Should We Use Doubt in Order to Gain Knowledge, Essay Example

The fundamental strategy of Descartes’ method of doubt is defeating skepticism on its own ground. He is often referred to as a major representative of methodological skepticism about the external world. Being a mathematician, he wanted to reveal the basic truth, which was as reliable as the mathematical truth of geometry. Thus, in order to demonstrate that science based on the firm of foundations and that these foundations rest in the mind and not the senses, Descartes started to doubt all the beliefs that we get from the senses. However, he did not intend to prove that nothing actually existed, but to evidently demonstrate that all our knowledge of these things through the senses is exposed to doubt. Therefore, if our knowledge came to us through the senses, we could not be sure that things around us existed. Consequently, if we do not know for sure that external objects exist, this knowledge cannot come to us through the senses, but with the help of our mind. In his Fifth Replies Descartes claimed: “The purpose here is to come to recognize that certain other things which cannot be rejected in this way (as doubtful) are thereby more certain and in reality better known to us.”(Grene, 1999)

Rene Descartes tends to doubt even our most everyday beliefs like the outside world was a way of making certain that our universal beliefs have a compelling epistemological foundation. Therefore, he appears to implement two famous arguments to expose all our knowledge to doubt: the dream argument and the evil demon argument. Basically, the main idea in each of these is that we never directly identify external objects, but only through the contents our mind, the images and figures that external objects generate in us. Therefore, what we experience through senses never puts us in contact with actual objects, but only with intellectual images. Thus, sense perception grants us no assurance that there is anything in the external world corresponding to the images we picture in our minds. Opposing to common sense, we get simply the imitations of things and not direct experience of actual things. Consequently, Descartes challenges the everyday common sense that we take for certain: that there is a world with objects that we perceive.

In fact, in Descartes’ Meditations he evidently demonstrates that we have good reasons to doubt all types of empirical knowledge. He argued that there was only one thing that could not be doubted in this way – the existence of the human mind, which actually does the doubting itself. Descartes claims: “I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.”(Broughton and Carriero, 2007) Descartes puts human mind above all other things in the worlds, thus making it clear that it is the only way for us to gain knowledge. He provides a comprehensive account of the skeptical problem of the external world, for he makes us to believe that our mind and not senses is vital. However, according to Descartes, mind actually does doubting, which makes us to inquire about certain things and objects. Eventually, we gain knowledge for after we doubt and question ourselves we are consciously receiving deeper knowledge of an object. Therefore, I think we should use doubt to gain knowledge, for knowledge is vetted by the mind.

Works Cited

Broughton, Janet, and John Carriero. A Comparison to Descartes. John Wiley and Sons, 2007.

Grene, Marjorie. “Descartes and Skepticism.” The Review of Metaphysics 52 (1999).