 Descartes advances these claims because he is trying to teach his metaphysics and because he thinks that his readers will not be in a position to grasp that metaphysics if he only makes claims that are  true.[4]  Reflecting the epistemic individualism that is common in 17th-Century Philosophy, Descartes insists that we should not accept a view until we see its truth for ourselves (Appendix to Fifth Replies, AT 9A:208, CSM 2:272–73). But he also holds that at the start of inquiry our conceptions and commitments are way off. Most of us are inclined to affirm that what we know best we know through the senses, along with the other falsities already mentioned, but in addition: our conceptions of mind and God represent mind and God as sensible when they are not; we think and speak by way of terms that we do not understand or that may have no corresponding idea; and what we take to be the paradigm of a distinct perception is hardly distinct at  all.[5]  We take in information against the background of our current commitments and conceptions, and so are primed to reject what conflicts with  them.[6]  When we work through the Meditations from the first-person point-of-view, we accept or reject things when we see for ourselves that they are to be accepted or rejected, but until our intellects are emended we do not have the best perspective from which to see the truth.