Descartes work entitled Meditations, is a work on metaphysics in which Descartes hopes to achieve absolute certainty about three issues: the soul as a thinking thing distinct from or without a body, the belief that God exists, and the belief that the external world exists. In order to acquire absolutely certainty which can be applied to these issues, Descartes first lays a foundation of integrity on which to build his knowledge. The technique he uses to lay this base of integrity is doubt. He discards all of what he believes to be true or fact and instead chooses that if any belief can be doubted it is not certain, therefore making it unusable as a foundation. Descartes first jettisons any information, knowledge, or truths that are based on his senses. Here, he applies the Dream Argument, (152) where he states that based on the senses alone, there is no definite way of proving that you are dreaming or that you are awake, thus, remedying any truths based upon the senses unreliable and doubtable. Deeming the senses as unreliable, Descartes then turns to why and how his senses are deceivable. He begins to doubt something that I have long fixed in my mind, his belief that God is an all-powerful, good, power. Instead, he believes that God could in fact be an evil deceiver, who created him and fooled his senses. I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me, (153). If this is so, Descartes considers what could possibly be true then. Already denying his senses and body, he concludes that he exists because the deceiver deceives his thought. As long as he (Descartes) thinks, he knows that he is something. He comes to the definitive conclusion that: I am, I exist, is true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it... But what am I? I am a thing that thinks, (156). From this...
