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The general structure of the First Meditation, "What can be called into doubt", is as follows. In order to establish something stable and likely to last in the sciences, Descartes decides to demolish all his old opinions, which were built on falsehoods he accepted in his childhood, and start again from the foundations. To do that he tries to undermine the basic principles on which all his former beliefs rested. First, since everything he accepted as most true he has acquired either from the senses or through the senses,¹ and since the senses occasionally deceive us, he finds it prudent not to trust knowledge acquired in this way. But he immediately argues against this reason for total mistrust: although the senses do occasionally deceive us about objects which are very small or in the distance, this is not a sufficient reason for doubting that we are where we seem to be, that we have hands and a body, and so on. Indeed, madmen are similarly confident in their absurd opinions about their constitution, yet it would be mad to base our doubts on the insane as a model.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137512024_7

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