Research Paper On Rene Descartes

579 Words3 Pages

Have you ever looked at yourself and your surroundings and wonder if it is all just a dream? Or if you even exist? Well, there is no need to waste your precious time philosophizing, Rene Descartes have already proven this. Through his technique of methodological doubt, Descartes proved that our minds and our bodies do exist because we are “thinking things”. Methodological doubt required Descartes to doubt everything until he found something that was impossible to doubt. He started off with doubting our physical senses, which we trust and use to make certain that something is true and certain. As Descartes said, “it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive”, for we do experience illusions and dreams in which we believe we are doing something …show more content…

So far it seems impossible to doubt mathematics, especially because mathematics is an a priori claim. A priori means it is an innate idea that we are born with and don’t need to experiment to prove it is true. Unless, there is an evil genius that controls our a priori knowledge! Descartes did not give up at this conclusion, he kept digging to find that indubitable knowledge. He thought to himself that the evil genius “can never cause me to be nothing so long as I think that I am something,” from this realization he concluded “I think, therefore I am”. If us human beings have the ability to doubt or think, it makes certain that our minds do exist since doubting is an activity of the mind. If we are able to think then we must also be able to understand, conceive, affirm, deny, refuse, imagine and feel. Now that Descartes finally found something that is certain and true, he must go back and prove that there is no evil genius that can deceive him in his thinking. The only way to do this is to prove the existence of God, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good creator of the