A Noble Failure?
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?
When Descartes forms his arguments to justify knowledge he, focuses on finding beliefs that are justified by their very existence. For example the cogito claims to justify itself by stating, “I am a being that thinks. If I am thinking about this now than I must exist in some capacity.” However where Descartes arguments often fails is making the leap from existing to proving his other beliefs such as the existence of his body. Fully, proving the existence of things outside of our thoughts may be impossible but there may be another way to prove we have knowledge. In order to make this leap I think we need to move the argument back into the idea of thoughts and create the idea of situational knowledge. So far we know that we think, and when we think we create thoughts. Because we think, our thoughts undeniably exist. We can also conclude that our entire reality is perceived through thought. This means that our reality exist, or it exists at least in thought. From here we can use the idea of situational knowledge. In the situation of our perceived reality there are certain things we can know for certain will happen because we observe them in thought without variation. These are things like an object, when dropped on earth, will fall. It is possible to justify our knowledge as true as long as we keep it in the context of our reality perceived in thought.
ReplyDeleteIf we agree that Descartes cannot justify all his claims to knowledge by an appeal to the Cogito, we must also agree that the foundational approach is futile. Foundationalism consists of identifying truths impossible to deny and building upon these truths to deduce a body of knowledge. An undeniable truths, Descartes argues, is the Cogito: Descartes believes that he exists, and therefore he must exist. The Cogito is an undeniable truth because even if one was being deceived when he believed that he existed, he would have to exist in order to be deceived. However, the Cogito is the only idea that we can be absolutely certain is true. This is because only the Cogito incorporates the possibility of deception into its structure. For any other belief, deception is a possibility that could invalidate the belief. Therefore, foundationalism cannot work if the Cogito is an insufficient starting point; there is a need to create a new way to justify beliefs.
ReplyDeleteEven if rigorous foundationalism fails, the system at the heart of foundationalism – deducing knowledge from recognized truths – is promising. A variation of foundationalism based on common observation could work. Descartes’s idea of “clear and distinct perception” is not sufficient because a lunatic could clearly and distinctly perceive a blatant falsehood. Common observation, however, which is based on the agreeing observations of many, is much more likely to yield truth because several people are much less likely to be deceived than a single individual is. This is the approach used in most disciplines today. In science, for example, theories are based on observed results; scientists agree from observation that the human body needs water to survive, and can therefore deduce that someone who doesn’t drink enough water will become ill. This approach strays from foundationalism in that we cannot be absolutely, definitively, one-hundred-percent certain our observations are correct, but it is much more useful and applicable to reality. We only care about determining whether things are true because identifying truth improves our ability to make the right decisions to improve our lives. If the system of common knowledge is accurate enough to allow us to reap the benefits of knowledge, it is sufficient for all practical purposes.
In order for Descartes to justify all of his beliefs, he needs a ‘foundational’ argument so that he could build off from this point and establish other beliefs. He was able to create a solid foundation by arguing the Cogito. The Cogito simply states that if you are to believe that you exist, then you must exist. This argument is sufficient to say that he has been able to establish a well-defined foundation for his house of beliefs, since he is taking into account all of the possible objections to his argument. However, if we are to assume that he is not able to base all of his arguments off of the Cogito, then we can see that there is a fundamental flaw in the foundationalism project: it does not work. We are able to see that even if we are able to establish a foundation in what we know to be true, we are still not able to prove that other things will also be true based on one fact. This is not to say that every foundational argument will end up this way, but it does mean that it will be very hard in finding that argument. Instead of focusing on building beliefs based on one another, I think we should always consider that fact that there might be an “evil genius” that could be deceiving us right now. This problem of an evil genius had taunted philosophers on what they do and do not know for centuries, and no matter what happens, we are not able to prove that he is all good like God. Keeping this into consideration we then cannot trust anything that has to relate to our perceptions, because this evil genius could be tricking us into thinking that our perceptions are correct. However, if we are to go off of the foundations of mathematics and principles along this line of reasoning, we can then create a house of beliefs that allows us to expand on what we know. By using mathematics, the evil genius is not able to deceive us on what is universally true, such as have two things and getting two more things will make us have 4 things. While the physical word “two” and “four” have no actual meaning to it, the concept of these ideas will never be wrong. Therefore, if we use the foundations of mathematics and other geometric ideas, we can then start forward on the quest for knowledge.
ReplyDeleteDescartes uses foundationalism to justify many of his arguments. Foundationalism is basically believing you have knowledge based on no true fact or knowledge, but based on a very strong belief. For instance, Descartes relies on foundationalism to prove that God is real. He has no concrete evidence of God’s existence, but says that God exists because he strongly believes in His existence. He uses knowledge based on foundationalism to support his arguments, which leads to his unconvincing arguments. He uses one argument, the Cogito, as the base to his other arguments. The Cogito is: “I think, therefore I am.” I believe this is a strong argument. If one thinks, it must have some sort of existence. Every sensation can be considered a though, or it is perceived. The perceived things could be false, but because they are thought of, or perceived, it proves that there is some existence of some kind. If his beliefs could not be justified by the cogito, it would be absolutely necessary for those beliefs to be justified by concrete evidence. I think that appeals to God should be avoided because so far, nobody has been able to justify His existence. If you base your arguments on a belief they are likely less true. I do not think you can really prove anything is really in existence except for thought and consciousness. But you can prove ideas such as 2+2=4. So if you can find beliefs to be true by using knowledge, then you have new knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI argue that René Descartes’ foundational method of proving his knowledge lies in the definition of knowledge itself as true, justified, belief; this I accept and legitimately believe is the best form of logic. By doing this, I must point out that in my opinion, Descartes unintentionally provides a beautiful proof for skepticism, where in his second mediation, he concludes this by writing “Yesterday’s meditation has thrown me into such doubts that I can no longer ignore them, yet I fail to see how they are to be resolved. It is as if I had suddenly fallen into a deep whirlpool; I am so tossed about that I can neither touch bottom with my foot, nor swim to the top” (Cress, Descartes 17). In the following meditations, he will attempt to dig himself out of this hole by proving the existence of an omnibenevolent god and then using this knowledge to prove everything else. However, his arguments past the point where he becomes skeptical of everything are weak in my opinion. For example, in his later meditations, he must use a general principle to prove God, but must also prove the validity of the general principle with God; thus he creates a logical circle.
ReplyDeleteAs stated before, I believe Descartes does a fine job at proving skepticism in my opinion. Skepticism is not bad, all it argues is that there are no beliefs that fit the definition of philosophically ‘true knowledge’. Not only do I argue that things are known, I argue that the conception of knowledge being true, justified, belief is valid to a point. Ultimately, all generally accepted ‘knowledge’ rests on conjecture based on probability of correlation with reality and concurrency with other generally accepted ‘knowledge’. It is making that leap of faith based on likelihood that fundamentally allows one to build consistent beliefs on each other. They always say ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’; in the real world, we have constantly reassessed our ‘knowledge’ based on the statistician in all of us, which I argue works better and better for us as time passes as we weed out bad ‘knowledge’ and figure out good ‘knowledge’. It is a matter of trusting in that statistician that is key to, what I argue as, what ‘knowledge’ really is.
By best form of logic regarding foundationalism, I mean the most logically sound within the bounds of skepticism.
DeleteRené Descartes’ many philosophical ideas are built upon foundationalism, a concept in which Descartes believes is perfect because it is self-justifying. Foundationalism is the concept that beliefs can be justified with foundational or basic beliefs. The most obvious and famous example of this Descartes uses is his Cogito argument. Being the origin of his famous quote, “I think therefore I am”, Descartes’ Cogito argument proves his own existence with a basic belief that is self-justifying. Because he believes he exists, he must. Descartes had previously talked of the possibility that humans are constantly being deceived by God, but whether or not this is true is irrelevant to the Cogito argument because it is a foundational, irrefutable belief. This serves to support his claim and Foundational approach. However, Descartes actually contradicts himself later on in his Meditations on First Philosophy when he continues to discuss justification for beliefs. Attempting to use Foundationalism to justify his argument, Descartes claims that a belief is proved true by doubting any possibility for falsehood. Descartes’ attempt at using a basic belief backfired, as he created a completely subjective and situational definition of justification. It is entirely possible for different individuals to have contradictory thoughts on a certain subject, proving that in this case, Foundationalism fails as a justifying ideology. Furthermore, Descartes set himself up for failure by proclaiming that if something has deceived or failed one once, then it cannot be trusted as truthful. Following his own argument, this one failure of Foundationalism proves it to be an unusable belief, causing a need for a new way to justify beliefs that does not use basic principles.
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