Analysis Meditations on Philosophy Essay Assignment Paper

We have advanced nursing paper writers to help on Analysis Meditations on Philosophy Essay Assignment Paper

Analysis Meditations on Philosophy Essay Assignment Paper

In the First Meditation, Descartes sets out to doubt all his beliefs. Discuss why he does this. Additionally, discuss what the following passage from the First Meditation is saying in regards to doubting one’s beliefs.

Descartes:

Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even once. [The next paragraph presents a series of considerations back and forth. It is set out here as a discussion between two people, but that isn’t how Descartes presented it.]

Hopeful: Yet although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects that are very small or distant, that doesn’t apply to my belief that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on. It seems to be quite impossible to doubt beliefs like these, which come from the senses. Another example: how can I doubt that these hands or this whole body are mine? To doubt such things I would have to liken myself to brain-damaged madmen who are convinced they are kings when really they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple when they are naked, or that they are pumpkins, or made of glass. Such people are insane, and I would be thought equally mad if I modelled myself on them.

Doubtful (sarcastically): What a brilliant piece of reasoning! As if I were not a man who sleeps at night and often has all the same experiences while asleep as madmen do when awake—indeed sometimes even more improbable ones. Often in my dreams I am convinced of just such familiar events— that I am sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown—when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!

Hopeful: Yet right now my eyes are certainly wide open when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it isn’t asleep; when I rub one hand against the other, I do it deliberately and know what I am doing. This wouldn’t all happen with such clarity to someone asleep.

Doubtful: Indeed! As if I didn’t remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I realize that there is never any reliable way of distinguishing being awake from being asleep. This discovery makes me feel dizzy, [joke:] which itself reinforces the notion that I may be asleep!

Specifications

Argument Analyses should be 1 to 1.5 pages long. To get credit, you must use relevant quotations from the course reader. Include a page number for each quotation, and provide a list of works cited.

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