The First Meditation
Descartes first meditation creates the foundation for both modern philosophical skepticism and his second mediation. The first meditation is basically an argument that seeks to overthrow what he perceives as prejudices in the western philosophy as created by Aristotle; when Aristotle suggested that all knowledge comes from senses. The first meditation brings in the doubt aspect, where he uses doubt rationally and methodologically to make his argument. Despite putting forth different arguments such as the “dream argument” and the “evil demon argument,” he does not just doubt things at random, in each argument; he provides solid reasoning for his doubts at every stage of the argument. For instance, even though he doubts whether he is indeed awake or in a universal dream where there is no waking world, he rejects the possibility that he could be mad since being mad would mean that doubts were neither systematic nor rational (Descartes, 2013). Here, it just shows that the mind of the meditator is open to the definite possibility that some of the things that both the mind and the sense perceive could be unreal; and more importantly, there is no one way to be particularly certain that they are. For instance, mad people do see things that are not existent, and we dream of things that seem real only to wake up and be disappointed.
The second meditation
Here, the meditator takes the argument into the next level. After internalizing that we could perceive things to be real but we cannot rule out (with absolute certainty) that they are unreal, he notes the need to acknowledge the relationship between the senses and the intellect. In his wax argument, (the wax can be solid and later smelted into a liquid puddle that can then, in turn, be transformed into infinite shapes that cannot be exhausted by imagination) only a relationship between the senses and the intellect can make sense of the knowledge and things that we both know and think that we know (Descartes, 2013). It is so because all that senses do is tell the brain about the world, but it is up to the intellect to make sense of the world with each change that is perceived by the senses. Solid wax and molten wax when only perceived by senses are two different things, but the intellect makes the connection between the two, among other interesting things such as to get the wax from honeycombs and to mold them to different shapes or forms as we can imagine. The senses work to perceive jumble information, but intellect puts it together for people to understand.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
In the first meditation, Descartes argues that one cannot know that he knows something for sure, and the only thing certain is existence. Doubts in this meditation suggest that there is no certainty in anything we perceive, and the only thing certain is that we have a mind that thinks and it’s the only proof of existence. The second meditation is more sensible in making sense of how we know and understand things, and as mentioned it takes the sense and intellect to perceive and understand things in the world (Descartes, 2013). The first meditation has logical weaknesses as it seems to be more hypothetical than practical. However, the second meditation makes sense because it takes connections between the sense, the mind, the body, the intellect and all other systems that work together to ensure that we make sense of everything we do every day. The question “do we really know anything?” can be answered by a yes. We do know a lot of things while others we cannot be sure of, and as long as a being has senses and intellect, the mysterious connection between the two will always ensure that we know something.
References
Descartes, R. (2013). René Descartes: Meditations on first philosophy: With selections from the objections and replies. Cambridge University Press.
