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To Doubt Rene Descartes

            Rene Descartes comes to the realization that he has been deceived in his lifetime. He sets out to question the scholastic traditions that are the foundations of the beliefs of his time. He believes that his predecessors made a fatal mistake in accepting things to be true without certainty. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes attempts to establish a new method of obtaining knowledge where he only accepts beliefs as true if they are beyond possible doubt. Descartes fails to adequately determine God's existence as he misapplies the standard of beyond possible doubt. He illicitly accepts God existence by a domino effect through his idea of self. He believes if he has the idea of God in his mind, then God must exist.
             Descartes begins to explore his previous belief with "First Mediation: On What Can be Called into Doubt." This mediation is the long overdue demolition of all prior knowledge and the starting over from the foundations. In this mediation, Descartes is motivated by the falsehoods he had accepted and the doubtful structure of beliefs that they are based on. He agrees to only assume ideas that are clear and distinct; so self-evident that they cannot logically be doubted. Descartes reasons through his opinions of what he believes to be true, doubting any belief that could possibly admit of being false. This doubt culminates in the "evil demon hypothesis." The evil demon is "some malicious, powerful, cunning, demon" that has been deceiving him all along. Descartes considers that it is the evil demon that tricks him into thinking the wrong things. It is possible that two plus three is not five and that there are not four sides in a square as the "evil demon" has been tricking Descartes all along into believing that it is true. The evil demon argument provides possible doubt ruling out that external bodies exist and that what he suspected to be true mathematics and geometry as false.

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