Ren DescartesFirst Meditation Things Which Can Be Called Into Doubt
In this first meditation René Descartes tells us of his thesis that nothing can be truly believed, that we cannot completely trust our senses and therefore we must doubt everything around us or that we encounter. ... In his first meditation Descartes describes this in these terms - ‘there are many other things about which one surely cannot have doubts, even if they are derived from the senses; for example, the fact that I am here, sitting by the fire, in a dressing gown, holding this page in my hand and other things like that. ... However he goes on to tell us that it could be possible to doubt this. ... As Descartes writes ‘how often does the nocturnal quietness convince me of familiar things, for example, that I am here, dressed in my gown, sitting by the fire, when I am really undressed and asleep in my bed? ... This is a medical condition which was first observed by a French neurologist called Joseph Babinski in which the patient cannot accept that one half of their body is paralysed.