Descartes is thought of as the starting point of modern philosophy and the end of the scholastic age. In an era of two major changes: the decreasing authority of the church and the increasing authority of science, Descartes found a way through all chaos and came up with arguments which focused on the individual for the first time in history. However, his work was only the beginning and Descartes still had a lot to prove if he proposed his claims were “irrefutable”. As other philosophers objected, the “cogito” argument which is the basis of his philosophical construct is not irrefutable because it stands upon a flawed approach, consists of unevidenced presuppositions and leads to misconceptions which all come from the scholastic mindset Descartes tried to get rid of.
At the time Descartes came up with his arguments, there was a scientific revolution that showed people most of the knowledge they have been taught by the church is wrong which created an unease. The unease led people to question if they can ever be sure of their knowledge/beliefs or which of their knowledge can they be sure of. In this status quo, Descartes was not only in doubt, he also was not pleased with the philosophy of his time because it was easy to refute. Dissatisfaction combined with doubt, he wanted to establish a new foundation for a reformed philosophy. To do this; his way was to detect the beliefs which cannot be doubted by subjecting every one of them to “radical doubt”. After detecting, he would put them in the base of philosophical thought and start building upon it, constructing a house which is philosophy. Here is his first misguide: Descartes could be wrong when he supposed our beliefs and knowledge were built like a house. If this is true, it should mean that all of our beliefs come from undoubtable ones and if the fundamentals are refutable, then the rest of the house should be demolished. However, no person can track their knowledge down to their basis and even if they do he/she could not prove that basis correct/irrefutable without the knowledge he/she left behind in the tracking process. Although Descartes’ approach leads to a paradox, he continues his questioning without finding an alternative approach which paves the way for the problems in the “cogito” argument.
Through radical doubt, Descartes proposed that our perception could be completely wrong about reality. He continued by saying even if all of our thoughts were wrong about everything, they still had to exist in the first place: “I can never doubt that I am doubting when I am doubting. If I doubt, I think. If I think, I exist because thinking things exist.”. This is the “cogito” argument Descartes found to be the undoubtable belief which would form the basis of philosophy. Unfortunately, he makes a presupposition, which is what is assumed beforehand at the beginning of a line of arguments, in the progress given above. “If I think, I exist” cannot be proven by saying that thinking things exist and the presupposition is in the “Things exist if they think.” statement. If a subject is thinking, it does not directly mean that a subject which thinks exists, it can only point that thoughts exist and the presupposition would be “A thinking thing has thoughts.”. This gap in the cogito argument consequently makes it refutable.
Lastly, the wrong approach in the beginning of Descartes’ journey leads him to reject all prior knowledge which forms an unstable perspective later in his work. In Gassendi’s words, “(...) Why instead did you treat everything as false, which seems more like acquiring a new prejudice than relinquishing an old one? (Bennett 84)”, Descartes’ misconception about the undoubtable and the correct established the ground for his loss to scholastic mindset. This loss refers to his explanation for the existence of perceived reality which justified God’s existence in a dogmatic way.
To wrap up, it has been shown that Descartes’ cogito argument is flawed from the beginning which led to other flaws later in his work. These criticisms prove that even though Descartes is widely acknowledged as the father of modern philosophy, he was not successful in quitting the scholastic mindset. Yet, it is important to note that his work was crucial and some parts of it are still being discussed today.
Sources
Bernett, Jonathan. “Objections to the Meditations and Descartes’s Replies.” Earlymoderntexts, www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1642_3.pdf.
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