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Research Paper On Rene Descartes

1029 Words5 Pages

Rene Descartes, a French philosopher born in 1596, was often considered “the father of modern philosophy.” Through “The Meditations”, Descartes takes us on a journey to discover the basis of all our knowledge claims by questioning what is knowledge, where it originated from, and how we can justify it. In his writing, Descartes doubts the existence of an external world by discussing several sources which caused him to develop this radical skepticism. With total neglect of all knowledge and existence, he creates his own theory of knowledge by questioning the nature of it, its extent, as well as its validity.
Descartes starts on the basis that scientific knowledge to Descartes comes from the mind and not from our senses. He began by evaluating …show more content…

He believed that God taught him that there was “no earth at all, no heavens, no extended thing” and that maybe he was being deceived when he adds two and three or “counts the sides of a square.” According to Descartes, God is of supreme good and a being of such would not deceive him into thinking that an external world exists. Descartes then suggests that God doesn’t exist and brings upon the evil demon argument. He suggested that all of our experiences are synthesized by an evil demon who is trying to deceive us. Descartes stated “I shall then suppose, not that God is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful but deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me.” ( ) Because Descartes couldn’t be certain that this evil deceiver was nonexistent, he started to be completely doubtful and denied all known …show more content…

In order to to have deception, there must be a deceived. In order to dream, there must be a dreamer. His existence in correlation to his previous propositions was therefore undeniably certain. After confirmation of his own existence, he then moved on to discover what the cause of ideas was. Descartes went through the process of cause and effect to determine that there must be an idea or source that had the capability of producing all the ideas that he has accumulated or will accumulate in the future. This idea or source, according to his understanding, must be God who is of supreme

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