Descartes Skepticism

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Recommended: Descartes on knowledge

Fineas Anton
PHIL 130
January 28, 2016
Paper 1 Descartes brings up an interesting idea and methodology, and specifically the idea that we should take everything that we believe is true, and be skeptical of it, thus in doing so we find one undeniable truth and build upon the truth to reinforce our other beliefs. During the process of skepticism, if any doubt arises to the mind of whatever you believe in, you deem the entire belief as false. When finding the foundational truth, it must be undeniably true. This method of finding an undeniable truth is necessary, because this would allow all other philosophers to be on the same page and able to agree, thus being able to build knowledge around one central and undeniable truth to establish a belief. …show more content…

Descartes states that “…even though the senses do sometimes deceive us when it is a question of very small and distant things, still there are many other matters concerning which one simply cannot doubt, even though they are derived from the very same senses…” (Descartes 60). He believes that the senses can deceive you, and they cannot be trusted. For example, Descartes states that our senses are deceived when we dream. Dreams are able to deceive you, for instance, you are having a dream that you are flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Your eyes are telling you that you see blue whales swimming gracefully in the beautiful blue ocean, but in reality, you are sleeping in your cramped room in Chicago hoping you don’t have to shovel your car out of snow the following day. Your dreams lead you to believe that you are sensing something other than reality. How do we know we are not dreaming right now? It is impossible to entirely rule out the possibility. Once we have deemed that one sense does not work, we can deem all other senses to be untrusted as Descartes believes that these senses are encapsulated. We can also relate to his foundational methodology, where once we have skepticism, we can deem it as false and untrue. If we are unable to use senses as a means of finding a foundational truth, then can we possibly use math and …show more content…

You have to be able to distinguish between what false and true is. Because if we were to mistakenly confuse between truth and false, our system for finding truths would be impossible. To find this truth, I believe following Descartes method of using an undeniable truth as a foundation and building upon it. Thus, rejecting all current beliefs and deeming them as untrue is the only way to building a solid foundation. Once you reject all current beliefs, you find your solid foundation of truth, and build a skyscraper of knowledge upon the foundation, which in theory, would be an undeniably true set of knowledge. But there are drawbacks to this method. Going through all the information and trying to prove everything based off of one undeniable truth would take too long, thus being

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