Outline, examine and evaluate the arguments used by Descarte

Descartes’ project in Meditations is ‘to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations’ in order to establish which of his beliefs he can know are true. He realises ‘how many things [he] had accepted as true in [his] childhood, and how doubtful were the things that [he] subsequently built on them’. Descartes believes it is necessary to ‘overturn’ one’s beliefs ‘once in a lifetime’ through a process of doubt; he regards the need to undermine the ‘foundations’ of his beliefs and this strategy of doubt as ‘straightforwardly and obviously’ the rational course to assume in order to discover the truth. However, it has been questioned just how ‘necessary’, ‘straightforward’ or ‘obvious’ this overturning is. Bernard Williams argues that ‘we constantly want the truth about various matters, but hardly ever demand the indubitable’. It appears rather overdramatic and unnecessary to insist on the absolute certainty of all things. However, Descartes’ use of ‘once in a lifetime’ suggests that he is merely curious; he is not searching for t

Descartes first resolves to call the senses into doubt. He argues that ‘everything that [he] accepted as being most true…[he] acquired from or through the senses’; however, he also notes that his senses have occasionally deceived him ‘and it is prudent never to trust those who have deceived us, even if only once’. However, it is questionable whether it is reasonable to wholly reject the testimony of the senses, even if they have sometimes been wrong. Indeed, as Cottingham points out, ‘is not our very ability to judge that the senses sometimes deceive us parasitic on the fact that they are sometimes non-deceptive’. Although our senses might deceive us of the exact shape or size or location of, for example, a table whilst standing in a dark room, or without one’s glasses on, or if drunk, once the light is switched on – or glasses found, or one has sobered up – the senses adjust themselves and we become aware of the exact situation of the table. We can recognise that our senses have deceived us and thus correct them. Therefore, critics who argue in this vein conclude, we can be sure that our senses do not deceive us in optimal circumstances (i.e. in bright, natural light). However, this criticism ignores certain issues. In a bright light, when we are able to assess a situation clearly, our senses may still deceive us. For example, the tabletop, although it appears to be perfectly square and flat to the naked eye, might on closer examination prove not to be so: the corners might not be at exact right angles, and it might be discovered that, when viewed through a microscope, the table surface is in fact quite bumpy and not exactly flat. It might still be argued that, seeing as we are able to examine the table and discover that it is not exactly square or flat, our deceived senses have still been corrected. To counter this argument, we could go further and argue that the table might appear to be rough under a microscopic lens, and thus our sense of sight may be corrected, however the table might still feel smooth. We are therefore told that our sense of touch has been deceptive; however, if we are deceived by our sense of touch, and that sense alone cannot be improved (the table feels no less smooth by the fact that under stronger and stronger microscopes it is proven to be even rougher than previously suspected). If our senses can contradict one another and one can remain persistently wrong, it can surely be argued that it is possible that our senses are capable of deceiving us all the time. Since the most apparently solid of our beliefs derive from the senses, if we can be deceived by these senses surely it is possible that we could be deceived about more ‘substantial’ things such as that I am sitting here, typing. Descartes originally argues against this by claiming that, despite his experience that the senses sometimes deceive, there are many things ‘about which one surely cannot have doubts, even if they are derived from the senses; for example the fact that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a dressing gown, holding this page in my hand’ and so on. However, Descartes then recalls that he has had vivid dreams in which he was performing such actions. This thought leads us to Descartes ‘dream theory’, the second main argument of the First Meditation.

However, it has been argued that there are certain matters on which it would not be possible for even a God, or omnipotent and malignant demon, to deceive us. Surely simple mathematical truths could not be incorrect due to the fact that they are by their very definition correct. How could two plus two equal anything but four? If two plus two did equal something else – for example, five – the words would merely be representing different numbers – in this example, two and a half. The numerical value of two would still mean that when added to itself it would equal the nu

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