Descartes’ Epistemology: Certainty, Doubt, and the Search for Truth
In this text, Descartes addresses an epistemological problem that responds to the question: Is there any principle of true philosophy? Descartes argues that it is reprehensible to find things in doubt, and that the senses can deceive us via demonstration, which is indistinguishable from waking from sleep. In conclusion, all doubt is the constancy of knowing myself, wondering, and while doubting, thinking, and therefore being indubitable. The author means a necessary, universal principle to learn. In truth, there is certainty, understanding, and idea. Doubt is a provisional method to know. Descartes’ means to do philosophy is to apply Cartesian epistemology to knowledge. The theory is based not only on reality but also on knowledge itself. Its main mission is to explain how we can be sure that something is valid knowledge (certainty), that is, how to be sure that the procedure leads to rational certainties. The problem of true knowledge becomes the problem of knowledge that is true and incontrovertible. The method arises with the intention to demolish the building of knowledge known before this, due to the lack of a comprehensive and systematic approach to underpinning knowledge itself on its root causes and not particulars. Having said this, we begin to expose what Descartes meant by “true” to see what he means by “knowledge.” Descartes meant by truth to certainty, understanding, or idea. Through his Meditations and his Method, he attempted to respond to the prevailing skepticism. His strategy was not a rejection or denial of doubt but its acceptance until the end. That is, he used doubt as a method and submitted all questions with the knowledge to find a truth that could no longer be doubted, even by the most skeptical. To get it done, he followed these steps:
- Doubt of the senses, which are confusing and often deceive us (we cannot distinguish dream from waking).
- Doubt of reality. After all, we’ve all had vivid dreams that seem so intensely real, and we can ask if all our life is a dream of great intensity.
- Doubt of understanding. Imagine a powerful evil genius deceiving me, making me doubt even in cases in which I believe to be absolutely certain of anything.
At this point, we have doubted the data provided to us by way of reality itself, and even one’s own understanding. In this way, he reaches a certain first: “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.” The absolute certainty that I exist becomes the basis of absolute knowledge. Subsequently, he develops deductive thinking through three substances:
- Adventitious: those that come from abroad.
- Factitious: those that are built through the imagination.
- Innate: those who have the understanding itself (size, thought, and infinity).
From here, he concludes that from nothing, nothing comes out, so there must be an infinite and perfect being that creates it, i.e., God.
René Descartes: A Brief Biography
René Descartes was born in The Hague (France) in 1596. From a noble family, he was sent to the Jesuit school of La Flèche, one of the most famous schools of his time. There he received a sound philosophical and scientific training, and he was interested in the new scientific and philosophical ferment and a methodology capable of finding the truth. Over time, disoriented, he left school after graduating in law at the University of Poitiers and decided to pursue a career in the military. He then fought against Spain for the freedom of the Netherlands in the Thirty Years’ War. At the time he was going to publish his “Treatise on the World,” he learned of the conviction of Galileo and, fearful, reversed his decision. He continued his work. He started a loving relationship with Helene Jans, with whom he had a daughter who died at age five. Bitter controversies aroused by his work, Descartes accepted the invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden and left Holland, which was no longer hospitable to him and was full of contradictions. However, he spent a very brief time at the Swedish court. The philosopher, upon leaving the palace, fell ill and died of pneumonia after a week of suffering.
Comparing Descartes’ Conception of Knowledge with Plato and Aristotle
Plato’s project was political in nature; he intended knowledge to be the supreme idea of good (justice). Descartes comes from the unification of science and seeks to create a metaphysical tree. The existence of a unique, immutable truth for both philosophers is true. Plato defends the process of reminiscence and dialectics, and Descartes instead advocates a reverse procedure, being a philosopher suspicious of everything to get to the truth. Both attach importance to mathematics. Plato and Descartes did not conceive of it similarly. Plato relates it to dianoia and puts it in his dialectical method. Descartes considers perfect and rational knowledge to be at the core of his method. On the other hand, what has changed is that the universal is not intended as an Idea, Plato’s style, or as a form or substance, as in Aristotle. Recall that Plato and Aristotle also considered intuition: they learned directly by the nous, as the supreme form of knowledge. While for Descartes, the understanding apprehends only what it could by itself. And finally, for Aristotle, the syllogism was a deduction in which findings and propositions are connected. Scholasticism (inherited from Aristotelian logic) means the syllogism as a deductive process in which, from a more general view, a less general one is still obtained, but this method provides no new truths since it was implicit in the premises.
Is There Indisputable Truth?
I rather agree with Descartes that there are indisputable truths, with two exceptions: the doubt of knowing myself, because if I think and I doubt, then I exist; and an infinite and perfect being we call God. According to Descartes, God is the creator of everything, and from nothing, nothing comes out. So there must be a beginning of everything that is absolutely certain and indubitable. As we doubt everything that the senses, reality, and understanding offer us. A clear example is using it when questioning understanding, imagining that an evil genius is powerful enough to deceive us to the point where we think we have something right. Or when he doubts reality, setting an example of a very real dream. Therefore, according to him, these two principles do not doubt, are indisputable and indubitable. But if everything is as simple as put forth by Descartes, why are there people who doubt an infinite, perfect, and creative being? Apart from the question before us, the problem of faith arises. As the only known indisputable truth is doubtful.