Descartes' Method of Doubt

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Descartes' Method of Doubt

Descartes is extremely important to Western intellectual history

Contributions in physiology, psychology, optics, and especially mathematics

Introduced analytic geometry

Influential in modern scientific approach (can’t just say it’s true, show it’s true)

The Cartesian Method

Descartes is very concerned with skeptical questions

Though he was not actually a skeptic, he used skepticism as a method of achieving

certainty.

“I will doubt everything that can possibly be doubted, and if anything is left, then it will be absolutely certain. Then I will consider what it is about this certainty (if there is

one) that places it beyond doubt, and that will provide me with a criterion of truth and knowledge, a yardstick against which I can measure all other purported truths to see if they, too, are beyond doubt.”

Doubt

In order to doubt everything he could, Descartes used two conjectures

Dream conjecture

Evil demon conjecture

Descartes was just as aware of how bizarre these ideas are as we are….that was his point,

to doubt anything that had even the tiniest possibility to be false

Cogito Ergo Sum

Descartes realized that he could, in fact, doubt “absolutely everything, save one

indubitable truth: I think, therefore I am”

The self that doubts it’s own existence must exist to be able to doubt

Moreover, a self that doubts must not only exist, but must exist rationally (being a thing

that thinks)

The “Absolute”

Once Descartes established that he doubted everything except that which cannot be

doubted (his doubting)---he wanted a yardstick that he could measure all other

things by to see if they are true beyond all doubt.

This yardstick is clarity and distinctness

Those things that are clear and distinct are true.

What is clear and distinct?

Mathematical concepts

There is no perfect circle in nature, but we know what a perfect circle is

God

Descartes, armed with his clear and distinct test discovers that he has certain knowledge

that God exists

3 Proofs

1) The idea of God must come from a reality that is at least as perfect as the idea

2) -I exist as a thing that has an idea of God

-Everything that exists has a cause that brought it into existence and that

sustains it in existence

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