1. René Descartes The Quest for Certainty
Chapter 15
René Descartes
The Quest for Certainty

2. Search for a Method
Edmund Husserl and Bertrand Russell were attracted to mathematics as a:
Possible model for certain kinds of philosophical inquiry
Descartes found the search for the elusive point of departure all important
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3. Montaigne on Skepticism
Men are in agreement about nothing
Those who doubt everything also doubt that, and those who deny that we can:
Understand anything say that we have not understood that the sky is over our head:
And these two views are incomparably the strongest in number
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4. Montaigne on Skepticism
Besides this infinite diversity and division, it is easy to see by the confusion that:
Our judgment gives to our own selves:
And the uncertainty that each man feels within himself that it has a very insecure seat
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5. Subjecting The Foundations To Doubt
Descartes is allowing fantastic, extremely far-fetched possibilities:
He calls them “hyperbolic” at one point:
As legitimate reasons to doubt the foundations of his former beliefs
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6. Subjecting The Foundations To Doubt
The main reasons he gives to doubt the reliability of sense experience as a:
Source of information about the external world is the possibility that all of these experiences:
Might be occurring within an elaborate dream
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7. René Descartes: Meditations
First Meditation—Concerning Things That Can Be Doubted
Second Meditation—Of the Nature of the Human Mind
And That It Is More Easily Known Than the Body
Third Meditation—Of God: That He Exists
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8. René Descartes: Meditations
Descartes subjects to doubt the two foundations of his former beliefs:
Sense experience and intellectual intuition
Exploring various possible bases for subjecting these foundations to doubt
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9. Cogito Ergo Sum If we are to achieve certainty:
We must be able to establish something that cannot be doubted
In the process of attempting to discover an indubitable truth on which he could:
Base his rebuilding of philosophy, Descartes never appeals to the senses
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10. Cogito Ergo Sum
Descartes’ standard for proof is rational and deductive
God As The Guarantor Of Certainty
What it is about the belief in his existence as a thinking thing that makes it certain
Proof for God’s existence
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