Thursday, October 3, 2013
A Noble Failure?
Many of us in class found Descartes' foundational project to fail. Let's assume that he cannot justify all his claims to knowledge by an appeal to the Cogito. What can we learn from this failure? Should we look for a wider class of foundational beliefs? Should we avoid appeals to a God who is not a deceiver? Should we find a different way to justify beliefs that does not require an appeal to foundational beliefs?
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I think that the idea of foundational beliefs fails not because there aren’t any foundational beliefs per se but because we as humans are too imperfect to know what is or is not foundational. Our imperfection lies in the fact that we try to base everything off of our knowledge of ourselves. This is seen in Decartes’ Cogito in which he says that if he knows only one thing then he knows that he exists. He assumes that the claim “I exist” is the most foundational belief upon which he must base everything else.
ReplyDeleteHis assumption makes sense when we consider how we humans must perceive the world around us. When we judge something outside of ourselves, we must always compare it to ourselves in order to determine whether or not it is true. When I say “compare” I mean that we must use our own thoughts and emotions to judge the other thing. For example, we can sympathize with someone who says “I am sad” only if we have felt sadness and remember our own experience of these feelings. Another example is that we judge what someone else says to be “true” by comparing it to the idea of “truth” we hold in our minds. In trying to find knowledge of the world based upon our perceptions of ourselves we assume that our knowledge of ourselves is a more objective truth than our knowledge of the rest of the world.
If the Cogito is false, then our perceptions and knowledge of ourselves are just as flawed as our perceptions and knowledge of the world around us. There may be an objective truth, but our perceptions are so flawed that we can never know this objective truth, and therefore even if we come across this truth we will never be able to recognize it for what it is. Therefore, a search for an objective truth and the foundational beliefs that follow from it is a futile search.
If all this is true then there are two alternative ways to find foundational beliefs; however, both severely limit how much knowledge we can ever have. First we can base all our knowledge upon the laws of mathematics. I agree with Descartes that mathematics is an objective truth that will never change no matter how wrong we are in our perceptions of it. Therefore mathematics is a valid foundational belief. However, I believe that a considerable amount of the things in the world cannot be explained through mathematics alone which means that if we take this approach our knowledge will be severely limited.
The second alternative is to throw out the idea of foundational beliefs entirely and to instead focus on the subjective truth that is right in front of us. We can therefore say that the Cogito is a valid argument because the foundation of our subjective truth is that if I perceive that I exist then I exist. Finding knowledge within this subjective truth may mean that each person reasons their way into a different set of beliefs which for them counts as “knowledge.” While theoretically this sounds scary because it means that there is virtually no knowledge that we can trust as being constant, this subjective knowledge is what people use in their everyday lives and that works well enough.
Descartes use of methodic doubt to systematically reject all statements that are false and eliminate any type of knowledge which can be doubted in any way is, in my opinion, an unreliable and erroneous method of approach in establishing foundational beliefs to base all of one’s knowledge and thoughts. Descartes uses the Cogito to defeat skepticism and prove God’s existence and thus all other things and objects in the external world. However, if one uses the process of methodic doubt, how can one establish for certain that a god even exists? One can doubt the existence of a god; it’s all relative, for each individual can have a different perception of god, if there is one, and the presence of a higher being. From there, all of Descartes previous claims and arguments fall apart, and we’ve gotten nowhere in terms of deciphering what is really true and what really exists.
ReplyDeleteI think that in order to be more practical and declare with certainty a necessary truth, I think one should toward a subjective truth, a set of beliefs relative to each individual. Each individual can have his/her own perception of truth and definition of reality. One would compare his own beliefs to his own definition of truth, and his alone. Subjective reality is, in this case, the only source of truth because a person can only define the boundaries of his/her own scope of reality. Then according to Descartes, if we used methodic doubt to attack another person’s set of foundational beliefs, is that even possible? Can someone else truly deny the knowledge of another? It’s impossible to deny a subjective reality, for we cannot think on behalf of another.
We should look for a wider class of foundational beliefs, ideally based off our own sense of truth and reality, for this is undeniable to our own selves. With Descartes, if we were to assume that he cannot justify his beliefs entirely on the Cogito and his foundational beliefs were universal, the idea of a subjective reality can be a range of beliefs only valid to our own perception, and thus true to ourselves and serve as our own foundational project.
I think that Descartes has the wrong approach when it comes to foundational beliefs. The reason for skepticism is a situation that is similar to that of The Matrix. How do we know that when we perceive is reality? Are we being deceived by an all-powerful being whose sole purpose is to deceive us lower life forms? Frankly, I don’t think that is all that important. Descartes is in search of an “absolute” or “definite” reality. In my opinion, I do not think this is necessary. If we never are conscious of this special reality, the true reality, why is it important to us? It is true that dreams and reality can be indistinguishable. However, for everyone inside of the dream, that is THEIR reality. Why should they care about the objective reality more than the situation in which they live? If they are never going to experience the objective reality, what difference does it make to them? They have knowledge of their reality, and that is what is important.
ReplyDeleteI think in terms of the foundational beliefs, they should only apply to the reality in which someone is in. It is pointless to try to learn things about outside realities when there are so many different possibilities.
In an essence, I do not think that foundational beliefs are all that important. I think that making the assumption that the reality we perceive is the reality which is important. To reiterate, I think that searching for foundational beliefs is a misguided first step. It would not change much if we were to assume that this reality is the only reality in which we should be concerned with, for the mere fact that this is the only reality in which we will be interacting with. Making this assumption in itself could be a first step in foundational beliefs.