FATE OF KNOWLEDGE by Raphy Jose Kadavi (0924608)

FATE OF KNOWLEDGE

 

Descartes, in order to attain knowledge took back the tactic of skepticism from Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. The tactic is to recall cases in which he has misperceived something and then to generalize on that basis that the senses are not to be trusted. According to him, to gain knowledge we must analyze our beliefs into their simplest components and test each of those components by comparing them to self evident truths. Once we have done that, we must reassemble the components that pass the test for truth into the complex belief we began with; or approximations of them if we found false components in our analysis and tests for truth (the Analytical method). What we compare belief-components to are with the truths that we have discerned through application of methodological doubt and discern as self-evident true i.e. ideas that present themselves to us as clear  and distinct through the light of reason. Only when the process of analysis, comparison and verification has been successfully completed can we judge something we believe or are inclined to believe to be true belief and hence knowledge, and only when something judged knowledge can it be used to test other beliefs. The process is cumulative and what now needed to proceed is a single self evidently true idea that will serve as his standard for testing the components of all his beliefs.   

 

Then Descartes establishes that he necessarily exists when he thinks; that he is a thing that thinks; and that the ideas he has of material objects; which may or may not exist, enables the derivation of extension as their common defining property.  Here his thinking is a property of mind and extension the property of ideas he has of the material objects. The only basis for this invalid conclusion is the Aristotelian Presupposition that substances have defining properties.

 

Then he distinguishes among ideas that are innate in him and ideas that he conjures up himself. Of those innate ideas his particular interest is on the idea of God.

He through his causal argument proves the existence of God. The basis of this causal argument is that the idea is presented to the mind in a way that makes the eternity of its cause somehow undeniable. The idea is that those who have the idea of God has got it not from themselves.

 

            Then he explains how error occurs, and hence of why error is not God's fault.

The explanation turns on two notions, the first notion is that we have perfectly free will; second is Descart's two step account of perception as involving the entertaining of ideas and the assenting to or rejecting of those ideas.

 

            Here now what is to be noted is the difference between the existence of divine substance and the extended substance. The existence of divine substance is conclusively provable by reason, whereas the existence of extended substance, of matter is as it were another matter. Matter's existence cannot be proven by reason because we have acces to it only through ideas that represent it. As far as Descartes is concerned , the existence of matter follows as a conclusion from the premises stating God's existence and perfect goodness, but the soundness of that conclusion is dependent on the truth of the premises, and problems with the ideas of perfection and with conception of existence as a property render those premises problematic enough that the conclusion remains problematic.

 

            Hence the fate of knowledge is to stay limited to the perfection of ideas.