When the Walls Come Tumbling Down
Descartes realizes that some of the beliefs he thought were true turned out to be false. In the pursuit of knowledge he seeks to tear down his previous beliefs and build them up again upon a firm foundation. In other words, he is engaged in a foundational project, searching for a class of beliefs that themselves are not in need of justification in order to justify his other beliefs. But is this quest a misguided one? Do such beliefs exist? If not, does that mean that knowledge is impossible? Or is there some other way to justify our beliefs?
In his “Meditation One,” Descartes begins by saying that he had, “today suitably freed my mind of all cares, secured for myself a period of leisurely tranquility, and am withdrawing into solitude. At last I will apply myself earnestly and unreservedly to this general demolition of my opinions” (Descartes 13). In order to be unbiased, in order to search for knowledge and truth, he had to rethink everything he had always thought before. Unbiased, he believes that he will be able to search with more precision, and not have preconceived notions which drive his arguments. Although this is what he says he does, he does not even consider the fact that there may not be a god. To him, it is so clear that there is a God that he does not stop thinking this way. Back to the point. Knowledge cannot be found without justification of beliefs. If one cannot justify a belief, then they cannot have knowledge. Beliefs that are not justified, but believed to be true, do not exist. At least knowledge of those beliefs does not exist. I do not believe that knowledge is impossible. For example, 2+2=4 is true. We have knowledge of mathematical truths which can be justified. However, as far as God goes, with the knowledge humans have at this point, the belief that he exists is not justifiable. Knowledge is not impossible because there are beliefs that can be justified. But beliefs that can be understood to be true without justification do not exist.
ReplyDeleteDescartes approach to finding knowledge, I believe, contradicts itself. Descartes believes in order to understand all knowledge he must tear down everything he knows and find a undeniably true foundation to base everything on. Descartes explains, "I will apply myself earnestly and unreservedly to this general demolition of my opinions...I will suffice for the rejection of all of these opinions, if I find in each of them some reason for doubt" (12). Here Descartes uses skepticism to initially start his search for knowledge but plans to use foundationalism. He eventually discovers that all of his beliefs are wrong because they are based upon his senses which he cannot trust. He describes, "I have noticed that the senses are sometimes deceptive; and it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once" (14). Descartes skeptic argument leaves him with no knowledge, digging him into a bigger whole. He does find a foundation for his beliefs in the cogito argument but since he continues with the mix of skepticism and foundationalism he can prove nothing more to himself. Because he previously proved to himself he cannot trust his senses. Thus, his approach to finding true knowledge is flawed because his use of skepticism leaves him with nothing other than he knows he exists and everything else he tries to prove can be doubted.
ReplyDeleteWhen Descartes realized that all of his conceptions of this world through his senses were false, he claimed that “Thus, after everything has been most carefully weighed, it must finally be established that this pronouncement ‘I am, I exist’ is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind” (Descartes 18). I believe that the arguments he makes past this creates a fundamental problem. While his general argument of I think, therefore I am are understandable, the fact that he has to validate that God exists for his arguments past this to work have some fundamental flaws. For example, we see the Cartesian circle where he could not prove that God existed through seeing things distinctly and clearly and therefore could not be a deceiver, and then trying to say that God existed by relying solely on seeing things distinctly and clearly. Therefore using this looping logic, he is unable to truly reason and his arguments fall short. While he may have believed he found “true knowledge”, many would disagree thanks to his argument’s fallacies. The assumptions that he makes are broad and unsatisfying for reasoning to this day, and I believe that one of the objections to his Meditations is exactly what I find so dubious about his argument. “... the author avoids reasoning in a circle when he says we are sure that what we clearly and distinctly perceive is true only because God exists… can we be sure that God exists only because we clearly and distinctly perceive this. Hence, before we can be sure God exists, we ought to be able to be sure that whatever we perceive clearly and evidently is true” (Fourth Objection). His objections to Descartes, in my opinion, sums up all the issues with the Meditations. He subconsciously reasons in a circle, and the only way he gets out of the circle is to create some sort of different argument that correlates and needs other proof to actually be believable. I believe that the way he engages his mission to find true knowledge is flawed and I believe this comes out of his inability to try to play with a different idea of God or the idea that they might not exist at all.
ReplyDeleteWhile his mission was flawed due to causes that are extensively mentioned above, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there are no true beliefs or that knowledge is impossible. While it is hard, there are ways to justify our own beliefs. All of this, however, is subjective as beliefs differ based on genetics, how you were raised, where, and many more factors. In my opinion, knowledge is not impossible because we already have knowledge of our world. While it may not be considered “true knowledge” that doesn’t make it any less important in our real and everyday lives. For instance, we know we need to eat to survive, we know we need to drink to survive, and we know the general laws that we need to follow to make our society safer. In this sense, our justification for knowledge is observing the world around us like Descartes did. However in my opinion, it’s not wise to invalidate all information that one can see currently because (while I understand the importance of “true knowledge”) our knowledge of this world is still applicable and important to us in this sense. We can use what we know as a general guideline to succeed in life and thrive as a species.
Personally, I believe that individuals formulate and justify their beliefs off that of another individual, a wiser and perhaps better-informed individual. This thought process of mine would allude to the possible existence of one original deep-thinker who entirely formulated opinions of his own, whereas before this individuals, possibly all members of a community lived without opinion. Because of this scholarly individual, other community members would then perhaps listen to the deep-thinker preach and express his beliefs and opinions, because he is the only individual who has an opinion, an opinion which he himself formed. Members of a community then had two options, those being to either agree or disagree with the deep-thinker’s opinions. Community members would subsequently form opinions of their own, based off the accord or discord with that of the original thinker’s. In today’s world, the original thinker and his opinions are similar to opinion show hosts, such as Sean Hannity or Chris Cuomo, and the community members who would attend the original thinker’s seminars are no different from individuals today who watch either opinion show. The individuals in today’s society who watch opinion shows are either fascinated by politics or wish to formulate their own political beliefs, and do so either in accord or in discord with the opinions of Hannity or Cuomo. I conclude that individuals justify their own beliefs because of other better-informed individuals and their opinions. This conclusion suggests that the attainment of knowledge is possible, therefore this quest of Descartes’ is a misguided one since individuals rely on others’ opinions in order to justify those of their own.
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ReplyDeleteIn René Descartes first mediation, he explains that many of the beliefs he held to be knowledge were actually false, resulting in fundamental doubt hovering over him for many years. When beginning his work in the first mediation to tackle this problem once and for all, he writes “[…] because undermining the foundations will cause whatever has been built upon them to crumble of its own accord, I will attack straightaway those principles which supported everything I once believed” (Cress, Descartes 14). In other words, Descartes comes to the conclusion that he must treat all beliefs built on any doubt as false. He then decides to use ideas that he maintains as true knowledge as foundation to build back up all of his beliefs. However, in his second mediation, Descartes falls down, to some, a very dangerous rabbit hole called skepticism, he writes “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.
ReplyDeleteI must admit that I am convinced with all of Descartes’ logic up to the point he attempts to dig himself out of skepticism. 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.
I believe that Descartes' foundationalism project is misguided and flawed because proving the knowledge of anything based on one fundamental piece is impossible. He attempted to prove his beliefs based on the existence of god but his argument was flawed; even though a perfect, omnipotent god exists, our senses still falter. However, he was still able to prove the knowledge of his own existence with the cogito argument, and his knowledge about arithmetic and geometry individually, through other methods. This proves that knowledge is not impossible, but foundationalism is not able to justify all of your beliefs. I thought of 2 alternative ways that he could prove all of his beliefs. The first way is to continue justifying his beliefs one by one. The second is to justify all his beliefs by twisting the arguments he used in skepticism. He could say that dreams and hallucinations feel and appear just as real as when he is awake, and because that the so called dream feels just like the so called reality, they can both be reality. This means that everything is real, and this proves all of his beliefs. Overall, fundamentalism does not work, knowledge is not impossible to obtain, there are other ways to justify your beliefs.
ReplyDeleteThe quest to find foundational beliefs is not misguided; however, it will be possible if Descartes goes about it the same way he did the Cogito, using the mind as an ultimate justification. In order to first remove all of his previous beliefs, Descartes examines them from a skeptical standpoint, “I will suffice for the rejection of all of these opinions, if I find in each of them some reason for doubt.”(12) While this is efficient for tearing down beliefs, it will create difficulty in building up more foundational beliefs. As Descartes has already shown that we cannot rely on our senses to form beliefs because they may sometimes deceive us, skepticism argument. Which leaves only one standing belief, the belief in our own existence, the Cogito. This argument works because it is based on thoughts within the mind which we cannot disprove, unlike all other beliefs which rely on our senses. This shows the only way to find valid and undeniable foundational beliefs is by using the mind alone independent of all of our senses.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the possibility of an omnipotent and all-powerful being makes any knowledge impossible. If the word omnipotent is taken as truth, then anything that is perfectly clear and certain would be cast into doubt. An all-powerful being would have the ability to make the furthest falsehoods seem like the most profound and obvious truths. Thus even clear and concise arguments and justifications could be an illusion created by the deceiver. Socrates states that considering “something very simple and easy in the areas of arithmetic or geometry… it would be easy for him to cause me to err even in those matters” (25). The same argument could then be applied to anything Descartes does to extract himself from this predicament. Any attempt to use rational thinking as a way to prove the existence of knowledge could be an additional deception by the deceiver. Therefore I believe that his quest is a misguided one. To tear down everything simply because of the possibility of doubt seems both impossible and useless. One modern argument against the existence of God is the idea that He doesn’t exist because there is no reason to believe He exists. The same argument could be used against both the dreaming argument and the evil deceiver argument. There is the possibility that there is no knowledge, but from all the evidence that humans have gained throughout millions of years, there is no reason to believe our current reality is not true reality. Just because unicorns could be invisible, magical, and insensible beings that walk the earth doesn’t mean we as humans should change our beliefs. Though the possibility is there, the overwhelming evidence shows nothing about them and there is no reason why they should be believed. Therefore there’s no reason to let it affect our knowledge.
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