Rene Descartes Rhetorical Analysis

Rene Descartes was a philosopher that lived from 1596 to1650. In Meditations of First Philosophy, Descartes leaves the reader with two main themes: skepticism and the cogito. In this paper, I will be examining Descartes’s writings. Mainly, what Descartes’s project consisted of, skepticism, the arguments he gave as means to his project, and the cogito. In doing so I will explain how he left the reader with the two important philosophical notions of skepticism and cogito.

Descartes goes through stages of methodological doubt I order to defeat skepticism. By doubting everything in the first meditation, Descartes begins his thinking experiment. With skepticism Descartes first notes that our sense deceives us. Not everything is what it seems to be. Descartes then argues that although our senses deceive us they still hold some truth. This leads into his second more systematic method for doubting his sensory perception, the dream theory. The dream theory is the idea the we can never really know if we are in a dream or awake as our senses deceive us. However, we can still know basic arithmetic and geometry as they cannot be illusory, “two plus three is always five (Descartes L322)”. Descartes then raises even more

Descartes’ Dreaming Argument comes from his thinking that there is no way of knowing if you are sleeping or if you are awake. To know something is to have no doubt of a fact, it must be a justified true belief. To be justified it must hold logical reason, you cannot state something is true without evidence. In order for it to be true it is not enough to justify it, but it must be justified with true facts. Finally, you must believe it, in order to know something it must be true in your mind. As a result Descartes doubts his consciousness as he cannot truly know that he is awake. This spurs Descartes to question if any perceived knowledge of reality is really true. Descartes calls his senses into questions as he notes, “it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” and therefore concludes that as a result it is prudent, never to trust his sense. In

Descartes has written a set of six meditations on the first philosophy. In these meditations he analyzes his beliefs and questions where those beliefs were derived from. The first mediation of Descartes discusses his skeptical hypotheses; questioning the validity of the influences of his knowledge. He has a few main goals that are expressed through the first meditation. First off, Descartes wants to build a firm foundation of knowledge that is also concrete. Through probing his mind for answers to all of his skeptical thoughts, he hopes to eliminate the skepticism and find true, unquestionable knowledge. Descartes has mapped out ways to

Descartes’ skeptical arguments begin from the thought that everything can be doubted; the first being our senses. He claims that our senses can sometimes deceive us (e.g. when viewing things from far away). Things that can deceive us once, have the possibility to be deceiving us all the time—giving us reason to doubt all sensory claims. This leads to a problem since humans rely on empirical knowledge. If one cannot consider any claim delivered by sense to be true knowledge, then it gives reason for one to doubt reality. Following is the dream argument in which what seems to be tangible reality, is an effect of a dreaming experience. Descartes gives the example of dreaming he is sitting by a fire when in actuality he could be asleep

René Descartes, a rationalist of the 1600, studied and critiqued the nature of knowledge and the reality of the world. Descartes was well known for his Method of Doubt where he encouraged using doubt explicitly and systematically as a tool for reaching certainty. He aimed at proving ideas and beliefs to be true but, to him, it is essential to detach from trusting the senses to provide certain knowledge. Jonathan Bennett overviews Descartes’ ideologies and principles on human knowledge and material things; He also describes the visible universe as according to Descartes. Bennett in detail covers each point fully which later can compile to show Descartes’ principles of philosophy.

At the beginning of Meditation three, Descartes has made substantial progress towards defeating skepticism. Using his methods of Doubt and Analysis he has systematically examined all his beliefs and set aside those which he could call into doubt until he reached three beliefs which he could not possibly doubt. First, that the evil genius seeking to deceive him could not deceive him into thinking that he did not exist when in fact he did exist. Second, that his essence is to be a thinking thing. Third, the essence of matter is to be flexible, changeable and extended.

In the First Meditation, Descartes invites us to think skeptically. He entices us with familiar occasions of error, such as how the size of a distant tower can be mistaken. Next, an even more profound reflection on how dreams and reality are indistinguishable provides suitable justification to abandon all that he previously perceived as being truth. (18, 19) By discarding all familiarity and assumptions, Descartes hopes to eliminate all possible errors in locating new foundations of knowledge. An inescapable consequence of doubting senses and prior beliefs

Descartes starts a journey with the opening of his first meditation. This journey does not bring everyone to the same destination, but that is of little importance. The important part of Descartes journey is his thoughts on doubt. He talks extensively about doubting everything that can be. Descartes does this to find reasons to doubt what he knows and bring a new foundation to his thinking. He does this by first examining how he has learned most of what he thinks is true, his senses. After he acknowledges that most of his senses are in fact true, except in niche cases, he goes back on that statement immediately based on the reasoning of dreams. Descartes says that in dreams he can see and feel things as real. Based on this observation he

On Meditation 1, the philosopher Rene Descartes centers on the idea that senses can not be trusted. Since in the past senses deceived him and let to false beliefs. Therefore his main concern is to erase all of the false beliefs he held to be true by analyzing and questioning which of them should be unreliable. Descartes, then, creates a new belief system in which all of the beliefs are correct.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, it is the self-imposed task of Descartes to cast doubt upon all which he knows in order to build a solid foundation of knowledge out of irrefutable truths. Borrowing an idea from

Rene Descartes’ begins to illustrate his skeptical argument as presented in Meditation l. Descartes basic strategy to approaching this method of doubt is to defeat skepticism. This argument begins by doubting the truth of everything, from evidence of the senses to the fundamental process of reasoning. Therefore, if there is any truth in the world that overcomes the skeptical challenge then it must be indubitably true. Thus, creating a perfect foundation for knowledge. The first Meditation is an examination in learning to doubt everything that I once believed to be true. Descartes begins to doubt everything he once believed about the external world using three solid propositions sensory illusions, the dream problem and a deceiving God. Descartes skeptical argument is refuted by many philosophers, in this paper I will explain Descartes argument and compare it to G.E Moore’s response while answering if his response successfully evades Cartesian skepticism.

Rene Descartes was a philosopher of the 17th century. He had this keen interest in the search for certainty. For he was unimpressed with the way philosophy is during their time. He mused that nothing certain was coming forth from all the philosophical ideologies. He had considered that the case which philosophy was in was due to the fact that it was not grounded to something certain. He was primarily concerned with intellectual certainty, meaning that something that is certain through the intellect. Thus he was named a rationalist due to this the line of thought that he pursued. But in his work in the meditation, his method of finding this certainty was skeptical in nature; this is ‘the methodic doubt’.

Skepticism in general says that we do not know many propositions about the external world that we naturally take ourselves to know. Descartes affirms skepticism by analyzing beliefs as knowledge. Meditations seeks to find a solution to the notion of if one doubts a belief, can it be considered knowledge?

In his first mediation Descartes comes to the conclusion that there is not one of his former beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised. I will assess his reasons for thinking this to be so. I will look at the variety of reasons he gives in relation to: his senses, the dreaming argument, what is real and what isn’t, God, his opinions and his evil demon argument. Through assessing these epistemological (theory of knowledge) arguments I will conclude that in order to obtain new perceptions or ideas about knowledge, one must question everything one knows, as all knowledge and perceptions are created ultimately through the senses and mind.