Descartes' Philosophy: Doubt, Existence, and Innate Ideas

Reasons to Doubt

• Senses: Doubts about the senses and sense knowledge obtained from external reality. Senses can be misleading.
• Sleep and Wakefulness: The problem of distinguishing between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes, dreams are so vivid that we feel things as truth. The inability to discern if one is living in a dream or in a waking state.
• Knowledge: Doubt in one's knowledge and reasoning processes. One can make errors in reasoning.
• The Hypothesis of the Evil Genie: It is possible that there is an evil genie deceiving me, even about what appears to me as obvious.

Conclusion of Methodical Doubt

After carrying out doubt on all these points, the only thing that remains is the doubt itself. The object of doubt is a reaffirmation of the indubitability of doubt, which shows the first conclusion of methodical doubt: "I doubt" is a clear and distinct idea.

Cogito Ergo Sum Analysis

Theory

• It is the first clear and distinct idea from which to base philosophy.
• "Thinking" is not an act of consciousness; it is a thinking substance, res cogitans, that thinks, feels, and wishes.
• "Exist" is the second evidence that comes from the depths of internal knowledge and doubt.
• Importance: Dual process, both ontological and gnoseological. It is reality and reality as I know it in the philosophy of Descartes.

To understand the famous "Cogito ergo sum," one must understand that Descartes discards all prior knowledge. Only on this basis is it possible to proceed. However, behind the questioning of all reality comes the conclusion that the one certainty I have is that I doubt, and from this, I come to the conclusion that I exist because I can think.

Analysis of Types of Ideas

After reaching the first truth, "I think, therefore I am," Descartes recovers internal reality by analyzing the different types of ideas to identify innate ideas, which are clear and obvious.

Types

• Adventitious: These are ideas that come from the senses and inform us about external reality. Importantly, their existence does not imply the existence of external reality.
• Factitious: These are ideas created by the imagination. These ideas do not have a reference point in external reality. For example, horse + horn = unicorn.
• Innate: True ideas are innate and have a referent in reality. Their characteristics are that they are evident, do not need demonstration, arise in my mind as true, and are presented clearly and distinctly.