Problem of Knowledge & Descartes

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The problem of knowledge is a key one in philosophy, asking as it does whether there is anything we can really know and whether what we know can be said to be objectively true. Theories of knowledge come under the heading of epistemology. We perceive the world through our sense, but our senses can be deceived. The degree of deception involved also varies according to different views of the world. Some see this deception as absolute and deny that there can be any knowledge at all through the senses. Others admit knowledge acquired through the senses while recognizing that there are limitations. RenT Descartes was a rationalist, and his thinking was governed by his knowledge of and dedication to mathematics, which he believed could clear up the confusions and uncertainties of philosophy. In this regard, Descartes wished to attain certainty with reference to the external, physical objects in the world around us. Mathematics, he believed, could help philosophy achieve absolute certainty so that philosophy could then reach final and certain truth. He began with the now well-known proposition, "I think, therefore I am," and from this he built a philosophical structure striving for the aforementioned mathematical certainty.

Descartes began with his method of doubt, undertaken because he had reached an age where he now believed that he would be able to remove all of his earlier beliefs and begin with a clean slate, as it were. He says that everything he knew or thought

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ndistinguishable at the time from the dreaming state. Descartes suggests that we pretend we are asleep and accept that all that we sense is false and illusory: Nevertheless we must at least agree that the things seen by us in sleep are as it were like painted images, and cannot have been formed save in the likeness of what is real and true (599-600). There must then be real objects corresponding to what we sense in our dreams, and so there is some correlation between the illusion and reality. Descartes thus determines that disciplines treating of composite things are of doubtful character, while arithmetic, geometry, and so on, disciplines that treat only of the simplest and most general things while being little concerned as to whether or not they are actual existents, have a content that should be seen as certain and indubitable. Mathematics may be false to the degree that it deals with composites and measures things in the real world, while arithmetic, which treats of no more than numbers in an abstract sense, can be considered true. The one thing that cannot be doubted and that is true each time it is expressed by a person is that that person exists. Descartes finds that he might doubt everything else because his sens
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Approximate Word count = 1639
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

Problem of Knowledge & Descartes

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