Descartes' Doubt

If I were to say that I understood all that I read this week, You could call me a liar. With that being said, I am not exactly sure how I plan to do this, but it will be good.... Hopefully... :)

After reading Descartes’ Meditations, I realized that a lot of my knowledge is based on things that I heard second hand and didn’t learn through my own experience. Some of these things are probably not wrong, but how can I be sure? Unlike myself, a person who will probably not do a single thing about this question that I just asked, Descartes took upon himself the challenge of seeing what, if anything, in life could be proved. I liked how he took all his thoughts and ideas and began to look at every detail from them and doubt what he saw until he either, a) found something that he could not doubt, or b) discovered that there is nothing certain. Through this process, he made quite a few uncertain conclusions, from the idea that God was deceiving him to the thought that a demon was making him see the imaginary world that he thought was around him. I do think that the idea of doubting knowledge could be very helpful, but I don’t ever plan on taking that to Descartes’ extreme and doubt all that I know.

Descartes’ Meditations definitely helped me understand that doubt isn’t bad as long as you are truly looking to gain more understanding and knowledge of the world, God, or anything else. As long as my doubt isn’t based merely on just wanting to go against everyone else, it shouldn’t be an issue.

P.S. I commented on Amy Smith’s post.