Part one of term paper
Descartes’ Meditations is a discussion of metaphysics, or what is really real. In these writings, he ultimately hopes to achieve absolute certainty about the nature of everything including God, the physical world, and himself. It is only with a clear and distinct knowledge of such things that he can then begin understand his true realit ...

Part two of term paper
... for truth. Authority, which is churches, parents, and schools, he says, are not reliable sources for truth because time shows we all die, and that we are eventually proved wrong, much in the same way the accepted truths of science have changed dramatically over the course of history. Also, he considers the generally excepted view that our senses dependably report the absolute nature of reality. Like authority though, Descartes discards the senses as a source of truth because of the ‘Dream Arg ...