Descartes

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I am going to discuss Descartes’ first and second Meditations concerning doubt. I will first summarize what Descartes was trying to say and prove, and explain why he was unsuccessful in his search for a foundation in which he could build knowledge from.
In Descartes first meditation he discusses that he has come to the conclusion that many of his beliefs and opinions he had as a child are doubtful. Descartes decides that in order to find out the “truths” he must disprove his current “knowledge.” He goes about this by a radical system of doubt and says that he must “attack those principles which supported everything I once believed (144).” His method of doubt allows him to eliminate anything and everything that has even the smallest possibility of not being factual. Descartes does not necessarily doubt everything that he brings up. In Descartes’ first meditation, he tries to disprove all of his fundamental beliefs. First, he doubts that he can trust his senses because they can be fooled. An example of this is the refraction that happens when a pencil is placed in water; it looks broken, even though it really is not.
Descartes then states that there are no definitive signs for him to tell weather he is awake or asleep. And since he cannot trust his senses, he concludes that there is no way to determine whether he is awake or asleep. He does say that there are some things that remain consistent when he is awake and asleep; namely, math. 2 + 2 still = 4 in a dream, and a square will still have four sides whether you are asleep or awake. His point is that even though there a things that remain constant in a dream, they are so vivid sometimes that you cannot tell if you are really conscious.
To disprove these beliefs Descartes abandons the idea of a supremely good God like he has believed in all his life and brings up the argument that God is an omnipotent, omniscient, evil genius whose entire purpose is to dec...