Descartes Doubt Analysis

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Descartes' philosophy of doubt separates him from previous thinkers because he wasn't just another skeptic who used doubt to clarify what exists and what does not. Rather, Descartes' method of doubting is his attempt to formulate a foundation for building up knowledge from. Doubt provides the foundation for Descartes further reasoning of what is reality and what is not. Where other philosophers initiated by assuming there is certainty, Descartes build his entire philosophical scope by doubting.
He suspends any belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, everything that he believed without having inquired into their truth. Descartes designates doubt as a deliberate strategy to proceeding towards certainty.

As Descartes attempts to separate himself from all prior knowledge, anything that can be even slightly doubted, Descartes labels it as false. This leads him to conclude that nothing is true. Since he could doubt everything, this rule allows him to reject anything that has even least amount of doubt. As a result of which, he comes about a simple truth; that he exists. Simply because he is capable of doubting, he therefore, exists.

Descartes realizes that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects since our senses too easily deceive us. Attempting to doubt everything, he realizes that he cannot doubt. What he cannot doubt is that he doubts. Obviously, he exists if he doubts that he exists. His doubt that he exists proves that he exists, for he has to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore he can’t doubt that he exists and that there is at least one fact beyond doubt; “I am, I exist” is true every time it is conceived by mind.
Descartes then links his capability of doubting to thinking. He says, “I am; I exist...

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...falsified as well. But he comes to a conclusion that if he is being deceived by an evil demon, he must exist in order to be deceived at all.
Descartes confirms his existence however, by stating, "let him who can deceive me; so long as I think that I am something, he will never bring it about that I am nothing." (48). He claims that as long as he’s capable of thinking, no other being can deny his existence. The existence of cogito is accepted as true since it’s clear that it cannot be doubted.
So concluding that ‘I am,’ ‘I exist,’ is true whenever it is conceived in mind, attests the fact that since thinking is taking place, regardless of whether or not what is being thought of is true or not, implies that there must be something else involved in the notion, precisely the “I.” Consequently, “I exist” is a certain belief from which other certain truths can be inferred.

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