Critically Discuss Descartes' Method of Doubt

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

Critically Discuss Descartes’ Method of Doubt

Descartes’ Method of Doubt is to doubt everything that can be coherently doubted to achieve truth and foundational beliefs. Descartes sets about doubting his beliefs because he believes that nothing indubitable can be built upon something dubitable, i.e., if his foundational beliefs are wrong then the whole structure of belief can be doubted. Descartes decides that he will overturn all his beliefs in order to separate the true from the false, he describes it as a ‘general overturning of my beliefs’ and decides to keep only absolute beliefs. Descartes says in the first meditation that “because undermining the foundations (of belief) will cause whatever that has been built upon them to fall down of its own accord- I will at once attack those principles which supported everything I once believed”.

This is Descartes’ first huge mistake, he does not specify what his absolute beliefs are, what are absolute beliefs? Descartes gives the impression that he will overturn all his beliefs, but he keeps these ‘absolute beliefs’, then does this mean that there are some that he can hold back as true? By specifying what he did not intend to doubt, Descartes could have avoided many of his pitfalls, there are many things that would have surely been rational to doubt, like the logic behind his own Method of Doubt, for all he knows, it could be complete nonsense, and his method could not have achieves the results that he desired at all.

When Descartes begins the process of ridding himself off all his beliefs, he does not recognise the importance of having replacements for them, otherwise, surely, he can’t even write anything because he has to even doubt his own language and legitimacy. Before purging all his beliefs surely he should set some ‘ground-rules’ like the fact that he possesses the ability to read, write, comprehend his own thoughts, otherwise insanity would ensue if he had no beliefs at all. It is clear that nothing can be resolved if everything is doubted.

Descartes begins his quest for truth by saying ...

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Descartes begins his quest for truth by saying that, because senses can be deceived, for example, when objects appear small, when they are, in fact huge, due to distance, then we should treat all sense based beliefs as false “Despite the fact that the senses occasionally deceive us about things that are very small or very far away, perhaps there are many other things about which one surely cannot have doubts, even if they are derived from the senses”. To this I would argue, what beliefs are not ‘sense based’? Even if an intellectual tells us something that is not necessarily sense based then surely even this can’t be trusted as we have heard it- therefore to believe it we must trust our senses, if we read something in a book, to believe it then we must trust our senses to rely on this knowledge also. The only viable way of believing something which was not originally sense based would be through an innate belief, but these are, surely, less likely to be true than a words in a book?

Descartes then doubts whether he is awake, he discusses the fact that he has been deceived before in dreams that he is awake, and argues that it is difficult to separate reality from dreams for this reason and concludes therefore that because it’s not possible prove that he is awake, that he is dreaming. This is a ridiculous argument as

it’s easy to see that in dreams you have no sense of rationalisation and argument, when awake we can recall memories of being deceived when dreaming. When Descartes discusses whether he is awake or asleep he confuses himself by concluding the he is, in fact, asleep-“When I think more carefully, I see so clearly I can never distinguish, by reliable signs, being awake from being asleep, that I am confused and this feeling of confusion almost confirms me in believing that I am asleep”. He does this because he can’t prove that he’s awake, but in doing this he misdirects himself to from the task of trying to find ways to prove that he is not actually dreaming, as Kenny says, ‘One cannot entertain beliefs in sleep’ (1993:31).

A device that Descartes creates to pursue his Method of Doubt is the ‘Evil Demon’ “Some evil mind, who is all powerful and cunning, has devoted all their energies in deceiving me. I will imagine that the sky, air, earth, colours, shapes, sounds, and everything external to me are nothing more than the creatures of dreams by means of which an evil spirit entraps my credulity. I shall imagine myself as if I have no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses at all, but as if my beliefs in all these things were false.” The flaw in this argument is that, how is it possible to prove anything if everything is potentially a deception- how would it be possible to get round the deception to build foundational beliefs? If Descartes does rely on this deceiving demon then surely the demon could deceiving him to believe that he could obtain the truth by ignoring all his senses. If there was an all-powerful, all-deceiving demon then there would be absolutely nothing we could ever do to obtain the truth, and therefore by creating this demon all Descartes is doing is undermining the very reason he created a method of doubt- to seek the truth. It is obvious that Descartes recognises this rather large flaw in his argument when, in meditation three, he disregards the idea of this Evil Demon totally and therefore contradicts a rather large part of his argument so far.

Overall I have found Descartes’ Method of Doubt too easy to flaw, a true Method of Doubt should describe it’s own limitations and faults, and this is because it was obvious from the beginning that Descartes knew he couldn’t doubt everything, so it gave the appearance that Descartes had ‘run himself into a rut’.