In the Meditations, Descartes aims to provide a solid foundation for science and to vindicate rationalism by demonstrating that the true source of scientific knowledge lies in the mind and not the senses. To demonstrate that the mind should be the true source of such knowledge, Descartes subjects all knowledge derived from the senses to doubt. He claims that as a child he accepted a large number of falsehoods and subsequently built an "entire edifice" of a "highly dubious nature" upon them. He argues that such childhood prejudices arise naturally through immersion in the senses. He uses the example of optical illusions such as a stick in water appearing bent to show the unreliable nature of information gathered through the senses and argues that we should reject such information as a result. Here Descartes leaves the task of evaluating the reliability of knowledge exclusively to the individual. It could be argued that the reliability of sense data could in fact be improved through confirmation with others, and should not simply be dismissed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To provide a truly solid foundation for knowledge, Descartes feels the need to question all knowledge and uses two thought experiments to do so. He says that we cannot doubt the things we see up close and in a good light, equating such doubt with madness and dismissing the possibility that he is mad. To also question these perceptions, Descartes uses the argument of dreams, arguing that in dreams we seem to see things up close and in a good light when in reality this is not the case. However, the dream argument has been contested on the grounds that it is an asymmetric argument: simply because we are not sure that we are asleep when we are dreaming, it does not necessarily follow that we do not know that we are awake when we are awake. Descartes does not stop at a posteriori knowledge: he also feels the need to question the validity of mathematics and a priori knowledge. To do this he proposes the idea of ​​an omnipotent being capable of deceiving us even about this knowledge. Descartes rejects the idea of ​​a deceiving God, since God is by definition "good" and would not deceive us, and instead proposes an omnipotent evil demon. However, the very idea of ​​“deception” is based on the idea that we are not continually deceived. Consequently, it seems that the omnipotent demon cannot in fact deceive us about all a priori knowledge, since if this were the case there would be no “deception”. In this way, Descartes seems unable to doubt all a priori knowledge. By using these skeptical arguments, Descartes claims to have demolished all existing opinions and allowed himself to start over and find a solid basis for knowledge. However, precisely through this statement Descartes reveals that he did not doubt everything, since he continues to assume the truth of foundationalism and believes that it is possible to find a foundation of knowledge, when in reality it may not be. He also fails to doubt logic, memory, and language – all tools used by Descartes throughout the Meditations, indicating that his doubt is in fact not “universal.” Alternatively, one might suggest that Descartes' method of doubt is actually too extreme. By wanting all knowledge to have the certainty of mathematics and ignoring all sense data, one could argue that Descartes simply sets the bar for knowledge too high. After Meditation One, Descartes' greatest challenge appears to be to overcome his evil demon. It is by challenging one's existence with the demon hypothesisevil that Descartes claims to find a piece of certain knowledge, which will form the foundation of all other knowledge. He argues that the evil demon cannot deceive anything into believing that it exists when it does not exist, and therefore when it conceives itself to be something that cannot be anything. Descartes argues that the Cogito is indubitable, because if it is deceived by an evil demon, it must exist. If true, the Cogito would be of fundamental importance to Descartes' entire strategy: it provides an ideal starting point from which he can construct further truths. It provides some knowledge not only of our ideas, but a substantial existential truth, born not of experiment or observation, but of thought alone. However, the Cogito has been criticized for its apparent use of a suppressed premise – namely, "all thinking things exist". '. This premise is highly questionable, because it is unclear whether the existence of thoughts necessarily implies a thinker. Hume argued that we have no right to presume this, and Buddhist teaching holds that the presumed "self" is impermanent. Alternatively, perhaps Descartes should have said "there is ongoing thinking, therefore there are thoughts", rather than making the inference between thinking and the existence of a thinker. Furthermore, Descartes moves away from rationalism here, since "thinking that things exist" seems to be an a posteriori observation. In this way, it is unlikely that the Cogito actually proves the existence of a self. In response to this, it has been argued that the Cogito does not use a repressed premise and is in fact an analytic truth, with the concept of my present existence contained in that of my thinking, just as the concept of "fox" is contained in that of "fox". However, if the cogito were truly analytic, nothing substantial in the world could arise from it and it could not constitute the foundation of knowledge since analytic statements tell us about concepts, rather than reality. Furthermore, as argued by Kant and Russell, existence does not appear to be a property among other properties that can be assigned to things, but rather the condition of possibility for having properties. This is demonstrated through the example of fictional characters: we can talk about characters who have thoughts, and in this way we can talk about non-existent thinkers while it is not possible to talk about male foxes. This suggests that there is no conceptual implication between existence and thought. Russell also argued that the Cogito is a circular argument since it presupposes what it sets out to prove, using the word "I" in an argument that seeks to prove the existence of said 'I'. Lichtenberg argued that this "I" is simply a linguistic convenience, similar to the "it" in "it's raining", and that it doesn't actually refer to anything. In its failure to analyze these fundamental concepts, Descartes' project could be seen as not radical enough, with empiricists arguing that it is subject to rationalist biases by viewing such concepts as innate rather than derived from experience. Descartes' claim to have overcome evil Even the demon with the Cogito is highly questionable. There seems to be no reason why an omnipotent being capable of deceiving Descartes regarding the logic of mathematics could not deceive him regarding the logic and reasoning he used in the Cogito. Indeed, by not employing truly universal doubt in the first meditation and by not doubting his own logic and reasoning, Descartes seems to have failed in his goal of providing a certain and indubitable foundation in the Cogito. Having apparently established the existence of his own existence through After the Cogito, Descartes then attempts to reconstruct the.