PHIL 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Medieval Philosophy, Substantial Form, Empirical Evidence
26 Sep 2016
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W2b descartes and the method of systematic doubt. Descartes tries to find something that he can find to be true: despite this he doesn"t have time to question every single belief. We discussed how the 17th century scientific revolu- tion forms the background to descartes"s desire to reform knowledge. Descartes"s sceptical arguments in meditation one are designed to reveal a certain truth or truths that can form the basis of a deductive reconstruction of human knowl- edge. Meditations one: descartes subjects his beliefs to critical scrutiny by attempting to find some so se- cure that they cannot be brought into question. To this end, he employs the method of systematic doubt. It can be argued that the fact that we can judge that we sometimes make errors on the basis of sense experience shows that we know how to distinguish truth from error.
