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What Was Descartes Method Of Doubt?

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What is Descartes’ method of doubt? Can we use it to respond to the sceptic? In this essay I argue that Descartes failed, in the Meditations on first philosophy (Clarke, 1998) to demonstrate the rule of 'clear and distinct perception' for the reason that the argument supporting this assertion is fallacious. Before discussing this specific argument, I will describe Descartes’ project, detailing what the method of doubt is and showing how it is a response to the sceptic. The sceptical challenge consists in the idea that humans cannot acquire knowledge at all, and everything we think we know is doubtful. It typically argues that truth is not a notion that humans can access, or that if something were to be true it could not be known. A …show more content…

This method is special in that, while it accepts to engage into the sceptical argument, it is also used as a means to find truths. Thereby working to prove the sceptics wrong in their claim that there can be no knowledge. The apparent aim of Descartes’ in the Meditations (chapters) was to persuade everyone including the sceptic of certain things such as God’s existence. In order to meet this purpose, the method needed to obey strict laws that would leave no ground for the sceptic to object. The method is meant to identify ideas that can be trusted, using the absence of doubt as a criterion. Wilson referred to the method as a "selective filter" (2003, p. 35) separating ideas into two categories. Wilson called them the "TRUE/BELIEVE" and "FALSE/DOUBT boxes" (2003, p.42). Ideas are scrutinised and can be believed if and only if no doubt is found in them. The meditator (narrator) hopes to reconstruct his whole set of belief, removing doubt from …show more content…

In the third meditation, Descartes argues “(1) I am certain that I am a thinking thing. (2) Do I not therefore also know what is required in order for me to be certain of anything, namely, that there is nothing in this first thought other than a certain clear and distinct perception of what I claim. (3) Evidently that would not be enough to make me certain about something if it could ever happen that what I perceived clearly and distinctly in this way could be false. (4) It seems, therefore, that I could establish as a general rule that everything that I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.” (Clarke, 1998,

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In what follows, I will argue that the meditator has adequate reasons to doubt everything he has come to experience

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However, Descartes is indeed certain of the fact that he is a thinking being, and that he exists. As a result of this argument, Descartes makes a conclusion that the things he perceives clearly and distinctly cannot be false, and are therefore true (Blanchette). This clear and distinct perception is an important component to the argument that Descartes makes in his fifth meditation for the existence of God. This paper explains Descartes ' proof of God 's existence from Descartes ' fifth meditation, Pierre Gassendi 's objection to this proof, and then offers the paper 's author 's opinion on both the proof and objection.

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Descartes ain’t no dummy! In his book, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes challenges all his former beliefs by critically doubting them. When doing so, he aims to continue doubting until he is able to discover a belief that he cannot be doubted. Descartes is therefore searching for the truth, within the doubt. In his cogito argument, Descartes clearly navigates through three stages of doubt, leading him to ultimately overcome scepticism, and assure the certainty of his own existence because it is universally accepted, he eliminates all doubt, and it is indubitable.

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In The Fire Next Time Baldwin informs his grandson about the living in the ghetto and how he will live and die in the there. He will never know what it is like to live a life more successful than his father’s. Due to his harsh living condition he creates a hard exterior to protect himself against the harsh environment around him, but he deep down he believes that the white men’s degrading term are true. Society’s views on black men have pushed him into a area or social status where he is supposed to be staying at.

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We know clear and distinct perceptions independently by God, and his existence provides us with a certainty we might not possess otherwise. However, another possible strategy would be to change Gods role in Descartes philosophy. Instead of seeing God as the validation of clear and distinct perceptions, rather see him as a safeguard against doubt. This strategy, however, is a problem since it re-constructs the Meditations – Philosophical work of Descartes –.This is because it would not be God, who is the ultimate foundation of knowledge, but the clear and distinct

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Discourse on the method, by Desecrate is a famous philosophical book, which focuses on doubting, certainty and existence. In his book, Desecrate constantly shifts from doubting to certainty. Although Descartes believes that everything can be doubted he finds ways to became certain of his existence mainly through quote “Cogito, ergo sum”, which means, “I think, therefore I exist”. Despite this phrase is one of the best in the world, and many people rushed to Descartes says, I see that it doesn’t have much significance as people think, he did not come up with any thing new. We have different kind of people, which are divided into religious, atheists and lost people.

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Having asserted with absolute certainty his existence, Descartes attempted to remove the basis for doubting, a deceiving God, by first classifying in the Third Meditation which category of thoughts would be susceptible to doubt. Descartes divided thoughts into three categories: imagery, volitions and judgments, of which the third category could be most erroneous since judgment could lead to false ideas, a problem which could be resolved by considering them different modes of thoughts. These ideas could be further divided into three categories - innate, produced by one or adventitious. The last category was of particular importance: in term of representation, these ideas conveyed different degree of objective reality with omnipotent deities

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For an example, rather than believing that a person is bad, someone can believe that a person is trusted. Epistemology which is knowledge, is the study of how a person obtains knowledge and how they asses and learns from that knowledge. Knowledge asks us, “how are suppose to know what we know?”.

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René Descartes, a famed mathematician and philosopher, enacted a thought project where he applied radical doubt to everything in existence, including himself. He wrote a treatise about the experience, called “Meditations on First Philosophy”, of which there are six parts. After first establishing his own existence as a “thinking thing,” Descartes wonders about the existence of God (153). Descartes then follows to prove, through a series of arguments, that God exists, and that the existence of God merits the existence of a material world.

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Accepting that everything he previously believed might be false, Descartes presented himself as a skeptic of all types of knowledge. However, he clarified his scepticism is potentially temporary, as his goal while writing Meditations was to discern his true beliefs from the false. In order to eliminate the idea that all of his beliefs are erroneous, in his Second Meditation, Descartes attempts identify one piece of knowledge he is certain to be true. As a foundationalist, Descartes believed on the importance of an indubious believe that would serve as a foundation to his other beliefs. He claimed that if a belief was proven false, all the other beliefs built upon that foundation would also be proven false.

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Explain Descartes’ method of doubt. What is Descartes purpose in exercising this method? Descartes begins Meditation I by stating that in order for him to establish anything in the sciences that was constant, he would have to start from the foundations of all knowledge. By claiming this, he is adopting skepticism which is not him rejecting his beliefs, but doubting them.

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In Rene Descartes meditations on Philosophy, he is seen constantly trying to question what he knows to be real or not. To settle the doubts that bother him, he tries to rid himself of all his pre-conceptions, hoping to rebuild what he does know from the ground up, determining what is absolutely certain, and what is still questionable. In the first meditation, Descartes reflects on all things false he had believed in his life. He goes through a process in which he separates himself from his senses and the world, so as not to be deceived.

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Descartes Epistemology: Descartes attempts to discover a foundation of knowledge as seen in his book ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’. He is essentially looking for total certainty. In order to do so, Descartes doubted everything, coming to the realization that he can only prove his

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Historically, philosophers and scholars have been known to argue and disagree about the most trivial matters because of the prejudices and biases towards the subject matter. Descartes popularized the methodological doubt because he realized that throughout his life he had acquired and maintained certain opinions and beliefs that he later discovered were false. Methodological doubt was a process that sought to attain the truth that was beyond dispute or was doubted by human beings and his fellow philosophers. Therefore, the methodic doubt was an approach to knowledge that would filter and sift through all the beliefs and opinions that people had and categorize then to create indubitably true knowledge. It was important in establishing a firm foundation of unchanging facts and knowledge from which people could base or dispute the knowledge, beliefs, and information they had amerced in their lifetimes.

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