Philosophy Essay: ‘Outline the background to Descartes’ use of the Method of Doubt’

The 17th century; this was a period of time in which an intellectual movement of reason and science began. This movement was known as the Age of Enlightenment. Sparked by philosophers, many began approach an understanding of our world by a means of adopt both rational and empirical methods. Research in this area lead to a multitude of discoveries such as; Johannes Kepler’s law of planetary motion, the speed of light and Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation. Such discoveries as these lead to an arising in both mechanical philosophy and materialism; beliefs that together state that the universe is analogised best as a machine in which both organic and inorganic have no intrinsic relationship to one another, but are rather just subject to the laws of nature. The increase of people holding such beliefs lead to an increasing doubt in the existence of God, and encouragement of atheism. This was a serious problem as the Catholic church very much impinged on every aspect of life. Any person who publically held a belief which conflicted with Catholicism was charged with heresy and punished. An example of this being Galileo, who was charged with heresy and sentenced to house arrest for asserting that the Copernican view of the universe was wrong, and that everything didn’t revolve around the Earth. Due to cases like this, the church restricted the range of scientific knowledge to a framework in which a belief in God was paramount. This was known as natural theology.

Being both a man of science, mathematics and a devout Catholic, Descartes thought it were possible to reconcile both science and religion. He believed Galileo’s scientific method was valid, and wanted to show that holding such beliefs about our universe wasn’t incompatible with Catholicism, and represented no threat to it. The way he set out to this is documented in his book Meditations on First Philosophy. He starts his Meditations by stating that he feels the need to be certain of what is true and what is false. Descartes sought to achieve this certainty via his method of doubt. He wanted to examine all his beliefs, but examining all beliefs one at a time would be a cumbersome and impractical process. Instead, Descartes doesn’t doubt the individual beliefs, but rather he doubts the foundations on which these beliefs rest. This would mean that any beliefs held on doubtful foundations can be discounted as knowledge, as it cannot be certain. He repeats this process on the different faculties (senses, imagination, reason). With each faculty, his sceptical hypotheses make leave something which cannot be doubted by it. This means that Descartes must therefore pose a stronger sceptical hypothesis in order to see whether what previously couldn’t be doubted can be brought into doubt. Once Descartes can no longer bring a proposition into doubt, he claims it as truth and holds it to be something certain.