Descartes’ Method: Rules and Application
Descartes’ Philosophical Method
Draft discards: Seek that truism on which to build philosophy. This required a method, previously found suitable, which was suggested by mathematics.
Method
A set of certain and easy rules whereby one will never take the false for the true and come to the truth.
Rules of the Method
- Evidence: Admit nothing as true that is not known and obvious; that is, without the possibility of doubt. A truism is clear and distinct. It naturally means that it is present and manifests to the attentive spirit, which is incompressible and distinct for its simplicity. The act by which evidence comes to mind is called intuition.
- Analysis: Consists of dividing the complex into its simple parts, in order to perceive clearly and distinctly.
- Synthesis: Is a deductive reconstruction of knowledge from the simple elements known by intuition.
- Enumeration: Checking and reviewing the whole process so as not to leave anything out.
The Method Applied
Once Descartes described the steps, he applied them to metaphysics to find the first evidence that serves to justify the whole philosophical system.
The first thing is to doubt everything. Descartes’ doubt will not be skeptical, but methodical: constructive (seeks to attain the truth), universal (as much of sensitive knowledge as mathematics), and theoretical (applies only to the sphere of philosophical reflection, not religion or morality).
- Doubt the senses, as they sometimes deceive us. Just put the tip of a stick in a bucket, and we will see it more crooked than we know it is.
- Doubts about reality: It is difficult to distinguish dream life. After all, we’ve all had vivid dreams that seem intensely real, and we can ask whether all our life will not be a long sleep.
- Question of mathematics: Throughout history, there have been errors in mathematical properties.
- Doubt of understanding.
Our understanding may be so constituted that it deceives us.
Imagine a malicious demon that forces me to deceive, even in cases in which I believe to be absolutely sure of something; we doubt carried to extremes.
The question now is whether it is possible to find something that, despite the doubt, is undeniable. However, throughout this whole process itself, there is something that remains undeniable; namely, that I doubt.
Since doubt is a mindset, we have absolute certainty that we think. Descartes expresses this with the statement: <<I think; therefore, I am>>. The absolute certainty that I exist as a thinking being becomes, therefore, the absolute foundation of knowledge we hoped for.
From the certainty of my existence as a thinking being, Descartes deductively proves the existence of other things.
Deductive Development: Substances, Attributes, Modes
Supporting the existence of thought (attribute of consciousness, self, or soul), the problem posed is how to get out of the world; that is, how to demonstratively or intuitively justify the existence of something besides the I.
We begin with an analysis of the thought itself. We note that thinking is an activity in which we handle ideas. These ideas can be of three types:
- Adventitious: Those that appear to come from external experience. They do not serve.
- Factitious: Ideas constructed in the mind from the above, such as the idea of a centaur from man and horse. Nor do they serve us.
- Innate: Ideas not formed from experience; they are ideas that have themselves by reason, such as extension, thought, and infinity.
Proofs of God’s Existence
- 1st proof: God as the cause of the idea of perfection in us.
- 2nd proof: God as the cause of our existence.
- 3rd proof: The ontological argument.