Outline and evaluate Descartes’ Method of Doubt.

Descartes develops his Method of Doubt out of a desire to “demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations” (First Meditation) - he claims this will allow him to come up with “perfect knowledge”. It is, therefore, a suitably extensive sceptical approach to his beliefs. Descartes applies it in four successive waves, in each of which our certainty about something further is called into question. First, Descartes doubts the senses, seeing as they are capable of deceiving us, having done so at least once in our lives. Next, he questions his wakefulness, noting that during dreams there can be - and there is often - an illusion of being awake. Third, he considers the argument that dreams at least reflect reality in some capacity, for example featuring the kinds of objects that exist in waking life; however, he points out, it is possible for dreams to be entirely abstract in the same way certain paintings are, so we can’t conclude anything about the real world based on a dream. Finally, he turns to the intuitions he is most confident in, such as basic maths - 1 + 1 = 2, for example; surely he can’t be wrong about this? On the contrary, he argues, there is nothing to indicate that he isn’t being tricked by an “evil genie”, who could cause him to go wrong every time he tried adding numbers. The mere possibility that he is being deceived this way means he can’t be certain about any of his intuited beliefs in the way he’d like to be in order to have “perfect knowledge”.

This leaves very little for Descartes to confidently assert: in fact, his famous “cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”) claim is the only thing he is able to proclaim after applying the four waves of doubt. This claim amounts from arguing that even if one is being deceived about literally every belief one has, “one” still exists - in other words, some conscious thing must exist in order for it to be deceived in the first place. Descartes’ first principle, then, is that he exists as a conscious thing. He will then try to prove the existence of God and the external world on the basis of this, but his arguments end up being circular. Perhaps, then, the Method of Doubt is, in some sense, too successful for Descartes to be able to arrive at useful knowledge. Even nearly four centuries later, there isn’t a universally accepted solution for establishing the existence of the external world on the basis of the Method of Doubt. Or, at least, there is no solution as long as one accepts some of the hidden assumptions of Descartes’ Method. Many people challenge these assumptions, including G.E. Moore who simply holds up his hands and claims “here are two objects that exist in the external world; therefore, the external world must exist”. Phenomenologists have taken issue with it, too, thinking that the question of the external world is besides the point, choosing to focus on our immediate experience of phenomena - manifestations which seem to represent the world outside.

In conclusion, Descartes’ argument might have been too successful for his own purposes, creating a difficult situation for him to extricate himself from. However, it might not be as steadfast as initially thought when one examines its unstated premises.