Descartes Defective Nature Of Doubt Analysis

pencil in a glass of water, the pencil will look like it is broken in half, but it is just the property of water that makes it seem like it’s broken. The next premise is that if my senses sometimes deceive me, then they might always deceive me. He stated that, “In a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once2.” So what Descartes means is that if someone or something deceives you once, there is a possibility that it will deceive you again. So you cannot fully trust that someone or something. His third premise was, “If my senses might always deceive me, then I cannot be certain about any beliefs acquired through my senses.” Descartes demands certainty. Therefore if something deceives him once, he cannot be certain it will not deceive him again. He cannot base any of his beliefs on his sense since he is not certain about his sense misleading him. His last premise was, “If I cannot be certain about any beliefs acquired through my senses, then I must suspend judgment on those beliefs.” Since he feels he cannot be certain about any beliefs that he gets from senses, he has to stop making conclusion based on those beliefs he got from his senses, because of his lack of certainty. Then he concludes by saying he must suspend judgment on those beliefs.

Clear your mind, if you will, of everything you have ever seen or known to be true. To begin understanding Rene Descartes’ method of doubt, you need to suspend all prejudice and prior judgments and start with a clean slate “for the purpose of discovering some ultimate truth on which to base all thought.” (Kolak, Pg.225). Discouraged with much skepticism from his own beliefs, Descartes was embarrassed of his own ignorance. He set out to try and accomplish the task of finding an absolute truth in which he would base his beliefs. Placing upon himself a task to find an axiom or absolute truth to base all thought, “he ventured as a youth in travel to collect a variety in experiences to derive some

In order to weigh up these arguments, it is important to understand Descartes’ reasons for formulating them: Descartes’ believes that it is important to be certain of the things that one believes to be true which, in turn, causes him to question the things that he has been certain of thus far. Because of this, he forms these arguments to further consider his theories about doubt and what it is to be truly certain of anything.

Descartes’ method of radical doubt focuses upon finding the truth about certain things from a philosophical perspective in order to truly lay down a foundation for ideas that have the slightest notion of doubt attached to them. He believed that there was “no greater task to perform in philosophy, than assiduously to seek out, once and for all, the best of all these arguments and to lay them out so precisely and plainly that henceforth all will take them to be true demonstrations” (Meditations, 36). The two key concepts that Descartes proves using the method of doubt are that the “human soul does not die with the body, and that God exists” as mentioned in his Letter of Dedication, since there are many that don’t believe the mentioned concepts because of the fact that they have not been proven or demonstrated. (Meditations, 35). In order to prove the above, he lays out six Meditations, each focusing on a different theme that leads us “to the knowledge of our mind and of God, so that of all things that can be known by the human mind, these latter are the most certain and the most evident” (Meditations, 40).

Descartes believes that knowledge comes from within the mind, a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. While seeking true knowledge, Descartes writes his Six Meditations. In these meditations, Descartes tries to develop a strong foundation, which all knowledge can be built upon. In the First Meditation, Descartes begins developing this foundation through the method of doubt. He casts doubt upon all his previous beliefs, including "matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable [and] those which appear to be manifestly false." (Descartes, p.75, par.3) Once Descartes clears away all beliefs that can be called into doubt, he can then build a strong

In my own opinion, I strongly consider his reason for doing this as reasonable because its intention is to create a body of knowledge, and Descartes never intended to set aside all of his opinions but just cast doubts on this opinions that are based on some preconceived notion so he will be able to stand back in order to see the truth in itself.

However, the Meditator realizes that he is often convinced when he is dreaming that he is sensing real objects. He feels certain that he is awake and sitting by the fire, but reflects that often he has dreamed this very sort of thing and been thoroughly convinced by it. On further reflection, he realizes that even simple things can be doubted. Omnipotent God could make even our conception of mathematics false. One might argue that God is supremely good and would not lead Descartes to believe falsely all these things. He supposes that not God, but some "evil demon" has committed itself to deceiving him so that everything he thinks he knows is false. By doubting everything, he can at least be sure not to be misled into falsehood by this demon.

In the first meditation, "Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", Descartes main goal is to distinguish what it is he can take to be true, and what supposed truths hold even the smallest degree of doubt. When he reviews all of his opinions he concludes "eventually [he] is forced to admit that there is nothing among the things [he]believed to be true which it is not permissable to doubt--and not out of frivolity or lack of forethought, but for valid and considered reasons. Thus [he] must be no less careful to withhold assent henceforth even from these beliefs then [he] would from those that are patently false, if [he wishes] to find anything certain."(Pg62) At the beginning of Descartes' meditations, he finds that there is really no concrete pillars of knowledge to base the foundations of his supposed

René Descartes was an extremely influential 17th-century philosopher and came up with many ideas that still persist to this day. One of those ideas was Cartesian skepticism, which states that “the view that we do not or cannot have knowledge in regard to a particular domain,” knowledge, in this case, is justified, true, beliefs. He first comes up with his idea of skepticism in the first part of his work “Meditations On First Philosophy,” aptly named “Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful.” In his first meditation, he discusses his doubts with sensory illusion/error, possible dream states, and regarding deception by an evil demon. However, after dissolving his first two doubts, he gets stuck on the third and

Descartes as a rationalist believes that knowledge comes from the mind alone. During the First Meditation, Descartes came to the conclusion that there must be some kind of evil deceiver that "leads him to a state of doubt" (Descartes 77). Descartes starts out with the fact that distant sensations are subject to doubt and uncertainty. He then goes on to try and cast doubt onto close sensations. Descartes starts off by stating that close sense perception must be certain because we are not crazy, and only a insane person would doubt what was right in front of them. Descartes then uses the dream argument to cast uncertainty on close sense perception because "they are as lively, vivid and clear as reality is when we are awake" (Descartes 76). Descartes then states that geometry and math are certain. "For whether I am awake or sleeping, two and three added together always make five, and a square never has more than four sides; and it does not seem possible that truths so apparent can be suspected of any falsity or uncertainty" (Descartes 98). Descartes comes to realize this certainty because math, geometry, and the simple sciences can be understood and proved through logic and reasoning. He then uses his Deceiver Argument to cast doubt on close sensations. He questions how we know for certain that God is good, and how we know that

Descartes' meditations are created in pursuit of certainty, or true knowledge. He cannot assume that what he has learned is necessarily true, because he is unsure of the accuracy of its initial source. In order to purge himself of all information that is possibly wrong, he subjects his knowledge to methodic doubt. This results in a (theoretical) doubt of everything he knows. Anything, he reasons, that can sustain such serious doubt must be unquestionable truth, and knowledge can then be built from that base. Eventually, Descartes doubts everything. But by doubting, he must exist, hence his "Cogito ergo sum".

     Through his philosophical search Descartes was able to find one indubitable certainty, that we are thinking beings. We always think, even when we have doubts that we are thinking we are still thinking because a doubt is a thought. Although Descartes found this one universal truth, he was still not able to believe in anything but the fact that he was a thinking being. Therefore he still doubted everything around him. He used this one certainty to try to find a system of knowledge about everything in the world. Descartes idea was to propose a hypothesis about something. For example he might say that a perfect being was in existence. He would go around this thought in a methodical way, doubting it, all the while trying to identify it as a certainty. Doubting everything was at first dangerous because in doubting everything he was also admitting that he doubted the existence of God, and thus opposing the church. However he made it a point to tell us at the beginning of his Discourse on Methods that what he was writing was only for himself and that he expected no one but himself to follow it (Descartes 14, 15). Descartes eventually managed to prove the existence of a higher being. He said that since he had the idea of a perfect being, then that perfect being must exist. His

Through his meditations, Descartes explored doubts in the search for finding true certainty of knowledge. During Mediation I, he shows through his argument of dreaming and argument of the evil demon that deception relates to our senses and is therefore unreliable. Descartes continues in his other meditations, building upon prior points and expanding on his idea that even when one believes to be using their senses, the intellectual mind actually takes over when perceiving. However, objections to such statements are evident. Though one should not solely trust their senses due to the possibility of deception, using intellect along with senses can help confirm certainty of knowledge because it can explore the subject further oppose to just relying

Descartes believes that knowledge comes from within the mind. This is a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. While seeking true knowledge, Descartes writes his Six Meditations. In these meditations, Descartes tries to develop a strong foundation, which all knowledge can be built upon. In the First Meditation, Descartes begins developing this foundation through the method of doubt. He casts doubt upon all his previous beliefs, including “matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable [and] those which appear to be manifestly false.” (Descartes, p.75, par.3) Once Descartes clears away all beliefs that can be called into doubt, he can then build a strong base for all true

Descartes’s theory of knowledge is essentially based in skepticism. He argued that in order to understand the world, first a person has to completely suspend their judgements of the world around them. This is the impression that the world makes on their mind. In this way, the physical world is not what leads to knowledge. Instead, the mind finds rationally seeks knowledge. The question is, essentially, “should we believe beyond the evidence?” (Kessler, 2013, p. 332). In this way, the ideas are rooted in the nature of doubt. This is an inherent nature of the mind, which is the result of the nature of man as made by God. In this way, the mind is guided by god towards knowledge in its infallible ability to reason about reality. In this way, the mind’s reasoning ability, even in the absence of physical reality, can ultimately lead to knowledge. I don’t fully agree with Descartes’ proposition that only the mind can produce certain knowledge and that our senses are constantly under the attack and being deceive by some evil deceiver. In order to go against Descartes propositions concerning about doubt I will use Locke to oppose it.