Descartes’ Critical Application of his Method of Doubt and the way he Builds Knowledge on a New Foundation

Answer

Descartes’ Critical Application of his Method of Doubt and the way he Builds Knowledge on a New Foundation

1. Descartes’ Method of Doubt

In the Meditations, Descartes makes a clean sweep of his beliefs and begins again. This move marks the point of departure for application of his method of doubt. In other words, he rejects all that which he has formerly known and believed to create room for the new indubitable knowledge expectedly to be derived from a new reasoning approach. Importantly, a pre-condition for his method of doubt is the implied dismissal of all prior knowledge and any belief that can possibly attract doubt, however slight or little that may be. This could be put in another way: that in the context of Descartes’ method (of doubt), the building of knowledge should start with doubting the validity of all that which is known as and believed to be the truth. As such, new knowledge is built upon establishing that indeed all long-held beliefs (thus constituting knowledge) are true and that trueness has been proved to hold beyond reasonable doubt. The thinker holds that all prior (or former) beliefs are either an indirect or direct derivation of the senses, implying they cannot be trusted because it is possible an evil genius has cheated people to conceptualize truth as is presently known. Such thorough skepticism is considered a necessary first step in the journey of building knowledge and arriving at what can undoubtedly be considered to be the absolute truth.

Importantly, Descartes’ method of doubt is executed in successive steps, and each step involves establishing contextual truth even as one moves closer and closer to the ultimate truth. Deductive reasoning takes center stage in the process. Take for instance the statement; “Allan is crying”. While it may be clear that indeed Allan is crying, Descartes would first cast doubt on this statement and its meaning, for he would say he it is not even certain that there is such a thing as crying. In addition, Descartes would argue that what is being observed is actually an illusion in the mind of the observer. Another possibility is that of the observe being deceived by an evil genius that before him is a character by the name Allan and indeed he is crying. Such is the kind of doubt that Descartes casts on phenomena, even that which may seem too obvious under normal circumstances. In this vein, the thinker finds merit in showing that since all conceptualizations originate in the mind, it is important that first the observer ascertains his/her own existence. Doing this entails establishing the existence of God, with similar efforts to also establish that no evil genius exists who would deceive people into believing that which does not exist. This way, one can deductively come to ascertain that indeed Allan is crying (as observed).

While exploring Descartes’ rationalism account of external objects, curiosity arises as to whether this account can withstand the criticism of Locke’s empiricism. To a great extent, yes, Descartes’ rationalism can withstand the criticism of Locke’s empiricism. True as it were, the root of the dispute between empiricism and the rationalist account (actually rationalism in general) is the extent to which sense experience can be relied upon in the course of gaining knowledge. Whereas the rationalist account has it that knowledge and concepts are gained in various ways that are independent of the sense experience, empiricism claims present that all knowledge and concepts flow from sense experience. Overall, the rationalist account disputes the role of sense experience by asserting that there are instances where the knowledge and concepts possessed by an individual outstrip or surpass information achieved through sense experience. Additionally, this school of thought holds that reason in one form all the other is responsible for a lot of information about the world.  Turning to empiricism, it gives complimentary assertions to rationalism. More specifically in the current conversation Descartes asserts that in order for someone to have a clear idea of an innate object, he or she must first be aware of such an object. Locke’s empiricist take is that the mind has its own perception of physical objects as well as ideas and knowledge possessed is limited to what an individual has in mind. By and large, this view appears to compliment Descartes’ assertion and it is on the basis of this complimentary line that the rationalist account can be said to be able to withstand the criticism of the empiricist account.

Taking into consideration Descartes’ and Locke’s accounts, the former is noted to be more plausible. This position is informed by the fact that Descartes’ does better to explain how ideas and knowledge are gained/built, unlike Locke whose assertions on the role of sense experience do not have as much support. Further, Locke’s viewpoint emphasizes the role of experience as the source of all knowledge, a point that begs the hard question as to the source of new knowledge that cannot in anyway be connected to experience.

2. Hume on the Problem of Induction

The problem of induction as explained by David Hume largely comes out as being especially problematic for empiricist accounts of knowledge. The empiricist line of thought has it that experience is the ultimate source of all knowledge. However, applying this line of thought to most known phenomena, it emerges that experience can establish the truth or correctness of only certain facts, which it can also disconfirm, as opposed to universal or general claims. In other words, not all knowledge can be said to flow from experience. If one wants to know if a certain rose is red, he or she just needs to look at that rose. However, if he/she wants to know if all roses are red, that cannot be directly achieved by just looking at a number of roses. Empiricism calls for a way of moving from knowledge of the particular to that of the universal, hence general relationships among phenomena. Induction comes in handy in this regard.

Taking into account how induction works, one then wonders if empiricism should give up on it as to restrict itself to non-universal facts and claims. However, that would not make much sense especially because empiricism is rightly expected to account for empirical science success that is largely pegged on general laws, which are in essence universal claims. On grounds of admission that general laws (or universal claims) govern nature, it is expected that empiricists ought to explain how knowledge can be expanded through inductive inferences, but that is problematic because they hold that experience accounts for all knowledge.