The “Meditations” Work by Descartes Essay

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Descartes’s Meditations involves an attempt to doubt everything, which he built upon few things that can be known with certainty. In his work during his youthful years, Descartes reiterates that opinions he firmly held were false, which made everything to him to be doubtful. He says that he formerly accepts things he learned through senses as certain and true by rebuilding his set of beliefs from scratch. This includes withholding beliefs that might be false in the name of searching for certainty.

There is a difference between rationalism and empiricism as put forward by philosophers. Rationalism refers to knowledge that arises from experience and through reason before the experience that is also known as prior knowledge. The empirical knowledge depends on senses that rationalists do not waste their time in demonstrating due to their unreliability. On the contrary, empiricism holds a belief that all knowledge arises through sense perception and reducible to the same. Empiricists argue that no knowledge can arise solely from reason and that where there is no experience, knowledge does not exist.

Individuals are capable of internalizing information and come up with the idea that presents their knowledge. Descartes revokes senses in generating doubt since they sometimes deceive. The reason I am supporting rationalism is the science behind Descartes’s reasoning, which is based on intellect innate ideas as validated by our creator. Meditations present Descartes rationalist’s confidence in inmate ideologies that create understanding to an issue. He argues in favor of rationalism through the wax argument as a reflection and a consideration object, concluding that in judging an issue, one has to reject thinking its current properties and rely on their mind and deduction.

Perception and feelings of the aspects prevent an individual from considering the objectivity of an issue. In this case, creating an unbiased opinion about an issue requires eliminating all the feelings and perceptions. Descartes considered a piece of wax and listed its characteristics such as shape, size, color, smell, texture as well as other features. Upon melting that piece of wax, another substance was formed. This experiment showed that the wax remains the same but what changed is its texture, shape, color, smell, and size. Thus, as put forward by Descartes, in measuring an object (wax in this argument), it is advisable not to consider feelings, perceptions, and emotions but use the deductive method.

The main argument about the wax experiment is that a person usually uses his mind in treating and defining an object based on its characteristics. As a rationalist, Descartes believed that knowledge is derived from the intellect’s ideas but not from their senses. This argument of innate ideas helps eliminate the possibility that distinct and clear ideas can be acquired through imagination or experience. Innate ideas possess universal truth and are dependable sources of knowledge.

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