Philosophy Descartes

• What things did Descartes used to believe that he comes to doubt by the end of the first meditation?

  Things Descartes used to believe that he comes to doubt by the end of the first meditation include God being the supreme source of good and truth (instead, he is deceitful), that the world around him is real (it is an illusion), and that he has a body (he does not).
• Why does Descartes come to doubt that information acquired through the senses cannot be trusted?

  Descartes comes to doubt that information acquired through the senses cannot be trusted because he has sometimes been misled by his senses in the past, and it is prudent to never wholly trust something that has once been deceitful.
• Does he doubt God’s existence? Why or why not?

  Descartes does not doubt God’s existence, but rather doubts whether God is supremely good or has deceived him into thinking that he exists in a physical world and making it so that his thoughts and judgments are always false. 
• What is the first thing that Descartes comes to believe that he cannot doubt?

  The first thing that Descartes comes to believe is that he himself exists. He is a being that is able to think, to imagine, to doubt, and to understand. 
• What is the significance of the piece of wax? What does it tell him about knowledge?

  In the second meditation, Descartes uses the piece of wax as an example of an object that goes through changes but is still recognizable by our minds as wax even though our senses would tell us otherwise. As a result, this tells Descartes that while we can recognize/acknowledge objects or other beings through the senses, it is our intellect and imagination that allow us to truly know and perceive these objects. In other words, the mind has the greater ability of knowledge than the senses do.
• Descartes says that he looks out his window and sees hats and coats and judges that he sees men. How is this relevant to what he knows?

  According to his senses, the only thing that exists outside his window are coats and hats because that’s the only thing he sees. However, his mind fills in the gaps and infers that those coats and hats contain people. As a result, his mind knows more than what his senses do. 
• • Physics, astronomy, and medicine and other sciences which consider composite entities are uncertain, while arithmetic, geometry, and other sciences of this nature which treat only the very simple and general things contain some element of certainty. 
• Foundationalism: All our beliefs are ultimately justified on the basis of certain foundational beliefs called basic beliefs.
• Foundationalism is from the school of epistemology
• Basic or foundational beliefs are self-evident and are justified by themselves rather than being derived and justified in terms of other beliefs. 
• Noetic Structure: A rock bottom belief system that supports all the beliefs above it or founded upon it, but cannot be supported by anything other than itself.