Descartes Meditation 2 Analysis

In Meditations II, Descartes expresses doubt through a form of meditation. Descartes claims to have accepted many false opinions over time. However, to reject all previous opinions, he states that he needs to “rebuild from the foundation.”
In the first section (paragraphs 3-4), Descartes questions our senses by inferring that they often deceive and mislead. He brings up seeing object from far distances that may you may not come across as you get closer to the object. This shows that we may not see everything accurate from our senses. Descartes also brings the idea that there are things that are impossible to doubt. One example is when the meditator could not deny sitting by a fire, clothed in winter dressing gown, and holding his hand on a piece of paper. The only way that Descartes could deny that particular setting only if he was hallucinating and becoming mad.

Descartes describes eyes opening, the motion of the head, and hands that eventually turns out to be illusions. Through that example, Descartes argues that our dreams are identical representations of our reality and therefore all of the aspects our bodies actually do exist. Since our dreams can be identical representations it can be hard at times to differentiate dreams from reality. Am I dreaming at this moment? That’s a question that Descartes was trying to answer in Meditations I. Descartes then brings up the existence of a variety of objects. With shapes we can cannot prove that a certain characteristic or object exist; however, the idea behind them is what we base our knowledge off of. Can we define what is straight or round? Descartes also states that physics, astronomy, medicine are doubtful because they are “composite items”; however, you cannot doubt Arithmetic and Geometry because they are “the simplest and most general