Knowledge which is being aware or being in full understanding of something or someone Descartes argues is more of reason than use of senses. To proof it, he uses doubts. He starts by doubting what he believes in, but, excludes, doubting himself. In this paper I will look on Descartes conclusions, the method and approach of knowledge.
Descartes is right by arguing that trusting senses is not good. What people believe in without proofing has a lot of errors and taking them as true makes people to remain in inaccuracies. What people receive through senses is prone to faults as Descartes says, “it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.” Therefore, people have to develop doubts in order to know whether what they are possessed of is true and right or not. The process of doubt involves an assumption and a claim (Green M, 2010).
If a person believes there are terrorists outside his or her house, then it means the person must know in reality there are terrorists. Seeing people outside the house is not enough to compel a person to believe they are terrorists. This is because a person in his or her dreams can see people and thus seeing is not a base for knowledge. There must be a proof there are people outside and they are not just people but terrorists, and this calls for a methodical application of reason.
According to Descartes trusting senses is like trusting dreams. The way experiences are formed out of dreams likewise senses make people to develop experiences that are not true. If a person can dream being at liberty while in jail and on waking up find himself or herself still in chains, the same applies to senses. People can form illusions of things that do not exists even when they are awake (California State University, n.d.).
The accurate knowledge according to Descartes does not come from trusting senses or reading books. He argues that reason must be applied for knowledge to be acquired. Reason involves a proof of what a person beliefs in. This calls for a person to doubt what he believes in and seek to prove whether it is true or not. But, Descartes also says, “I am persuaded that I shall not be doing wrong, if, taking an opposite judgment of deliberate design, I become my own deceiver,” and therefore, in the process of searching for truth care should be taken for one can err (Trident University Library, n.d.).
The appealing thing in the Descartes arguments is the idea of finding out whether what one believes in is true or not. This is because wrong beliefs and ideas can be passed from one generation to another. If it is not proved, then it means all people who believe in that idea will be following mistakes that were made in the past. The odd thing is the process of proofing beliefs or knowledge already acquired it tedious and may arouse issues hard to swallow and thus as Descartes say, “so I, of my own accord, fall back into the train of my former beliefs, and fear to arouse myself from my slumber, lest the time of laborious wakefulness that would succeed this quiet rest, in place of bringing any light of day, should prove inadequate to dispel the darkness that will arise from the difficulties that have now been raised. (Trident University Library, n.d.)”
