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Category: Philosophy
Tags: DescartesKnowledgePhilosophyRationalismSkepticism
Entities: Cartesian skepticismCogito, ergo sumEmpiricismRationalismRené Descartes
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this video is sponsored by ag1 use the link in the description to receive a free one-year supply of AG vitamin D3 and K2 and 5 travel packs with your first purchase what do you know with absolute certainty anything are you sure this is real right
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now are you sure you exist in the form you think you exist could everything be an illusion could this all be a dream could your brain be in some sort of vat of nutrient solution for reasons you don't know or remember all of your current perceptions and memories merely
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a product of electrical impulses stimulated by a machine regarded by many as the father of modern philosophy 17th century French philosopher Renee descard placed these seemingly absurd questions at the center of his life's mission in an effort to find the very Foundation of all
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knowledge and discover only what could be known with absolute certainty Descartes set out to question everything in doing so endowing everything he believed perceived and experienced however obvious or absurd it may have seemed he would go on to make one of the most notable philosophical discoveries
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ever made in history arguably it is the only philosophical proposition that is and will forever remain absolutely indubitably true it is kogito ergo soon or I think
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therefore I am Descartes was born in France in 1596 which would later become Descartes France after it was renamed after him at only one year old Renee's mother passed leaving him to his father who was
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a hyper-busy lawyer and magistrate who had very little time to raise Renee and his siblings as a result Descartes was raised primarily by his grandmother and great uncle in 1607 after delaying his education due to poor health throughout his childhood he entered the Jesuit college at La
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flesh here he would become exposed to mathematics science and philosophy for the first time finding out how little he truly knew about the world and developing a strong Affinity toward mathematics as the only truly stable method of discovering what he could know
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following Jesuit college however under the pressure of his father Descartes would go on to study and obtain a law degree from the University of poise eventually pushing back against the pressure to become a lawyer Descartes would instead enter the military with the hopes of becoming an officer while in the Army he formally studied military
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engineering which would re-engage him in mathematics and science in 1619 everything would dramatically change for Descartes after having a series of three intense vivid dreams in a single night the dreams were so disturbing and moving for Descartes they essentially caused
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him to redefine his entire life's path through his interpretation of these dreams he now believed his life's purpose was to reform all knowledge by pursuing a new approach to philosophy an approach that used the same method found in Science and Mathematics that is
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rationality and that's what he did unlike many philosophers around this time who still Justified their arguments with religious belief Descartes would go on to argue for a new philosophical system in which propositions needed to be based on logic alone with this he
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would become the first thinker of the philosophical movement known as rationalism which would go on to also include other seminal thinkers like Baruch Spinoza and Godfrey leibniz essentially rationalists believe that there are truths that exist prior to any experience or observation known as a
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priori knowledge which can be acquired and understood solely through rational thinking this directly opposes another philosophical school that emerged around the same time known as empiricism which argues that all knowledge comes chiefly from our experiences of the external
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World known as a posteriori knowledge partly as a consequence of the preceding Renaissance Era skepticism was also becoming an increasingly popular attitude held toward knowledge around this time unlike rationalists or empiricists true Skeptics believe that
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our senses memories and reason are all inherently flawed and no certain knowledge can ever be acquired Descartes however being a rationalist though he agreed that many beliefs were susceptible to irrational thinking and faulty sensory input he believed truths
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could be arrived at through reason and so he sought to refute skepticism through rationalism in order to do this however he realized he needed to rigorously inspect every single one of his beliefs he needed to doubt all things completely assume
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everything was false and only take seriously that which could not be doubted in his seminal work meditations on first philosophy published in 1641 Descartes wrote some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood and by the
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highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them I realized that it was necessary once in the course of my life to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely
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to last famously Descartes used an analogy of an apple basket to illustrate his process of thinking he suggested we imagine a basket of apples in which some of the apples may be rotten if in fact any of the apples are rotten the rot will
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spread to the other fresh apples and ruin the entire basket and so the only way to prevent this from happening is to take every Apple out of the basket inspect each one individually for rot and then only place back the fresh Good Apples the point here is that any rotten
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or false beliefs can and likely will affect one's other beliefs destroying the entire structure through which one understands the world and so one must doubt or take out every single one of their beliefs breaking each one down into smaller questions to further evaluate them for logical problems and
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then only accept and place back that things that are impossible to doubt this extreme form of skepticism would come to be known as Cartesian skepticism or Cartesian doubt it might sound counter-intuitive that Descartes would employ such an extreme form of skepticism if he was a sort of
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anti-skeptic but this method is known as methodological skepticism in which skepticism is used as a means to disprove skepticism by reducing it to absurdity in the form of truths that cannot be doubted doubt is the origin of wisdom Descartes wrote
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in the first meditation in meditations on first philosophy which is broken up into six meditations Descartes contemplates the very Foundation of knowledge since for him anything that was possible to doubt it all to any degree was to be left out and treated as false he soon found himself asking these
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fundamental questions how could he know anything was as it seemed how could he know anything existed how could he know that the world was not some deception everything from the colors he saw to the memories and beliefs he had to the very existence of himself perhaps it was all
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a dream after all for the most part one only ever knows that they're dreaming after they've awakened or perhaps he was awake but his mind was being manipulated by some sort of evil demon at the beginning of the second meditation Descartes writes so serious are the doubts into which I
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have been thrown as a result of yesterday's meditation that I can either put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them it feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep Whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top nevertheless I
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will make an effort and once more attempt the same path which I started on yesterday anything which admits of the slightest doubt I will set aside just as if I had found it to be wholly false and I will proceed in this way until I recognize that there is no certainty Archimedes used to demand just one firm
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and immovable point in order to shift the entire Earth so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing however slight that is certain and unshakable eventually after intense doubting and contemplation Descartes would arrive at
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the certain and unshakable Discovery Solid Ground to stand on at the bottom of the whirlpool he realized that if he was dreaming if there was an evil demon affecting his thoughts and perceptions if he couldn't trust any of his experiences memories perceptions or beliefs he could still
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know one thing he existed if perceptions and thoughts were occurring at all then there must be a mind in which those thoughts and perceptions were occurring one cannot endowed if they exist if they do not thinking is proof of being
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I think therefore I am Descartes writes if there is some deceiver or other who is supremely powerful and supremely Sly and he was always deliberately deceiving me then two there is no doubt that I exist if he is deceiving me and let him do his best
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at Deception he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I shall think that I am something thus after everything has been most carefully weighed it must finally be established that this pronouncement I am I exist is necessarily true every time I utter it
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or conceive it in my mind [Music] with this truth as a foundation Descartes believed he could now go on to attempt to prove other truths in particular the existence of God and mind-body dualism he would argue that since innately he could not doubt that
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his mind existed but he could doubt that his body existed then his mind and body must be separate and therefore made of two different substances extended substances or physical and thinking substances or mental his argument for God would essentially rely on his
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ability to conceive of the idea of God since he could conceive of a perfect being within his mind and according to Descartes all things that exist must have a sufficient cause for their existence which in this case must be something more perfect than the idea of a perfect being than for Descartes God
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exists of course there are a lot of problems here even if the mind and body are separate that does not mean they are made of different substances they could still be made of the same basic physical material of the same physical world subject to the same physical laws and
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the inability to doubt or conceive of something does not necessitate its existence in order to find its quality nor predicate Perfection all is to say although Descartes did seemingly find the bottom of the whirlpool his attempts to swim back up and find the surface only led him to being swirled back
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around and placed back down on the ground and arguably that is where we have and possibly will always remain Descartes described the kogito I think therefore I am as the first item of
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knowledge perhaps however it is the only item of knowledge but without any doubt Descartes should be revered for it for his groundbreaking work discoveries and contributions he forever influenced Western philosophy mathematics and thinking as a whole from the way we
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question things to the way we strive for their answers through his process of extreme skepticism he dived headfirst into the whirlpool of uncertainty and emerged with one of the most notable philosophical propositions ever uttered perhaps the only thing that while you're swirling around this Whirlpool you can
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always hold on to and in seeming perfect poetry that thing is you without doubt without question you are the solitary absolute truth amidst the Sea of all things uncertain
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