UMass Philosophy Society
Come to our first meeting of the semester to meet Philosophy students, engage in discussion, and share your thoughts on future activities!
Preview this week's discussion:
Is anything so self-evident that it cannot be doubted?
Is it not possible that our lives are no more than dreams, or that the world is just a figment of our imagination? Outlandish though these notions are, the mere fact that they are conceivable shows that the reality of the physical world can be doubted.
There are other ideas, however, which seem to be so clear and self-evident that they must be true. For instance, whether you are awake or asleep, two plus two makes four. A triangle must have three sides whether the world, real or imaginary, contains triangles or not.
But what if God, or some powerful, malicious demon is tricking you? Couldn't such an evil spirit fool you into believing that the false is obviously true? Haven't we seen hypnotists make people count to ten, unaware that they have missed out the number seven? And what of a man who, in a dream, hears four strikes of the clock tower bell and finds himself thinking, "How odd. The clock has struck one four times!" If the evil demon is a possibility, is there anything which is beyond doubt?
The first meditation, from
Meditations by René Descartes (1641)