Question

According to Descartes, illusions and dreams often appear as real as ordinary sense experience, but they obviously cannot provide us with any certainty about the world. Because sense experience is also often mistaken, it too cannot provide a dependable ground for knowledge. Given such a situation, he concludes, the most responsible thing that a true searcher for truth can do is to engage in methodic doubt--that is, a doubt about:

Select one:
a. those things for which we have good reason to doubt.
b. contingent but not necessary truths.
c. only those things for which we have no good reason to doubt.
d. everything, even if such a doubt seems unreasonable.

Answer 1

Descartes embraces methodic doubt, advocating for a universal skepticism where one must doubt everything, even seemingly indubitable truths, to achieve certainty. The correct answer is option d.

Step-by-step explanation:

According to René Descartes, illusions and dreams cannot provide us with any certainty about the world; hence, sense experience, which is just as susceptible to mistake, also cannot provide a reliable foundation for knowledge. The approach Descartes advocates is methodic doubt—a form of radical skepticism in which the true searcher for truth engages in doubt that is universal and hyperbolic.

This means doubting everything, even things that appear beyond doubt. Such an extreme level of skepticism is evident in his evil demon scenario, where a malevolent being deceives us about everything we think we know. Therefore, the most responsible action, as Descartes concludes, is to doubt everything, even if this seems unreasonable, thus the correct answer is d. everything, even if such a doubt seems unreasonable.