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  • Essay / Analysis of Descartes' Doubt - 640

    Descartes' philosophy of doubt distinguishes him from previous thinkers because he was not just another skeptic who used doubt to clarify what exists and what does not exist. Rather, Descartes' method of doubt is his attempt to formulate a basis on which to construct knowledge. Doubt forms the basis of Descartes' later reasoning about what is reality and what is not. Where other philosophers initiated by the hypothesis of certainty, Descartes constructs his entire philosophical scope through doubt. He suspends all belief in the knowledge learned from childhood, in everything he believed without having inquired into their truth. Descartes refers to doubt as a deliberate strategy to progress towards certainty. As Descartes attempts to separate himself from all prior knowledge, from anything that can be even slightly doubted, Descartes calls it false. This leads him to conclude that nothing is true. Since he can doubt everything, this rule allows him to reject everything that contains the slightest doubt. As a result, he arrives at a simple truth; that it exists. Simply because he is capable of doubting, he therefore exists. Descartes realizes that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects since our senses deceive us too easily. By trying to doubt everything, he realizes that he cannot doubt. What he cannot doubt is that he doubts. Obviously, he exists if he doubts his existence. His doubt about his existence proves that he exists, because he must exist to be able to doubt. He cannot therefore doubt that it exists and that there is at least one fact beyond doubt; “I am, I exist” is true whenever it is conceived by the mind. Descartes then links his capacity to doubt to thought. He said: “I am; I exist...... middle of paper...... also falsified. But he comes to the conclusion that if he is being deceived by an evil demon, he must exist in order to be deceived. Descartes, however, confirms its existence by declaring: “Let him who can deceive me; that I am something, he will never make that I am nothing. » (48). He claims that as long as he is capable of thinking, no other being can deny his existence. The existence of the cogito is accepted as true since it is clear that it cannot be doubted. Therefore concluding that "I am", "I exist" is true whenever it is conceived in the mind, attests that since thought takes place, regardless of whether what one thinks about is true or not implies that there must be something else involved in the notion, precisely the “I”. Therefore, “I exist” is a certain belief from which other truths can be deduced..