Descartes Radical Doubt Essay

Descartes’ Dreaming Argument comes from his thinking that there is no way of knowing if you are sleeping or if you are awake. To know something is to have no doubt of a fact, it must be a justified true belief. To be justified it must hold logical reason, you cannot state something is true without evidence. In order for it to be true it is not enough to justify it, but it must be justified with true facts. Finally, you must believe it, in order to know something it must be true in your mind. As a result Descartes doubts his consciousness as he cannot truly know that he is awake. This spurs Descartes to question if any perceived knowledge of reality is really true. Descartes calls his senses into questions as he notes, “it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” and therefore concludes that as a result it is prudent, never to trust his sense. In

     The second argument that Descartes defends is another question posed towards the senses. How can we take anything as real if our dreams cannot be

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 has written a set of six meditations on the first philosophy. In these meditations he analyzes his beliefs and questions where those beliefs were derived from. The first mediation of Descartes discusses his skeptical hypotheses; questioning the validity of the influences of his knowledge. He has a few main goals that are expressed through the first meditation. First off, Descartes wants to build a firm foundation of knowledge that is also concrete. Through probing his mind for answers to all of his skeptical thoughts, he hopes to eliminate the skepticism and find true, unquestionable knowledge. Descartes has mapped out ways to

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).

Rene Descartes argues that a rational method is required to have knowledge. Descartes wants to determine which, if any beliefs, he has that are certain must be true! He employs a method of doubt whereby he hopes to find at least one foundational belief. The Evil Demon suggests that all of one’s experiences might be the result of a powerful outside force, a “Malicious demon”. Descartes had 3 types of beliefs: Beliefs about the world- Optical illusions, Beliefs about self- Dreaming and Beliefs about Math/Science- Evil Demon. He employs a method of doubt whereby he arrives at his one foundational belief. The evil demon can trick you into belief. According to Descartes a being cannot have knowledge of a being higher of the scale, unless the higher being imparts that knowledge to him. His limited intellect could never hope to comprehend God unless God imparted the Knowledge. Since Descartes has a clear and distinct notion of God, God must exist. Since God exists and all is good, all of Descartes previous doubts were washed away. God would not allow an evil being to deceive us.

As a thinking entity, Descartes is a consciousness mind aware of the potential to engage in various modes of existence. To the numerous operations of “thought” he includes doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing, refusing, imagining, and sensing. As varied and manifold as these operations appear, they are but expressions of two principal types of conscious activity, to which Descartes eventually traces the nature of error. Thinking and reasoning, together with all belief in general, depend upon the operation of the twin faculties “knowing” and “choosing,” or the free will. Garrett Thompson writes:

Through questioning the knowledge he had always believed to be true, Descartes comes to realize that many of his basic beliefs were founded on sensual knowledge. This leads him to question his very existence, and eventually to search for unconditional proof of his existence

Through the application of his method of doubt, Descartes’ developed the understanding that the human experience remained unique to the individual. Descartes also expressed the possibility that the world as we know it may only be a mere, dream-like illusion fabricated by our own minds. His only proof of this notion being that there are no true signs in our universe that indicate whether we are awake or

He finds it plausible that we are all living in a dream and we have never experienced reality. He can no longer give any credence to his senses and finds himself in a place of complete uncertainty. Descartes comes to the conclusion that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than his own mind. He has discovered that even bodies are not accurately perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination, and are only accurately being perceived by the intellect. He also realizes that they are not distinguished through being touched, smelled, or tasted, but by being understood alone. (An apple is an apple because our mind tells us that it is an apple.) It is the faculty of reason that gives the knowledge and lets the mind know the truths and essences of objects. Descartes assumes that all of us can be decided by our senses, someone can see something far away, and then discover that is not what we thought it was. Or even a oar when is immerse half in water attempt to be bent, but instead is straight. Descartes think that we cannot always be sure of what we sense, and gives the example of himself seated by the fire.

Secondly, Descartes, by embarking on this reconstruction of his thoughts, hopes to find a stable basis for the sciences. Since Descartes was trained as a mathematician, he likes to find proofs for ideas, so that he can know them with absolute certainty. Initially, he believes philosophy to be the basis for the sciences “insofar as they [the sciences] borrow their principles from philosophy.” However, he concludes that philosophy cannot be the basis for the sciences, saying, “one could not have built anything upon such unstable foundations.” Now, he has to find a stronger foundation for the sciences and it is only through the reconstruction of his thought that he is able to do this.

     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

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

This argument is based in the uncertainty of knowledge. Descartes argues that we cannot be certain of the physical impressions upon our minds because the world can potentially deceive the mind, leaving it with false impressions. Due to the fact that our minds can conceive of a reality in which we are dreaming or some nefarious force is

Rene Descartes was a philosopher of the 17th century. He had this keen interest in the search for certainty. For he was unimpressed with the way philosophy is during their time. He mused that nothing certain was coming forth from all the philosophical ideologies. He had considered that the case which philosophy was in was due to the fact that it was not grounded to something certain. He was primarily concerned with intellectual certainty, meaning that something that is certain through the intellect. Thus he was named a rationalist due to this the line of thought that he pursued. But in his work in the meditation, his method of finding this certainty was skeptical in nature; this is ‘the methodic doubt’.