Question

What is Descartes method of doubt? What is its purpose? Does Descartes think that it is successful? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Cartesian doubt is a systematic process of being skeptical about or doubting the truth of one's beliefs, which has become a characteristic method in philosophy. This method of doubt was largely popularized in Western philosophy by René Descartes, who sought to doubt the truth of all his beliefs in order to determine which beliefs he could be certain were true

.Methodological skepticism is distinguished from philosophical skepticism in way methodological skepticism is an approach that subjects all knowledge claims to scrutiny with the goal of sorting out true from false claims, whereas philosophical skepticism is an approach that questions the possibility of certain knowledge.

DESCARTES METHOD :René Descartes, the originator of Cartesian doubt, put all beliefs, ideas, thoughts, and matter in doubt. He stated that the grounds, or reasoning, for any knowledge could just as well be false. Sensory experience, the primary mode of knowledge, is often erroneous& therefore must be doubted. For example , what one is seeing may very well be a hallucination. There is nothing that proves it cannot be. In short, if there is any way a belief can be disproved, then its grounds are insufficient. From these reason, Descartes proposed two arguments, The dream & the evil demon.

THE DREAM :There are no sufficient grounds by which we can distinguish a dream experience from a waking experience Descartes conceded that we live in a world that can create such ideas as dreams. thus, by the end of The Meditations, he concludes that we can distinguish dream from reality at least in retrospect:

Descrates philosophical writings :"But when I distinctly see where things come from and where and when they come to me, and when I can connect my perceptions of them with my whole life without a break then I can be certain that when I encounter these things I am not asleep but awake."

The Evil Demon : He states that, The demon is as clever & deceitful as he is powerful. He created a superficial world that we may think we live in. As a result of this doubt, sometimes termed the Malicious Demon Hypothesis, Descartes found that he was unable to trust even the simplest of his perceptions

. In Meditation I, Descartes stated that if one were mad, the insanity might have driven man into believing that what we thought was true could be merely our minds deceiving us. He also stated that there could be 'some malicious, powerful, cunning demon' that had deceived us, preventing us from judging correctly.

Descartes argued that all his senses were lying & since your senses can easily fool you, his idea of an infinitely powerful being must be true as that idea could have only been put there by an infinitely powerful being which would have no reason to be deceitful to him

. While methodic doubt has a nature, one need not hold that knowledge is impossible in order to apply the method of doubt. Descartes' attempt to apply the method of doubt to the existence of himself spawned the proof of his famous saying, "Cogito ergo sum- means I think, therefore I am. So, Descartes tried to doubt his own existence, but found that even his doubting showed that he existed

THE PURPOSE OF METHOD OF DOUBT : Its purpose is to use doubt as a route to certain knowledge by finding those things which could not be doubted. The fallibility of sense data in particular is a subject of Cartesian doubt. There are several interpretations as to the objective of Descartes' skepticism. Descartes' skepticism is aimed at eliminating all belief which it is possible to doubt, thus leaving Descartes with only basic beliefs Descartes then attempts to derive further knowledge.-- It's an archetypal and significant example that epitomizes the Continental Rational schools of philosophy.

The method of doubt was very less successful as the theories were unable to prove the difference between truth & doubts.