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Of The Things Which We May Doubt Analysis

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Madison Christensen Essay #2 A Method to the Madness In Descartes’ First Meditation titled “Of the Things which we may Doubt,” he begins by noting that he has been wrong about a lot of things as well as that he has reasoned from these false beliefs to equally false conclusions. Descartes continues by identifying himself as a foundationalist. As a result, he decides that he should essentially throw out everything that he already believes and begin new by rebuilding his belief wall from the bottom up beginning with a good and solid foundation (Warren). Descartes states that he should refuse to accept beliefs that he cannot be certain are true because if a person cannot be certain that a belief is true then there is a possibility that the belief might be false (Warren). Descartes possessed a main concern of avoiding all likelihood of error, which then leads to his epistemological objective to define truth. Reaching the definite truth is a worthy goal, and it is reasonable for a person to want his or her beliefs to be true because why should a person settle for beliefs that …show more content…

Descartes states that he often has perceptions very much like the ones he usually has in sensation when he is dreaming, and there are no definite signs to distinguish dream experience from waking experience; therefore, it is possible that he is currently dreaming and that all of his perceptions are false. The dream argument suggests two ideas. First is the universal possibility of dreaming, which is that although there are waking experiences, a person can never truly know which moments are dreams and which moments are waking. Second is the possibility of a universal dream, which investigates the idea that a person’s whole life is a dream and that no waking world

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