Descartes' Doubt and the Cogito: Foundations of Knowledge

Doubt

There are different ways of referring to the questions proposed by Descartes (check the class book); the most common references are to "hyperbolic doubt" or "methodical doubt." All mean the same: we doubt everything that is possible and then consider it false.

Metaphysical meditations are perhaps the clearest attempt to implement Cartesian doubt. We see it.

When does a man start wandering? From a young age. The boy is an imperfect man, lacking what characterizes the man of reason, which has been imposed.

Admittedly, we were wrong; we are sick of our own opinions. What is the first step to cure a disease? Well, the first step is to meditate and radicalize the doubt!

General Rule:

WHAT ALL THE THINGS THAT MAY BE CONSIDERED FALSE: HYPERBOLIC DOUBT.

Next Step:

I doubt it?

• Of the senses, because we often deceive
• Of reason, because the arguments are often misleading
• In mathematics, algebra, and geometry: the argument of God Almighty, who created me fallible. God is a Vetus opinion, and should be distinguished from the evil genius hypothesis.
• From God?

Thus, although we can doubt, therefore, deny everything. Descartes: a moderately skeptical.

And finally, the radical doubt or initial skepticism gives rise to something that is impossible to doubt: If you think, then you are.

The Cogito (The First True Statement)

The first real truth: clear and distinct, clear, according to the criteria of evidence proposed by the method. It goes beyond skepticism.

Ergo sum "I am" is an act, an unquestionable fact.

But what am I?

A substance: cogitans, thinking one thing, the Cogito. Maybe everything is false, even my body, but it cannot be false that I think.

Types of ideas:

• Innate (in mind)
• Adventitia (come out)
• Factitial (inventions)

All these ideas are the contents of the first certainty: the Cogito, or cogitans.

I have a strange idea: God.

This is the second certainty. Descartes needs to prove the existence of God as this will become the final guarantee of the validity of knowledge. Use two arguments: