Today I read the first meditation (On What Can Be Called Into Doubt) from “Meditations on First Philosophy,” by René Descartes. It was very similar to some puzzles in “The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten”—the philosophical puzzle The Evil Demon in particular—because it questioned whether you can truly know anything. How do you know an evil demon isn’t hypnotizing you to believe something, or that your senses haven’t been stimulated so you believe that you “see”, “hear”, “smell”, “taste”, and “touch”? Once you accept this supposed virtual world as a possibility, you know of almost nothing except your own beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and intents—but even so, you don’t even know of your past feelings, because your memories could be false as well. I thought that the idea was really interesting, and certainly possible, although whether it’s actually true is doubtful. Still, as many ideas show, almost anything is possible if you don’t trust anything and require absolute proof—which is, in almost every case, impossible—that something is true or untrue. This possibility has been brought up in movies, such as The Matrix and Inception, and books, such as “Running out of Time,” by Margaret Peterson Haddix. The main idea of “First Meditation” was to give up all your ideas about the outside world; according to the author, “I realized that if I wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last, I needed—just once in my life—to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations”. I highly enjoyed this passage and recommend it to anyone who likes any of the stories or movies I mentioned. I would rate this chapter 9.7/10.
phoenixbookreview 