Descartes attacks the possibility of certainty with regardsto the existence of small and universal elements with the possibility of our thoughts being altered by anomnipotent deceiver. In paragraph nine, he states, How do I know that he did not bring it about that there be noEarth at all, no heavens, no extended thing, no figure, no size, no place, and yet all these things should seem tome to exist precisely as they appear to do now. His point is that this omnipotent evil deceiver could create inour minds an understanding of mathematics and logic that is at odds with reality, causing us to construeeverything wrongly. Thus Descartes ends this final and devastating doubt with the preliminary conclusion thateverything he perceives can be called into doubt. Descartes answers his seemingly hopeless skepticism from the first meditation with the Cogito. Thebasic point of his Cogito argument is that for me to either perceive awry, or even to doubt my own existence, Imust exist. It is, as Descartes says, I am, I exist is necessarily true every time it is uttered by me or conceivedin my mind (Med2, par3). He makes two arguments for the Cogito in his second meditation. Descartes arrivesat the Cogito through the notion of an omnipotent deceiver actually. He starts to question his own existence withthe possibility that maybe even he doesnt exist and the deceiver has managed to fool him into thinking so. But,in thinking this thought, Descartes realizes that for the omnipotent deceiver to fool him, he would actually have toexist. For false notions to be put into his thoughts, he must have thoughts. Thus he finds his existence to beimmune from the doubts that the omnipotent deceiver argument cast upon small and universal elements. Descartes second tact to verify his existence is drawn from his perception of a piece of melting wax. Hewatches the wax melt and notices that, though its physical properties change, he still clearly an...
