Descartes 2
Descartes 2It took Descartes a long time before he realized how many false beliefs and assumptions he had from his childhood.
To start over with a new mind set, he had to totally rid himself of assuming things been true or things that he had not questioned but had rather accepted as a truth.
Descartes waited for a when he was retired to come up with his opinions and question the truths. He therefore had plenty of time to ponder and really nothing to loose in terms of leisure, care and passion.
What Descartes first meditation starts out to do is not to base or accept as the most true certain things his senses had made him accept as true. For example, if Descartes saw a piece of wood when he was younger he would have automatically assumed or believed it came from a tree. This was his automatic assumption because this was what had been instilled in his thought process which was that wooden objects came from trees. This is what we could call the perception of our senses. Our senses take the front seat of our thought and we hardly ever question it. Not basing his beliefs on his sight would satisfy not trusting a deceptive sense such as sight as used in our example because of its deceptiveness to come to a true belief..
Descartes slowly moves on to set the stage on another argument which I shall call the dreaming argument. The dreaming argument is centered around differentiating our awakened mind from sleep. Descartes uses this technique and builds upon it to show that an external world doesn�t exist. Descartes makes a good argument by using scenarios which happen to everyone whilst having a dream. Descartes believes that our dreams usually represent unclear settings of ourselves and while not in a dreamy moment ourselves we can'� be very clear if what we experience while awake really are occurring. Simply put, reality and when we are in a dreaming state is so blurred that sometimes or most times when we have dreams we tend to think we aren�t dreaming but are actually experiencing a real situation. Descartes hammers his point here by saying...
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