Descartes wrote six meditations and in each one of them he comes up with new ideas and thoughts about certain topics such as dualism, the existence of God and so on. All of his ideas are interesting however what I found most interesting about the book Meditations on First Philosophy is the idea Descartes had of “I think, therefore I am”. In the first meditation he questioned his existence, he did not like uncertainty. He went on a deep mental journey to find truth so he uses doubt to help him.
Descartes questioned his existence because of the senses which had deceived him and he believed that the senses are not certain. He brings up in the first meditation how he has dreams and how they deceive him. He mentions that he often would have dreams of him sitting by the fire in his dressing gown when in reality he was asleep. He states “As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep” (Cittungham 1996).
Dreams can seem to be very real when in fact they are not. Descartes believed that in order to reach any certain knowledge he would need to disregard any falsehoods. He had to start from the bottom to work his way up and disregard everything he had ever believed. He considered himself to not have any senses in order to arrive at the knowledge of any truth. Descartes brought up the idea of “I think, therefore I am” in the second meditation. He previously doubted the material world but in this meditation he wanted to find out how to distinguish wether he himself is real. He states that he knows he is real because he is a thinking thing.
127 our experts are availableright now
A thing that affirms, denies, imagines, doubts, senses and feels. His ability to think is the only thing he cannot doubt thus far. He can doubt the existence of his body but not of his mind so he concludes that he is just a thinking thing. He then questions the nature of the physical and uses wax as an example and correlated that to rationality. Wax is solid at first but if you were to leave it next to the firewood it would melt.
We know this because of rationality, we are able to understand what happened to the wax and the reason why it melted. We are also able to understand that it is the same piece of wax and not a different one because the shape changed. He believed that truth can only be perceived by our mind and our ability to think logically. He believed that we can’t doubt our existence if we think because that means that we do indeed exist. In the third meditation Descartes uses the rational approach to find out if God exists. He talks about clear and distinct ideas and claims they are true unless God is deceiving him.
He divides the ideas into three categories which are innate, adventitious and invented ideas. He stated that if he has the innate idea that God exists that it means God himself created that idea therefore he exists. How would you know he himself didn’t imagine that idea instead of God creating that idea? He would say because Descartes is finite so therefore he would not be able to create the idea of an infinite being. Only something greater than him could have created that idea. “Altogether then, it must be concluded that the mere fact that I exit and have within me an idea of a most perfect being, that is, God, provides a very clear proof that God indeed exists” (Cunningham 1996).
That’s how he arrives at the idea that God exists. Now if Descartes were to be able to create himself he would not create himself with such limitations. If he had the option to create himself he would have made himself a wealthy man. His parents did create him but someone had to create his parents and then someone had to create his grandparents and so on.
When he thinks about that thought he concludes that their must be an infinite being that’s responsible for creating life and thinking things which is God. At the end of the third meditation Descartes arrived at the idea that he exista and so does God. In the fourth meditation he asks himself why does he make mistakes if God is perfect why does he allow him to make errors. He said, “The more skilled craftsman the more perfect the work produced by him; if this is so, how can anything produced by the supreme creator of all things not be complete and perfect in all respects?” (Cunningham 1996).
We are finite thinking things and are prone to make errors because there is only one perfect infinite being and that is God. In order for us to recognize that there is a perfect infinite being we must be finite otherwise we would never be aware of that. Although we are limited beings God has given us two gifts which are our free will and intellect. Our intellect is what delivers ideas to us, it is what we know about the world and our capacity to learn. Our will is infinite and our ability to act upon our desires.
However as finite beings there is a limitation on how much we know, no one knows everything. Will is not limited and it is not restricted, we can make choices and always say yes or no or choose to act or not act. Our will is what can potentially cause us to make errors and that’s why he suggests that we should act upon our will only when we are certain about it. In the fifth meditation he talks about material things and starts to thing about the existence of physical things.
Descartes claims that he must look inside himself in the context of his own mind in order to reach a conclusion of it. He argues that he perceives clear and distinct ideas in relation to physical objects such as shapes and sizes, duration and motion. He talks about the triangle and is aware of what it looks, it has a shape that makes it a triangle. The idea of the shape of a triangle is clear and distinct and is in fact real.
As Descartes thinks about the shape of a triangle he realizes that it has its own properties that makes it a triangle. Descartes refers God as a supremely perfect being, he believes that existence is perfection. He uses mountains and valleys as an example, if we have a concept of a mountain it must logically be known that it has a valley.
In order for a mountain to exist it would need a valley, it can’t exist without it. If God is the mountain existence would be the valley, this is his version of the ontological argument. In the sixth and final meditation he talks about the mind and the body. He starts to think about his senses and suggests if the material world exists that must mean his body also exists. He believed that mind and body are separate and that they are completely different things.
The body is not capable of thoughts however the mind is indivisible. Our true selves are our minds and not our bodies. I found all of his ideas interesting however I found the idea of “I think, therefore I am” the most interesting. I myself have questioned my own existence in the past and wondered if I was real and asked myself if everything surrounding me was real. Similarly to his conclusion on why he believes he exists. I figured that I must exist because I think therefore I exist.
I agree with his idea because in order to exist you would need to have a mind. I have also thought about the idea of someone controlling me and what if this thing a robot let’s say is deceiving me. I would have to add that not only would I know I exist because i’m a thinking thing but also because of free will. I am able to make my own choices and decisions in life if someone was deceiving me I would not have free will. How would I know that a robot is making my choices and decisions for me?
I would say that if this robot was making my choices for me and if it were to control me then why is it that when I make my own choices I feel good about them. For example lets say i’m hungry and i’m specifically craving pizza, i’m going to make the decision to order pizza. When I eat the pizza I would then feel happy and satisfied. When I think of someone controlling someone else I associate it with being a negative thing. That is the reason why I come to the conclusion that I know no one is controlling me because of free will.
Works Cited
Descartes, René, and John Cottingham. Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Print.
