Descartes is a rational thinker and he rationalizes through his studies that nothing in the world is known. I will briefly discuss the three meditations of Descartes. Hume is an empiricist who attempts to explain things based on cause and effect, true or false. I will briefly discuss Hume’s cause and effect theory, and they way he classifies into two ways how knowledge gives us experience and how he thinks we can not predict the future but only make inferences to it based on the past. I will agree with Descartes method of reasoning yet I will argue that Descartes seems insecure because his need to ask questions about everything he has known, about everything that currently exists, and his own existence.

Descartes tires to convince not only himself, but also the reader that in his theory, one must reject all of his present ideas and beliefs and start from nothing. He believed that reason as opposed to experience was the source for discovering what is of absolute certainty. His first meditation acts as the foundation for the following ones. He discerns between strict absolute certainty and mere opinion. Descartes first examines those beliefs that require our senses. A

re our senses a valid meter of what they represent? Descartes comes to the conclusion that our senses are prone to error and hereby cannot reliably differentiate among certainty and inaccuracy when he inspected ones sometimes-firm belief in the actuality of dreams. In the beginning of meditation two, he is “stuck in the middle of nothingness,” (Descartes). He regards everything around him as false, due to the fact that he cannot believe what he has learned and he is also unable to trust his senses because he believes they will deceive him. At this point in his life, he doubts everything in the world, including himself. In beginning his knowledge from non-existence, he disregards everything he has ever seen, learned and thought. “Cogito Ergo Sum” means “I think, therefore I am,” (Descartes). This statement is undoubtedly the one thing that will remain true because if you are still thinking, you currently exist. In other words, if you doubt, then you exist rationally. In his third mediation, Descartes makes three points and then draws on a conclusion: 1) He has an innate idea of an infinite being. 2) A finite mind like his own could have not possibly come up with the infinite innate idea. 3) There must exist some infinite mind that gave Descartes this infinite idea. In his conclusion of these ideas, he states “Therefore God must exist,” (Descartes).

In Hume’s writing, “An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” he demonstrates how there is no way to logically make any claims about future occurrences. Hume believes that knowledge of matters of fact come from earlier experiences. Drawing on this idea, he goes on to discuss how we, as humans, can only make inferences on what will happen in the future, based on our past experiences. He then continues to point out that “We are incorrect to believe that we are warranted in using our experiences of the past as a means of evidence of what will come about in the future.” (Hume). Hume said “Even though the cause preceded the effect, there is no proof that the cause is responsible for the effect’s occurrence, it could be purely coincidental,” (Hume). He also claims that our ideas, (which forms the basis of our knowledge), are resulting from impressions that we obtain in from the outside world and into the inside world that is our mind.

The version of the Cogito, maintains that it is definite because Descartes has intuited it. It can be seen to be true, in the same way that we know 4+5=9. He simply knows he exists based on an undeviating understanding. With this analysis, clearly the proposal “I exist” is the first certainty. The dilemma o

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