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Descartes' Sceptical Method
By: Shyster

In Descartes’ Meditations, he brings into doubt all that he has naively perceived to be real. He claims that “it is a mark of prudence to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once”(14). The conspiracy of one’s senses and emotions can cause the most lucid idea to become indiscernible through the many deceptions that result from their imperfect natures. Love can blind as the eyes can betray, and these things are easily doubted as reflecting what is real. Yet, these many sensory perceptions, when taken as a whole, create one’s experience of the world. Could this very experience be subject to doubt? In this writing, I shall demonstrate how Descartes “ likens [himself] to the insane”(14); through his dream argumrnt and evil genius argument he proves that sanity is merely a matter of believing that one’s delusions are reality, yet while in this delusion one cannot see what is real.

The only escape from the captivity of this condradiction is to destroy what confines us, namely, our belief that we are sane and that our reflection of the world is accurate. Truth must be stripped bare by doubt in order to be seen explicitly, for only then can the cold light of reason run over its naked flesh. I shall, therefore, attempt to prove ,with Descartes’ assistance, that I am not actually sane and that all of my world is delusion.
When I sit in class, listening to a lecture, I am aware that I may mistake the writing on the whiteboard to be something other than what I visually perceive it to be. I may easily see an “m” where the Professor had intended the letter to represent an “n”, or confuse what I hear for something other than what was actually said. I often confuse the identities of the twin males that sit at the table behind me, and in fact all of the hip-hop bedecked 19 year olds sometimes blur into one entity. It should be real, however, that I am actually in class, that I am reading Descartes along with the silken-voiced Professor, and that my classmate Ben is sitting beside me, trying in vain to prove his intellectual superiority. However, Descartes’ brings up the point of how “evening slumber [can] persuade me of such ordinary things”(14) that in fact while I think I am in class, I may be “lying undressed in bed”(14) dreaming the whole experience.

By presenting this argument, Descartes calls into question reality itself, for if we cannot even be certain that we are awake, what can we be certain of? How can I say with absolute certainty that my experiences are not all dreams or the delusions of a madman? For if I were insane, it would be fair to reason that I would take my illusions to be real, since my perception of the world is the only gauge by which I judge reality. To argue this from the perspective of dreams, I often do not know when I dream that I am dreaming. I am present in my dreams, I can see, touch, feel, taste, and all of these things are as vivid and produce the same physical responses as my supposed waking life.

The counter argument for this, as Descartes asserts, is that the resemblance between the two must logically mean that at least one of these “could only have been produced in the likeness of true things”(15) . On the other hand, it could also be that there is no truth in what I perceive or think I perceive, that what I discern as “eyes,head,hands and the like—could be imaginary”(15). I cannot, therefore, say with conviction that I am sane, for the things that would constitute proof of my sanity would seem real to me even if they were all the product of my deluded mind.

Yet, even if my world is comprised of delusion, would it not still hold true that “a square does not have more than four sides”(15)? For despite my consciousness or lack thereof, I still have mass and take up space, and my experiences, real or no, are still limited by the concept of time. My mind may betray me when I fathom those things which are disputable, yet a priori truths are self evident. If a square does not have four sides, then it is by definition not a square; this is deductively true. All other knowledge can be called into doubt if I am insane , but how can I question basic logic? Descartes introduces this possibility firstly by the concept of God, who is touted by the religious zealots (most of whom are related to me, it seems) as being all powerful and able to mould reality into any form of his/her choosing. However, if this “God” is “said to be supremely good”(16) it does not seem cogent that he/she would be so beguiling. Of course, this same logic could apply to the biblical story of “Job”, and the whole idea of God making bets with Satan, but it seems to me that this is to be taken as a metaphor.

If I am to know if I am sane , I must be willing to plunge myself into this darkness of questioning even that which seems certain, for perhaps all of the world is a carefully crafted matrix of deception. Light cannot be seen unless it comes from darkness, just as knowledge cannot be ascertained unless it comes from ignorance. Hence Descartes’ theory of the “evil genius”, in which said genius “lays snares for my credulity”(16,17) and convinces me that my very rationality exists, when in fact I am being utterly mislead. What proof can I offer beyond any doubt that I have extension in space, or even if extension in space exists at all? I cannot prove that I am even awake or sane, and from this it is reasonable to allow that there may be an evil genius who controls all that I experience. My life has been such a series of incredulous happenings that I must allow the possibility that even the axioms within this are false. I can think of nothing that I know which cannot be disproved by the concept of an evil genius.

The fallacy of popular opinion provides me with customary beliefs about actuality and all that this entails, but by definition this is a fallacy, for it has been shown throughout history that mass delusion is possible. So if reality is falsly based upon the common thoughts of the many, could it also not be falsely based upon the thoughts of the few, or even the one? It seems logical that “there is nothing among the things I once believed to be true which it is not permissible to doubt … for valid and considered reasons”(16) Only through these means may I hope to understand my sanity in regard to what I think I know. My judgements must be held to the light of scrutiny to test their validity, for most of them stem from habituation. Even if some of these judgements are true, “I would do well to deceive myself by turning my will in completely the opposite direction and pretend for a time that these opinions are false and imaginary”(16) for what I believe is so ingrained in my thoughts that there is no room for questioning them. Only when I refrain from questioning does the learning process end, blocked by an egoistic assertion that I am certain of anything. As long as this block exists in my mind, I shall never be aware of the truth. It is an arduous task to begin from nothing, but if the foundation upon which I base my beliefs is unsound, then it follows that all that is built upon this foundation must be unsound as well. Conditioned responses to stimuli, as the experiment of subjecting infants to loud noises while showing them a picture of a certain object, will render the same response years later without the noise but the picture alone. The subject of this is experiment is unaware that they are reacting to the noise from years earlier as opposed to the picture they see now. Could I not in turn simply be reacting to what an evil genius has conditioned me to believe? Descartes uses the evil genius argument to dispute what could not be disputed by the dream argument alone, namely that even necessary truths are open to doubt.

If this is so, that all manner of things and thoughts are open to doubt, then nothing remains of my knowledge or my sanity. From this postion then may I hope to rebuild my understanding of reality.

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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