Do We Have Knowledge of the External World?

The first of Rene Descartes six Meditations is concerned with the possibility that our immediate perceptions of the external physical world that we either ignorantly or correctly call reality, may all in fact be a dream. Is the external world we believe to be our waking reality different to a reality we are programmed to be unable to perceive? Is it merely an intelligent deception of some sort, orchestrated by a cunning evil demon? This essay will attempt to question our capacity (or lack thereof) of perception within a hypothetic “real world” by examining objections of the sceptic in order to discover the possibility of an objective reality with reference to arguments set out in Descartes’ Meditations. By the external physical world, I mean a world compiled of objects and events which we can only experience through our sense organs, forming the subconscious intelligence of sense perception, that which is impartial of the mind. We don’t seem to engage directly with the external world but rather subconsciously piece together a rational system of patterns from our experiences gained through our senses to develop our own individual concepts of the matter we come across as we grow up. These intangible concepts constitute our knowledge of the external world and allow us to build foundations for further experience. From this foundation, we begin to create a mental display of rationalised relationships between ourselves and other objects (along with inter-object relationships) through what we, again, perceive through our senses. But on what grounds is our knowledge of this external physical world substantiated? This is precisely the question Descartes presents us with and simultaneously tries to dismantle.
The argument begins with the problem of being able to hold our senses in a trustworthy light. Although to us prima facie it seems that we are on most accounts able to trust our sense perception, however, there are times at which our senses deceive us into thinking one