...Those who challenge the thinking of others are the ones who elevated the progression of mankind.Goals and beliefs Ideas created by each redefining being enabled the discovery and application of each new breakthrough, the once believed infeasibility of the ideas were disproved, still aiding and guiding us until this day. The certainty that Phelps describes is what allowed the creation of new laws, inventions, and capabilities. Individuals certain in their beliefs such as Copernicus, Christopher Columbus, and the Wright brothers show the importance of certainty and the insignificance of doubt. Agreed by most of the scientist at the time, the Solar system was once thought to be Geocentric, where Earth is the center of the Universe and the Sun and stars orbit it. Yet Copernicus believed differently, Certain in his own beliefs he defied the World of Science by stating the true orientation of the Solar system is Earth orbiting the Sun. Copernicus’s ideas were Doubted and refuted by all, even the Catholic Church, yet he stood certain and unchanged in his beliefs. Copernicus’s discovery led to the change in the beliefs of many, and accomplished the identification of how the Earth moves. Copernicus shows that Just while...
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...new freshness and innovativeness. This new system incorporated doubt at its center. In order to destroy his entire old system of beliefs, Descartes created doubt about as many of his previous beliefs as possible. Descartes wanted to find foundations on which he could build a new system of beliefs. His goal was to actively try to doubt everything in order to find something that he cannot doubt—something that is indubitable and therefore certain. Thus, Descartes begins a process of trying to doubt as many beliefs as possible by creating skeptical arguments. The Method of Doubt states that all beliefs, which are not absolutely certain, should be treated...
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...Descartes' Methodic Doubt René Descartes (1596-1650) is an example of a rationalist. According to Descartes, before we can describe the nature of reality (as is done in metaphysics) or say what it means for something to be or exist (which is the focus of ontology), we must first consider what we mean when we say we know what reality, being, or existence is. He suggests that it is pointless to claim that something is real or exists unless we first know how such a claim could be known as a justified true belief. But to say that our beliefs are justified, we have to be able to base them ultimately on a belief that is itself indubitable. Such a belief could then provide a firm foundation on which all subsequent beliefs are grounded and could thus be known as true. This way of thinking about knowledge is called foundationalism. In his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Descartes indicates how we are able to guarantee our beliefs about reality by limiting what we believe to what is indubitable or is based on what is indubitable. That involves him in a series of six "meditations" (of which we will focus on only the first two) about the proper method of philosophical reflection and the conclusions that can be drawn from using that method. Throughout these Meditations Descartes insists that (1) we should claim to know only that for which we have justification, (2) we cannot appeal to anything outside of our ideas for such justification, and (3) we judge our ideas using a method...
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...meditation justify your answer in full and respond to possible objections. A belief is any opinion or any view whether you are committed to the view or not. Thus, if you know something, you are entitled to believe in it. The subjective nature of knowledge partly is based on the idea that beliefs are things that individuals have and those beliefs are either justified or not justified (Pardi, 2011). However, Descartes notices that over the course of his life, he has from time to time accepted false beliefs and the falsity of these beliefs have influenced other beliefs. Thus, Descartes aim in his first meditation is to find out if what we know is truly correct (Blackburn, 1999:15). Once we have figured out what beliefs are beyond any possible doubt, it is suggested that we can use reason to deduce the rest of what is knowable (Pardi, 2011). There are three conditions when one can say they know something is true (Pardi, 2011). Firstly, you believe in something, secondly, it is in fact true and lastly you are justified in believing a statement is true. Of course it is possible that there are no complete unshakeable truths, it is also possible that we might discover that our prejudices cannot be detached or that the beliefs we think are our grounds for all our other beliefs are not really ultimate at all. For this reason, it is why rationalist say that knowledge comes from within, the only beliefs we can really know are those that we access through introspection. In contrast...
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...Descartes's Method of Universal Doubt in the First Meditation Descartes is widely regarded as the father of modern philosophy. In the First Meditation, he begins with his method of doubt, calling into doubt everything which can be called into question. In the beginning of the First Meditation, Descartes tries to call all his empirical beliefs into doubt with a single stroke: “I have occasionally caught the senses deceiving me,” he writes, “and it’s prudent never completely to trust who have cheated us even once”. The reason why Descartes began by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to us from the senses is to show that science rested on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses. He is not aimed to prove that nothing exists or that it is impossible for us to know if anything exists, but to show that all our knowledge of these things through the senses is open to doubt. We could not even be sure that anything outside of us existed, if our scientific knowledge came to us through the senses. Since sense experience is sometimes deceiving, it is obvious to Descartes that a posteriori claim cannot be the basis for claims of knowledge. We do not know that what we experience through our senses is true; at least, we are not certain of it. And we cannot tell when our senses are correctly reporting the way things really are and when they are not. So the best thing to do is to doubt whether any knowledge can be based on our sense experiences...
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...Karthik Keni Phil 21 Greg Antill Part A: 1. The Evil Demon Argument In Descartes’ First Meditation, he completely shatters the foundations of his previous beliefs and then uses the evil demon argument as a platform in which he can explain the source of his beliefs. Descartes proposes the evil demon argument because he wants to instill doubt not only in himself, but also in his audience that God may not be the only “Supreme Being”. He believes God to be a good being that wouldn’t deceive us and lead our thoughts astray. The evil demon argument has the purpose of casting doubt on his belief that God is the only being who has the capability of implementing thoughts into his mind, creating doubt of the existence of an external world, and aiding his pursuit of a strong and certain foundation for all his knowledge and beliefs. In this argument, Descartes doesn’t refute the reality of a God, however I believe he presents the argument as if they both exist and that if he is being deceived it could not be from God, the good being, but the evil genius providing him with false sensory material. The primary claim of this skeptical argument is to doubt the reality of an external world that has the possibility of being created by an evil demon. Deceit could be defined in such a way that our minds are being controlled by an evil demon and that our senses of an external world are mistaken. Depicting the evil demon argument of Descartes in a science fiction way like “The Matrix,” made me...
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...Descartes’ use of the Method of Doubt’ The 17th century; this was a period of time in which an intellectual movement of reason and science began. This movement was known as the Age of Enlightenment. Sparked by philosophers, many began approach an understanding of our world by a means of adopt both rational and empirical methods. Research in this area lead to a multitude of discoveries such as; Johannes Kepler’s law of planetary motion, the speed of light and Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation. Such discoveries as these lead to an arising in both mechanical philosophy and materialism; beliefs that together state that the universe is analogised best as a machine in which both organic and inorganic have no intrinsic relationship to one another, but are rather just subject to the laws of nature. The increase of people holding such beliefs lead to an increasing doubt in the existence of God, and encouragement of atheism. This was a serious problem as the Catholic church very much impinged on every aspect of life. Any person who publically held a belief which conflicted with Catholicism was charged with heresy and punished. An example of this being Galileo, who was charged with heresy and sentenced to house arrest for asserting that the Copernican view of the universe was wrong, and that everything didn’t revolve around the Earth. Due to cases like this, the church restricted the range of scientific knowledge to a framework in which a belief in God was paramount. This...
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...certainty, others doubt even the hardest of facts. The best balance between certainty and doubt is to reserve a small amount of doubt for every aspect, which allows for constructive arguments and the betterment of society, as too much certainty in a belief can lead to horrible consequences. When individuals develop absolute certainty in a certain belief, the outcome can be catastrophic. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the residents of Salem are very pious members of the Puritan religion. They are so engrossed by their beliefs that...
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...conception of knowledge, in which a belief can only be considered knowledge when it is based on basic principles, or principles that are justified without appealing to any external ideas or facts. Under the methodological skepticism, a person can test a belief by asking the question “Could it be false?” If the answer is “Yes,” the belief is not necessarily true and is not considered knowledge. This is the perfect tool for presenting a foundationalist conception of knowledge, unless there is an omnipotent being who can deceive people to think wrongly about these basic principles. Therefore, the existence of an omnipotent God and proof that God is not a deceiver is then presented in order to reject all doubts about the foundationalist conception of knowledge. A foundationalist conception of knowledge is a conception of academic discipline: one can only trust real knowledge that is based on basic principles. If a principle is wrong sometimes or is possibly wrong, it is not basic. If the principle is self-evident, showing its own truth, or is justified without appealing to any external ideas or facts, it is basic. Also, if the principle is clearly and distinctly perceived, and one cannot help but assent to it, the principle is necessarily true, or is self-evident. Senses are not necessarily true because they are “sometimes deceptive” in the cases of “very small” and “distant” things (Descartes, 18). Location in space and time are also possible to doubt because of dreaming. For example...
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...to the stress that which of his different convention may be false. So he set out to tear down all his beliefs and to reconstruct them to scratch. For this, he needs significant agreements which basically cannot doubt. He needs the basic conventions for the foundation so that he could start building a new structure. For those meetings, he began questioning everything he can. However, it does not mean that everything he doubts was false. His technique was just to ensure conventions he chooses were correct without any doubt. This technique of challenging everything is...
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...Philosophy”. Throughout Descartes years of study he was plague by the decision to question how much of his knowledge were true and how much were false. He set out to establish a system of knowledge on a foundation of beliefs whose truth could not be doubted. Descartes basic strategy was to consider anything false that present even the slightest doubt. This form of doubt is called the “hyperbolic doubt” and serves to clear the way for what Descartes considers as the unprejudiced truth. It was from this point that Descartes sets out in search for what lies beyond all doubts. Throughout this philosophy essay I will divulge more into what foundationalism is and how it attempts to address the problem of the infinite regress with respect to justification. Foundationalism has a long history; some view it as a structure of justification that we consider as a factor of what we take for granted based on knowledge. Foundationalism can also be defined as the search for the first cause; the search for beliefs that can serve as justifications for other beliefs, it is like searching for the truth; to a foundationalist knowledge is dependent upon justification. The idea of justifying what we belief and how we come to belief what we know puts us in a position to question our beliefs, not everything that we believed in life is known, and nothing can be known without other things such as acceptance. The structure of...
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...René Descartes was a famous French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. He was arguably known as the "Father of Modern Philosophy." Descartes published many works of mathematics and philosophy throughout his life. In one of his most important works, Meditations on First Philosophy, he added a number of arguments for and against skepticism. Skepticism is the doubt about the truth of something and that absolute knowledge is not possible. Like past famous philosophers before him, Plato and Parmenides, Descartes believed that "evidence from the senses was inadequate to prove the kind of justification required for a claim of knowledge." In the first of Rene Descartes Meditations, he provided arguments for the skeptical position. He realized that, based off his senses, he had accepted many false opinions as true and that everything he afterwards built upon his opinions could only be doubtful and uncertain. In his project, a quest for knowledge, he decided to disregard and discard all beliefs that were based on any evidence which could be doubted and proven as less than certain. He wanted to create a new, firm foundation. He decided to go about this project because he, like other famous philosophers, believed that much of what is believed is based on ones senses. Descartes noticed that his senses had often deceived him and it was prudent to trust completely in what has deceived a person even once. Aside from deceiving senses, Descartes was also reminded that everyone has dreamed...
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...objects. The radical skeptic would tell you that there is not four of the same object because they may be different in size, have different colors, etc. I do, however think that it is possible to doubt most things, until they are proven. Some things, such as mathematical equations, cannot be doubted. I use the same example as before, that 2+2=4. We cannot really say, “I doubt that 2+2=4“, because we already know that it is true. We can, however, doubt things such as government, whether or not certain medicines will work, when a person who is gullible tells you something, etc. I do not believe that we can be skeptical about, or doubt scientific and proven facts. I do not believe that we have to use ethics and moral reasoning when examining our beliefs. However, if we did not think about which beliefs are wrong or right, we could be lying to ourselves. Personally, I do not think that holding the belief that “murder is okay” would be good for anyone. We would only be hurting ourselves,(and potentially the people around us), if we truly believed this. I think that it is smart to consider which beliefs are right and wrong, but we are not obligated to. There is nothing wrong with basing beliefs off of faith. One belief that I have, that I personally do not, and would not doubt, is that there is such thing as...
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...O’Connor exemplifies the ideas of certainty and doubt through characters such as Hazel Motes. While the novel shows cases of certainty and doubt in the past, contemporary articles such as “The Certainty of Doubt” by Cullen Murphy expresses how Certainty and Doubt is exemplified in society. Having certainty creates a clear path as it seems that life is easier...
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...ways that the church had never previously seen. The idea that the church could change and was actually being changed by the events happening during the 1960’s was uncomfortable for some people within the church and caused great strife between leaders. The change that was occurring within and surrounding the Church had many people questioning God, his sovereignty, and even his existence. In John Shanley’s short story, “Doubt: A Parable”, Sister Aloysius begins to question her commitment to the church as well as her faith as her certainty about many things like the evilness of using secular songs in Christmas plays, and the morality of the Church were questioned by other leaders within the church. Sister Aloysius’ certainty about even just little things in life begin to be questioned by others in the church causing her to become very resistant to the change and tries to enforce what she has always known. Sister Aloysius was accustomed to Christian songs being played during Christmas performances and believed that secular songs exposed, “a pagan belief in magic,” (Shanley 29) and should not be allowed in the church. She had understood the lyrics to be heretical, but with the Church progresses not everyone had the same strong feelings towards the secular songs. It is assumed that the tradition of only using Christian song during the pageant had not been challenged and was always just understood, until Sister James wanted to have the kids sing “Frosty the Snowman”. Instead...
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