Descartes’ Method: Doubt, Certainty, and the Pursuit of Truth

Posted on Jan 12, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Provisional Morality

Provisional morality consists of the following principles:

  • First, to obey the laws and customs while preserving the religion, according to your opinions.
  • Second, to maintain firmness and resolution in the implementation of decisions taken.
  • Then, to conquer yourself rather than fortune.
  • Finally, to choose one’s occupation as the result of reason.

The Rules of the Method

Divided into four sections (Cartesian method):

  1. Evidence: Do not accept as true any proposition that appears as such, preventing and avoiding precipitation.
  2. Analysis: Break down the problem into simple elements.
  3. Reconstruction and Synthesis: Return to the simple elements, leading to the compounds, even assuming an unnatural order.
  4. Enumeration: Review the process as many times as necessary.

Implementation of the Method

  • The senses deceive us, and we should not treat them as sources of certainty.
  • If we use thinking processes, we risk making mistakes.
  • Differentiating the reality of the dream is impossible.
  • The first proposition is completely true: “I think, therefore I am.”

Meaning of Doubt

Doubt is not denial but a postponement of the election to avoid the possibility of error. Descartes was trying to leave the course by obtaining a certain, undeniable truth.

Doubt is a starting point to find supreme certainty. This certainty is metaphysical. Life is the result of applying the method and is expressed in two levels of intensity:

  • The limitation of self.
  • Subsequent to knowledge but not to practical life.

The philosophy of Descartes should be presented as an investigation that alternates doubt and certainty as a methodical order.

First Question: The Senses

Knowledge begins with the senses, and they deceive us, so all that is known through them is disqualified. The inability to distinguish the dream from reality makes the existence and truth of the external world uncertain. Neither how strong the impressions and the stability of the world seem, nor the consistency between situations are matters of certainty. With these statements, Descartes reminds us of the Baroque mentality.

First Conviction: Doubt of the External World

We doubt the external world and how it presents itself, yet we cannot doubt the truths of mathematics dealing with the simplest components of the representation. While you are awake or asleep, two plus three make five, and a square always has four sides.

Second Doubt: The Evil Genius Hypothesis

This is the next intellectual fiction: now he supposes that there is a malicious spirit, more powerful than himself, determined to deceive him about everything he had considered real. Based on that assumption, Descartes will try to reach some truth to avoid being cheated. The famous Descartes’s evil genius is an experiment to counteract the inertia of common sense and test the strength of each truth. This formula increases the level of doubt. A higher level of doubt leads to stronger certainty. It is not challenging the senses but questioning reason. When he supposes a being more powerful than himself, he doubts his own reason, showing the limits of human reason.

Second Conviction: “I Am”

Descartes warns that there is more certain and secure evidence than mathematics: the evidence of one’s existence. No one can doubt this truth. “I exist” as a thing that thinks, or as he puts it, “I think, therefore I am,” which can be interpreted as:

  1. I (activity of the mind)
  2. Therefore I am (direct collection of evidence).

This formula connects the act of thinking with existence.