Secondly, Descartes says to divide all problems into as many parts as possible. He says it is difficult to look at a problem in its entirety and be able to come up with a correct and concrete conclusion. By dividing the problem into separate parts one can examine each part on its own and avoid any complications to coming to conclusion. It is easy to oversee all possible conclusions when looking at the problem as a whole. After, it is broken down into smaller parts it is the possible for one to come up with a clear and distinct conclusion. The simplest known truth, denied and then broken down in this way can be proven and seen in its whole truth. Descartes doubts everything he once knew as true because it was all based on his senses and the teachings of others.
Thirdly, he says to conduct one’s thoughts orderly. He means to go from one truth to another not to jump around and get lost in fallacies. It is easy to get lost in false hoods associated with finding the truth. By keeping one’s thoughts in order confusion is less likely to take over the search. The search for the truth can be very tedious but Rene Descartes helps simplify it by drawing up his four rules as an outline for everyone as a way to organize the search. If your thoughts wonder from aimlessly with no direction or motive to solve the problem or find the truth, the search becomes very difficult, more difficult than it already is. Organization is always better than jumbled thoughts and mass confusion. His rules make it easier for him and others trying to follow in his ways to try to find the truth after doubting what they once took for true. His whole system for doubt was so that he could find the truth for himself. He wanted to find out what he knew to be true on his own rather than have it told to him by others or by sensing it.
His fourth rule for understanding one’s reason is to make complete enumerations. By this he says that one should look at all possible options and only then can the right decision be made. This is the final step to fully understanding any reasoning made by someone. It is not possible to know the truth or understand until all four rules have been followed. It is then possible to know that everything was done in order to find the truth and one can know that the final decision can be accepted as true and correct.
He came up with these rules as a guideline so that he may be able to find truth for himself. Throughout all his meditations, though, he does not recommend that anyone in particular follow these rules or that these rules, or any other of his meditations, would be correct for anyone else.
It was from his first step to knowing the truth, doubt everything that he came up with his first truth; Cogito ergo sum – I think; therefore I am. He had realized that while he was thinking that everything was false, he himself was a thinking thing, therefore something so then he must exist. This was his first truth that he accepted almost without doubt. He says, “From the very fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things, it followed very evidently and very certainly that I existed.” The use of this methodological doubt in order to find the truth brought him to the conclusion that among anything that he may or may not find, one thing is for certain and that is, he exists. His whole reasoning for doubting came about because he realized that he no longer could trust his senses. The whole idea that he could have dreams during his sleep so similar to the thoughts that would come to him while he was awake was not enough for him to trust anything. It did not make sense that it could be possible, “The fact that the same thoughts that we have when we are awake can also come to us when we are asleep…I resolved to pretend that all things that had entered my mind were no more true than the illusions of my dreams.” He had to decide from these senses what was true and what was not. It then came to him that he must doubt everything until he had enough evidence to accept anything.
Through all his reasoning and he thoughts and his doubting the truth comes about that God does exist. It starts out that Descartes by saying if two plus three does not equal five he truly cannot know anything. It is his nature by which he believes this is true. He tries to find out weather it is possible for his nature to deceive him, which is put in him by God and it is very possible for God to be able to deceive him of everything. Descartes has come to a point where he cannot know anything if he does not know the existence of God, thus, if there he says, “I should at the first opportunity inquire of this, it appears I am never capable of being completely certain about anything else.” Throughout his search for knowing God, which has come about by his way of doubting everything, he comes up with this idea of god. He says he is an infinite and imperfect human being, which came from nothing. He continues and says that he something cannot come from nothing, therefore he must have came from something or something that is higher and more perfect than him put him there. The he doubts that idea, “Hence it follows that something cannot come into being out of nothing, and also that what is more perfect (that is, what contains in itself more reality) cannot come into being from what is less perfect.” Thus he concludes that there must be something that is greater than himself who the result is his existence and that cause must be God. He has, thus proven through a negation of the truth that God exists and is perfect and infinite as well as imperfect and finite.
Had Descartes never doubted anything he could have never know these truths. It was his use of methodological doubt, of taking nothing as true without knowing them clearly and distinctly and following his rules for understanding reason, that has brought him to the conclusion that he, an imperfect finite thinking thing, exists from something that is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent.
Bibliography
Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by D.A. cress. 4th edition. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998.
All the information research for this paper was found in and retrieved from the above source.
