First Meditation
E198122
First Meditation is the opening section of René Descartes’ *Meditations on First Philosophy*, in which he introduces radical doubt by questioning the reliability of all his previous beliefs.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| First Meditation canonical | 1 |
| Meditatio prima | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1783653 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: First Meditation Context triple: [Meditations on First Philosophy, hasPart, First Meditation]
-
A.
Theologia Platonica
Theologia Platonica is Marsilio Ficino’s major philosophical treatise that systematically presents a Christianized interpretation of Plato’s metaphysics and the immortality of the soul, foundational to Renaissance Platonism.
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B.
Hexaemeron
Hexaemeron is a series of homilies by Basil of Caesarea that offers a theological and philosophical commentary on the six days of creation in the Book of Genesis.
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C.
The New Theologian
The New Theologian is the honorific title of Symeon, a 10th–11th century Byzantine monk and mystic renowned for his influential writings on personal experience of divine light and inner spiritual transformation.
-
D.
On the Soul and the Resurrection
On the Soul and the Resurrection is a theological-philosophical dialogue by Gregory of Nyssa that explores the nature of the soul, death, and the afterlife in a Christian Platonic framework.
-
E.
On the Soul
On the Soul is Aristotle’s foundational philosophical treatise that investigates the nature, faculties, and functions of the soul as the principle of life in living beings.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: First Meditation Target entity description: First Meditation is the opening section of René Descartes’ *Meditations on First Philosophy*, in which he introduces radical doubt by questioning the reliability of all his previous beliefs.
-
A.
Theologia Platonica
Theologia Platonica is Marsilio Ficino’s major philosophical treatise that systematically presents a Christianized interpretation of Plato’s metaphysics and the immortality of the soul, foundational to Renaissance Platonism.
-
B.
Hexaemeron
Hexaemeron is a series of homilies by Basil of Caesarea that offers a theological and philosophical commentary on the six days of creation in the Book of Genesis.
-
C.
The New Theologian
The New Theologian is the honorific title of Symeon, a 10th–11th century Byzantine monk and mystic renowned for his influential writings on personal experience of divine light and inner spiritual transformation.
-
D.
On the Soul and the Resurrection
On the Soul and the Resurrection is a theological-philosophical dialogue by Gregory of Nyssa that explores the nature of the soul, death, and the afterlife in a Christian Platonic framework.
-
E.
On the Soul
On the Soul is Aristotle’s foundational philosophical treatise that investigates the nature, faculties, and functions of the soul as the principle of life in living beings.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (48)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
chapter of a philosophical work
ⓘ
philosophical text section ⓘ |
| addressesAudience | learned readers of theology and philosophy ⓘ |
| aim |
to demolish all previous opinions
ⓘ
to find indubitable foundations for knowledge ⓘ |
| author | René Descartes ⓘ |
| centralIdea |
suspend judgment on all doubtful beliefs
ⓘ
withhold assent from anything not absolutely certain ⓘ |
| concerns |
justification of belief
ⓘ
possibility of knowledge ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | France ⓘ |
| dedicatedWithinWorkTo | the Faculty of Sacred Theology of the Sorbonne ⓘ |
| genre | early modern philosophy ⓘ |
| hasForm | philosophical meditation ⓘ |
| historicalPeriod | 17th-century philosophy ⓘ |
| includedIn |
expanded second edition of Meditations on First Philosophy (1642)
ⓘ
first Latin edition of Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) ⓘ |
| influenced |
analytic discussions of skepticism
ⓘ
modern epistemology ⓘ skeptical philosophy ⓘ |
| introducesConcept |
hyperbolic doubt
ⓘ
method of systematic doubt ⓘ radical doubt ⓘ |
| languageVersion |
French translation supervised by Descartes
ⓘ
Latin original version ⓘ |
| mainTheme |
deceptive God hypothesis
ⓘ
dream skepticism ⓘ epistemic skepticism ⓘ evil demon hypothesis ⓘ foundations of knowledge ⓘ methodical doubt ⓘ unreliability of the senses ⓘ |
| originalLanguage | Latin ⓘ |
| originalTitle |
First Meditation
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Meditatio prima
|
| partOf | Meditations on First Philosophy ⓘ |
| philosophicalQuestion |
Are the senses a reliable source of knowledge?
ⓘ
Can any of our beliefs be absolutely certain? ⓘ Could a powerful deceiver make us wrong about everything? ⓘ How can we distinguish waking from dreaming? ⓘ |
| philosophicalTradition | Rationalism ⓘ |
| precedes | Second Meditation ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1641 ⓘ |
| relatedWork |
Discours de la méthode
ⓘ
surface form:
Discourse on the Method
Second Meditation ⓘ |
| setting | solitary reflection ⓘ |
| structure | first-person meditative narrative ⓘ |
| usesExample |
dream argument
ⓘ
evil demon thought experiment ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: First Meditation Description of subject: First Meditation is the opening section of René Descartes’ *Meditations on First Philosophy*, in which he introduces radical doubt by questioning the reliability of all his previous beliefs.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
Meditatio prima