In his meditations on First Philosophy, the philosopher Descartes takes on the responsibility of breaking down all his previous assumptions to reconstruct his knowledge with certain truths. In his first meditation, Descartes establishes three reasons for doubt, including the inability to distinguish between waking and sleeping states. He admits to having been deceived in the past by sensations in sleep, which were later identified as dream illusions. Because of these false perceptions, Descartes reveals that he cannot be sure that he is awake and perceives real images or hallucinations in his sleep (Descartes, 114). He also introduces the idea of always dreaming, which he promptly denies by claiming that whatever images he sees in his dreams are taken from reality. Descartes goes on to systematically question all his beliefs and reconstruct his understanding on the basis of facts that he can recognize as certain. As the meditations unfold, the meditator always asks himself whether he is conscious or not. Within Meditation I, he ultimately revisits this skepticism where he concludes that waking and sleeping states are distinguishable, which one stumbles into due to doubt. Furthermore, by questioning the reliability of our senses, Descartes demolishes the basis of his previous beliefs by using the evil demon argument as a basis to raise further uncertainty. It is one of the most extreme skepticisms because we have to give up all the things we have always doubted. Descartes proposes the idea that there is an omnipotent and deceptive evil demon who uses all his power to deceive him. Everything he thinks he knows, the sky, the earth, the colors, the figures, the sound and all other external things are false and considered by him to be illusions created by the devil. Since his senses fail him and his beliefs develop based on the senses, the beliefs are false and must therefore be discarded. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay To begin, Descartes reintroduces his only reason for doubt during the first Mediation that he did not address; How does he know he's not dreaming? Entering into the discussion of this skepticism, Descartes observes that his senses most often suggest what is true for him, and less often mislead him. Considering this, he suggests that this is quite useful because he can now identify deceptions and deal with them in the same way. Considering the propensity of the senses to suggest reality, Descartes defines his dream doubt as hyperbolic and ridiculous. Along with other doubts. He goes on to state: “… whether I am awake or dreaming, it remains true that two and three equal five, and that a square has only four sides; nor does it seem possible that such evident truths could ever fall under the suspicion of falsity [or uncertainty].” (Descartes, 115). The reason for dismissing this doubt is simply that dreams do not fit the waking mind. An example introduced by Descartes to illustrate this is the idea of characters who seem to appear and disappear in a dream, but he would not recognize the abnormality; would be able to determine that it is a figment of the imagination in a waking state. He can determine this because if a person entered a room in the waking state and then left, Descartes would connect the person's perception to other aspects of the event, thus creating an interconnected memory of the person, which is not evident in the dream (Descartes 114). After all this Descartes concludes that if the senses, mind and intellect all work to investigate dreams from waking life, then reality will be known. Second, the waking state is distinct from the dream state, because the waking state has afinite duration. sequence of events with greater attention to detail. Thought processes within the thought state can be traced back to the event that gave impetus to a particular thought or concept. However, in the dream state thoughts can simply arise without origin. There is always some missing step or error in the logic of the dream state, which means that it is a dream. The waking state also provides a linear history of thoughts and actions that a dream cannot accomplish. In waking state events that follow other events, an itinerary of a person's day can be written, explaining the person's actions at each moment of the day. However, when you sleep, the itinerary says sleeping. The itinerary also reads sleep upon awakening, from the moment the person went to bed to the moment he woke up to write another action. For this reason linear history is possible, it is possible to identify a dream. Due to the temporal structure and external analysis, the limitations of a dream are evident and a dream can be identified as soon as these points become apparent. Furthermore, the topic of the evil demon is of the utmost importance in Descartes' work. The topic tests our cognitive nature; everything we think we know comes to us through the senses, but our senses are not reliable. When our senses cannot be completely trusted, then nothing is certain in the external world, since everything is experienced by our senses. Our cognitive function is essentially flawed, determining that humans cannot trust their experiences (in hindsight) as knowledge. The argument works hand in hand with the dream argument as he came to this conclusion because he failed to determine the difference between his dream and non-dream experiences, therefore, since dreams are not reality, his perceptions and impressions of the world could be false. . Again, conclusions arising from the act of doubting. Descartes recognized that the dream argument may not be convincing enough, and therefore argues that we believe in an omnipotent God, one who created us and even has the power to deceive us about anything, even mathematics. Therefore, it is possible that we live a life of deception. Yet, Descartes states, God is all good and would not deceive us; however, there could be an evil devil-like demon that would do this (Descartes, 115). This may or may not be a valid statement, however, our world experiences are too vague to be considered facts and therefore we have no reason to believe one thing over another. Descartes' evil demon argument suggests that we may be trapped in a vat "connected" to a dream universe dominated by an evil demon that provides false perceptions of real life. In essence, the evil demon argument states that we may be living in a dream: like the world; at least we have no objective reason to believe that we are not. There may be no real emotions, no real relationships, no real experiences, nothing real. We may lead a life of deception and falsehood. Our whole life is suddenly called into question because if we live in an illusory world, everything we believe is simply a sensational experience. Knowledge, however, is not based on this argument since living in a false dream world would be fundamentally bad even if we did not know we were not in reality, for three main reasons. First, the most basic scientific beliefs would be wrong. Scientific beliefs such as the scientific method, history's most effective method of discovery, would lead us to the wrong answers; the composition of
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