Good dilemmas essay example

Introduction

One’s mind is the subject of a human’s activity. It is the mind that intervenes in every activity and forces a person to either advance in the project he or she was undertaking or change alternatives to pursue a different task with intent to achieve different or similar objectives. Such a situational aspect of indecisiveness is referred to as dilemma. In definition, dilemma is a situation offering two possible solutions but neither of the alternatives offers direct results. Either way one must choose one alternative and be positive about the outcome. If the outcome is negative, the situation may be flexible to allow for the foregone alternative or confine you to accept the outcomes and mend the faults in different avenues. There are different types of dilemmas which are distinctively defined by the indifferent situation you find yourself in. In this assignment, emphasis would be placed on the strategy that would help in overcoming the statements of Descartes’ dilemma in the meditations
Descartes dilemma in mediation refers to starting thinking about a situation with doubt. Therefore, the best way of overcoming the statement of Descartes’ dilemma is by going between the horns of the dilemma. In this case, this would involve having the notion that none of the conjuncts is not true hence there is a third alternative that seems to be true. According to Descartes, persons should be able to put themselves in places of first person narrators so as to experience for themselves the benefits of the philosophical methods. In accordance with Descartes, the best strategy for the method of doubt would involve defeating skepticism on its own ground. This would involve beginning to doubt the truth of everything, that is, the evidence of the senses as well as the fundamental processes of reasoning. Descartes noticed that testimonies of senses in relation to any form of judgment concerning the world might turn out to be mistaken. It is therefore sensible not to trust the truth on what we as individuals perceive. In any ordinary life, individuals should be able to adjust for mistaken opinions with reference to the correct perceptions. However, because it is difficult to be sure at the first instance the cases that are veridical and the cases that are not, it is always possible to doubt any bit of the ostensible sensory knowledge. Therefore, the strategy provided above would help in overcoming such cases. That is, one should look beyond the perceptions that have been brought into view since they might not be actual arguments towards a case.
The dilemma by Descartes about trusting one’s senses is very unpleasant and its concept could be attributed to the indifference of determinism and indeterminism. We attribute the performance of our senses to an external influence which is abstract and beyond our understanding . That third alternative is God. We cannot therefore live by the assumption that “ God does not exist” . Therefore, To save Descartes, dilemma, we can only survive by partially trusting our senses and consider the influence of the external world. The conjunctive premise about naivety in the operation of our senses can only hold if we create space that our senses do not act alone. They operate instinctively hoping that the directive they offer will bear positive results. By assuming that our senses are independent and not influenced by the external world will be baseless and not logical.