PHL 333 Chapter 4: Descartes - Meditations
4 Apr 2018
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Meditation one: concerning those things that can be called into doubt. What we perceive as true usually comes from our senses. However, our senses can deceive us - we should never place complete trust in them. No definitive ways to distinguish being awake from being asleep. When we are asleep, we are deceived that our dreams are real. Dream images are drawn from real life experiences. While he can doubt the composed things and images, he cannot doubt the universal parts from which they are constructed like shape, size, etc. We can doubt studies on composite things such as medicine, astronomy, physics, etc. but we cannot doubt studies based on simple things like arithmetic and geometry. Even simple things can be doubted too. One can argue that god is supremely good and would not allows someone to falsely believe in things.
