Rene Descartes's Meditations On First Philosophy

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Rene Descartes famously argues, in First Meditations, the first section of his larger work, Meditations on First Philosophy, that it is unwise to trust something that deceives you, even once. Descartes continues by claiming that because the senses are known to deceive, be it through optical illusions or through dreams, it is imprudent to trust one’s senses. G.E. Moore responds to Descartes’ radical argument in his academic essay, Proof of an External World. Moore asserts, “I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist (24).” He executes this claim in an astonishingly simple manner. He simply holds up each of his two hands and says, as he makes certain gestures with the right hand, “here is a hand,” and, as he makes an additional gesture with the left hand, “here is another [hand].” Since he was able to wave both hands, and assert their existence verbally, Moore is now convinced that two hands exist in the world. To clarify, in this paper, external means anything outside of consciousness; for, in Descartes’ Second Meditation, he claims that the only thing he can know with absolute certainty is: I possess consciousness, or in his words, “I am, I exist.” Based on Moore’s above ‘proof,’ he draws the conclusion that if two hands exist, then the external world must exist as well, because hands are inherently external. In Moore’s view, this, and this alone stands as proof that things outside of his consciousness exist, any additional examples would be repetitive and

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