Review Of Dostoevsky's Rebellion

Descartes discusses the deception of human senses, and how things sometimes seem different than what they really are, in the third and fourth paragraphs of Meditation 1. Descartes explains how he is sitting near a fire and he is holding a newspaper. Here, he questions our senses. He says that our senses have deceived us before, but they only deceive us with things that are unclear. He says that our basis for some of the things we know and understand come from a reference due to our past sense experiences. He presents the question of whether or not his hands and his body are really real. He knows that he is in front of a fire, and holding a newspaper, but how do you know. Is it from a frame of reference, or just from past knowledge? Since our senses sometimes deceive us, do we trust them, according to him we must. He then goes on to comparing himself with the mentally insane. Maybe their minds are not distorted. Maybe their senses see things in a different way. What seems right to someone may seem inverted to another. He then states that they are demented and that if he were to take their side or accept their views, then therefore that would make him demented too. (p.232-23

I feel that the one trait that I achieved best was the trait of intellectual humility. I know the limits to my knowledge in this subject. I do know something’s about the senses and how to use them, but I did not try to elaborate on information in which I did not have. The one trait in which I did not perform as well is the trait of fair-mindedness. I did not treat all viewpoints alike in that I feel that Descartes contradicts himself. In doing so, I leaned more toward one side of the argument rather than looking at the whole picture. The other intellectual standard that I did not perform as well is precision. Although I made my points and facts as clear as possible, maybe I could have been more specific in what I was trying to get at.

Our senses are the basis of reference to many things we know and can relate too. Our five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight make up the tools for which we can explain things. Although our senses seem to deceive us, like the sense of sight, maybe it is just that our senses are only so strong and that after such a point, they are incapable of explaining what we are trying to define. A great example of this is the sense of smell. Human beings have a great sense of smell, but there are some vapors and gases that are undetectable to a human beings sense of smell. Although are senses deceive us, they help us to prove that something is what it is. How do we know that an object is hot or cold, we know this by the sense of to

Some topics in this essay:
Review Descartes, senses deceive, mentally insane, sense smell, basis reference, fire holding newspaper, human sense smell, descartes explains, demented demented, fire holding, maybe senses, holding newspaper, human sense,