PHLA10H3 Chapter : Summarization of Rene Descartes' Epistemology (Cogito Ergo Sum)

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15 Dec 2010
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In the meditations, descartes wants to lay a foundation of things we know for sure. He starts off by discarding anything we can"t currently be absolutely sure of (wipes the slate clean, so to speak). This is considered by some the foundation of modern scepticism. Descartes uses three arguments to get us into a state of no knowledge whatsoever. He uses three arguments to take away our senses, our body and external world, and finally even our logic. These arguments are the argument from sensory error, argument from dreaming, and the evil deceiving demon hypothesis arguments, respectively. Very simple, just think that your senses are not 100% reliable; most people have experienced their senses deceiving them at least once. Descartes believes that if your senses (or anything for that matter) can deceive you once, you have reason to believe that they can deceive you again, and by extension, deceive you every time.