Tuesday, October 12, 2010
A Noble Failure?
Many of us in class found Descartes' foundational project to fail. Let's assume that he cannot justify all his claims to knowledge by an appeal to the Cogito. What can we learn from this failure? Should we look for a wider class of foundational beliefs? Should we avoid appeals to a God who is not a deceiver? Should we find a different way to justify beliefs that does not require an appeal to foundational beliefs?
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Although Descartes’ foundational project fails, several benefits come from testing it out. First and foremost, the failure shows that trying to prove anything from foundational beliefs is faulty and that people shouldn’t take that route. Secondly, it may bring up questions that should still be answered, regardless if the way Descartes tried to prove them were wrong. For example, is God a deceiver? This is a reasonable question to ask, one that people should try to find the answer to, just not by foundational methods. Lastly, Descartes’ failure may also propel new and different ideas that can lead to something more logical. We can learn many things from this failure. We can learn from his mistakes, eliminate the wrong ideas and methods, think of question that should be proven, and push new ideas.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that looking at a wider class of foundational beliefs would improve anything. Foundationalism is a flawed method no matter how many original beliefs build the base for all arguments. I think that if one thing needs to be proven, then everything needs to be proven. Descartes tries to base his arguments on foundational beliefs. It doesn’t make sense that he has to prove that some things exist and are true, but not others (the foundational beliefs), specifically anything related to God. Anything related to God is a very vague and twisted topic; therefore I feel that no foundational beliefs can be based off of God. If we broaden the foundational beliefs, there is even more room for error. Not only does a bigger set of foundational beliefs cause a greater possibility for mistakes, but also it becomes very unclear how all of these beliefs don’t need to be proven.
We should try to find a different way to justify our beliefs, not using Descartes’ foundationalism. Descartes says, “And thus I realized that once in my life I had to raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundation, if I wanted to establish anything firm and lasting in sciences” (17). I believe that there are other ways to justify things in the sciences with the knowledge that we already know—in context of our realm. I feel that knowing whether or not we truly exist in the world that we are in is an unnecessary thing to concern ourselves with. If in our world we think, we see, we learn, according to us, why should we be concern that there is another, more real world, that we can’t even get to?
A method that we talked about in class is coherenitism. I believe that this is a better approach that foundationalism. The basic of coherenitism is to base one beliefs and justifications on our realm of things. Like I said before, why be concerned that we are possibly in a Matrix and where we have no real knowledge, if we can just focus on the knowledge of our world? In coherenitism, someone’s beliefs are true if they are coherent with all their other beliefs. This leaves less room for error, unlike foundational beliefs where all arguments can come from different statements. If all your ideas are based off of each other, then there is more consistency, logic, and reason. Granted, this method may not be perfect either, but I feel that it is more reasonable and logical without jumping to conclusions/assuming certain things.
I think that, despite the fact that his project was a failure, we can still learn much from Descartes' project. First off, figuring out why Descartes' arguments are wrong is a good way to practice debating philosophical concepts. If we can't even find the flaws in a failed project, coming up with our own beliefs would be nearly impossible.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, even if Descartes' project fails as a whole, that doesn't mean individual arguments are wrong. For instance, if we did assume that God was benevolent, it makes sense that everything we clearly and distinctly perceive is real. I also found Cogito to be a convincing argument, even if it didn't support Descartes other arguments. To ignore all of Descrartes arguments because some of them are wrong is a reckless course of action. We should learn what we can from Descartes before we completely dismiss his beliefs.
I do think looking beyond Foundational beliefs would be a wise tactic, since I don't believe that one will ever be able to completely prove the existence of certain things. We'll never know if we're in the matrix or not. Furthermore, even if we could, if we don't have a way out of the matrix, such knowledge has zero pragmatic value. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is the only reason to continue searching for foundational beliefs.
Descartes’ project is very ambitious in that he wants to find the few foundational beliefs that justify all knowledge. He does so only after throwing out everything that everyone previously thought was knowledge. His argument quickly goes into the Cartesian circle, and his rebuttal does not completely and convincingly break the circle. Therefore, his project is a failure, and we can learn that his method of using skeptical arguments before finding the few foundational beliefs is ineffective. I agree with Geophdr in that if we do not understand the flaws in Descartes’ argument, we will never be able to build one of our own. I think, however, that we can take this one step further. It could be possible that if we understand where Descartes’ went wrong, we can fix those errors in building our own argument and come closer to successfully justifying the basis of all knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that the search for knowledge through the method of finding foundational beliefs is totally lost. It seems to me that building something out of nothing, as Descartes did, allows a lot of room for error because the first few foundational beliefs have to hold true in every conceivable situation – there is no way that Descartes could have envisioned every possible situation when he came up with his foundational beliefs. What if we were to do the opposite? I’m thinking of the parallels between philosophy, and science in general and physics in particular. With the philosophy of foundational beliefs, we try to find a few beliefs which lead us to all knowledge. In physics, the “holy grail” is a unified theory – a foundational belief – from which all laws of physics and all our knowledge of the universe fall naturally. What Descartes does is analogous to a physicist seeking the one unified theory without knowing anything about the universe beforehand – a challenging prospect. The chances of a physicist discovering that theory while randomly searching are about as high as Descartes’ chance of randomly finding the ultimate foundational belief. What if, like in science, a philosopher were to seek the foundational belief by first considering everything we know about the universe (experimental data), finding relationships between that information, perhaps specific laws which govern specific areas of life (Newton’s laws of physics, Einstein’s Special/General theory of relativity, etc.) and then continuing to dig deeper until a foundational belief (maybe string theory?) is found?
I think that the biggest thing that we learn from this "failure" is that you can never create an argument that is perfect for lack of a better word. Whether you know it or not you are going to form an argument based on the beliefs that you as an individual have. With that being said you have to realize that everyone will not agree with the things that you have to say and therefore an argument can never be based off a universal belief. I think that while readers consider Descartes' argument to be a failure that there a very clear reason as to why it's a failure. One must be able to clearly point out the flaws in the argument is order to disregard it and if one can do that then one must also come up with come sort of alternative that would make the argument better. All in all one learns the importance of formulating your ideas into a clear argument that doesn't lead back to the same premise. We learn not to assume and that you can never truly define beliefs fully or discover where those beliefs came from.
ReplyDeleteSo far as looking at a wider class of foundational beliefs I don't think that would solve anything. I think that everyone has there own set of what they believe to be their beliefs and unless Descartes is going attempt to prove every single one of those beliefs to be universally true then there is no winning. While trying to prove all those beliefs to be true he must also take on the intial task of proving that we all exist and that because we exist that we are capable of thinking. If you widen this spectrum of beliefs all you are doing is making it even more easier for the argument to fail. In addition adding God into the mix makes this even more entangled. One has to consider that this whole notion of God is a faulty one which goes back to my previous point that you can't assume that your readers believe the same things that you do. You can never base any belief off the existence of God because that just does nothing but complicate things and make the argument easier to consider as a failure.
So far as finding a different way of justifying beliefs I don't think that is neccesary. i think that as long as the individual justifies their beliefs for themselves then there is no need to go any further. No belief will ever be totally justifiable for everyone and the definition of belief and the question of where beliefs come from will never have the same answer in everyone's mind. I think people need to see beliefs as just that...beliefs. Belief does not at all mean fact. A belief is something that someone BELIEVES to be true which is totally different from something that is factual. Beliefs will never be factual and so with that being said the notion of belief is a big component of what makes the argument so faulty.
In reality, just because Descartes failed in his attempts to find foundational beliefs, it does not mean that such a quest is doomed to failure. It just means that Descartes failed. Foundationalism is a legitimate way to justify beliefs. If one can find something inherently true, and from that alone prove other truths, then foundationalism works. Most of us agree that the cogito is valid - the problem is, it is difficult to prove other facts simply based on existence. If the cogito were broader, a foundational approach could be simple.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, it is definitely true that this project makes a foundational system of justifying beliefs less appealing. The inherent flaw with such a concept is that if any diminutive flaw is found with any foundational belief, none of the arguments that follow are valid and the "house" of beliefs must be rebuilt. There are definitely other methods of justifying beliefs. I personally think that beliefs need only be justified on the scale of the existence which we perceive - that is to say, we really have no practical need to know that the world we live in is true outside of itself. Even if we are all plugged into a matrix, or if we're all dreaming, that doesn't mean we can't simply accept what we perceive in this existence as true for this existence. If there is another world, the one in which we are all plugged in, that world is irrelevant to how we live our lives and we should just examine our role in this universe.
As for his arguments themselves, one thing about his argument can be salvaged, and it definitely the most well-remembered: cogito ergo sum. He does prove this very effectively, and it is somewhat reassuring to an individual when they realize that they exist. Other philosophers can use the cogito as a tool to build other concepts - for example, someone can probably find a way to extend the cogito so that we know that other beings exist. From this, we could theoretically find more foundational beliefs. However, the cogito is most suited to proving (or assisting in proofs of) things similar to it, because it is a very particular fact. Not a whole lot of things can be proven simply based on my existence - but some might be.