Descartes: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Sorell Tom

Author:Sorell, Tom [Sorell, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

What method had Descartes hit upon and what did he include under the heading of ‘metaphysical truths’? The method – commonly known as the Method of Doubt – has already been alluded to. It began with a resolution to take as positively false anything that seemed in the least uncertain to the enquiring mind. Whatever commanded assent in the face of the strongest efforts at rejecting it would be quite certain. In the Meditations, the treatise that Descartes eventually published, the resolution to reject as false anything that could possibly be doubted was put to work with the aid of some strange sceptical hypotheses. Descartes imagined himself in the grip of a powerful demon capable of controlling his thoughts and making him believe nothing but falsehoods. For the demon to be effective in his deception, it had to be beyond doubt that the demon actually produced thoughts in Descartes. That fact – that he had thoughts – was therefore one the demon could not deceive him about. And if the reality of his thoughts was beyond doubt, so, too, was the reality of some subject of thought, some ‘I’ to do the thinking. Hence the first certainty of metaphysics, that I am thinking, so I exist. This had to be true even if all one’s other thoughts were in the control of a deceiving demon. And from it, Descartes argued, other metaphysical truths (about God) could be deduced.

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