thing that thinks" (Descartes, 2001). He affirms that he is a thinking being who is capable of doubt and affirmation, denial and knowledge. He is certain that he thinks and

acknowledges the fact that at times he acknowledges the truth and reality of a tangible thing, or an emotion or a feeling and then later he finds out that his

God, a divine Creator. Not surprisingly, Descartes goes about his proof by analyzing the nature of human thought, which he has already shown will be the bedrock of his epistemological

can be sure. As he begins Meditation III, Descartes describes himself as "a thing that thinks." While Descartes grants that what he perceives or imagines may be nothing apart

leading one to come to the ultimate conclusion that the mind is really distinct from ones body by applying his theory of the Other Mind. II. THE OTHER MIND

the separation of body and mind are indeed just beliefs or whether there is indeed such a separation. He recognizes, in other words, that it is indeed possible for

is still whole. This train of thought, in turn, caused him to postulate that he might have been deceived by some "evil genius," who influenced his senses to provide

"innate, some adventitious and others to be formed (or invented)" by himself, as he reasons that he has the "power of understanding...from no other source than my own nature" (Descartes).

consider whether this implies that what he perceives through sensory data can also be considered as true. He begins the First Meditation by stating that

Ren? Descartess Meditations to some extent helps to explain life, but they are as confusing as they are profound. One example of how confusing the meditations can be comes from

conjectures. The Sixth Meditation In his Sixth Meditation, which is titled "Of the Existence of Things Material, and of the Real Distinction Between the Mind and Body of Man,"

Meditations demonstrates how Descartes went about reconciling the existence of God to what he observed about the unreliability of his senses and the nature of reality. Descartes states that

the mind is complex and is used for a variety of things. It is something quite functional and definable biologically, but there is a suggestion of a spiritual nature. There

doubt about that knowledge. It is a matter of taking an absolute position and stripping it of its dogmatic stand and imposing the question on it: What else is possible?

and soul as connected and not separate. Some claim that the brain is really responsible for everything that occurs at the point of death. There have been studies done to