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What Is Descartes Argument Of Skepticism

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Nicholas Knight
Philosophy
4 November 2015
Byrne: Skepticism about the Internal World To begin the essay, Byrne describes Descartes’ argument of skepticism in the external world. Descartes believes things are not as they seem to be, and that one cannot prove what they think they know due to the lack of evidence. He believes that if you see yourself as you are in one moment, you could really be vividly dreaming, and be ignorant to it. He elaborates in his First Meditation by saying, “that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep” (Byrne 283). Therefore he concludes he does not know if he is actually awake and sitting by a fire, and this applies to everyone. As a result I do not know that I am sitting in Langsam typing a paper for Philosophy or if I am vividly dreaming of doing so. …show more content…
The result is not being able to distinguish one world (real world) from the other (dreaming world) (Stroud 31). An example to elaborate further is presented by Byrne on page 284. He alludes to the game Clue and paints a mental picture of a murder. In the Murder a detective could not determine the murderer because the witness’ descriptions were too vague and both suspects embodied the description. Byrne uses this example in order to draw the a flaw in Descartes’ argument, that in order to determine the premises on which the conclusion would be based, you must derive a conclusion from a previous hypothesis, and that is directly contradictory with Descartes’ argument that one cannot be certain of anything in the external

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