Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is an example of a rationalist. According to Descartes, before we can describe the nature of reality (as is done in metaphysics) or say what it means for something to be or exist (which is the focus of ontology), we must first consider what we mean when we say we know what reality, being, or existence is. He suggests that it is pointless to claim that something is real or exists unless we first know how such a claim could be known as a justified true belief. But to say that our beliefs are justified, we have to be able to base them ultimately on a belief that is itself indubitable.
Such a belief could then provide a firm foundation on which all subsequent beliefs are grounded and could thus be known as true. This way of thinking about knowledge is called foundationalism. First Meditation Descartes argues that our ordinary experience of the world cannot provide the kind of guaranteed foundation on which all other knowledge can be based. We are often disappointed to learn that what we have been taught are merely prejudices, or that what our senses tell us is incorrect.
That should make us wonder about whether all the other things that we think are obvious might likewise be mistaken. In order to test whether what we think we know is truly correct, Descartes suggests that we adopt a method that will avoid error by tracing what we know back to a firm foundation of indubitable beliefs. Of course, it is possible that there are no absolutely unshakeable truths. It is also possible that we might discover that our prejudices cannot be removed or that beliefs we think are ultimate foundations for all our other beliefs are not really ultimate at all. The point of our meditations is to challenge those beliefs, even if we have held them for a long time.
The Term Paper on The Importance of Considering Philosophical and Psychological Foundations in Developing a Curriculum
As proposed by Golan Steven (1982); Interviews were conducted with a state director of business and office education, superintendent, curriculum director, director of vocational education, principal, business education department chairman, business education faculty member, parent, and student. The instrument used was "What Do You Believe? ," 15 statements of ideas expressed in educational ...
And that self-critique will take a real effort. In order to determine whether there is anything we can know with certainty, Descartes says that we first have to doubt everything we know. Such a radical doubt might not seem reasonable, and Descartes certainly does not mean that we really should doubt everything. What he suggests, though, is that in order to see if there is some belief that cannot be doubted, we should temporarily pretend that everything we know is questionable. This pretence is what is called a hypothetical doubt.
To make sure that we take the pretence seriously, Descartes suggests that there might be good arguments to think that such doubting is justified (and thus more than simply something we should pretend to do).
His arguments fall into two categories: those aimed against our sense experiences and our supposition that we can distinguish between being awake and dreaming, and those aimed against our reasoning abilities themselves.
Since sense experience is sometimes deceiving, it is obvious to Descartes that a posteriori claims (e. g., that this milk tastes sour or that suit is dark blue) cannot be the basis for claims of knowledge. We do not know that what we experience through our senses is true; at least, we are not certain of it. And we cannot tell when our senses are correctly reporting the way things really are and when they are not. So the best thing to do is to doubt whether any knowledge can be based on our sense experiences. Furthermore, how do we know that we are not dreaming some particular experience we have, or that we are not dreaming all of our experience of the world?
When we dream we imagine things happening often with the same sense of reality as we do when we are supposedly awake. Just as a person who has an amputated limb has real sensations and feels real pains in a hand or a foot that no longer exists, we sense that we have a body and interact with other bodies. But isn’t it possible that we are dreaming that there are things that exist apart from our thinking or dreaming about them? Note, in his dreaming argument, Descartes is not saying that we are merely dreaming all that we experience; nor is he saying that we cannot distinguish dreaming from being awake.
The Essay on Dreams Dream World
1 11 2001 DREAMS ~ An Analysis The poem Dreams by Cecil Frances Alexander portrays very strong imagery, and has a message that ties in with the theme of this poetry notebook. The emotion shows the speakers feelings about being asleep as to being awake. Although there is nothing original about the layout and rhyme scheme of the poem, Alexander has a way of showing ones love for this dream world in ...
His point is that we cannot be sure that what we experience as being real in the world is actually real. Next, we cannot be sure that our reasoning abilities can be trusted: we cannot be certain that 2+3 really equals 5, that triangles always have three sides, that a whole is always greater than any one of its parts, or that if A=B and B=C, then A=C, because some evil power (though not God, who is all-good) might be deceiving us to think such things when it is possible that such propositions and the judgments based on them that seem obviously true might really be false.
Meditation One ends in this doubt-filled state, prompting Descartes to wonder if anything can be known with the kind of certainty that he had hoped to use as the basis for all claims of knowledge. Objections to foundationalism and Descartes’ method of doubt. Critics have raised a number of objections to Descartes’ way of setting up the problem of knowledge. For example: Just because some of our sense experiences are mistaken, that is not reason enough to suspect (even hypothetically) all of them.
And besides, we know that some of our experiences are wrong only because we are able to know some of them are correct, and for that we have to rely on other sense experiences. Even to raise the possibility that our experiences might not accurately describe a world that exists apart from our experience is already to assume that the distinction of world vs. experience makes sense. But what if the things we experience are not in fact ideas at all, but are rather things in the world themselves?
The method of doubt proposes that it makes sense to think of ideas or beliefs apart from how they are ideas or beliefs about a world. But apart from the assumption of an external world, it makes no sense to think of ideas as distinct from that world. If we doubt everything, we also must doubt whether we are truly doubting. But that gets us into an endless regress (doubting that we are really doubting that we are really doubting and so on).
The Essay on The Rio de Janeiro Experience
Life is full of contradictions. The aforementioned adage exemplifies the main message of the narrative that talks about the experience of Isabel Jones in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As mentioned by Barthes, narrative plays an important role in the lives of people and also the society as a whole because it provides the necessary story and information about the various beliefs, values, experiences, and ...
So the effort to reach an indubitable principle through doubt is doomed from the outset.
The only way to find out that we are correct in doubting is to appeal to a public understanding of what doubt means, and that means assuming that there is a really existing world. Descartes’ claim that we should limit knowledge only to that about which we are absolutely certain is much too limited. It makes perfect sense to say that we know things without having to guarantee that what we know is based on an indubitable foundation. Second Meditation Descartes begins his Second Meditation wondering whether there is anything that we can know–that is, anything that survives his methodic doubt.
I can doubt whether there is an external world and whether I really have a body. We can doubt (through the device of the evil genie) whether our own reasoning abilities can be trusted. But even if an evil genie deceives us about all other beliefs, there is one belief that we cannot be mistaken about, and that is that we are thinking/doubting. Even to doubt this is to affirm that we are thinking. And since thinking cannot occur without there being something that does the thinking (namely, me), “I” must be a thinking thing.
Thinking proves that we exist, at least during those times that we think. And when we think, we are thinking things or minds, regardless of whether we have bodies. In fact, the body I experience as my own need not be an essential part of my self because I can doubt its existence in a way that I cannot doubt the existence of my mind. A common objection at this point concerns whether Descartes is justified in saying that, just because thinking occurs, we can conclude that there is a thing that does the thinking.
For Descartes, the “I think” seems to imply that there is a subject engaged in the activity of thinking. But (the objection goes) to conclude that there really is a subject who thinks is to be bewitched by the grammatical structure of the sentence. In response to this objection, Descartes implies that no action (e. g. , thinking) can occur without something or someone doing the action. That someone is the self who does the thinking.
The Term Paper on Critical and Creative Thinking 4
INTRODUCTION What is thinking? Basically, thinking is one way for human to practice the act or exercise their intellectual or process of thought. In other way, thinking can also mean as a way of reasoning and judgment. In easier words, thinking is the active process by which human develops by understandings of us, others and our world. The process of thinking enables us to solve problems, ...
