Part 1 of Essay
Descartes overall objective in the Meditations is to question knowledge. To explore such metaphysical issues as the existence of God and the separation of mind and body, it was important for him to distinguish what we can know as truth. He believed that reason as opposed to experience was the source for discovering what i ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... that our senses are prone to error and thereby cannot reliably distinguish between certainty and falsity. To examine those ideas that have “objective reality," Descartes makes the improbable hypothesis of “an evil genius, as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me” ( ). By proposing this solution he is able to suspend his judgment and maintain that all his former beliefs are false. By using doubt as his tool, Descartes is now ready to build his follo ....