“What is Descartes’ method of doubt? What is it for? Explain it and briefly assess it.

Nanziba Ibnat
1239080
Professor Andrew Bailey
PHIL*1050
Midterm Replacement Essay
23.10.22
 Descartes used the "illusion" argument, the "dreaming" argument, and an "evil genius"

argument known as the "method of doubt" to attain his goal of proving that the mind and body are

two separate substances, the total separation of the mental and physical worlds. Descartes strives

to find a foundation of certainty on which to build his knowledge in his first meditation by

questioning all of his beliefs. He elaborates on a few areas of uncertainty in this meditation, and

they are treated with skepticism. He discusses a variety of topics, including his “method of doubt”

and his suggested dualism between mind and body. This essay will address Descartes' “method of

doubt” and his beliefs regarding the dualism between mind and body since Descartes' “method of

doubt” is related to the "mind-body dualism" in various respects.

The “method of doubt” encourages us to investigate our beliefs and question them. If we can

doubt them, we consider them untrue, and we must repeat this process until we are unable to

discover anything to doubt. The main point is that we accept all of our beliefs as false until we

uncover an undeniably true foundation on which to construct everything. The “method of doubt”

will be developed by questioning the senses, questioning the physical world, and contemplating the

existence of an “evil genius.”

The main concept of Descartes’ “method of doubt” is “to defeat skepticism on its ground.

Begin by doubting the truth of everything—not only the evidence of the senses and the more

extravagant cultural presuppositions but even the fundamental process of reasoning itself”.

According to Descartes, if the truth is confirmed to be true following this process, it will be

indisputable. Some fundamental concepts underpin this method:

1. The Human Senses Are Not Reliable: Everything the human senses experience is not real. One

should not believe what their senses tell them.

 2. Everything in This World Is Part of a Big Dream: This concept is founded on the reality that

dreams, no matter how real they appear to a dreamer, are nonetheless unreal. Therefore, it is

claimed that everything a human receives through his senses may be a dream. “On this

supposition, it is possible to doubt that any physical thing exists, that there is an external world

at all.”

3. Humans Are Being Deceived: Descartes believes in an "omnipotent God." He claims, however,

that this God is fooling the human mind.

Descartes explains that the mind should not trust what the senses tell it about the external

world. He doesn't have trust in his own body but the one notion he is certain of is that he is

thinking. As a result, he trusts his intuition. His famous remark, 'I think; therefore, I am,' establishes

the basis for his mind-body dualism. He has demonstrated that he has a mind without assuming

that he has a body. Descartes states that the mind and body are distinct but function as one entity.

“Imagination and sensory perception could not exist without a mind to contain them. Similarly,

some kinds of extension cannot occur in the absence of a body to contain them." Descartes

establishes the existence of God.  He claims that the concept of God's existence comes only from God

and not from the human mind. He also claims that God is not a liar and that his power is limitless.

Thus, God will not allow a mind to believe in false notions. Descartes' “method of doubt” and his

mind-body dualism both distrust the human senses and believe in God's infinite power. They do,

however, contain significant distinctions.

Descartes presents the possibility that our beliefs are dubious because our senses have

deceived us. That is, what we were perceiving in the real world may have been an illusion formed
by our senses. Descartes initially considers that his senses occasionally betray him in this line of

ideas. Then, if his senses occasionally deceive him, they may constantly deceive him. And if they are

continuously deceiving him, he cannot be assured of whatever convictions he has gained through

his senses. If he is uncertain about any of his beliefs, he must defer judgment on those beliefs.

However, this reasoning only applies to things observed from a distance by the senses.

Someone may argue that our senses wouldn't deceive us and that this doesn't apply to his

belief that he was physically present, experiencing things through his senses that may be true, but

Descartes responds that we can't be confident of such beliefs since we may be sleeping and it's all a

dream. As a result, he presents the possibility that we might doubt our beliefs because they are all

part of a dream. Descartes notes: "I realize that there is never any reliable way of distinguishing

being awake from being asleep.” The argument is then made that, while dreams are not reality, they

are constructed of reality or reflect a version of reality. He states: "there is no denying that certain

even simpler and more universal kinds of things are real.” So, in this context, the study of anything

with a complicated structure, such as physics, astronomy, and medicine, might be doubtful, but

arithmetic and geometry include certainty since there are fundamental concepts that are simply

true, according to Descartes.

Descartes maintains his “method of doubt” by presuming that we are dreaming about

everything for the sake of argument. Even though we are dreaming about everything, there is some

knowledge gained inside the dream itself. This means that, while we may dispute all of the visuals

and thoughts, the encounters in our dreams pertain to some external reality. However, we may

examine these images and ideas in their simplest form to discover if any of them are true in and of

themselves. Descartes arrived at the simple truth of mathematics after discarding all simple
components of pictures and concepts based on senses such as color, sound, and so on, Descartes

established the basic truth of mathematics which is that one plus two equals three and it is derived

solely from our thinking, regardless of whether we are sleeping or awake. Descartes applied this

concept to arrive at a clear and distinct thought that is without dispute. Similarly, while we may

declare that one plus three equals four, we cannot imagine in our brains that it equals four but just

three.

Descartes' “method of doubt”  focuses on being a skeptic of any thought in which he deploys

any doubt. His strategy for doubting is as follows: he will view any belief as erroneous if he can

create doubt about it since all ideas are created from potentially false preceding ones. As humans,

we've all constructed perceptions based on our senses that are just false. Our senses may be

continuously giving us the incomplete truth, and it is through these senses that we will develop yet

another thought. Descartes thinks that while seeking authentic knowledge, it is reliable to infer that

any principle derived by our senses is false. His skepticism is heightened by the deception of the

content of our dreams, which is created and frequently resembles elements we meet throughout

our lives. It is likely that the views on which we base our beliefs were formed when we were

dreaming. However, there are some scientific realities that, whether sleeping or awake, are always

true, so to begin from the beginning of our beliefs, we must also assume the role of an almighty

creator. God has the potential to affect our perceptions and interfere with our ability to determine

whether or not sciences are manufactured conceptions. This leads to just one absolute fact, and that

is "I think; therefore, I am" we understand that in order to think, we must be alive, and we must

exist.

Descartes states that the origin of our knowledge and truth begins when we start to

challenge what we have been taught since we were infants. He claims that to discover the truth, we
must examine all concepts, ideas, theories, and beliefs. By doing so, we will obtain a greater

knowledge of ourselves and the people around us. He also brings up the phrase "Cogito," which is a

well-known piece of reasoning. The translation of cogito is "I think," which, as Descartes argued in

the phrase "I think, therefore I am," implies that the fact that we can create ideas confirms that we

are existing because humans cannot think without existing. However, this argument might be used

against Descartes because his entire method is predicated on his attempt to prove his existence

solely through reasoning.

As we have witnessed Descartes pushing his quest for the absolute truth to its logical

conclusion by imagining an evil genius, he defines the malignant genius as someone who possesses

God's power and is not good. The 'evil genius' is determined to fool us into thinking there is a

physical universe when there isn't. Although Descartes also does not fully believe this 'evil genius'

exists, there is no way to rule it out based on our sensory experience. So, there is no way we can

dispute that one plus two does not equal three when our minds automatically acknowledge that it

does. Descartes utilized the notion of the 'evil genius' to postulate that perhaps there is an 'evil

genius’ who is deceiving us and keeping us from finding the true solution. Even though we

constantly believe that one plus two equals three perhaps this deity is deceiving us, and it equals

four. Descartes related this situation in which we are certain about our conviction in a given fact,

but afterward, realize that we were wrong about the fact. This may be the case for our

mathematical truths, in which an 'evil god' deceives us into not finding the proper answer to a

problem every time we count or do the arithmetic.

Following that, he evokes the concept of an all-powerful "demon" who may be controlling

his mind to create doubt and deceive him about the sensory experience and even his knowledge of
the most basic realities. However, he only realizes that it could be a demon after considering that it

may be God who has caused him to be deceived but then concludes: "God would not let me be

deceived like that, because he is said to be supremely good."  Then he concludes that, while God is

not deceiving him, he is still deceived, so he decides that there must be something else causing him

to be deceived, and thus creates this "demon."

Descartes' fundamental goal in employing the “method of doubt” was to discover a

foundation upon which real knowledge might be developed. Descartes sought assurance or truth

that could not be questioned beyond a reasonable doubt. Certainty might be defined as the inability

to doubt what we know as certainty is something that cannot be doubted. By ‘possible to doubt’,

Descartes meant any possibility whatsoever. This ensures that whatever that cannot be questioned

is certain. As a result, if we could locate something indisputable in this sense, we might use it in a

logical argument, such as a syllogism. The conclusion would be that the world exists in the manner

we believe it does. Descartes was also skeptical in his reasoning. To assess the veracity of his

arguments, he used reasoning and critical thinking. He was able to get to a supported conclusion

rather than justifying a predetermined opinion.

Descartes' “method of doubt” is his pursuit of certainty in knowledge, a system that allows

us to be confident that what we think we "know" is not a fiction of his imagination but an absolute

fact. The motivation for his “method of doubt” stems from the possibility that all of his thoughts are

false, based on the fact that he has had many false beliefs in the past and could have formed more

false beliefs with a fabricated base, and that to have stable sciences, we must be free of doubt. To

start over, Descartes must destroy each notion that causes him to question, leaving just one simple
truth. John Hospers, who is an American philosopher and political activist, counters this skepticism

by arguing that we must develop a mechanism to distinguish between true from false.

In contrast to Descartes' “method of doubt” John Hospers challenges the word "know" and

the criteria of knowledge. Hospers points out that the word "know" itself has quite distinct

connotations, with the “method of doubt” using it in the strong sense and Hospers using it in the

weak. Instead of dismissing all disputed knowledge, Hospers contends that if we know something is

false, we must be knowledgeable about the subject at hand. Although we cannot dispute that

Descartes' efforts to dismiss all beliefs served his purpose, this argument asserts that knowing is

believing. Unlike Descartes, Hospers argues that if we know something is true, we believe it, but

Descartes denies knowing anything even if he believes it, which Hospers interprets to suggest that

he does not understand what knowledge is. We are to have a proof for our knowledge in this

argument, but the extent of our evidence is carefully disputed, and all that can be determined is that

something should not be doubted once all tests that would settle the doubt have been conducted.

One of the most fundamental points made in the anti-skepticism argument is that just because one

does not know one perspective that built another perception does not mean they do not know the

subsequent perception. Just because our ideas could be untrue does not mean they are, a theory

that Descartes accepts. In contrast to Descartes' reasoning, it is asserted that if there is uncertainty,

it is just likely; it has no bearing on knowing. Essentially, the idea is that people should not be

skeptical about realities that are unrelated to what we perceive as everyday life. We should only be

concerned with the reality of the life we believe we are living, even if it is a delusion.

John Hospers argues that we can have total confidence in our convictions because there is

enough evidence from history and our personal experiences to validate an argument as accurate.
Although both Descartes and Hospers have strong opinions, Hospers' philosophical ideas on

various levels of knowledge and evidence are more convincing than Descartes' theories of cognition

and reality. The only reasonable argument against Descartes' “method of doubt” that Hospers

points out, in my opinion, is that there is a difference in the usage and meaning of the word "know."

Although he claims to use the weak sense of the word, he utterly misses Descartes' arguments.

There is no way we can know anything if we cannot agree on a concise meaning. We must contrast

"I am, I exist" with "I know nothing, but that I know nothing at all," because both conclusions strike

the same points. The criticism ignores the genuine potential that everything except our existence in

our thoughts may be a fiction of our imagination, and it is there that we seek the truth; "is this

real?" It is conceivable for us to know facts in our supposed existence, but if that life is a dream or a

trick of God, none of it is true. Descartes compares reality to a dream, but Hospers constructs an

imaginary border between the dream and "real" worlds. Although it is uncomfortable to live in

perpetual uncertainty, we must accept the possibility that our entire lives may be a dream, with no

means of knowing what is genuine and untrue. It is considered that knowing obligates one  to

believe, but what happens if we cease believing? Aside from the fact that it lacks critical

components, it does not indicate that we should not be cautious. Overall, Hospers provides a lousy

retort.

Descartes' “method of doubt” was quite easy to comprehend in his meditation, and he

provided several ideas and options as to why we should accept them and why they may be real. He

went into great length on why we should not trust our senses or mathematical equations. Descartes

stated that we have not tried to prove hypotheses that we have been taught since we were very

young, and that many of them are false. Descartes did an amazing job justifying his method and also

adding counterarguments that may or may not have worked in his favor in a few cases. Although,
denying all of our previously held beliefs and notions is not the ideal strategy to reach the truth

since we may end up generating new difficulties by digging deeper. Descartes' “method of doubt”

has significant drawbacks, mostly because we are attempting to doubt things from God and

concepts that have been confirmed to be right by numerous people over the years. However,

Descartes' major objective was to teach the audience that questioning what we currently know

might lead to new disciples and possibilities.