The Extent of Doubt in Descartes' Meditations

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (1):51 - 58 (1973)
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Abstract

There is still considerable debate among commentators about the extent to which Descartes intended to, or actually did, exercise the principle of methodic doubt. Basically, the debate is about the import of the word “all” in the opening sentence of the synopsis of the Meditations: “In the first Meditation I set forth the reasons for which we may, generally speaking, doubt about all things … ”. A. K. Stout and Willis Doney have argued that the thing to be doubted is all knowledge to the extent in which memory plays a role in it. They attempt to show that Descartes is looking for a guarantee for the reliability of memory rather than for, say, a guarantee for the reliability of all clear and distinct ideas. Most commentators do not restrict methodic doubt in this way. For example, Alan Gewirth has recently suggested that sometimes Descartes even doubts the cogito.

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References found in this work

The Cartesian Circle.Willis Doney - 1955 - Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1/4):324.
Memory and the Cartesian circle.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1962 - Philosophical Review 71 (4):504-511.
Descartes: Philosophical Writings.[author unknown] - 1956 - Philosophy 31 (116):84-87.
The basis of knowledge in Descartes.A. K. Stout - 1929 - Mind 38 (151):330-342.

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