Tuesday, October 8, 2019
A Noble Failure?
Many of us in class found Descartes' foundational project to fail. Let's assume that he cannot justify all his claims to knowledge by an appeal to the Cogito. What can we learn from this failure? Should we look for a wider class of foundational beliefs? Should we avoid appeals to a God who is not a deceiver? Should we find a different way to justify beliefs that does not require an appeal to foundational beliefs?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Descartes’s foundational project—to find a class of beliefs that do not need any justification and can be the foundation of all future knowledge—has its strengths and flaws. By doubting his own existence, Descartes proves his existence as “a thinking thing” (meditation 2). However, his Cogito belief can be challenged. One could believe that the act of thinking does not necessarily mean the thing thinking exists—it only means the thoughts exist. Additionally, Descartes falsely assumes that what exists must think first. Yet, that does not account for the unconscious objects around us, such as trees and buildings. In other words, Descartes fixates on the center of the universe and the basis of all existence within himself, which deceives him. Understanding existence should not be limited to our own experience alone. Descartes’s flaws in the Cogito also shows us that extreme skepticism—which, as much as Descartes fears, he utilizes to find his foundational truth—is self-defeating. We should find a different way to justify beliefs because foundational beliefs are almost impossible to prove. That is, there is no philosophical belief that can be seen as absolute truth; so, we must learn to accept partial-truths and make sounds assumptions to have and acquire any knowledge at all. If skepticism proves anything, it is that there are no definite truths, and searching for a foundational belief is valuable but impossible. However, Descartes’s skepticism does remind us that we are skilled when it comes to seeing everything through our own biases; it is important to doubt and question ourselves, but, at some point, we need to accept almost truths versus impossible absolute truths.
ReplyDeleteDescartes tries to justify all his claims to knowledge through finding some things which never need to be justified, the Cogito. He believes that the fact that you are thinking and therefore exist need no justification and can be used as the foundation of all his arguments. He fails in his foundational project, since he can prove very little from the Cogito argument. He may know that he as a thinking thing exists, but he has no idea if anyone else really exists. His supposed foundational argument is very limited since it pertains to only himself and does little if anything to the material world around him. In his proof of God, using this knowledge. Descartes has a lot of problems in his proof of a God, including the fact that he uses an all-powerful deceiver to proof his cogito argument. Then disproves the deceiver later, disproving his premises for the foundational project showing that it is not actually possible to find these things that require no justification. Descartes should also avoid appealing to a God who is not a deceiver, since he tries to prove that God is real by saying that; 1. God is a supremely perfect being. 2. Perfection entails existence. 3. Therefore, God exists. This is not a good argument, since there a number of times where something is perfect in idea, but is actually less perfect in existence, which if it is true, shows the God does not exist. An argument could also be made that God is not a supremely perfect being, since the people under his charge can be immoral. The rebuttal to this is that the people are immoral due to a lack of understanding or information and not actually because of a lack of God's perfection. In many religions, God is not seen as perfect. In Judaism, God is not seen as perfect, since there are examples where God's anger got out of control and Moses had to try and calm God down. Descartes's foundationalism belief disproves skepticism by proving your own existence, but the Cogito argument lacks functions in other philosophical debates. The search for these foundational beliefs is a very important quest since it proves our own existence, as mentioned earlier, but many beliefs cannot be justified based on the Cogito, so we should find a different way of proving things.
ReplyDelete