American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR)
2021
American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR) e-ISSN :2378-703X Volume-5, Issue-10, pp-09-17 www.ajhssr.com
Research Paper
Open Access
RENÉ DESCARTES’ CONCEPTION OF CERTAINTY: From the Infallibity of human mind to its Reliability Zacharie Wasukundi and Rev. Dr. John Muhenda P.O Box 85 Kayole 00518 Nairobi-Kenya
ABSTRACT: This article describes the Cartesian conception of certainty in its epistemological approach. Its main question is:“Can we really know with certainty?” On the one hand, René Descartes says that we can know with certainty if we respectively doubt our former knowledge, the senses, dreams, evil genius and even the mathematical truths. On the other hand, he argues that we can know with certainty if and only if we rely on the followingfour epistemological requirements: “evidence” about reality; “division” that deals with the various parts of the same reality; “order” helps to move from simple ideas to the complex ones; and enumeration dealing withthe relevant and holistic ideas about reality. In his epistemological approach of certainty, Descartes affirms that human reason/mind is both infallible and reliable. However, this article also aims at showing and even proving that human reason is reliable without being infallible. Since we can partially know something about the whole reality, our new epistemological approach deals with “probability” instead ofdealing with certainty.
I. INTRODUCTION René Descartes is widely known as the “the father of modern philosophy” 1 and also as the “founder of Epistemology”. In terms of epistemology (or theory of knowledge), Descartes is the major figure in the philosophical movement known as rationalism. In fact, rationalism was at the center of the Enlightenmentduring the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that revolutionized the Western world. 2 After the revelation he experienced on November 10, 1619, René Descartes undertook his own intellectual rebirth. His plan was to throw out everything he thought he knew. In this act of demolishing and then reconstructing his former knowledge, he doubted everything in order to attain a certain knowledge. As he says, this certain knowledge can be acquired by means of the strict application of reason to all problems. In this article, we are going to talk about: The Cartesian doubt, Descartes‟ conception of certainty and the objections against the Cartesian conception of certainty. At the end of this article, we shall show that human reason is reliable without being infallible since our new epistemology deals with probability instead dealing with certainty. II. THE CARTESIAN DOUBT 2.1. Doubting his former knowledge René Descartes (1596-1650) was educated at the Jesuit College (La Flèche), where he studied Aristotelian logic, Mathematics and Philosophy. In fact, Descartes speaks of the Jesuits of La Flèchewith affection and respect, and he regards their education as greatly superior to what was provided in most other pedagogical institutions. He even considers that he had been given the best education available with the framework of tradition. However, Descartes‟ attitude toward the education he received at La Flèchewas somehow ambivalent. On the one hand, he later wrote that the college was “one of the best schools in Europe.” On the other hand, he acknowledges that the philosophy he had learned there, “despite being cultivated for many centuries by the best minds, contained some uncertainties, disputes and disagreements.” 3
1
Samuel Enoch Stumpf. Socrates to Sartre. A History of Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1998, 244. 2 http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/descartes/context/ 3 John Cottingham (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 3.
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