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Essay / The role of doubt in the philosophy of Descartes
In his meditations on the First Philosophy, the philosopher Descartes takes it upon himself to shatter all his previous assumptions in order to reconstruct his knowledge with certain truths. In his first meditation, Descartes establishes three reasons for doubt, including the inability to distinguish between waking and sleeping states. He admits that he was misled by sensations he felt while sleeping in the past, which were later identified as dream illusions. Due to these false perceptions, Descartes reveals that he cannot be sure whether he is awake and perceiving real images or hallucinations in his sleep (Descartes, 114). He also introduces the idea that he is always dreaming, which he quickly refutes by claiming that the images he sees in his dreams are taken from reality. Descartes systematically questions all his beliefs and reconstructs his understanding from facts that he can recognize as certain. As the meditations unfold, the meditator is always wondering whether he is conscious or not. In Meditation I, he finally returns to this skepticism in which he concludes that the states of waking and sleeping are distinguishable, which he stumbled upon due to doubt. Furthermore, by questioning the reliability of our senses, Descartes demolishes the basis of his previous beliefs by using the evil demon argument as a basis to raise further uncertainty. It is one of the most extreme reasons for skepticism that we must give up all the things we have ever doubted. Descartes proposes the idea that there is an all-powerful, deceptive evil demon who uses all of his power to deceive him. Everything he thinks he knows, the sky, the earth, the colors, the figures, the sound and all other external things, is false and is considered by him as illusions created by the demon. Because his senses betray him and his beliefs are developed on the basis of the senses, these beliefs are false and therefore must be rejected. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayTo begin with, Descartes reintroduces his only reason for doubt throughout the first Mediation which he did not address; how can he know he's not dreaming? Turning to the discussion of this skepticism, Descartes notes that his senses most often suggest what is true for him and less often mislead him. Considering this, he suggests that this is rather useful because he can now identify deceptions and remedy them as well. Given the propensity of the senses to suggest reality, Descartes characterizes his dream doubt as hyperbolic and ridiculous. With other doubts. He goes on to state: “…for whether I am awake or dreaming, it remains true that two and three make five, and that a square has only four sides; nor does it seem possible that such apparent truths could ever come under the suspicion of falsity [or uncertainty]. (Descartes, 115). The reason we reject this doubt is simply that dreams do not suit the waking mind. An example introduced by Descartes to illustrate this is the idea of characters who seem to appear and disappear in a dream, but he would not recognize the abnormality; he would be able to determine that it is a product of the waking imagination. He can determine this because if a person entered a room while awake and then left, Descartes would connect the person's perception to other aspects of the event, thus creating an interconnected memory of the person, which which is not evident in the dream. Descartes 114). After all this, Descartes concludes that if thesenses, mind and intellect all strive to study the dreams of waking life, then reality will be known. Second, the waking state is distinct from the dreaming state, because the waking state has a finite lifespan. sequence of events with more attention to detail. Thought processes within the thought state can be attributed to the event that gave impetus to a particular thought or concept. However, thoughts can simply arise in the dream state without origin. There is always a missing step or error in the logic of the dream state, which means it is a dream. The waking state also provides a linear history of thoughts and actions that a dream cannot achieve. In waking state events that follow other events, an itinerary of a person's day can be written, explaining the person's actions at each moment of their day. However, when sleeping, the route says sleep. The itinerary also indicates sleep when rising, from the time the person went to bed until the time they woke up to write another action. Thanks to this, a linear story is possible, the identification of a dream is possible. Due to temporal structure and external analysis, the limitations of a dream are apparent, and a dream can be identified as these points become evident. Additionally, the evil demon argument is of utmost importance in Descartes' work. The argument tests our cognitive nature; everything we think we know comes to us through the senses, but our senses are unreliable. When we cannot fully trust our senses, then nothing is certain in the external world, since everything is experienced through our senses. Our cognitive function is essentially defective, meaning that humans cannot consider their experiences (a posteriori) as knowledge. The argument works hand in hand with the dream argument because he came to this conclusion because he could not determine a difference between his dream and non-dream experiences. Therefore, because dreams are not reality, one's perceptions and impressions of the world may be false. . Again, conclusions arising from the act of doubting. Descartes recognized that the dream argument may not be convincing enough, and so he argues that we believe in an all-powerful God, the one who created us and who even has the power to deceive us about anything. no matter what, even about mathematics. It is therefore possible that we are living in deception. However, Descartes asserts, God is all good and does not want to deceive us; nevertheless, there may be an evil devil-like demon who would do it (Descartes, 115). This may or may not be a valid statement, however, our experiences of the world are too vague to be considered facts and so we have no reason to believe one thing over another. Descartes' evil demon argument suggests that we may be trapped in a vat "plugged in" to a dream universe dominated by an evil demon giving false perceptions of real life. Essentially, the evil demon argument claims that we may be living in a dream. like the world; at least, we have no objective reason to believe that this is not the case. There may be no real emotion, no real relationships, no real experiences, nothing real. We may be living a life of deception and lies. Our entire lives are suddenly called into question because if we live in a world of illusion, then everything we believe in is just a sensational experience. Knowledge, however, is not constructed from this argument, because living in a false dream world would be fundamentally wrong