nnot be sure of the existence of the nature of anything at all, at least at the beginning of our philosophical journey, he argues. If we begin by doubting everything (that is, if we begin by arguing that we do not know what we know about anything) and then proceed with the utmost care only to acknowledge as true or real those things that have passed the strictest epistemological tests, then we may end up in a place of certainty (Descartes, 1960). This sounds like fairly sound philosophy, but it must be admitted that things get a little dicier after this because Descartes engages in something of a cognitive shell game.
Indeed, Descartes moves from the initial doubts and uncertainties about the nature of the world and the possibility that objects have a reality that is objective, i.e. that objects exist apart from our perception of them to a position about the certainty of a great many things with such ease and rapidity that we might well doubt the sincerity of his professed doubts to begin with. The journey that Descartes takes begins with his assumption that humans are imperfect: This is something that the Christian orthodoxy to which he adhered had taught him. (It was also no doubt something that he had come to believe through the process of watching the many imperfections of thos
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