The Meditations are one of Descartes most important works. They consist of his views on sensory perception, God and Nature. He considers the problems of the sources and nature of knowledge; the validity of truth; the nature and destiny of man; the existence of god, and the creation of the universe. Of the six meditations, the third is the most important. In the third mediation Descartes proves the existence of God, which provides him the foundation for the remaining three meditations.
In Descartes second meditation, he established that because he is a thinking being, he exists. In the third meditation, Descartes attempts to build upon this foundation by questioning whether or not anything exists outside of him. In order to do so, he must distinguish between those of his thoughts that come from outside, and those, which only seem to. Descartes begins by analyzing the nature of thought and dissects what consists our ideas. An idea maybe an image, a form or a judgment and Descartes claims that the image or the form can never be false. The only idea that can deceive is thought. He states, " Thus the only remaining thoughts where I must be on my guard against making a mistake are my judgments. And the chief and most common mistake which is to be found here consists in my judging that the idea which are in me resemble, or conform to, things located outside me. (p.89)." In the first mediation Descartes claimed that sensory perception deceives human beings!
. In the above statement Descartes seems to be arguing that since the majority of our judgments about our surroundings are assisted by our senses, these judgments must also be deceiving. He believes that he has two kinds of ideas, innate and adventitious. Innate being the ideas that were instilled in him by nature and adventitious which are ideas that come from things outside him based on his judgments. He states, "Now it is manifest by the natural lig...