Epistemology\
¨
Famously,
Descartes
defines
knowledge in terms of doubt. While distinguishing
rigorous
knowledge and lesser grades of conviction ,Descartes writes:
¨
I
distinguish the two as follows: there is conviction when there remains
some
reason which might lead us to doubt, but knowledge is conviction based
on a
reason so strong that it can never be shaken by any stronger reason.
¨
Elsewhere,
while answering a challenge as to whether he succeeds in founding such
knowledge, Descartes writes:
¨
But
since I see that you are still stuck fast in the doubts which I put
forward in
the First Meditation, and which I thought I had very carefully removed
in the
succeeding Meditations, I shall now expound for a second time the basis
on
which it seems to me that all human certainty can be founded.
¨
First
of all, as soon as we think that we correctly perceive something, we
are
spontaneously convinced that it is true. Now if this conviction is so
firm that
it is impossible for us ever to have any reason for doubting what we
are
convinced of, then there are no further questions for us to ask: we
have
everything that we could reasonably want. … For the supposition which
we are
making here is of a conviction so firm that it is quite incapable of
being
destroyed; and such a conviction is clearly the same as the most
perfect
certainty.
These passages (and others) clarify that Descartes
understands doubt as the contrast of certainty. As my certainty
increases, my
doubt decreases; conversely, as my doubt increases, my certainty
decreases. The
requirement that knowledge is to be based in complete, or perfect
certainty,
amounts to requiring a complete absence of doubt—an indubitability,
or
inability
to
undermine one's
conviction. Descartes' methodic emphasis on doubt, rather than on
certainty,
marks an epistemological innovation.
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