Denying Premise 2- Philosophy

A detailed Summary of Denying Premise 2- Philosophy

The quest to find out who we are, where we came from, where we will go after we die and what, if anything, controls our world has fascinated mankind throughout the centuries. Famous philosophers have devoted their whole lives to developing theories, and yet the closest any have come to success has been to not have their theories disproved. With the knowledge that no theory has been proven to fact, "I don't know" may be the only true answer to one of civilization's oldest questions.

The idea that we can never know the answers to these and many other questions leads to the theory of Skepticism. This theory maintains that we must doubt every single one of our empirical beliefs, as they are from our perceptions like our material body. We doubt them because they are seen from the lens of our own prejudices. For example, just as our senses can deceive us, or our dreams seem real, our experiences can also deceive us. Therefore, we cannot with certainty say that anything is true, and we have no knowledge and we live in the unknown.

However, Skepticism is contrary to one of the most basic of human instincts: the fear of the unknown. The desire to define the world and make order out of chaos and the refusal to accept "I don't know"

Could the skepticism argument be proven false by denying premise 2? Descartes thought knowledge had to be indubitable and therefore he had chosen to keep premise 2 as true. However, premise 2 can be denied just as easily as premise 1 is denied. There are two ways to deny premise 2. The first way goes back to Socrates' question. The second way deals with the definition of knowledge.

Since we have different experiences that leads us to have different knowledge, knowledge can be doubted. But that is how the "good" God wants it. We can disprove the Evil Demon theory by denying premise 2 just as easily as we deny premise 1. Furthermore Descartes can deny either theory and still use his same thought process. He can use the Cartesian Construction of Knowledge to disprove the Evil Demon theory by denying one of either premises.

Socrates asks the question: What is the difference between knowledge and mere true belief? Socrates answers that knowledge is true belief for which the believer has adequate justification. Then Aristotle questions: how is knowledge possible given that beliefs can only be justified by appeal to other beliefs that are themselves justified? This leads to the idea that all knowledge is justified by other knowledge and the chain continues backward until there are basic foundational beliefs that don't need justification.

However, Descartes also had a third premise which undermined the first two. This premise is that of the Evil Demon. This theory states that even with all our empirical knowledge, that there is still no material world. There can exist a omnipotent supreme being who controls all our experiences, leading us to believe what we do. For example, an Evil Demon makes us think that we have hands and are sitting watching television and laughing with our friends, but in reality all that is false. This Evil Demon set everything up to manipulate us in believing in the material world as we know it today.

Descartes starts by saying that he has knowledge of himself. He cannot doubt that he has a mind and he believes he is a "thinking thing." He then states that his ideas of God and a supreme being come from God himself. He doesn't believe he can develop these ideas by himself. There must be some outside source that allows him to develop such thoughts. But now Descartes must figure out how this supreme being is a "good" God and not the Evil Demon. Descartes says that in every case of trickery or deception, some imperfection is to found. God gave us the ability to believe that our ideas of material objects are produced by those same material objects. Material objects do exist and contain

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Approximate Word count = 1786
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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