Pros And Cons Of Rene Descartes

In Meditation I Descartes wanted to discover if anything is absolutely certain. His goal is to secure a stable, certain foundation for knowledge. Descartes method is to doubt everything that can be doubted and see what certain knowledge really is. Descartes had to destroy his whole foundation of knowledge, by doing this he had to doubt everything he believed and his opinions. He had to discover a new foundation that could survive his doubts and skepticism so that he could have a perfect certain foundation of knowledge. Rene Descartes said “If I am able to find in each one some reason to doubt, this will suffice to justify my rejecting the whole,” (Introduction to Philosophy, pg. 50) Descartes had to examine each of his beliefs individually,

In Meditation I, Descartes gives three methods of doubts, these three arguments are Sensory doubt argument, dream doubt argument, and deceitful god or evil genius doubt. Descartes sensory doubt argument is about how his senses have deceived him so he should not trust them. Descartes says “ but it is sometimes proved to me that senses are deceptive, and it is wiser not to trust entirely to anything by which we have once been deceived.” (Introduction to Philosophy pg.5o) There is also a contrast between appearance and reality, he argues that what we see and feel is merely appearance which we perceive as “reality.” An example of appearance/ reality distinction is phantom limb experience. Which is when someone has a missing limb but they think they can feel their missing limb. Descartes second argument is the dream doubt argument, which he argued that it might be possible that everything he perceives might not be real but might be from his imagination, i.e. dreams. Descartes made me really think when he said “But in thinking over this I remind myself that on so many occasions I have in sleep

Descartes is correct, that senses do deceive us in some cases. But his skepticism about this is questionable because one is able to see through deception, which avoids one from being deceived. Our senses might be reliable but they are far from perfect. I don’t think Descartes argument completely justifies his degree of skepticism with the sensory doubt argument. I don’t completely doubt my senses because they occasionally fail me because I can see through the deception most time. An example is things in the distance look smaller than they actually are which is true. The same goes for his dream doubt argument, because I can distinguish my world when I’m awake and when I’m dreaming. The external world is supposed to be whatever exists outside of your own mind. The skeptics say that there are things in the external world but you can’t know whether there real or not. I don’t know if we can have knowledge of the external world because you can only know your internal world. I think I can tell the difference between my dreams and the real world which I feel Descartes skepticism somewhat fails. I don’t agree with the evil genius because I don’t think there is something out there that is trying to deceive my views of the world. I feel like Descartes arguments are somewhat reasonable but they are not 100 percent enough to create complete