DescartesMeditations, To What Extent Are We Able To...

â€Å"With reference to Descartes’ ‘Meditations’, to what extent are we able to distinguish between reality and illusion?† ‘Meditations’ outlines Descartes’ method of justifying, through reasoning alone, his initial beliefs concerning the existence of reality as he perceives it. This challenge of scepticism is itself achieved through adopting a temporary sceptical approach in meditations 1 and 2. By way of mental deconstruction and evaluation of all that he had previously considered true, Descartes is left with only the elements that he is able to ascertain are ‘certain and indubitable’ . He first asserts our apparent inability to distrust our senses in distinguishing reality from illusion. This process forms the foundations from which he may†¦show more content†¦In the first meditation, through providing three arguments (waves) as to the nature of our inability to distinguish reality from illusion, Descartes makes a convincing argument as to why we would, prior to his reasoned proof of existence of God, disregard all a posteriroi knowledge as a viable source of information abou the world. In the first wave Descartes questions the legitammacy of the information provided by the senses. He provides the example of the way in which our sense of perspective funtions, stating ‘senses occasionally decieve us about things that are veru small or very far away’ , to call into question that which we so often rely on to provide us with an accurate account of ‘reality’. Descartes’ method demands that if reason is to doubt a foundation then all knowledge based on that foundation should be rejected; of the senses he articulates having ‘occcasionlly found that they decieved [him]’ following with the statement that ‘it is prudent never to trust those who have decieved us’ . In this way Descartes is seeking to undermine empiricism, his abandoning of he sense principle is utilied to porve that senses are our main soucrce of error. A possible contradiction of this could perhaps be Descartes’