Doubt

examining other possible approaches to discover illusions, and arguing about what one I hold to be the most efficient. Afterwards, I will defend Descartes’ belief in deceit, against an objection that depicts the impossibility for humans to be deceived, even assuming the actual existence of a ‘Demon Doubt’ that deceives us. Firstly, Descartes challenges the scepticism accepting that…

The René Descartes’ main purpose was finding whether some truths really existed or not. It does not have to be forgot, indeed, that he came from a period of time when sciences did still not have a framed system of values, therefore he wanted to find a truth, between a lot of possible illusions: namely, tidiness among chaos. In this essay, I will explore Descartes’ meeting with the sceptical challenge of what he calls Demon Doubt, by providing evidence of this, as well as an explanation of what…

The relationship between certainty and doubt is a strong one that affects our life in big ways. This relationship can be described as constantly feeling certain but also needing a little bits of doubt to keep things tangible, realistic, while still remaining confident. To start, always have a little self doubt in order to keep things realistic. If I said I wanted to live on Mars, there would be some doubt that I could achieve this dream because living on Mars is not realistic at this point in…

pp 49). The problem with truth is that it is subjective to the eye of the beholder and everyone sees truth in a different light. The truth is tainted. Therefore the idea of certainty is a lie. Certainty cannot exist without pure truth, but doubt is concrete and tangible. In religion, doubt is combated by faith that feeds this certainty. Religions such as Catholicism and Christianity use parables to “illustrate morals or lessons” to make the understanding of truth easier (Shanley pp 37).“Doubt”…

grandmother has what appears to be an epiphany. But is it truly an epiphany or did she just realize that nothing she could do or say at this point was going to save her. So which of these characters is actually suffering from a moral dilemma? Then of course there is the play Doubt. Again the characters are faced with a moral dilemma. Could Father Flynn actually be a pedophile? Sister Aloysius seems to think so. She had convinced herself that because of a past experience and a “feeling”…

Just as there is no way to know if our senses are deceiving us, there is no way to tell if we are awake or dreaming. This step is harder to wrap the mind around but Descartes argues that there are plenty of times when he has been dreaming and had no idea until he woke up (Tweyman, 2013, p.47). Which is a very valid point, people often have very mundane dreams that consist of them just going about their day, completely unaware they are dreaming. This brings into question the reality of the…

the team the years before. It was always about winning, the team tried so hard to win that they forgot to the purpose of the game: to have fun. I felt like I was a man on a mission, my close friend had to move to another state because of some family issues so now it was down to me to change the soccer team’s mentality. It was the day of our first game that things began to go my way. To my surprise, I had impressed everyone. For the first time since joining the soccer team, I began to…

Descartes reflects on many false statements he has come to believe while growing up and the various arguments he has developed from this falsehood. He resolves to clean up his mind from the story and decides to begin afresh from scratch and to build again his knowledge based on a particular ground. Sitting by the fire all by himself, he revokes his earlier opinion carefully, free from any burdens and worries. Descartes thinks that he needs only to find a reason for doubting his currently held…

it is worth going for that goal or not. Overcoming obstacles such as fear, doubt from others or even self-doubting is an important part of being able to achieve a goal. The individual has to have a positive attitude towards what they want; anything can be done when having a positive attitude towards something. In Edgar Albert Guest’s poem, “It Couldn’t Be Done”, the author employs words and phrases that motivate people not to give up on their goals no matter what others have to say and to…

Descartes, Plato, and The Matrix: A Comparison The Matrix, The Republic, and Meditations on First Philosophy all provide some valuable food for thought on the issues of reality and what we think we know to be true. Through their similarities and differences, we can explore some interesting perspectives on the age-old questions of “what can we know for sure if anything?” and “how do we know what we know?” As they have been, these questions will likely continue to be debated and explored for…