Rene Descartes: Cogito Ergo Sum
French Philosopher, Mathematician, Physicist
Philosophy and works of great thinker Rene Descartes, known for 'cogito ergo sum' ('I think therefore I am'.)
French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes is called the 'father of modern philosophy.' He is known to physicists as the discoverer of the law of refraction in optics, although his best work is in philosophy.
Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye, Touraine, France, and died in Stockholm, Sweden on February 11, 1650, aged 54.
His most famous legacy is the 'Cartesian Dualism', relating to mind and body. In his cogito ('I think'), Descartes begins a project in which he attempts to prove the existence of God, in order to establish the basis of human knowledge.
Meditations on First Philosophy established the agenda for speculation in the philosophy of mind and epistemology for at least the three centuries. In this book, he makes use of a method of radical doubt about our knowledge of the world with the aim of establishing at least one certain belief. His argument is one of the most famous in the history of philosophy, with his maxim 'cogito ergo sum' popularly translated as 'I think therefore I am.'
His program in the Meditations is to put the edifice of human knowledge upon secure foundations. Reviewing his beliefs, he finds that many are contrary. He resolves to put some kind of order into his beliefs so that justification of one proposition may follow from another. In order to do this, he needs to begin with whatever is most certain and infallible.
To begin with, Descartes comes up with a brilliant program. Rather than attempt to examine each belief and order, he decides to examine his beliefs against a method of doubt that consists in questioning the source of his beliefs and asking whether that source is infallible. If not, he can be sure that any belief from that source cannot be relied upon to provide the foundations of knowledge.
Descartes notes that many of his beliefs are derived from his senses or from perception, but he also notes that senses can often mislead. For example, the true size of objects can be many times greater than would appear from sight, and so on.
Nevertheless, he rejects any information obtained through the senses as being uncertain and fallible, that although the senses may deceive from time to time, he recognizes that there is no clear and distinct way of telling the difference between reality and dreaming.
Recommended Works by Descartes
- The World, 1633
- Discourse on Method, (Discours de la Méthode), 1637
- Meditations on First Philosophy, (Meditationes de Prima Philosophia), 1641
- Principles of Philosophy, (Principia Philosophiae), 1644
Sources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una Mcgovern, Chambers (2002)
Philosophy, the Great Thinkers, by Philip Stokes, Capella (2007)
