Chapter 15 Ren Descartes The Quest for Certainty

Chapter 15 René Descartes The Quest for Certainty

Search for a Method • Edmund Husserl and Bertrand Russell were attracted to mathematics as a: – Possible model for certain kinds of philosophical inquiry • Descartes found the search for the elusive point of departure all important © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Montaigne on Skepticism • Men are in agreement about nothing • Those who doubt everything also doubt that, and those who deny that we can: – Understand anything say that we have not understood that the sky is over our head: – And these two views are incomparably the strongest in number © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Montaigne on Skepticism • Besides this infinite diversity and division, it is easy to see by the confusion that: – Our judgment gives to our own selves: – And the uncertainty that each man feels within himself that it has a very insecure seat © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Subjecting The Foundations To Doubt • Descartes is allowing fantastic, extremely far-fetched possibilities: – He calls them “hyperbolic” at one point: – As legitimate reasons to doubt the foundations of his former beliefs © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Subjecting The Foundations To Doubt • The main reasons he gives to doubt the reliability of sense experience as a: – Source of information about the external world is the possibility that all of these experiences: • Might be occurring within an elaborate dream © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

René Descartes: Meditations • First Meditation—Concerning Things That Can Be Doubted • Second Meditation—Of the Nature of the Human Mind – And That It Is More Easily Known Than the Body • Third Meditation—Of God: That He Exists © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

René Descartes: Meditations • Descartes subjects to doubt the two foundations of his former beliefs: – Sense experience and intellectual intuition • Exploring various possible bases for subjecting these foundations to doubt © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cogito Ergo Sum • If we are to achieve certainty: – We must be able to establish something that cannot be doubted • In the process of attempting to discover an indubitable truth on which he could: – Base his rebuilding of philosophy, Descartes never appeals to the senses © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cogito Ergo Sum • Descartes’ standard for proof is rational and deductive • God As The Guarantor Of Certainty – What it is about the belief in his existence as a thinking that makes it certain – Proof for God’s existence © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.