Rene Descartes (DESCARTES FIRST AND SECOND MEDITATION)

Running Head: DESCARTES FIRST AND SECOND MEDITATION
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DESCARTES FIRST AND SECOND MEDITATION1
Rene Descartes was a French philosopher as well as a mathematician and a Scientist at the same
time. He is considered to have been the first modern philosopher and is famous for his
contributions in geometry and algebra as he found the connection between both of them. The
philosophy of first meditation was developed in the year 1641 (Descartes)The fact that it is
studied in many philosophy classes makes it necessary to investigate how Descartes looked for
the certainty of knowledge, his doubting process, and how arrived at his conclusion. A
significant challenge with the second wave is its wording by Descartes. He argues that "there are
no conclusive signs using which one can distinguish clearly between being awake and being
asleep.” He, however, goes ahead to distinguish between dreams and reality, and this means that
he either contradicted himself or he chose the wrong words to bring forth his argument. It can be
said that the significance of these two waves has been overrated as Descartes only uses them to
get the reader into the process of doubting. In this the first and the second meditation as outlined
by the philosopher Rene Descartes will be discussed in details and the elements that are attached
to the concept of first and second meditation will also be discussed.
The purpose of his first meditation as was to discover something “firm and constant in the
senses.” His sole motivation was to find out what humans, in general, could grasp or know.
Descartes had an outlined meaning for knowledge as he defined it to be something that is
unquestionable. This is to mean that if knowledge is indubitable, then the only way to find out
something you do not doubt is letting go of all the ideologies and illusions which a person has
had throughout their life that can make them have a reason to question or doubt.
Descartes method of doubt was developed in the book ‘Discourse on the Method,' making it an
unavoidable read before analyzing Meditation (Descartes). Descartes employed a method known
as ‘foundationalism.' Using this method, Descartes systematically targets the place from where
the human beings get their knowledge; basically he attacks the source of knowledge. This means
that if he were to analyze every single person's belief, then it would be time-consuming meaning
that it would take a lot of time to get his results. He settled not only to let go of the things he
could substantiate to be untrue but also to also throw away everything his mind could doubt to in
even in the most minimal way. Through this method, his doubt could be perceived to be vocal. In
Meditation 1, Descartes attacks all sources of knowledge by remarking that he associates with a
procedure referred to as ‘global skepticism’ (Rasmussen and Moe 31-42). This means that he

DESCARTES FIRST AND SECOND MEDITATION2
questions everything in the bid to uncover the axioms (truths considered to be self-evident) and
which the world understands can be based on (Descartes). However, the scale at which Descartes
doubt is global is questionable. It is also essential to note that Descartes was on a personal
journey for knowledge, “I shall apply myself seriously and freely to the destruction of all my
former opinions.” Through foundationalism, Descartes uses what he termed as ‘three waves of
doubt’ to attack all origins of information or knowledge. This means that to be able to question
everything, it was crucial to assess all sources of knowledge, including empirical and rational
sources. By the completion of the three waves of doubt, Descartes concluded that he had been
able to doubt everything which is a questionable conclusion to be discussed later.
The first wave of doubt by Descartes involved a sensory unreliability (Stefan 15). He remarks
that ‘’everything I have accepted...I have learned from or through the senses” (Descartes)This
was about the laws of mathematics and geometry he had learned earlier. This means that the
process of learning these laws initially is by our senses. He, however, went ahead to question the
authenticity of sense learning or experiences by stating, “sometimes the senses deceive us,
concerning things which are barely perceivable or at a great distance”. He uses this statement to
mean that senses and their experiences are capable of misleading us from time to time. Another
reliable example of how senses deceive us can be portrayed by AJ Ayer's presentation of a stick
in the water where our eyes perceive the stick to be bent due to the refraction of light while in
real sense it is common knowledge that the stick is straight.
He conceded that there existed a significant variation between mistaking something appearing at
a distance in foggy conditions and things that are immediate to your view. Descartes introduced
his second wave of the doubt to question his own counter-argument. The second wave proposes
that a person could be asleep at the moment and not even figure it out. Reality is more vivid and
outstanding than a dream. For example, when someone is doing an activity, they are normally
much aware of their surrounding environment than they are when they are dreaming about
anything. Descartes used this imagination/hypothesis to suggest that it was likely for him to have
been in a dream while writing his philosophy without his knowledge and that there was a
possibility of waking up from the dream and joke of how funny his dream was (Descartes). The
possibility of Descartes being in a dream according to his arguments makes us be in doubt of our
sensory experiences. He argued that even when we are dreaming, it is impossible for us to come