Descartes Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Descartes Philosophy - Essay Example The cause of the 'magnetism' is the magnet. This form of circular causal reasoning would have had been insufficient for Descartes and it is in this context of a world that is founded on such archaic Aristotelian principles that he meditates the cogito. Descartes wanted knowledge derived from natural science to have the clear and distinct properties of mathematical and geometrical concepts. Descartes presents his method in The Meditations. In order to evaluate its significance to his own philosophy it is imperative to demonstrate how he reaches the conclusion of the cogito. In order to build a proper epistemic approach to knowledge Descartes asks us to suspend our beliefs in propositions whose truth it is possible to doubt even in the slightest. As Descartes advances through the first meditation, our principles for acknowledging reality are elevated ever higher as he demolishes the capacities of recollection and the senses and even rationale in this respect. He presents three skeptica l arguments to fortify doubt, the dream argument, the interventionist creator-God and the imperfect creator/imperfect creation arguments. Discussion and Analysis The first argument, the dream argument says that there is no definite way to discern between when I am awake and when I am dreaming therefore, it is possible that I am dreaming right now and hence that all of my perceptions and sensations are false. It can be said against this that dreams are often hazy and are surreal with an unusual and we can always tell if we are able to dream. But for every notion we have of defining a boundary between dreams and being in a state of awakeness. One other problem with the dream argument as an argument for universal doubt is that it does not cause problems for self-evident 'truths' such as mathematical and geometrical concepts. To introduce the hyperbolic doubt Descartes needs to arrive at the cogito he must conceive of an argument that would make mathematics and logical validity dubitabl e. In order to do this he conceives of God as an all-powerful creator. Because of the omnipotence of God it is possible for Him to disrupt the truth of ideas we perceive as distinctly and clearly such as tautologies and analytic mathematical propositions. The first objection against this argument is that some people would not believe in a God that had sufficient power as to remove the certainty from clear and distinct ideas. Descartes reasons out of this problem by arguing that if our creator-God is less than perfect then we have even more reason to doubt because of our origins from an imperfect being. The other problem from this rebuttal is that assuming that there is a perfect God then it would be contradictory to his perfect being to deceive us. Another point, a God who deceives could have created our minds so that they could we can always have frequently or indeed always, have false thoughts. Accordingly, when we are calculating 2+2=4 and believing it to be self-evident we could be suffering an intervention from an omnipotent God to trick us to believing. It would seem that Descartes has now called even reason itself into doubt. By showing all knowledge is dubitable in the first meditation the significance of the Cogito for Descartes becomes clear. What if Descartes would be able to offer a cognitive principle that would