**(27/12/2012)** **Preface** : _René Descartes revolutionized modern philosophy and science when he proposed ‘The Method’, a methodology than enjoins a universal hyperbolic doubt. Doubt everything you possibly can, from your very own existence to the existence of the world outside your mind. He wasn’t a madman, rather quite the opposite, his mere intention was to lay a solid indubitable foundation for our knowledge from which we can proceed to gain further knowledge with perfect certainty and assurance._ The Method itself, however, is outside the scope of this article; it was more physical than metaphysical. What we’re concerned about here are the Meditations. The book is actually made up of six meditations, each concerned about a certain matter, but the six, of course, are complementary. In the First Meditation, Descartes argues that nothing is insusceptible to doubt. Since all of our knowledge depends on our senses, then it’s all open to doubt, because we only perceive the model our mind constructs from the data fed by the senses. We’re never put into direct contact with the external world, so we can never be sure that anything exists outside our minds. In the Second Meditation, Descartes argues that although he can doubt every truth, every belief and every perception he perceives, he cannot doubt that he is doubting. ‘my consciousness of my own thinking means that I am conscious of my own existence.’ He doubts ergo he thinks ergo he can be sure he’s at least a ‘thinking thing’ (res cogitans). “I think, therefore I am.” In the Third Meditation, Descartes tries to prove God’s existence. He first states there are three types of ideas: innate, fictitious and adventitious. Innate ideas are ideas which we are born with, have always been inside our mind and which we are not the cause of. Fictitious ideas are invented by our imagination. Adventitious ideas are gained through life and experiences. He argues that the idea of God is innate and placed inside our mind by God himself and cannot possibly be a fictitious or adventitious idea. His argument for God’s is existence is that we, being imperfect and finite beings, cannot be the cause of the idea of a perfect and infinite being as God. Therefore that idea must be innate and caused by God himself, and since there must be as much reality and perfection in the cause of anything as in the effect, then God must exist as the only possible cause of the idea I have of him. He then proceeded to prove that external objects exist. His proof was primarily based on God’s existence. He argued that, since God is perfect and created me, then he has no reason to deceive me, and if he gave me reason that tells me that my ideas correspond to external objects, then they must exist because God is no deceiver. Descartes finally tries to prove the distinction of the mind and the body. His argument depends on Leibniz’s law which states that if two things are the same thing, they must share all the same properties. Descartes shows that the mind and body have different properties: The mind is a thinking, indivisible and unextended thing, while the body is a non-thinking, divisible (consists of many parts) and extended thing, therefore they are not the same thing, therefore the destruction of one doesn’t necessarily mean the destruction of the other. Thus, according to Descartes, the mind or soul is immortal. **Objections** **:** - If the mind and body are radically distinctive, then they shouldn’t affect each other the way they do. The mind controls the body in every way. The body also affects the mind; take drugs and caffeine for example. - Dualism is pretty much obsolete; we now know that the subconscious mind is simply a product of the immense physics ongoing in the physical brain. The brain dies with the body and so does the mind. - His argument for God’s existence is easily debunked by the perfect island analogy: if I have an idea of a perfect island, it doesn’t mean it exists, it’s just an idea. - If the idea of God is indeed innate, then all humans should have had the same idea about God, which isn’t the case, there is a wide range of beliefs and ideas regarding God.