Descartes Meditation Summary

VY100 section 5

Summary Assignment

Date 2017.9.28

In Meditation one, Descartes questioned the believes which he had had faith in. In order to find an entirely definite and doubtless foundation, Descartes doubted all the principals he had believed in. He first came to senses, and thought they were deceptive.Then he questioned whether his body was true, and founded that it was also uncertain since he may be deceived by some evil genius or couldn’t tell reality from dreams.Likely, he doubted science and everything external to him with the same theory.

In Meditation two, he kept thinking to find an absolutely certain thing.Then he found that he thinks, he exists, whether he was deceived or not. After proving his existence, Descartes went on to find out what exactly he was, and he could only get the answer that he was a thing which thought, since things unknown to him might not exist. Then he came to the other part of his meditation, that his minds couldn’t be confined to a small limit of truth, and he knew things by judging them. Also, by the process of judging, he proves the existence of himself.

In Meditation three, Descartes considered at the very beginning that things he could perceive certainly and evidently were true, and what were presented to his mind were only the thoughts of things. Then he tried to find out where his ideas came from.In addition to his own mind, they also came from things other than him, and, what’s more, they are presented to him from external, regardless of his own will. Therefore, what he could doubt were only the things he perceived, rather than the resource of those things. However, without an external thing presented, he might still thought. And he realized that, the idea of an object and an object itself could be greatly different, the reason of which might be that every judgement was uncertain and impulsive.After that, Descartes started to prove the existence of God, from whom he could perceive substances. Ideas could never be greater than the origin of this idea, therefore there must be some external things outside the fact that he thought. From the existing things, he concluded that a supreme God who possesses the property of infinity necessarily exist. Meanwhile, Descartes proved the existence of God from another aspect. He started from himself by stating that he perceived the infinite through denying the finite. He also supposed that he possessed some perfection of God. These ideas were from God,which although he might not be aware of, and ideas must be produced by something actually exist, therefore, he derives his existence from God.