6/28/2023 0 Comments Rene descartes first meditation![]() His senses have deceived him before, so they could be deceiving him now, so he rejects all sensory-based beliefs. To avoid any false beliefs, his strategy is to doubt any belief he has that could be false or that he could be mistaken about. He sets out to devise a strategy to not just prevent having false beliefs but, more dramatically, to ensure that scientific research reveals truth, not error. Meditation 1: Skepticism and the Method of Doubtĭescartes begins by reflecting on the unfortunate fact that he has had many false beliefs. This two-part essay reviews Descartes’ process of reasoning and some of his arguments on these issues.ġ. It raises timeless and fundamental philosophical questions about knowledge, the self, the mind and its relation to the body, substance, causality, perception, ideas, the existence of God, and more. The Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) is a classic work that lays the philosophical foundations of this enterprise. ![]() In an era of great debate over the fundamental facts of nature-e.g., about the Earth’s place in the cosmos, the amount of energy in the universe, the circulation of blood in the human body-René Descartes’ (1596-1650) central goal was to establish a body of scientific knowledge that held the same degree of certainty as mathematical truths. ![]() ![]() ![]() Categories: Historical Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind and Language, Philosophy of ReligionĮditor’s Note: This essay is the first in a two-part series on Descartes’ Meditations. ![]()
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