Running head: DESCARTES PHILOSOPHY 1

Descartes’ Philosophy of Doubt

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Descartes’ Philosophy of Doubt

Descartes was certain that he doubts. He was certain that he exists and he thinks.

Although he was sure that the evil demon exists, the demon could not make him think that he

does not exist because doing so would prove that he indeed thinks and therefore exists. Thinking

and existing are connected in such a way that when a human being has the mental capacity to

think, then this is a clear indication that he/she exists. Descartes developed an organized way of

doubting one’s thoughts called Cartesian doubt. He argued that all senses of a human being lie.

Therefore, there is need to identify a powerful being upon whose trust one can build a sense of

self trust. He believed in the existence of God to give him direction and the sense for

existence(Chene, 2005). The main reason why he was certain of the existence of God is the

belief that God was the fountain of goodwill and truth. Due to the existence of evil and deceit in

the world, especially within a person, Descartes was sure that there existed a demon who

controlled all the negative aspects.

Descartes based his philosophy on the fact that the opposite of certainty is doubt. He

doubted his beliefs as a threshold of making them facts. He developed a system of using reason

to develop science. Additionally, he developed a method called methodological skepticism which

argued that it is not possible to rule out a fact by doubting it and later establish the truth value

behind the doubt(Morris & Baker, 2015). The overlap between a thought and an individual

establishes the principle of existence in such a way that thoughts cannot be separated from the

person who has the thought. Through this, he proves further that he exists because he can think.

Reasoning is connected to the other body senses and the soul. In developing fundamental aspects

of life, Descartes builds a system of knowledge that rules out perception and deems it unreliable.

The need for deducing the factual concepts of a phenomenon is important. The interaction
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between religion and physics encouraged him to study the connection between the mind and the

body, and it is clear that the dualism between these two body parts is evident. The mind is

thought to control the body, and this revelation provided a foundation for development of mind

studies even after his death. His moral philosophy ideas state that ethics and freewill are related,

and human beings need to seek doing good things in the society to have peace and pleasure. He

bases most of his arguments on religious beliefs and acknowledges the existence of God as the

most clear and true belief.

In 2016, a year when information is readily available especially in social media,

information consumed by human beings is faced with many uncertainties. Fake news may be

expressed to be true, and many people easily take it as gospel truth. Unlike Descartes, the need to

question and doubt the authenticity of information has lost value. Spread of propaganda takes

place so fast until people confuse it for truth. There is need to develop a means of evaluating the

truth of issues in the modern world so that there is a distinction between facts and fallacies.

However, you can be sure of the originality of information be analyzing the source of the

information. If the source is reliable, one may choose to believe in the information though it is

healthy to doubt.
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References

Chene, D. Des. (2005). :Descartes’ System of Natural Philosophy. Isis, 96(3), 436–437.

https://doi.org/10.1086/498777

Morris, K., & Baker, G. (2015). Descartes’ Dualism. In Descartes’ Dualism (pp. 11–22).

https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203983638