Radical Skepticism Descartes

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The Prompt Radical skepticism is a concept that questions the existence of the external world and the things in it, beyond the human thoughts. Radical skepticism argues that nothing else exists apart from the human thoughts. This philosophical theory asserts that everything in the world, including the earth, people, planets and other heavenly bodies, is simply a dream, an illusion, or mere imagination. Descartes argues that there exists a set of beliefs within individuals. It is these beliefs that make them to think or imagine that there is an external world that comprise of things like the stars, soil, animals among other things (1). From his personal experience, he claims that these beliefs are often…show more content…
From this angle, it, therefore, implies that the human senses do not exist either. This is because if the eyes, nose, ears, hands, tongue do not exist then all the five senses of smell, sight, hear, touch and taste respective, do not exist. First, Descartes presents an illustration of reality as a distinct factor from dreams (2) in the human life. He argues that dreams exist in the human life. And these dreams are a reflection of most of the things that exist or happen in the real world of the dreamer. According to him, one can create doubt on the reality by imagining that the dream is the reality, and everything else is simply a dream. If all else becomes a dream then, it means we are never going to wake up, and everything in the world is just but a dream including our existence. He also argues presents an argument that everything else that seem like reality to us could be mere imagination that is brought about by some malicious creature with demonic power (3). He supports this argument with the view that most of the things we believe in always turn out to be untrue and we are easily deceived and our knowledge corrupted from such beliefs. From his point, of view, this deception is most likely to be the work of the evil demon because the supreme God is known to be good and non-deceptive (for those who believe in…show more content…
This is supported by the argument that, all through his work the mind had a series of thoughts and ideas coming out. It is this thought that make one to argue for or against some opinion. In fact, it is through thinking that one can question the existence of mankind and the external world. Ins support of Descartes’ view, when one can stop thinking for a moment, then everything they have known or believed in would cease to exist. This only makes me come to the conclusion that everything we perceive, hear or touch is a creation of the mind. The shape, size and other features of things are also a function of the mind. That is why we can see the car from a far distance as a tiny object but still perceive it to be a car with a regular size that the mind has conceptualized it
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