Denying Premise :: Philosophy

The quest to find out who we are, where we came from, where we will go after we die and what, if allthing, controls our world has fascinated mankind throughout the centuries. noted 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 negated. With the knowledge that no possible action has been proven to fact, I dont know may be the only true answer to one of civilizations 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 confirmable beliefs, as they are from our perceptions like our material body. We doubt them because they are seen from the crystalline lens of our own prejudices. For example, just as our senses can deceive us, or our dreams see real, our experiences can also deceive us. Therefore, we cannot with certainty say that anythi ng is true, and we have no knowledge and we live in the unknown.However, Skepticism is contrary to one of the or so basic of human instincts the fear of the unknown. The desire to define the world and diagnose order out of chaos and the refusal to accept I dont know as the answer has motivated both scientists and philosophers. Rene Descartes (1596-1650 was one much(prenominal) man. Though brilliant, and the author of Mediations, feared being skeptical of the external world.Descartes wanted to disprove the skepticism theory. To do so, he first developed dickens expound for the skepticism theory, and then rejected it by disproving one effrontery. The first present is that of Nave Empiricism. This premise states that all knowledge rests on our perception, our own experiences, and thusly all our knowledge is true. The second premise is the method of Doubt. Descartes claims knowledge is something that is indubitable. That is, for individually body of evidence, only one conclusion can be reached. With those two premises, Descartes derives the sub-conclusion that if we do have unique knowledge, then the evidence of our senses must determine out all other possibilities. In short, truth is derived entirely from the confirmable evidence we collect.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 be quiet no material world.