... about the world is a matter of fact, and thus can be justified only through experience and can be denied without contradiction. Relations of ideas can teach us the mathematical truths, but cannot teach us about the existence of our selves, an external world, or God, as opposed to Descartes. Firstly, Descartes was a rationalist, and so he trusts his Natural Light. Descartes begins his meditations by asking how he can be certain of anything and then develops the reasons that why he should mistrust his senses by giving the example of dreaming. While we are dreaming there are moments when we cannot decide whether we are living in the dream or not and cannot distinguish between the truth and the dream with our senses. Thus he argues that our whole lives may just be dreams. Descartes develops a conception of the mind where the senses and the imagination are also ...

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