Descartes

Descartes opens the First Meditation asserting the need "to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations" (AT 7:17). In the architectural analogy, we can think of bulldozers as the ground clearing tools of demolition. For Knowledge building, Descartes construes sceptical doubts as the ground clearing tools of epistemic demolition. Bulldozers undermine literal ground; doubt undermines epistemic grounds.

Descartes' ultimate aims, however, are constructive. Unlike "the sceptics, who doubt only for the sake of doubting," Descartes aims "to reach certainty

Attacking the underlying assumptions of his former beliefs, he asserts that

everything he knew in the past was based upon sense perception. The senses,

however, may be deceptive in that the minute objects are apprehended they may

appear differently from various points of view. It is highly probable that

other things which appear certain through sensation may in reality be the

products of illusions.

Yet there are some objects of sensations which must be accepted as true.

For instance, Descartes affirms that he is seated by the fire clothed in a

winter dressing gown. It would be insane to deny his knowledge of his own

body. We must admit certain characteristics of objects. For instance,

extension, figure, quantity, number, place, time, may be imputed to objects.

In addition, there are mathematical truths relative to objects. We know a

square has four sides and not five. In order to build a valid structure of knowledge he affirms that

he will consider all external reality as illusion. Even the perfect God will

be questioned in this universal doubt. He will assume the possibility that God

is a malignant demon who deliberately attempts to deceive him. In effect,

Descartes intends to suspend all judgment.

Descartes concludes this meditation with the observation that it is

extremely arduous to accomplish this doubtful state of mind. There is a

tendency for the human mind to return to former beliefs as a secure means of

resolving its problems. In the event that man permits this regression, he may

find it impossible to ever dispel the intellectual darkness.

Meditation I is written in first person and in the dialectic style. It proceeds through three stages in "tearing down" opinion with one common principle throughout. The principle is that one should refrain from asserting anything that is uncertain just as if it was false. However, he recognized that the mind has a habit of believing what it perceives and, thus, the will must deliberately suppose that all prior beliefs are false. In order to support this, he discusses three stages: senses, dr RenÐ"© Descartes, author of "Meditation 1 , writes how he must erase everything he had ever learned and thought to be true and must "begin again from the first foundations