Wednesday, September 30, 2015
When the Walls Come Tumbling Down
Descartes realizes that some of the beliefs he thought were true turned out to be false. In the pursuit of knowledge he seeks to tear down his previous beliefs and build them up again upon a firm foundation. In other words, he is engaged in a foundational project, searching for a class of beliefs that themselves are not in need of justification in order to justify his other beliefs. But is this quest a misguided one? Do such beliefs exist? If not, does that mean that knowledge is impossible? Or is there some other way to justify our beliefs?
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After Descartes original beliefs were prove false, he set off for a new quest to justify our beliefs. However, I believe that this task is not only misguided but also impossible. Therefore, I also believe that it is impossible for us to gain knowledge, because true beliefs do not exist. Descartes starts of by describing foundationalism. Foundationalism is the foundations of all of our justified beliefs. Although this idea sounds like it should work, it cannot exist because we can never prove anything wrong or right. Unless Descartes can prove that an evil genius who is always deceiving us does not exist, can we really be sure about anything? I think the idea of the evil genius is similar to Plato’s cave. We only believe what we have grown used to, but what if there is someone who is constantly deceiving us? In the cave, the people trapped only see shadows of objects and cannot see the truth. In Descartes’ evil genius theory, we could be the ones trapped in the cage and the evil genius will be the one showing us false beliefs. Descartes mission to find justified beliefs is therefore impossible because how can he be certain about anything? The only thing that can be justified is that “I exist”. However, that is not a foundational belief because we cannot generate knowledge off of it. I can only know that I exist and I cannot prove anything else to be a reality. Descartes new mission to discover more beliefs is going to end in a failure. There is no absolute way to guarantee a belief and that is why his quest is misguided.
ReplyDeleteDescartes’s ultimate goal is to find beliefs that are absolutely undoubtable. In other words, he is seeking to find knowledge in its purest form. He acknowledges that justifying such knowledge (true justified beliefs) either end up being infinite, end up at a stopping point, or end up in a circle. His aim is to end up at a stopping point. This stopping point is known as foundationalism: the idea that all of our beliefs are ultimately justified by a class of beliefs that do not need justification themselves. These, if we were to analogize foundationalism to a pyramid, are at the bottom of the pyramid, and anything upwards is a product of such rooted layers. But such a task seems nearly impossible. Is there really anything in this world that does not need justification? Is there really such a “class of beliefs” out there that are the foundation for the rest of our beliefs that need justification? I feel that such a set is unattainable, at least through Descartes’s approach. Take, for example, a notable objection by Hume that undermines Descartes’s quest: “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.” He does, however, acknowledge that such an idea may be perceived by someone other than him, that upon reflection, one only perceives himself, but that such a perception is not possible in him. Now let’s throw it back to The Republic for one moment. Socrates spends a great deal trying to understand this highly complex notion of morality and what it entails. In doing so, it seems that everything in which he uses to explore morality needs some sort of justification. Morality is good. Okay, but why is it good? Is there a foundational belief that does not need any sort of justification that we can just use to address morality? Not in the case of Socrates at least. Thus, while there MAY be some belief hidden out there, I do not believe that it can be attained, even with years upon years of meditations. Such a task, in my eyes at least, seems admirable but almost pointless. On the other hand, while I believe that it is not within the capability of any human to discover such beliefs, it might be possible that they do exist. While it may seem like I am contradicting myself, as I stated earlier that it is possible that everything needs justification, I am, in the end, open to believing both viewpoints. Think about happiness for a moment. There are many people now who study happiness, yet they look at the components that happiness entails (i.e. money, family, love, etc.). If happiness were to be represented by a eukaryotic cell, the components of happiness would be things like the plasma membrane, the cytoplasm, and the ribosome, while happiness itself would be the DNA, the core of the cell. When you ask yourself, “Why do I want to be happy?” it seems that we reach a stopping point. We get past these layers that ultimately reach this one question that addresses happiness itself in its most pure form, and it seems like we’ve just found ourselves at a point of no further addressing. While the example of happiness may be a bit off in comparison to Descartes’s quest for knowledge, it still shares a similar idea. Ultimately, there is no way to determine if such beliefs exist; however, I believe that regardless of their existence, we should not try to discover them; rather we should leave them in their natural state. To back track to Hume’s objection once more, that the self is not a whole unit, but rather a collection of several perceptions arising from our senses, it makes me wonder whether Descartes’s decision to abandon his senses for his quest was really a smart move. After all, it seems that senses are a necessary and fundamental part of knowledge, even if there happens to be some Evil Genius deceiving me at this very moment.
ReplyDeleteSure, the quest to build a basis of knowledge that doesn’t need to be justified may be a misguided one, but no, that doesn’t mean that knowledge is impossible. We can’t prove that we aren’t being deceived by an evil genius, but we do understand our surroundings, and even if our understanding of what is real differs from what really is, the ability to comprehend something, even if it’s a lie, is in my opinion, a form of knowledge. For those who disagree, and believe that something only qualifies as knowledge if it’s an understanding of undisputable reality (which doesn’t exist), I would point out another thing: If we don’t understand our surroundings, and can’t know anything for sure about other people or things, we can, and do, at least know ourselves. The Cogito moves in this direction, with the idea that thinking proves one’s existence, but I’d take it a step further, and say that the ability to think and be self-aware is proof of knowledge. Even if everything outside of my mind is an illusion, by processing it, and understanding the way I process it, I have knowledge of myself. Every time I feel an emotion, and am able to in any way articulate, even just to myself, what it is I’m feeling, I am demonstrating a grasp of myself, and therefore, even if only in a very narrow field, knowledge.
ReplyDeleteSearching for a class of beliefs that you know are true so that you can use them to build other ideas, makes sense however; such beliefs do not exist. The only beliefs that we can know for absolute certain are beliefs that cannot be built upon. An example of that type of belief is knowing that we exist. There is no belief that you can build upon knowing that you exist. One idea that we may think comes from our existence is that fact that you can feel things, but even if you know that you can feel things you can't know for certain what makes you feel that way. This is because of the possibility of an evil genius. The evil genius may deceive you into thinking that you are feeling pain because you burned yourself, when in actuality you could be in a completely different place and you are only tricked into thinking that you were burned and it hurt. A similar situation would be thinking that one plus one equals two but the evil genius could have deceived you into thinking that. This idea means that the idea of knowledge as we know it is false because we cannot verify what we think that we know. The only knowledge that we have is that we exist. If that is the only think that we know for certain and we know that that is the only thing that we can ever know for certain there is not point in not living your life as you would before you knew that you only know one thing.
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ReplyDeleteDescartes' ultimate goal is to identify a set of beliefs which justifies all others, and lays the foundation for all of his other beliefs. He does so by reevaluating all of his beliefs using methodic doubt: assuming that all of his beliefs which are doubtable are false, so that he can get to the core of his beliefs. Descartes is a skeptic in search of the foundations of all knowledge, who is struggling to prove that he does have real knowledge throughout the meditations. His quest for this fundamental fact which will justify the rest of his beliefs is an understandable one: everybody wants to have knowledge, and when one's knowledge is called into question one must try to prove its verity. Descartes examines whether or not he has knowledge by trying to prove the existence and disposition of god, examining deception, and trying to prove his own existence. The principles which Descartes examines get to the fundamentals of all beliefs, and make up the bottom of the pyramid: Descartes is correct in examining what he does, and gets very close to proving his knowledge through these arguments. However, being a skeptic myself, I do not believe that such foundational principles are attainable and comprehendible in the way which Descartes hopes them to be. Though he gets close, Descartes will not ever fully prove his knowledge to be true, he will not ever be able to be satisfied with what he finds because there is a way of disproving nearly everything, which is something that both Descartes and Plato really grapple with. Truth seems to be subjective, as does morality, and attempting to prove knowledge as a whole, for all beings, with a subjective foundation does not prove anything at all. All beliefs, whether "doubtable" or not, can be argued against and disproved, and in this manner Descartes will never find the answers which he seeks. There really is no other way to justify all of our beliefs, either; the methodology does not matter, since it is the subject matter which is at fault. Though Descartes is justified in seeking the foundation of his knowledge, his goal is ultimately unreachable.
ReplyDeleteIn his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes begins a noble quest to find the knowledge. He brings up the question of if he can find fundamental ideas that do not themselves need justification, and can be used as the foundation for all knowledge. Knowledge has been defined as a true justified belief. So Descartes is looking for something that he does not know exists. Descartes will never be able to find these beliefs because they do not exist. Without any proof there is nothing that can inherently be assumed as true. Each person’s beliefs are known to them and they only assume they are true is because they have been proven to them. But, people’s beliefs change continuously as they progress through life and learn more. The beliefs that they assume to be true cannot function without any justification even if it is simply because someone told them so. Descartes has become misguided in his search for knowledge because it is impossible to find any belief that can be known as being true without proof. His search is like a young child’s search for Santa. A young child will try to stay up as late as they can to see Old St. Nick, but they will never see him because he does not exist. Descartes can question every idea and even develop ones that no one has thought of before but, he will only be left assuming they are true. No belief can simply be true without justification because that would mean that knowledge is not true. It is the justification of a belief that makes it true and makes it knowledge. Knowledge is simply a perception of what beliefs happen to be justified and accept as true at any given time. There was once a time where the earth was assumed to be the center of the universe because the smartest minds at the time had found some kind of evidence to justify this; but as technology advanced and they learned more they found that this belief was false. All knowledge is simply a temporary justification of a belief and at some point something will come along that will make people question or disprove the belief, making it impossible to have a set of beliefs that are true without justification.
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ReplyDeleteIt is true that there are some ideas that are known to be true by the majority of people on Earth, but I don’t believe that makes it true. Through the years there have been ideas that have been widely accepted by humanity. These ideas would eventually be proven wrong. Therefore, there really isn’t any way for anyone, except God, to know the truth about anything. So the foundational beliefs that Descartes is in search of can’t be true. These foundational beliefs could one day change when something is discovered for the first time. Even if scientists or mathematicians come out with ideas they say are true these are merely claims, that one day could be disproven. For an argument to be justified the argument must be proven to the conclusion of these fundamental ideas. Yet, if these ideas are false the argument is not really justified. This means that knowledge is not an obtainable goal. You may believe you have knowledge. You can clearly and distinctly perceive something that is totally false. Everyone in the world could accept the fact that the sky is blue, because that’s how they perceive it. Yet, they could be being deceived. There is only one foundational belief that everyone can know, and that is that only you exist.
ReplyDeleteAfter Descartes realizes that the conventional ideas that people have about their existence cannot be easily proven, he tries to come up with a group of foundational beliefs that will help define what people “know”. These include ideas such as others existing. Descartes gives many scenarios that explain why one cannot assume the existence of others; one of them is the existence of an evil genius deceiving us, making the world we see before us. This idea mirrors the allegory of the cave and the world we see before us is an illusion and we have yet to escaped and see the real world. Descartes’ only belief that we know for certain is that I exist; We can for sure know that I exist because things that exist can be deceived and not deceived and I am always being deceived or not deceived. This is the only thing we know for sure, that I have a mind, not for certain a body but for sure a mind because I have thoughts and without a mind I can have no thoughts and if I have no thoughts I don’t exist. This is Descartes’ first foundational belief for figuring out what we know. This belief is hard to jump off of and create other beliefs because one cannot use it to prove other ideas such as the existence of others. This is why we need another belief for certain because with this belief, we will be forever lost in the questions we have about others and the world we live in.
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