Descartes and Doubt
The question to be addressed is as follows: if you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things? As the following will illustrate, I am convinced that the answer is in the affirmative. Moreover, I believe that the query is unnecessarily qualified; in my estimation, any pursuit of truth demands exercising doubt on a consistent basis, and certainly more than once in a lifetime.
Questions and Responses
What is your initial point-of-view? I believe that seeking truth inherently requires a willingness to practice skepticism with what is presented as truth, and with virtually anything encountered in the course of seeking real truth. Furthermore, I feel that the willingness referred to must reflect an active commitment, and not be perceived as an occasionally needed behavior.
How can you define your point-of-view more clearly? A more precise definition of my point-of-view can be had by better defining the components of the question. That is, it is essential that a seeker of truth be genuine in the ambition, as it is equally important that "all things" be the objects of doubt. If these two realities are in place, then the view may be expressed this way: a truly authentic interest in discovering truth, in any arena, demands an exercising of doubt in order to penetrate the many and diverse obstacles typically masking truth.
What is an example of your point-of-view? In pragmatic terms, an example of this view was the investigative journalism of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the 1970s, which resulted in the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Nixon. The truth of the circumstance, that the President had sanctioned the attempted theft of sensitive Democratic Party materials, could only be arrived at by a consistent doubting of the obfuscatory explanations provided by the government to shield the administration. More importantly, as in other pursuits...
Carrying it to the next logical step, he says that all opinions are false until proven otherwise, and perhaps it is not he himself who is responsible for his own deception, but rather it is "some deceitful demon" who is so clever and capable that he can blur the reality of "the sky, the air, the earth" into a dream or illusion. Meantime, Williams writes that Descartes is the kind of
However, there are numerous beliefs that his argument leaves unchallenged. When we dream, although the particular beliefs we form ("I am falling from an airplane.") are often false, the materials for our dream (airplanes, physical objects) come from things we experience when waking, and we can still rest assured that some of these things exist. Therefore, the dreaming argument leaves unchallenged our belief in general truths about the world
Descartes Discourse IV For centuries, humans have wondered about certain basic paradigms of the universe -- how do we know what we know? Is there truth? Is there a God? How can we prove that? While we know that this basic question has been debated for centuries, it was Rene' Descartes who focused more that only the discovery of reasonable knowledge and eternal truths were found by reason alone. These truths,
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Some of the reason for error, therefore, is not related to indifference or for not having enough time to fully consider some matter. Some of it is due to man's propensity to flaw, and to his limited ability (which is related to his limited mental and physical power). In addition to misinterpreting the nature of the relationship between intellect and free will, Descartes has incorrectly interpreted some of the most
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