Many of us in class found Descartes' foundational project to fail. Let's assume that he cannot justify all his claims to knowledge by an appeal to the Cogito. What can we learn from this failure? Should we look for a wider class of foundational beliefs? Should we avoid appeals to a God who is not a deceiver? Should we find a different way to justify beliefs that does not require an appeal to foundational beliefs?
In his second meditation on first philosophy, the famous French philosopher and mathematician, Rene Descartes comes to the famous conclusion that he is “a thinking thing” or “a thing that thinks.” From this realization comes the statement, “cogito ergo sum” or “I think, therefore I am,” which establishes that the only thing Descartes can be certain of is that his thoughts are real, regardless of whether his senses deceive him or not. This is a belief people should learn from, as it provides us with respite from global doubt and the possibility that nothing truly exists, which is a concept he uncovers in his first meditation. Descartes’s certainty that his thoughts exist, regardless of everything else he believes and perceives, is his foundational belief, which he builds upon to defeat the idea of the evil genius, proving that he has knowledge.
ReplyDeleteDescartes’s foundational belief is an important part of philosophy, as it proves that one exists if one is a thing that has thoughts. From this however, Descartes cannot be sure that anything else, apart from him and his thoughts, exists. Thus, he is unable to justifiably believe anything other than the fact that he exists as a thinking thing. Though Descartes’s foundational belief is monumental, it is incapable of establishing rules about clear and distinct perceptions, as the scope of this fact only applies to the individual. Descartes can only be sure that he exists and not anything or anyone else.
Though it is apparent that Descartes nobly fails on his foundational project, he does employ the correct strategy to defeat skepticism, that is, discovering an irrefutable fact of reality, and using that fact for the foundation of other beliefs. But to determine that one can have knowledge outside of knowing that oneself exists, there must be a different foundational belief that is broader in scope that applies to everything other than the individual. No such foundational belief has been discovered or discussed in our class, and maybe there is no such a belief. But if this new foundational belief were to exist, it would be the necessary answer to defeating skepticism of everything other than ourselves and our thoughts.
René Descartes was a mathematician and philosopher who argued for foundationalism, the belief that we can have knowledge of things because there are some things that are self-evident or infallible. This means that the things that we know, we truly know because it would be impossible for those things to not be true. Descartes started by arguing for skeptisicm so that he could disprove the best possible argument. This style of argument is considered as the principle of charity. After proving that he can’t trust his senses and therefore can’t be sure of anything, Descartes begins to build some foundational beliefs. He finds that he is “a thinking thing” and used that to come to the conclusion, as famously put, “cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am.” This means that the only knowledge we can truly have is of our own existence. From this foundational belief, Descartes attempts to build more foundational beliefs such as the existence of God. However, we must first look at his original skepticism argument to find the flaw with all foundational arguments. Descartes’s argument for skepticism is that everything he believes, he believes through his sense; his sense have deceived him before; anything that has deceived you, can deceive you again; therefore he can’t trust anything he believes. He then follows this argument with his “cogito ergo sum” argument. The problem is that in his “cogito ergo sum” argument, he uses the fact that he believes that he thinks and since he already has proven that he can’t trust anything he believes, he can’t trust that he thinks. Although Descartes could argue against this counter argument, he must believe this argument and any of his future arguments, and since he believes them, he can’t trust them. This will create an infinite chain, where everyone one of his arguments are countered by this same argument because he can’t trust a single one of his arguments. Since he won’t be able to trust any of his arguments, then he can never be sure of any truths and therefore he can not have any foundation beliefs.
ReplyDeleteThough Descartes does not actually use this argument, he does at one point acknowledge that any Supreme Being's ways are bound to be far more complicated than any human can understand. While Descartes brings this up as a way to justify the fact that there are aspects of creation that we don't understand (specifically, our ability to err though we are supposedly created by a perfect being). I think that this argument could be used the opposite way. Any supremely powerful being is not necessarily supremely good, and to think that our conceptions of what is good could be accurately applied to any omnipotent, omnipresent being, is frankly a bit laughable. If we're going to assume that, it's going to be on the basis of trust, not reason. Therefore any foundation for knowledge should not be wholly (or really at all) built around the concept of a being infinitely wiser and more powerful than we are with the caveat that It also has our best interests at heart. This is not necessarily to argue that there is an Evil Genius, but more so to point out that if an all-powerful being exists, it's rather egotistical to assume that it's primary concern is our well-being, especially when the primary difference between humans and the Supreme Being is It's inability to err, whereas we can and do go wrong, and yet what is often seen as a flaw in humans is our own self-absorbedness.
ReplyDeleteThus, while it seems like an argument that we might accept whether or not it is true, if only for the ability to have anything to build our arguments around, in fact building an argument wholly around a Supreme Being makes everything which follows almost less certain even than if there were no Supreme Being.