Descartes First Meditation

The First Meditation is part of the Meditationes de prima philosophia by Descartes and was written in 1641.[1] In the epistemological oeuvre, Descartes demonstrates the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The First meditation is concerned with doubting the foundations of knowledge.

René Descartes was a french philosopher and scientist. He was born in 1596 in La Haye en Touraine and died 1650 in Stockholm. Descartes is considered the founder of rationalism, which is partly based on Cartesianism, Descartes philosophy.[2] He is best known for his quote «cogito ergo sum» (I think, therefore I am).[3]

In his First Meditation, Descartes demonstrates that all knowledge can be called into doubt. He starts by explaining his motivation for his Meditations: Descartes states that since his early childhood, he has accepted many opinions to be true which later turned out to be false, and that he therefore formed many new opinions based on the ones he considered truths. This necessarily led to him being convinced of many things which actually are false. This can be better explained by an example: Consider a small child learning a new language. Now imagine there to be somebody which teaches the child, for whatever reasons, that dogs are, in fact, called cows. Let’s say that nobody corrects the child and the child therefore forms the opinion that dogs are called cows – it accepted an opinion to be true which actually is false. Now let’s say some relative talks to said child on the phone, telling them that they recently bought a cow. Of course, the relative means an actual cow – he might be a farmer. However, in the childs mind, the picture of a dog pops up – it is now convinced that his relative owns a dog. This false opinion was formed on another opinion, which was considered a truth despite being false.

Descartes then realizes that all of his opinions might be based on false ones and that therefore «the whole structure would have to be utterly demolished».[4] For that to happen, the philosopher wants to demonstrate, that the truth of all his believes can be doubted. However, he does not do so by doubting each and every opinion, he instead doubts the very foundations upon which his opinions are based.

Now knowing that all of his believes might be based on lies, Descartes decides that he can only consider the opinions formed based on what his senses told him to be true. For example, when one sees a cup, the opinion of that cup being there is not based on other believes but only on one’s own vision and therefore can’t possibly be false – or can it? Descartes proceeds to explaining that his senses have indeed deceived him before (consider seeing something out of the corner of an eye and believing it to be something other than what it actually is). However, one’s senses might only deceive them «about things that are little», but not about the most basic things like being where one is.[5]

Descartes next considers the option of dreaming and concludes, that even if his senses do not deceive him about important things, he might be dreaming – and that there is no possible way of differencing between dreaming and being awake. Therefore, even the most basic believes based on one’s senses might be false, for one might only be dreaming to see and smell these things. However, Descartes next states that the human mind cannot invent completely new things, not even in its dreams. The philosopher states that each invention and imagination is made out of parts of things which do exist (take, for example, mythical creatures – a mermaid is partly woman, partly fish). Therefore, Descartes is convinced, that even if one is dreaming, some parts of the things he dreams about must, in fact, exist. From this, Descartes concludes that disciplines such as geometry «which deal only with the very simplest and most general things, and care little whether they exist in nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable».[6]

Descartes then proceeds to talking about God. He states that he himself believes in an almighty God which created him and the whole world. But if that god in fact is almighty, he might not have actually created Descartes but only made him think he did. Actually, Descartes states, he might not have created anything at all and simply deceives Descartes, making him think that the world exists. Even if God is told to be good, he does permit being deceived in some ways, so he might really deceive one about ones existence. Next, Descartes considers the option of no almighty God. He shows that even if there is no God, one might be deceived about everything, because being deceived appears to be «some kind of imperfection, the less powerful the source they invoke to explain my being, the more probable it will be that I am so imperfect that I am perpetually deceived».[7]

Knowing that therefore all of his believes might be false, Descartes emphasizes the importance of keeping that in mind. This, however, can be very difficult, for it is easy to fall back into ones believes if ones whole world is based on said believes. Therefore, Descartes decides that he must convince himself, that all of his believes are, in fact, false. He does so by convincing himself to believe in the existence of some almighty evil spirit which, like God might, deceives him about everything, making him believe that he exists, even though he does not. This way, Descartes hopes to be able to not rely on any of his believes as long as they are not proves to be undoubtably true.

In his second Meditation, Descartes does in fact find a believe which is undoubtably true and about which not even an evil spirit can deceive him: He states that he must, in fact, exist – because he is thinking, and only existing things can think («cogito ergo sum»).[8]

From that starting point, Descartes begins to build a fundament of truths, demonstrating the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the existence of material things and the differences between the mind and the body.

[1] Descares, René: Meditationes de prima philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animae immortalitas demonstratur, Paris 1641.

[2] Cartesianism is Descartes philosophy and the fundament of early rationalism. It is concerned with ontology as well as epistemology.

[3] Descartes, René: Meditations on first philosophy: with selections from the Objections and replies, S.24, Cambridge 2017.

[4] Adv., S. 13.

[5] Adv., S. 13.                

[6] Adv., 15.

[7] Adv., S. 16.

[8] Adv., S. 13.