Descartes’ Epistemology Essay

Carefully beg off Descartes cogito and his attempt to make his noesis social system from the ground up. (Be as succinct as possible.) Does Descartes succeed or fail in that attempt? Justify your come in full. Descartes Epistemology.This essay attempts to explain Descartes epistemology of his knowledge, his Cogito, Ergo midpoint concept (found in the hypothesiss), and why he apply it the cogito concept as a knowledgeableness when building his structure of knowledge. After explaining the concept I give a brief evaluation of his success in introducing and utilise this cogito as a foundation. Finally, I provide reasons why I estimate Descartes succeeded in his epistemology.The First Meditation began with Descartes deciding to employ radical scepticism in his quest of acquiring true knowledge and this snuff it him to conclude that he could not be sure of allthing except that he knew nothing (Descartes, 198412-15). Meaning that Descartes cast a personal manner all his knowled ge whether it was knowing that he had fingers, knowing that the forcible world inhabited, knowledge of his studies etc. he began by acknowledging how everything that constituted his preconceived knowledge could be doubt worthy. This climax of doubt was rooted in one factDescartes felt that there was good reason to believe that a higher causality could invite deceived him into accept that his empirical and a priori knowledge was plausible. Since God is a higher power that Descartes believed to be all good and never deceptive, he named his deceiver the Evil dickens a complete arctic to his wholesome observation of God (Blackburn, 200119). Descartes established that the Evil Demon subscriber line could wipe out all assurance of his prior knowledge except for one his existence (Descartes, 198417).This was a good argument because it presented a well thought out reason to forefront his knowledge. Descartes argued that if an Evil Demon truly existed and is merely focussed on de ceiving him then this proves that he Descartes exists If he is deceiving me and let him deceive me as much as he brush off, he will never bring about that I am nothing so commodious as I think that I am something I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it isconceived in my fountainhead (Blackburn, 200120).It is possible to refute this translation of existence in the formof Do we suppose that a thinking thing exists because it has experienced thoughts? According to the Second Meditation Descartes result would be that I am, I exist stands only for a thing that is doing the thinking now and if it were to cease thinking it would cease to exist altogether (Descartes, 198418). In addition it is not the thinking that lead to existence, nevertheless the existence lead to the thinking.Descartes was uncoerced to be questioned about his knowledge of the world and to prove that he truly sought the correct answer to any objection that may be raised he overlooked everything he knew and arrayed to build an argument from scratch to assert the knowledge he would later accept as accurate. Thus, Descartes chose the cogito concept as a foundation that he could begin to enlarge his territory of understanding on.From observation it is clear that Descartes only began his Meditations to build a foundation of understanding and since he had discarded all his prior knowledge he undeniable a solid base to begin reconstructing on, so the cogito concept emanates. Cogito, Ergo Sum is Latin for I think, therefore I am. The cogito argument is as follows 1. An evil demon might be deceiving me into believing that I dont exist. 2. If I believe that I dont exist, then I exist.3. I exist.This argument states that, if I convinced myself of something then I sealedly existed (Descartes, 198417). This simply sum that anyone unbelieving his or her own existence or presence indeed exists because in order for doubt to deem place there has to be someone to do it. A proper understanding o f the cogito concept means recognizing specifically the classification in which this someone that is active fits into and whether it is accurate to say that he or she exists.The argument, as Descartes presented, does not give a valid reason for the existence of the body or anything else in the material world, so we cannot accept that bodies exist. Neither does the cogito account for the existence of different minds as that would entail knowledge of the physical world where other things exist. The cogito concept does however give a valid argument for the existence of the mind or a thinking thing that exists independently of the body.In hisnovel Think, Blackburn explains the cogito concept as a means of justifying the core of ones existence as thinking, we accept that thought exists not a self (Blackburn, 200120). I agree with Blackburn because his Descartes concept serves well to prove that we exist as thinking things and regular(a) if we were to discard any a priori or a posteri ori knowledge, we can still endorse the cogito.The cogito concept stands no matter of empirical knowledge because it suggests the existence of thought without actually linking it to the body (which constitutes a sort of empirical way of acquiring knowledge through the senses). In addition, it can be accepted without any a priori knowledge since Descartes only introduced it after concluding that he knew nothing, and could only accept knowledge of his own existence as vindicated.To assess Descartes choice of foundation I will raise some questions that implore an explanation regarding the cogito concept. Firstly, if we only exist when thinking and the Evil Demon is able to manipulate our knowledge of everything else, why are our thoughts not susceptible to his deception? In my perspective, the Evil Demon has the ability to deceive us to a certain point, that point is our existence, and we have established that our existence leads to thinking.Descartes supposed that the Evil Demon may have influenced our thoughts but the thought he Evil Demon could not alter is the thought of us thinking. For example, if I were to throw a flexible ball into a recycle bin and it were melted and reshaped into a mug, although the state of the ball may have changed it is still plastic and even if we discard its previous state its present state shows that it is indeed existing and I cannot convince the plastic that it never existed just because it is in a different state.This example explains how our definition of existence may have changed but the fact remains that we exist hence we think. My example is another(prenominal) way of stating Descartes wax example(Descartes,198420-21), which according to Blackburn, he Descartes uses to confirm that with the cogito we can solidify that our thoughts exist regardless of them be immaterial, various and not constrained to a physical body (Blackburn, 200121).A second question could be, if we know(or supposedly accept) that we are creation de ceived by the Evil Demon wouldnt that mean that we were aware of when we were not being deceived by him and so before we established our foundation(using the cogito concept), we had already accepted some knowledge which lead to the foundation? I thinkDescartes would respond by saying that the fact that we can think of the Evil Demon and accept that he is deceiving us means that we already established the cogito before moving on to think of the actual idea of a deceiver, again we see that any thinking means something existed to do it(the thinking).This response seems to present some equivocation but unfortunately I think that any of Descartes responses may arouse the burden of proof to the person who raised the question. His argument, as I would render it, may be that the question is going in circles and only raises doubt of his Descartes means of acquiring knowledge and not actually any objection to the cogito. This last response seems to credit Descartes success in establishing th at the cogito is a concept that gives us the beaver potential start to gaining any knowledge.Even the knowledge of an Evil Demon would mean we have to start by accepting that we exist (cogito) in order to prove any of our knowledge as untrustworthy.A third and final question is, what form of knowledge is the cogito and what other knowledge can we build on this foundation? The cogito is a form of a priori knowledge because we do not need to prove its cogency by explaining anything or drawing on a previous experience to prove it. Descartes further used the cogito when acquiring the knowledge of Cartesian Dualism, which is his next step of building knowledge that is rooted in the cogito.Descartes tell that Cartesian Dualism is justified by the cogito because we only have knowledge of an existing thinking entity that has no body, hence the body and the mind should be viewed as separate and neither one has the ability to influence the other (Descartes, 198421). I think the cogito conce pt provokes a sense of identity that each of our thinking may deem and this identity entails that as much as the Evil Demon may try to take away our knowledge we still have that little something, as thinking beings, that can only be explained as an existence. This entity of our existence is immaterial, yes, but it leads us into thinking and thinking is our starting point of gaining new knowledge.Therefore Descartes succeeded in his epistemology by choosing Cogito, Ergo Sum as a base for his future knowledge. Once the cogito is accepted Descartes can acquire new knowledge. In conclusion Descartes processes of building a knowledge structure foundation was procreative and ultimately leads to a successful epistemology.BibliographyBlackburn, S. 1999. Think A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy. New York Oxford University Press. Descartes, R. 1984. The Philosophical literary works of Descartes, Vol. II, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch (Translators).UK Cambridge University Press. Le rm, J. 2013. Descartes Second Meditation The Cogito Argument Lecture Slides. 1 . J. Lerm Rebulding Begins lecture splay 2 2 . Lerm The Cogito Argument lecture slide 7