Descartes Methodological Skepticism

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Descartes’ first meditation, “What can be called into doubt”, is an introduction to his methodological skepticism. The meditation starts off by Descartes reflecting on his beliefs and coming to realize that many of these beliefs have turned out to be false in the long run. This causes him to question his belief system and make him wonder about what other beliefs of his are false. He is intent on finding a way in which all of his beliefs will be indubitable. To do this, he figures that the best way would be to wipe his slate of beliefs clean and start “fresh”. He goes on to doubt everything he knows, so that he will be able to uncover these indubitable beliefs. This will be his new foundation and serve to help him build a new structure of knowledge. However, Descartes is not going through all of his beliefs because he believes that they are all false, but rather to “weed out” the ones that do …show more content…

He is not looking to deceive us, although he is more than capable of doing so. Descartes continues on to present the possibility that an evil demon exists that is capable of deceiving us in the same way that God is able to. If this evil demon does in fact have that much power and is clearly able to deceive in any way then, there is really no way I would be able to trust anything that my senses tell me. With that being said, it seems as though almost all of my beliefs would be dubitable due to this omnipotent evil demon. This is the most solid argument when is comes to the skepticism that Descartes is trying to achieve through his progression. This is because this evil demon that Descartes is portraying would technically be able to deceive in many different ways where a person would not know deception from not. The evil demon would be able to create doubt to anything that is open to being doubted, which still leaves this argument up for

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