Descartes Meditation 1(Knowledge And Doubt) Flashcards
What can be called into doubt?
Descartes begins his meditation by recalling that in his childhood he had accepted many ‘falsehoods’ as true. Upon these beliefs, other beliefs had then been formed and as a result his whole system could be considered untrustworthy.
Descartes strategy
‘I realised that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start right from the foundations’. He uses an analogy to explain his strategy by comparing his strategy to a building with unstable, rotting foundations. We would have to courtly destroy the original building and restart.
What are descartes aims?
- to find absolutely certain knowledge
- to establish something ‘firm and lasting in the sciences’
- to defeat the sceptics
What is the senses argument?
- in the past he has taken many of his beliefs to be true from senses, despite the fact that our senses have been shown to deceive us.
- He suggests it is unwise to completely trust in the senses as we shouldn’t completely trust things which have decieved us in the past
- conclusion is at this point is NOT that senses are completely untrustworthy but rather we shouldn’t have complete trusts in our senses
What is the mad man argument
- Descartes argues that he finds some sense experience impossible to doubt. For example, the experience of him sitting by the fire in his dressing gown.
- Descartes compares someone who would doubt all beliefs gained by sense experience to a mad man
- dismissing the possibility that all sense experience should be completely doubted.
What is the dream argument?
- Many dreams are so mundane that we confuse them with everyday life
- Descartes points out that the experience of waking is very distinct
- however he remembers that he had similar thoughts while dreaming.
- this means it is impossible to tell when we are dreaming and that he could currently he dreaming and his senses are deceiving him to believe he is in his dressing gown by the fire.
- we can still be sure of somethings while dreaming - matter or physical substance.
Provisional conclusion to the dream argument.
- Descartes concludes that subjects like physics, astronomy, and medicine, which depend on studying concepts that could be drawn together using our imagination, can not be reliable as they could be a product of our dreams
- Descartes gives the example of geometry and arithmetic as being possibly trustworthy ‘whether I am awake or asleep 2 and 3 added together are five’
- even if we are dreaming there are still some basic truths that he cannot doubt
What is the deciving god argument?
- Descartes considers the possibility that God might be deceiving him about mathematical knowledge and even the existence of the entire world
- concludes that his foundation for knowledge is undermined by possibility that God may be deceiving him
What is the malicious demon argument?
- To help descartes pretend all his previously held beliefs are false he imagines a being as powerful as God, but evil instead of good, who is trying to trick him into believing things that arent true.
- Descartes focuses on the demon the demon deceiving him about the nature of the external words - stuff he learns through sense experience
Analysis/evaluation of method of doubt
- rigorous, very successful destructive phase as he sets out to undermine all his beliefs, the imaginary malicious demon will help him to not just doubt them but also consider them completely false
- perhaps too high of a standard
What if there are no foundational beliefs?
Descartes has set out on his project aiming to uncover some absolute indutiable truths on which he can rebuild his whole system of beliefs. If we can’t find any indutiable we can’t find a new system of knowledge upon them.
Was descartes sincere?
Maybe he didn’t sincerely engage with his own method and has simply used it as a tool to present his own viewpoint. Encourages uses of ‘hyperbolic doubt’ but maybe these doubts are just pretence and he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to prove from the outset?. For descartes method to be completely effective he needs to discard all his prior beliefs - including his belief in god
Problems with the dream argument
Descartes suggested that he regularly mistook the experience of dreaming for reality. However, after waking up, it doesn’t take long for us to realise we are awake.
When we are asleep we can’t clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep. However, when we are awake we do seem to he able to check easily. He has made a logical error by assuming that mistaking dreaming as reality means we can’t distinguish between dreaming and conscious experience. His conclusion that he can’t tell whether he asleep now isn’t necessarily the case.
Dream argument used to argue superiority of rationalism instead of empiricism. If descartes dream argument isn’t that strong then perhaps his argument agaist empiricism isn’t that good
How does Hume argues that the method can lead to a dead end?
Hume argues that once hyperbolic doubt is embarked upon, nothing can survive. Theoretically, all our beliefs can be doubted. Therefore, descartes methods can lead to a sceptical dead end.
- can descartes ever get out of this state of hyperbolic doubt? Surely all reason and logic fall victim to this argument. Is it not too strong?
