Article title: Rene Descartes Methodic Doubt; A Tool for Authentic Knowledge

Authors: Abel Friday Ugwu[1,2,3,4]

Affiliations: pontifical urban university rome [1], university of calabar cross-river state nigeria [2], urban
secondary school umuna orlu imo state nigeria [3], hearts of love juniorate school orlu imo state nigeria [4]
Orcid ids: 0009-0000-5458-6551[1,2,3,4]
Contact e-mail: [email protected]
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
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Preprint statement: This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed, under consideration and submitted to
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DOI: 10.14293/PR2199.001173.v1
Preprint first posted online: 17 October 2024
RENE DESCARTES METHODIC DOUBT;
A TOOL
FOR AUTHENTIC KNOWLEDGE
1.0. INTRODUCTION

Epistemology is one of the major branches of philosophy; it focuses on human knowledge, and

asks the questions such as what is knowledge? What is truth? How certain is our knowledge

claims? Philosophy was born out of wonders, of which the desire to know formed the basis of

their wondering, they sought to tender solutions to that which has bewildered man and his

environment.

It is the case that we often say we know, and then on a critical reflection we realize that, for one

to say ‘I know’ is too ambiguous a statement and that, which we think we know, might turn out to

be unreal. It is on this background that Philosophers down the ages have attempted to discover

the means by which our knowledge is acquired, the extent of our knowledge, and the standard or

criteria by which we can judge the reliability of our knowledge-claims. It is also the case that we

are satisfied with what we think we know without questioning its reliability until it is proven

false, and then comes our shock.

Rene Descartes was determined to find an indubitable foundation upon which knowledge can be

laid. He could not rely on experience for such a foundation, because most of the things he had

learnt to be true later were proven to be false, of which they came from experience. Having been

dissatisfied from the response he got from the external world in search for such a foundation, he

made a striking turn, deciding there upon to take a study within himself, and choose for himself, a

road upon which to follow. This led him to critically subject everything including himself into an

acid bathe of doubt, until there remains that which in no circumstance can be false. There upon,

reliable knowledge can be founded. We shall follow in this research, Cartesian road as an aut

authentic tool for knowledge.

1
In this research therefore, we shall ex-ray Rene Descartes methodic doubt as a tool for

discovering authentic knowledge. Can we have such perception so clear and distinct that it cannot

be doubted? Is experience entirely useless in the quest for certain knowledge; is the Cartesian

foundation really indubitable? These shall also be our concern, even as we try to explain Rene

descartes’ methodic doubt as a tool for authentic knowledge.

2.0. OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS

There is one thing that is certain in philosophy, the fact that every term in philosophy will always

have as many explanations as there are many philosophers, that is why it is always necessary to

start with the etymology of any given concept. It is of great importance here to give a brief

explanation of the terms that will occur regular in our work; this is to enable the reader grasp

without tears the context in which they are to be used.

 EPISTEMOLOGY: Epistemology is rooted in two Greek words, ‘episteme’,

meaning ‘knowledge’ and ‘logos’ meaning ‘study’ hence, literally, epistemology

is defined as the theory of knowledge. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy

that is concerned with knowledge; that is, the philosophical problems around the

nature and manner of human knowledge, it seeks to analyze our knowing process,

the source of knowledge, its validity and criterion for truth (Ojong, 1). Omoregbe

in his book ‘knowing philosophy’ defined epistemology as the branch of

philosophy which studies the nature, the origin, the foundation, the method, the

validity, the extent and the limits of human knowledge (134). Epistemology

subjects our previous claims to knowledge to rational scrutiny which will lead to

its confirmation; it is composed of different questions such as: what is knowledge?

2
 How valid and reliable is human knowledge? Is it possible to have absolutely true

and certain knowledge? (Anosike, 5), these and many more are the questions

epistemology seeks to answer.

 AUTHENTICITY: According to oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary 6th

edition, the word authenticity is defined as the quality of being genuine or true. In

another definition it is the quality of being genuine or not corrupted from the

original. From these definitions we realize that when we ask the question of how

authentic is our knowledge claims, we are directly talking about how truthful, how

genuine, how correct is the original knowledge we have.

 TRUTH: This is one of the, if not the most enigmatic concept in epistemology.

Oxford Dictionary has its peculiar definition of truth, it is defined as the true facts

about something, rather than the things that have been invented or guessed, and it

is also the quality or state of being based on fact. Philosophers of different epochs

defined the concept truth as it suits their area of endeavor, Plotinus the last of the

ancient philosophers identified truth with the ‘One’ Augustine conceived truth as

an entity, one, eternal and unchanging, St Anslem defined truth as the rightness of

something as perceived by the mind, Descartes defined truth as clear and distinct

perception of innate ideas (omoregbe, 39) Descartes as Omoregbe would record,

went further in his definition of truth when he writes…

Truth is indubitable, it comes from within us, not outside

us, and it is known through ‘clear and distinct
perception’, that is, through an intuitive perception (39-40

 KNOWLEDGE: Knowledge is the central focus in epistemology,

it is the state of awareness of a given fact or information (Etuk, 3)
knowledge according to the English Dictionary is the fact of
3
 knowing something; general understanding or familiarity with a
subject, place, situation etc. it suffices therefore to say that when we
talk about knowledge of a thing, we are in essence saying that we
are familiar with that thing, we are aware of it and understands it
well. Omoregbe noted that knowledge presupposes consciousness
(1) that is to say, if we say that we have knowledge of a thing it
means that we are conscious of that thing, knowledge is that which
should be stable and certain. Knowledge can refer to a theoretical or
practical understanding of a subject. It can be implicit or explicit.
Knowledge in the traditional definition is seen as ‘’justified true
belief’’ (Ojong & Ibrahim, 38) which means that a statement must
meet three criteria in order to be considered knowledge: it m must
be justified, true, and believed.

3.0. RENE DESCARTES METHODIC DOUBT AS A TOOL FOR AUTHENTIC

KNOWLEDGE

3.1 AN OVERVIEW OF RENE DESCARTES PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD

After his studies, Rene Descartes criticized almost all he has studied. He subjected traditional

learning to strong criticism ranging from humanities, morals, logic and so on except for

mathematics which he saw some atom of certainty in its axioms. These comments were never in a

bid to criticize the college from which he studied them or the teachers who taught him, or to

discard them entirely, rather it was against the general state of the studies and sciences of his

time. He spoke of the Jesuits of La Fleche with affection and respect, and regarded their system

of education as greatly superior to that provided in most other pedagogical institutions. He

affirmed this when he noted as recorded by Copleston that, ‘‘he had been given the best

education available within the framework of tradition’’ (63). But for him, it was not based on a

solid foundation. He was then set for a new methodology. However, he had no intention of

making his own method an absolute one, a must follow; rather to reveal indubitable truths. This

4
was made clear when he said as recorded by Norman, ‘‘My present design, then, is not to teach

the method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his reason, but solely to describe a

way in which I have endeavored to conduct my own’’ (X).After leaving La Fleche, he resolved to

study and to learn from the book of the world, which is, seeking a knowledge which would be

useful in life. His fundamental aim was to attain philosophical truth by the use of reason, but

what he was seeking was not to discover a multiplicity of isolated truths but to develop a system

of true propositions, in which nothing would be presupposed which was not self-evident and

indubitable, of which other truths would be driven from because of its solid foundation. In this

case, there would be an organic connection between all the parts of the system, and the whole

edifice would rest on a sure foundation. It would thus be impervious to the corroding and

destructive effect of skeptism. From this Rene Descartes broke with the past and was determined

to start again from the beginning, as it were without trusting to authority of any previous

philosophy (Copleston, 67). He optioned out three important steps that could guide him in his

pursuit: first, to rely only on his reason, not authority; secondly, to avoid confusion of the clear

and evident with what is hypothetical or at best only probable; lastly, to attain and work with

clear and distinct ideas and not to use terms without any clear meaning or possibly without any

meaning at all. From this, Rene Descartes ventured into fighting the battle against confusion and

error, his adventures was the adventure of the spirit and his conquests the conquest of truth. He

wished to find and apply the right method in the search for truth, a method which would enable

him to demonstrate truths in a rational and systematic order, irrespective of whether these truths

had been previously acknowledged or not. Rene Descartes went further to explain the method

which he tend to propose when he said as Copleston noted,

5
 by this method I understand a set of certain and easy rules such that
anyone who observes them exactly will never take anything false to
be true and, without any waste of mental effort but by increasing his
knowledge step by step, he will arrive at a true understanding of all
those things which do not surpass his capacity (73).

He bore in mind as we have rightly pointed out to provide us with an indubitable

knowledge and before this knowledge could be arrived at, one must follow a certain

procedure and this characterizes his philosophic method. Rene Descartes philosophic

method has many factors which prompted it, one of which was his accidental meeting

with Isaac Beeckman, a student of science who was several years his senior. Rene

Descartes noted that ‘‘Beeckman in truth was the one who has shaken him out of his

indolence; making him recall all he has almost forgotten’’ (Norman, XI). This

incident then propelled him to set out in discussing of new knowledge of which only

one man could achieve. Rene Descartes in his individualistic approach noted that this

particular research could only be carried out by only one man, because for him there

is less perfection in works composed of several different hands than in those due to a

single master-workman. He was curious of who this one man could be, the question

kept ringing inside of him which later took a form of a threefold dream. This dream

he believed was a divine inspiration, inspired him to search for a new method.

Furthermore, Rene Descartes’ life divides itself in a very remarkable degree into three

clearly marked out periods, first dating from 1596-1612, he devoted his life to his

education in France, then from 1612-1628 was a period he spent seeing the world in

travel and warfare, finally, his constructive period dated 1628-1650, this was the

period he devoted to active reflection in a bid to discover this certain knowledge and

6
pure truth that has been his quest and this leads to what follows in our next

discussion.

3.2 QUEST FOR CERTAINTY

Quest for certainty was one of the major goals in his philosophical works. Doubts about what to

believe and the conflicting opinions he found everywhere he looked were not only

psychologically disturbing, but weakened the foundations of all the sciences (Lawhead, 243).

Being perplexed about this so many conflicting opinions and what to believe, he aimed to

discover the truth and a firm foundation upon which knowledge can be built. At the course of his

meditation, he tried to rid himself of all knowledge that could be doubted, he noted that if a fact

can be doubted, then, it cannot be held as certain truth. It is pertinent to note that skeptism played

a large role in his quest for certainty because he constantly questioned accepted truths even

though he was not a skeptic but only employed that in order to answer questions to reach a level

of certainty. He noted that senses cannot help us attain certainty because they are deceptive. He

believed that knowledge such as mathematics, physics, and astronomy were sources of true

knowledge because they are associated with concepts that are not under influence from other

factors.

He was chiefly concerned with the problems of intellectual certainty as we have highlighted.

Looking back on his studies, he saw that Ancient literature provided him with charming fables

that stimulated his mind, poetry gave him knowledge with imaginative force, theology points out

the way to heaven, medicine and all other sciences brings honor and riches to those who cultivate

them (Descartes, Discourse on Method, 6). Nevertheless, the ancient literature could not guide his

behavior. Poetry is a gift of the mind and not the fruit of study while theology is above human

7
intelligence and could not provide a method by which truths could be arrived at solely through

the capacities of human reason (Stumpf & Fieser, 205), whereas philosophy for him, enables one

to talk plausibly in all subjects and win the admiration of people less learned than oneself

(Elizabeth & Geach, XV). Speaking more on philosophy he said;

I shall not say anything about philosophy, but seeing that it has been cultivated
for many centuries by the best minds that has ever lived, and that nevertheless,
no single thing is to be found in it which is not subject of dispute, and in
consequence which is not dubious, I had not enough presumption to hope to
fare better there than other men had done (Descartes,Key Philosophical
Writings, 75-76).
He was troubled with what to believe because the opinions in these fields of study were

quite conflicting. More so, Rene Descartes, as Stumpf noted, held that, ‘‘neither the

authority of Aristotle’s great reputation nor the authority of the church could suffice to

produce the kind of certainty he sought’’ (206). He was therefore set to follow his own

part.

3.3. DISCOVERING THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

Finding the foundations of knowledge preoccupied Rene Descartes mind and this was made

explicit in his Meditations on First Philosophy. Rene Descartes after his observations regarding

philosophy and other disciplines asked the question, why were there uncertainties, disagreements

and arguments in philosophy? The answer as he saw was simply because; they were not built

upon a solid foundation, rather, a shaky foundation. This ignited him to propose a new

foundation, an unshakable foundation that knowledge could be built upon. He sought to unlock

the mysteries of life which has hitherto been dark.

In his adventure, he saw atom of certainty in the procedures of mathematical methods and this he

tends to apply in philosophy in other to reconstruct philosophy; At least lifting it from baseless

8
foundation to a firm one. In a bid to do this he rejected Aristotle’s logic which for him does not

discover new facts or truth rather explains and confirms those already known (Omoregbe, 80). He

rejected sense experience because it is deceptive in nature. He, on the other hand based his own

logic on intuition and deduction. Intuition for him is the activity of grasping some simple truth

with such clarity that there is no room for doubt, while deduction is a necessary inference from

facts that are known with certainty (Ojong & Ibrahim, 145). He said as Halden noted that, ‘‘there

is nothing far beyond our reach, or so hidden that cannot be discussed, but the condition remains

that we must abstain from accepting the false to be true and always pressure in our thoughts the

order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another’’ (25-26). This simply means, one

starting from the simplest things and working gradually from that as a starting point. For him,

these two methods (intuition and deduction) are the most certain routes to knowledge and the

mind should admit no other, all the rest should be rejected as suspect of error and dangerous. It

therefore holds that any knowledge built upon intuition and deduction as its method has no option

than to be certain and this becomes the foundation of knowledge. Descartes provided a series of

mental exercises which when meditated upon one might find the truth within; this is what is

known as Descartes methodic doubt.

3.4 THE METHODIC DOUBT

Descartes, used the method of doubt in order to find an absolutely certain starting point for

building the foundation of our knowledge. Rene Descartes as we noted earlier was not at home

with the foundation upon which sciences of his time was built, and this foundation he sought to

restructure in order to make it solid to be able to project an indubitable knowledge and establish a

firm and lasting truths in the sciences. What we have to understand here is that there has existed

9
foundations of knowledge especially that, projected by Aristotle and his followers and that

projected by the scholastics. This was made implicit when he noted that,

I have been nourished on letters since my childhood, and since I was

given to believe that by their means a clear and certain knowledge could
be obtained of all that is useful in life… I entirely changed my opinion,
for I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors.
(Descartes, Discourse on Method, 5)
For him, they have gone a long way in blurring our vision of authentic knowledge because their

foundations were baseless. He thought of making a clean sweep in his life and beginning again

from the very foundations, if he would establish this lasting and secure result in science.

Nevertheless the task seemed enormous and that was why he did not venture into it immediately

but waited until he felt his age was ripe for it. In his Meditation, he said that:

It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that
I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was
everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was
convinced that I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all
the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and commence to build anew
from the foundation (Descartes, 134)
He began his restructuring first by getting rid of ideas and opinion he already had in the past. But

before then, he needed a guiding principle, which will serve as a candle light to his path. He

outlined four of these guiding principles thus;

 Never to accept anything as true which I do not clearly know to be such.

 Divide difficulties into as many parts as possible.

 Proceed from the simplest and surest knowledge to the more complex.

 Make the connection so complete, and the reviews so general, that nothing shall be

overlooked.

10
This is the guiding rules upon which he uses to search for that which perplexed him and this

lunched him to his methodic doubt. The methodic doubt is not a holistically rejection as false

everything he thinks he knows, but a means to avoid believing things that are not entirely certain

and indubitable. He said as Skirry noted that, ‘‘he will include nothing more in his judgments

than what presented itself to his mind so clearly and so distinctly that he had no occasion to doubt

it’’ (24). In this venture, Descartes adopts skepticism, but he is only aiming to doubt, not to reject

his beliefs. The general strategy he tends to use is to cast aside any belief that has even the

slightest element of doubt in order to eventually discover some truth that are impossible to doubt.

He came up with a metaphor which best illustrates his opinion. He said, as Lawhead recorded;

Suppose we have a basket full of apples, and we suspect some are rotten.
If we remove only the bad ones that happen to catch our eyes, we risk
missing some, which may infect the rest. The only safe procedure,
therefore, is to empty the whole basket, carefully inspect the apples one
by one, and return to the basket only those that are sound (229-230).

The apples here are his beliefs, the rotten ones are false beliefs, and the good ones are

the true beliefs. The basket on the other hand is the mind, and the dumping of the

apples is Descartes’ methodic doubt. The illustration above gives a clear insight to

what Rene Descartes is aiming at. It is clear that for progress in knowledge to be

attained, there is need to make a clean sweep of the obstacles that besiege the mind,

what Francis Bacon calls the idols, which hinders knowledge. Clearing his mind of all

doubtful beliefs will allow him to focus on the most simple absolutely certain truths

and then allow him to work his way little-by-little; to more complex absolutely

certain truths. This clean sweep is not something one could possibly venture into just

like that, but it requires a process, little-by-little, this process is what Rene Descartes

has in his methodic doubt. Taking the apple metaphor, one would realize that after the

11
isolation of the good ones from the bad ones and putting them inside the basket again,

the possibility of having the bad ones back to the basket is very little, likewise in the

area of the acquisition of authentic knowledge, if the same process is carried out,

letting go of what has been there in the mind which might be true or false, then

starting afresh to gather those knowledge which are true, then we will stand to have

an authentic and certain knowledge embedded in us. It then holds that Rene Descartes

methodic doubt leads to foundation of certainty.

3.5 FOUNDATION OF CERTAINTY: ‘‘CORGITO ERGO SUM’’

Rene Descartes noted, as Alcoff observed that; Anything which admits of the slightest doubt, he

will set aside just as if he had found it to be wholly false; and he will proceed in this way until he

recognize something certain, or if nothing else, until he at least recognize for certain that there is

no certainty (8). He took time to doubt so many things, but because there were even so many

others to be doubted, he grouped them into a smaller number of categories and examined each

general category. The first beliefs Descartes rejected were those relating to the senses, that is,

everything that is observed by sight and touch. He employed methodic doubt with a view to

discover whether there was any indubitable truth. At the process came a famous change of

mindset, this change is what Ani in his book, Introducing Philosophy to a Lay Mind noted as the

first stage of Rene Descartes’ epistemology, which is the fact that doubting is a form of thinking

(84-85). In his Second Meditation, Rene Descartes argues that, there is one thing he can be

completely sure of; which is the fact that he thinks, and that if he thinks, that he exists. He cannot

doubt that he thinking, because doubting is a kind of thinking. If the demon were to make him

doubt that he is thinking, that would only show that he is. Equally, he cannot doubt that he exists:

12
if he were to doubt that he exists, that would prove he does exist (Broughton, 113). For him, he

cannot doubt his self, and as such, cannot doubt his thought, even if he was dreaming; he noted

that, he is at least sure that he was dreaming. Rene Descartes asked, what is the essential in all

this reasoning and questioning? He replies that, all is founded on the knowledge of the self, on

what we afterwards learned to call self-consciousness (Elizabeth, 174). For him, we may be

mistaken in our judgments, but above all judgments, there is a principle which can never fail us,

and which is constantly before us, whether we are actively conscious or not. He noted that of all

he has doubted, nothing was left that could not possibly raise a doubt and this makes it difficult

for him to discover that Archimedean’s point he was looking for. But then he was sure of nothing

else to be doubted, this proposition ‘‘sure of nothing else’’ presupposes something which is

certain. He was certain that he cannot doubt the fact that he was doubting, because the act of

doubting affirms the existence of he who doubts and thereby bringing him to a certain end.

Hence, he came to the conclusion that, to think is to exist, which brought about his famous

dictum, ‘‘Cogito Ergo Sum’’, ‘‘I think, therefore I am’’, which for him was so certain and so

assured that all the most extravagant suppositions brought forward by the skeptics were incapable

of shaking it. This became the first principle in his establishment of the certainty of truth. He

noted, ‘‘I came to the conclusion that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of

philosophy for which I was seeking’’ (Descartes, Discourse on Method, 23). The discovery of

this foundation of certainty ‘the corgito’, asserts the existence of the self and it is an indubitable

truth that is imbued with clarity and distinctness. It shows that the foundation of our knowledge

lies in the reason and through it; other forms of knowledge could be proved (Anosike, 49).

Affirming this, Ojong and Ibrahim noted that, ‘‘The Corgito ergo sum was so solid and so certain

that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptic were incapable of upsetting it (152).

13
3.6 NOTION OF INNATE IDEAS

Rene Descartes spoke of discovering the first principles of first causes of everything which are or

which can be in the world without deriving them from any source except from certain germs of

truths which are naturally existent in our souls. Passage of this sort inevitably suggests that,

according to Descartes, we can construct metaphysics and physics by logical deduction from a

number of innate ideas implanted in the mind by ‘nature’ or by God. Rene Descartes holds, as

noted by Neil that, ‘‘knowledge is innate, that we are born with natural inclination to form certain

ideas and certain judgments’’ (89). For him all clear and distinct ideas are innate, and all

scientific knowledge is knowledge of or by means of innate ideas (Copleston, 83).

Descartes doctrine of innate ideas can be approached either by way of his ontological dualism of

mind and matter or by way of his epistemological dualism of thought and sense and in both cases

extension forms the crux (Norman, 234). The question is how can an un-extended mind unite

with extended body? For him, there is no hope of being able to comprehend the union of mind

and body. Ideas are among the most important items in Rene Descartes epistemology, he

classified idea into three;

But among these ideas, some appear to me to be innate, some adventitious, and
others to be formed or invented by myself; for, as I have the power of
understanding what is called a thing, or a truth, or a thought, it appears to me
that I hold this power from no other source than my own nature. But if I now
hear some sound, if I see sun, or feel heat, I have hitherto judged that these
sensations proceeded from certain things that exist outside of me; and finally it
appears to me that sirens, hippogriffs and the like are formed out of my mind.
But again I may possibly persuade myself that all these ideas are of the nature
of those which I term adventitious, or else that they are all innate, or all fictions
for I have not yet clearly discovered there true origin (Descartes, Meditations
on First Philosophy, 150).

14
Here Descartes considers three kinds of idea: innate ideas, adventitious ideas, and what are

sometimes called fictitious ideas. These categories are determined by what appears to him to be

differences with respect to the origin of their contents. The first category (innate idea) poses no

difficulties, for he suggests that he can account for these ideas (their contents), such as ideas of

what a thing is, what thought is, and so on, by an appeal to his own nature. He is an existent

thinking thing, and so the origin of the contents of these ideas, the objects they represent, can be

traced to the fact about his nature. His last category of idea (fictitious idea) is also unproblematic,

for he can easily account for them by an appeal to himself. He puts them together, so to speak,

out of other ideas that he already possesses. Adventitious ideas for him, pose an immediate

problem, since nature has always taught him, he says, to think that they proceed from certain

objects that are outside of him. So, there origin are caused by things located externally to the

mind such as seeing the sun or feeling the fire.

Furthermore, Talking about the innate idea he said; in a letter to Guillaume Gibieuf dated January

19, 1642, ‘‘I am certain that I can have no knowledge of what is outside me except by means of

the ideas I have within me’’ (ibid, 201). He noted that there were in himself certain thoughts

(cogitatione) that did not proceed from external objects, nor from a determination of his will, but

only from the thinking faculty that is in him, therefore, in order to distinguish the ideas or notions

that are the content of these thoughts from other ideas which are adventitious or fabricated, he

called them innate (ibid, 302).

For him, knowledge more or less lies deep in the recesses of our minds until, by probing in the

right way, we draw it to the front of our minds where we come to know it and to be fully

conscious of it. We are born with certain fixed principles planted in our minds by God; they are

an inherent part of us. The first of these principles is that ‘I think, hence I exist’, through which

15
we can deduce and build our whole edifice of knowledge. Our ideas are all in the mind ab initio,

put there by God when He created us, we need only to uncover them, clean them up, recognize

them for what they are, arrange them properly and our edifice of knowledge will be built orderly,

symmetrical, perfect and straight.

UNIQUENESS OF DESCARTES’ SYSTEM

The question is what are the characteristics peculiar to Rene Descartes’ work, which

distinguishes it from that of other philosophers? His knowledge can be said, without

oversimplification of truth, to have three principal marks, it is innate, it is intuitive, and it is

independent of things. These are the marks of his rationalism, and they are the marks by which

philosophy was universally recognized in Western history

3.7 THE EXISTENCE OF THE BODY AND THE MATERIAL WORLD.

Having built a foundation he sought for on ‘‘the thinking self’’, Descartes sets forth to prove the

existence of other things. Rene Descartes first and foremost, discovered that he is a thinking

being otherwise known as the self who exists certainly and reliably, he furthers his investigation

to enquire if there were other bodies in the world apart from him. He at least perceives clearly

and distinctly through his faculties of feelings and imaginations some certain impressions from

outside of him. The faculties of feeling and imagination are intellectual faculties from the

thinking being that receives light of existence from existing beings other than and distinct from

the self. The faculties of feeling and imaginations are formally conceived to be intelligible; from

where the self infers that there modes are distinct and proceed from a thing other than itself. He

observed the faculty of changes in positions, and posture of figures. The faculties conceive some

16
distinct and external impressions which if they must be in existence must be attached to some

corporeal or extended substance since there figures and modes are extended and corporeal.

Furthermore, Rene Descartes agreed with St. Thomas Aquinas that God can be known only

indirectly, and this also applies to our knowledge of other selves and the independently existing

physical bodies (Norman, 228). For him, since none of these is directly apprehensible, any

knowledge we may have of them must be due to mental processes of a more composite kind. He

is still holding fast to the view that in knowing ideas, the mind is patiently contemplative, it

cannot invent for itself a single new idea, and being thus passive in the reception of those which

present themselves to it. When we look at the ‘‘corgito ergo sum’’, we realize that it only

affirmed to Descartes that he was existing as a thinking being whose nature is essentially to

think, then if be it so, thinking only requires only the mind to carry out its activities, body being

unnecessary. Then for Descartes, whether he has a body or not he is not sure.

Hence, still on his pattern of thought he realized that he was performing certain activities which

required a body, he concluded that he had a body but for him as Omoregbe noted, his body is not

a part of his nature or essence as a thinking being, it is not an essential part of man’s nature (83).

Man is essentially a thinking being, that is, essentially a mind. He went further to note that he was

receiving impressions from outside him which impresses in the sense organs, from which he

concluded that material world therefore exists.

3.8 TENDENCY OF SKEPTICISM IN CARTESIAN CERTAINTY

Rene Descartes believes that one who does not learn at all is better than one who believes an

erroneous knowledge. He therefore, doubted, to know and learn rather than to condemn like the

skeptics. He undertook to rid self of all opinions, ideas and belief built and admitted since his

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earliest youth. He began by attacking those principles upon which his formal belief and opinions

were rested. This according to him could have been the founding platform upon which

philosophy should have been laid. This is to enable a clear certitude in the philosophical products.

According to Descartes, he realized that there are some errors in most of his previous held belief

and knowledge even most of the innate ideas. For instance, the fact that I am holding this paper

on my hand and reading these lines for him is devoid of doubt, since I may be insane or mad to

think I am what I am really not, or even dreaming since I cannot distinctly distinguish a real

difference. For even the strongest conviction of awaking activities, such as, that this head which I

move is not asleep, that it is deliberately and of set purpose that I extend my hand and perceive it,

what happens in sleep does not appear as distinct as does all this. For these then, Rene Descartes

claimed the faculty to assume that these activities of our nature like movement, possession of the

organs of the body and perception of other bodies are delusions. However, he could not cease to

reserve some acknowledging relevance to these phenomena which could be a pointer to

something realistic or somewhat a representation of meaningful phenomena. On the other hand

Rene Descartes’ scientific phenomena like physics, astronomy, medicine and all composite things

are subjects to doubt, but arithmetic, geometry which treat things in their simple and general or

metaphysical form contain some measures of certainty, ‘‘for whether I am awake or asleep, two

and three together always form five, and the square can never have more than four sides, and it

does not seem possible that truth which is so clear and apparent can be suspected of any falsity

(Descartes, Discourse on Meditations, 137).

Furthermore, it is apparent that even the earlier position which employed doubt to be the very act

of my existence deserves some considerations. This is because even as I suspect an act of

delusion of my reading these lines or existing at this place in time it still points to one fact; that

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all these do not happen in a vacuum. For the very fact that I dream or for the fact that I resolved

to doubt in the first instance means that I exist, for to doubt is to exist ‘‘si fallor, sum’’ (if I doubt,

I exist) (Ewelu, 35). This truth is clear and certain. It is also clear that to doubt is to hold some

propositions or affirmation as evidently and reasonably false, which implies the attitude of

thinking. For him therefore, ‘‘I think, therefore I am’’, ‘‘Corgito ergo sum’’. This truth is also

clear and certain, but how is Descartes to believe that all these formulas are not deceit. For it may

have been brought to pass that he is insane to think that two and three form five or square made

to have four sides. Descartes contended as noted by Elizabeth and Geach

That I am not deceived to believe that such mathematical truths are

certain for many a times I see deceit in what people think they know best.
And it is also possible that I am being deceived to believe that when I
think or doubt or manifest any of the things that made me think that I
exist, I would really think that I exist. Even when I think that I am
deceived, it still points to the fact that I exist, for to be deceived, I have to
exist. (139)
3.9 THE IMPLICATION OF RENE DESCARTES METHODIC DOUBT TO THE

FORMATION OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

There is no doubt to deny that, the methodic doubt as proposed by Rene Descartes, basically

leads to what is known as self-knowledge, which Omoregbe noted that it is spontaneous,

intuitive, and indubitable (37). Self-knowledge standardly refers to knowledge of one’s own

sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and other mental states, which is special because of the distinctive

agential relation one bears to one’s own mental states. With self-knowledge one can have a

strong epistemic claim which is infallible. What is relevant to the most famous philosophical

argument involving self-knowledge is the certainty of a particular instance of belief. And this is

what Rene Descartes argues in his corgito which aims to demonstrate that, so long as you are

carefully attending to your own thoughts, nothing, not even a supremely powerful evil genius

19
who controls your thoughts and seeks to deceive you can render misleading your evidence that

you are thinking and that you exist. Self-knowledge is immune from some types of error to which

other kinds of empirical knowledge most obviously perceptual knowledge are vulnerable as

Descartes imply

Furthermore, self-knowledge possibly leads to self enhancement. This is because people seem

motivated to experience positive emotional states and to avoid experiencing negative emotional

states; people are motivated to feel good about theirselves in order to maximize their feelings of

self-worth, thus enhancing their self-esteem, which affects the way people feel about themselves.

People with high self-esteem are more likely to be thinking of themselves in positive terms at a

given time than people suffering low self-esteem (Brown & Mankowski, 64). Self-knowledge is

important because it helps you to understand yourself better. Through better self-understanding,

you are more able to be in control of your own life.

However once self-knowledge is actualized one can possibly infer the knowledge of others.

Through self-knowledge, we are in a better position to understand the outer physical world

around us as well as the inner metaphysical world within us, and to see how our mind becomes

the interface for both experiences.

More so, we know that the meanings we place on the realities of life have a greater effect on the

quality of our human experience than the realities themselves. Thus, we can change the quality of

our life simply by changing the way we think and view the world around us. We can become

happier simply by changing ourselves, without changing the world. Paradoxically, when we

change ourselves, the world around us changes as well. Rene Descartes was outstanding and was

given the title father of modern philosophy because through his method and postulations he was

able to change the world view as at that time. Roger scrotum noted that ‘‘Rene Descartes was the

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principle founding father of modern philosophy, and well known mathematician. He deserves the

eminent place accorded to him on two accounts; first, because of his single-minded search for

method in all branches of human enquiry; second, because he introduced philosophy, largely on

account of that search, many of the concepts and argument of which have since served as

foundation. Through the realization of the self as a thinking being he offered a basic foundation

to knowledge claims which influenced many philosophers who came after him.

4.0 CRITICAL EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION

After a critical exposition of Descartes journey towards certainty, it is pertinent at this point of

our research to look at both the strength as well as the weakness of his projects and the

contribution to the epistemic community.

4.1 EVALUATION.

We have tried to succinctly explore his philosophical endeavor as regards the nature of

knowledge in relation to certainty as well as method of arriving at certain knowledge. We began

by looking at the views of some great minds on the conditions and criteria of certainty in

knowledge. However, our basic concern was Rene Descartes own method and postulations. He

earned himself the title of the father of modern philosophy’’ in the acknowledgment of the

strength of human reason. Being a mathematician, he subjected philosophy into a meticulous

scrutiny, taking it from the conventional and traditional shaky foundations to a more certifying

approach. His epistemology would highly be appreciated for the way he attempted to resolve

certain epistemological issues that had been in vogue since the Sophists entered the scene of

philosophy. The sophists had brought about skepticism towards what man knows and what he

21
claims to know. Among all other efforts put forth to tackle the problem of knowledge as seen in

the works of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, among others, Descartes took a different route to

attempt to reshape philosophy, which he believed was built on a doubtful and shaky foundation

or weak foundation amounting to imprecision associated with postulations. Descartes sets out to

provide secure foundations for science, metaphysics and religion by defeating skepticism. This

made him to formulate and overcome the strongest possible skeptical arguments. Rather than

appealing to particular challenges and particular contrasting appearances, he engaged in

questioning each opinion he considered dubitable. As such, he began a systematic doubt which

put all our beliefs into question. The possibility that I might be dreaming challenged all

perceptual beliefs as well as the possibility that I was wholly under the influence of an evil

demon threatened logical and metaphysical principles. Unless Descartes could legitimately

appeal to a criterion enabling him to reject those possibilities, none of our knowledge would be

secure.

The thinking self as the ground for certainty

More so, He made a principal contribution to the basic understanding of existence. Upon every

doubt towards the re-examination of the formal beliefs, Descartes succeeded in exposing the

eternal and indubitable truth. In the second meditation, he stumbled at the existence of the

corgito- the thinking being; ‘I am thinking, therefore, I exist’. The interest in the thinking being

can be traced as far as Plato who held man as a very important thinking being, who is solely

capable, in relation to the created beings, of penetrating the ‘‘forms’’ or ‘‘ideas’’ for the true

knowledge. This is done with the power of thought and contemplation. ‘‘Man, Plato thought, is

truly the measure of all things, in the sense that, there lie in him certain universal principles,

notions, concepts or ideas which are basic to all knowing. These ideas correspond to reality, the

22
real-world. Man, in his thinking, is able to grasp the true nature of things’’ (Frost, 56) Descartes

held that since he thinks, he must certainly exist-I think therefore, I exist. This truth is necessary,

self-verifying, and incontrovertible. Without a clear and distinct truth as Descartes expounded,

nothing would seem certain.

Just as Archimedes used to demand only one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire

planet, so too the meditator hopes to find at least one truth claim, however slight that is certain

and unshakable in order to build on it a comprehensive system of knowledge’’ (Vuitch, XVI).

Descartes method involves an intuitive deduction geared towards establishment of a clear and

distinct knowledge beyond every doubt from where the truth claims of other knowledge could be

examined and established.The first and basic knowledge upon which Descartes founded and

established his discoveries of knowledge was the thinking being, from which proceeds the

possible existence of other things in the world. (Omoregbe, 20).

However, despite these great records of Rene Descartes in his theory of knowledge, he has been

realized to have many flaws which many scholars criticized. Opponents have challenged

Descartes position, refuting the concept of innate, clear and distinct ideas. A skeptical opponent

has even suggested that what Descartes was offering as certain knowledge was nothing more than

personal fantasy.He was criticized on the innate idea; it is not necessarily correct to postulate that

people possess mind the moment they are born, instead they develop the mind through the

process of living for some time. Descartes position on the innate idea is open to criticism; innate

ideas critiques argues that, ideas should be predicated not thought of. Some of these criticisms are

directed to his proof of the self or thinking being, the existence of God, body and mind natures

and relationships as well as the notions of the other bodies of the universe. The issue of his

thinking being was meticulously criticized. This objection holds that there is nothing in the notion

23
of thinking that denotes existence. According to this objection, there is nothing in the ‘thinking’

that implies existence, even if there were something existential in the notion. Kant believes it

could not be known, since it is immaterial, spiritual and noumenon. This means that Descartes’

thinking being should not be personal or subjective to be ‘I’ think. The thought herein is rather

transcendental and unsubstantial, so there are no criteria of determining the subject of the

thought. This is because spiritual and immaterial being has no such qualities. Kant can agree that

there is an act of thought but ‘‘all we can know about it, is that, it is the subject of the act of

thinking…’’ (Omoregbe, 104).

Furthermore, his rationalistic method was heavily criticized by a philosophic movement known

as ‘‘positivism’’. One of the early leaders of this group, Auguste Compte was in opposition to the

‘‘thinking being’’; he said as recorded by Frost in his book The Basic Teachings of Great

Philosophers, that ‘‘we cannot know the inner essence of the universe or man’’ (74). The only

source of knowledge is observation and experience from where we get only uniform relations

between phenomena. For Bertrand Russell, the thinking being or man is only a small and

insignificant part of the universe which is governed by scientific law. In the same line, some

group known as the idealists who developed their doctrine from Kant criticize the Descartes

notion of the body and the existence of material world. For them, body does not exist in the real

sense. Hegel as a proponent of this group believes that body is a mere creation of the mind. All

interaction of mind and body as could be usually conceived are merely ideas in the mind and of

the mind. The body and the material world for them are limitations of mind ‘‘in every case it is

the mind which is the real thing, and matter is a creation of the mind, dependent upon mind for its

existence’’ (Frost, 244)

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4.2. CONCLUSION

From our discussion we can primarily assert that Descartes project has one basic underlying

factor: that there is possibility of certainty of knowledge. Breaking with the convention of his

own time and tradition, Descartes noticed that its knowledge claims were open to dispute, even

though it has been cultivated by great minds, uncertainties knock at its every corner. Descartes

gave a fresh foundation to philosophy through his methodic doubt, a first person-approach to

knowledge claims, which means that the general basis for knowledge claims was to be found in

the individual’s own mind, and the ‘I think’ is for him, the basis for any confidence an individual

can have in believing himself as a thinking person to have knowledge. The possibility of any

further knowledge must be derived from that application of rules of attaining truths,and using a

pure mathematical and classical philosophical method of a science of thought as opposed to

received wisdom, based on the tenets of formal belief. His discoveries were thus based on pure

fundamental and central questions surrounding knowledge. Despite the defects found in his

philosophy, he was able to establish at least some major facts which include that there is

possibility of knowledge which can be certain, an achievement which earned him the title ‘father

of modern philosophy’, the greatest European rationalist thinker of the modern era. Also, he was

acknowledged of doing a great work to place epistemology in the position that it has occupied in

philosophical study, and much of modern philosophy and culture bear his imprint.

Following the line of Rene Descartes, we will discover that it is good for people to learn and be

well educated or even in the process of learning to apply critical thinking and question their

thoughts over things they have learnt and also spend reasonable time to evaluate ideas. By so

doing, we will have the ability to grasp knowledge more and not just knowledge but an authentic

one (just like scientific truths which when questioned gives room for the discovery of more

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authentic one). Descartes made doubt the corner-stone of a philosophical method, hence, in order

to place our knowledge on foundations which are genuinely secure; we should try to doubt all our

beliefs, retaining them only if they are indubitable as proffered by Descartes. It then holds that

this Rene Descartes ‘Methodic doubt’ is a great tool for an authentic knowledge because

following his method will enable us to arrive at an indubitable knowledge or at least knowledge

with great propensity of certainty. With Descartes method, nothing, when it comes to knowledge

can ever be taken for granted, but must always be subjected in an acid bath of doubt, until it

proves itself as durable in terms of certainty.

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