Descartes Meditation On First Philosophy

Descartes began Meditation One of his classic Meditation on First Philosophy by saying that throughout his life, he had acquired several opinions and beliefs which he later discovered to be false (17-18). The main goal of Descartes was to find a foundation on which knowledge can be built. Descartes wanted to find a certainty, which could not be doubted beyond dispute. Descartes agree with Plato that knowledge requires certainty, but reject the Platonic idea that the physical world is not knowable (Reed, Newman). What does it mean to be certainty? Descartes main aim was how to achieve this certainty. In order to achieve his aim, Descartes adopted a systematic method known as the method of doubt. The method of doubt teaches us to take our beliefs
Descartes consider the ‘evil genius’ to be someone who has the power of God, but who is not good. The ‘evil genius’ is determined to deceive us into thinking that there is a physical world when in fact there is none (Reed, Newman). For example, using the famous Matrix movie, the machines that are used in the movie would be considered as the ‘evil geniuses’. Everything would seem to us to be real just like in the matrix, but none of them is real. However, Descartes does not actually believe that this ‘evil genius’ exists, but there is no way to rule it out based on our sensory experience. How can we doubt that one plus two does not equal three when our minds necessarily admit that it equals three? Descartes used the concept of the ‘evil genius’ to hypothesize that there is an ‘evil god’ who is deceiving us from getting the correct answer. Even though, we always think that one plus two equals three. This god is actually tricking us that in reality it equals four. Descartes linked this circumstance to situations where we are absolutely confident of our belief toward a certain fact, but despite this confident we often discover later that we had mistaken about the fact (20-23 and Reed). This might be the case for our mathematical truths in which an ‘evil god’ is deceiving us from getting the correct solution to a problem every time we
Descartes wanted to find a certainty, which could not be doubted beyond dispute. What does it mean to be certain as posed in the introduction can be defined as being unable to doubt what we know? Something that cannot be doubted is considered to be certain (Reed, Newman, and Hatfield). By ‘possible to doubt’, Descartes mean any possibility ‘what so ever’. This guarantee that whatever cannot be doubted is actually certain. If one could find something that was truly undoubted in this sense, we could use it in a valid argument like a syllogism. The conclusion would be that the world exists in the way that we think it does. In addition, Descartes was skeptical in his arguments. This is because he applies reasoning and critical thinking to determine validity of his arguments. He was able to find supported conclusion and not the justification of a preconceived