Week 3 Discussion (PHIL 101)

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American Public University *

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101

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Philosophy

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Dec 6, 2023

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docx

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Week 2 Discussion Why doesn’t Descartes simply determine what's real by looking around him and using his sense experience? What is the reason he felt he needed to adopt radical skepticism, and do you feel he is successful? Be sure to use passages from the Meditations or his Discourse on Method to support your assertions. - He states that our human senses cannot always be trusted that they are sometimes false and can even deceive us. - We must use reason and logic to determine what is real. - He gives the analogy that if you wanted to determine if a basket of apples was good, you should empty the basket and individually determine if each apple is good or rotten. The same should be done with your beliefs; they should be broken down into smaller thoughts and examined thoroughly to see if the whole of your belief is real or true. They should separate the uncertain beliefs from those that are certain to keep the bigger belief true. - Meditation 1 & 2 Good Day, I will be answering in response to the following prompt: Why doesn’t Descartes simply determine what's real by looking around him and using his sense experience? What is the reason he felt he needed to adopt radical skepticism, and do you feel he is successful? Be sure to use passages from the Meditations or his Discourse on Method to support your assertions. Descartes was a philosopher in 17 th century France and is known for his epistemology, his skepticism of all things. The term cartesian skepticism was coined after him. He proposes in his first meditation that we cannot rely on our human senses, because they are unreliable and can deceive us. We must use reason and logic to determine what is real or false. Rationalism is where our knowledge of the real world stems from, rather than our senses; his second meditation promotes this idea. Descartes believed that he could doubt everything that he previously believed, everything except that he was thing that did think. He could be certain that that this was true because if he did not exist, then he could not think about whether he existed or not, so therefore he must exist. Everything ales could be doubted and should in fact be doubted. He notions that we should only believe something is true if there is no possible reason to doubt it. Descartes introduced a new, radical skepticism; we cannot trust any of the beliefs that we have know to be true, because what if there is an ‘evil genius’ that has created an illusion that is the world we live in. And if there is, then we would have no way to know or to detect the illusion. The ‘evil genius’ could have planted all the things we believe to be true. I believe that Descartes had a new and interesting way of challenging the way of thinking. Some philosophers, however, argue if actually discovered anything meaningful besides the fact of existing as a being that is able to think. If I agree with them, I am unsure, but I can see why they would think this. Some ideas that Descartes proposed seem to appear convoluted or perhaps farfetched, such as the idea of the ‘evil genius’ who plants false beliefs and memories in our minds. However, I can appreciate his method of doubt, which can be successfully used to question what we and others believe.

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