René Descartes - Meditation #1 - The Method of Doubt

I am writing a book! If you want to know when it is ready (and maybe win a free copy), submit your email on my website: I won’t spam you or share your email address with anyone. This is a lecture about the first of Descartes’ six Meditations on First Philosophy. It is part an introduction to philosophy course. In this meditation, Descartes explains his plan for all six meditations, then explains how his method of doubt will allow him to temporarily cease to believe all the things that he cannot know for certain, and finally executes the first part of that plan. He goes through the basic principles which underly his beliefs, doubts those basic principles, and then wipes clean all of his previous beliefs. Most notably, Descartes discusses dream skepticism, or the possibility that he is dreaming, and malicious demon skepticism, or the possibility that he is being deceived by an evil genius or malicious demon.