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Rene Descartes 'Meditations'

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In order for Descartes to begin building a solid foundation, where upon he can decisively decide whether if God exists, he must first make two clear distinctions, or goals: One; The inherent source of human knowledge is in the mind. Two; science and religion are to be compatible with one another if the outcome of God’s existence is to be proven true. From there he begins to break down the thought process into ‘Meditations’ and then begins to break down what can be called into doubt. He starts off by stating his ‘Methodological Doubt’ process, in which he inherently breaks down to the very fundamentals of human thought and begins to rebuild his assumptions based on known assertions.
In the First Meditation he breaks down anything that can be …show more content…

By getting rid of foundations of thought, doubting everything, and suspending judgment in order to use systematic doubt to stave prejudice he begins from the ground up to conclude what he can truly call real. First he recollects on the assumption of beliefs being based on the senses, as the senses can often deceive oneself. Next, he clarifies that one could not truly differentiate between what is a dream and what is a reality based on the first assumption. Third, a spirit could be deceiving oneself from the truth, however, based on this assumption, all beliefs could be wrong; yet the inherent belief in one’s ability to comprehend thoughts seem to not deviate even with this third notion. Descartes then comes to the conclusion of “I am, I exist” (pg.536) based on these three assumptions, and therefore he concludes that if he can think, he is real. The revelation of this finally concludes that there is at least one axiom to the world so far. Even if all else had failed to be proven true, Descartes had the foundation to begin investigating further into the realities of his

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