
His famous cogito argument, “I think therefore I am”, explains that we exist while we think. Descartes observes: “I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed” (Meditations on First Philosophy). Every thought, even if unreliable, proves existence because in order to have a thought there must be a thinker. This is the questionable doubt that Descartes was looking for in order to build his new
philosophy.
Descartes has found well thought out reasons to distrust his senses and his perception, but there are criticisms of his philosophy’s. Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the cogito argument say that thoughts that require a thinker is not indubitable and thoughts may exist as unconnected free-floating ideas. Other criticisms of Descartes methodological skepticisms include: “the principle dictating that there must be as much reality in a cause as there is in its effect does not survive radical doubt”, “even if we can justifiably invoke this principle, it isn’t clear that it can be used in the way that Descartes thinks it can be used”, “act that I can use this principle to argue for the existence of things that we know do not exist indicates that either principle is faulty or that the reasoning underlying this application is”, and the “second part of Descartes’ project is so inconsistent with the logical rigor of the first part that one might be tempted to conclude that Descartes is just intellectually dishonest”.