Term Paper on "Clifford Descartes to a Large Extent"

Term Paper 4 pages (1386 words) Sources: 1 Style: Chicago

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Clifford Descartes

To a large extent, Clifford's and Descartes' points-of-view regarding evidence and belief could not create a more stark contrast. Whereas Descartes relied upon rationalism to its furthest extents to indicate what propositions were likely to be true and which were likely to be false, Clifford expressed an extreme form of empiricism, with regard to metaphysical truth. According to Clifford, it is morally wrong in every instance to believe any proposition for which there is insufficient empirical evidence. However, he does not provide a clearly workable formula or method by which to determine at what point evidence becomes sufficient to ascribe one's belief to a given proposition. Descartes, from his rationalistic point-of-view, explicitly suggests a manner by which claims can be said to be false -- if there is sufficient cause to doubt them. According to him, something can be said to be false, in the metaphysical sense, if it can be doubted through abstract reasoning. Overall, these two points-of-view are utterly incongruous in the real world, and even within the realm of philosophy. If we start with Clifford's empirical stance and then apply Descartes method of doubt, then it becomes clear that there is no claim that we can accept without at least some small level of doubt. So, taken together, we, as reasoning human beings, have no justification for believing anything about the physical world.

Clifford, in his "The Ethics of Belief," writes straightforwardly, "It is wrong always, anywhere and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence," (Clifford 71). With this assertion, Clifford deliberately makes the leap from claims about the metaphysical world to claims about human moral behavior. Obviously, in the realm of ethics, human beings are charged with the task o making choices about what is right and wrong based solely upon the evidence that they are presented with, which comes to them through their senses. However, sensory input is not the only means by which humans are capable of deciding between right and wrong actions; we also possess the tool of reasoning. Yet, this requires something of a leap in logic -- taking the limited amount of information we are privy to through our finite number of senses, and using that to make absolute determinations about truth, falsehood, right and wrong. For Descartes, this is no problem, since he believes that abstract, rational lines of reasoning are the only means by which to determine truth. But if we are working from Clifford's empirical perspective, arriving at truths that lack any level of doubt becomes an impossibility; this is because empirical reasoning can never be used, unlike rationalism, to prove something deductively. Empiricism is the tool of induction and, accordingly, is always and unavoidable associated with some level of uncertainty.

Descartes' methodology is almost antithetical to Clifford's notion of proof. To Descartes, truth of a claim is essentially verified once the claim has been shown to withstand all feasible argumentative attacks. So, anything that can be stated -- after being arrived at through deduction -- must be true if we have no justifiable cause to doubt it: "Once the foundations of a building are undermined, anything built upon them collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested," (Descartes 163). From this standpoint, philosophical reasoning is dependent upon the original claims from which deductive reasoning first sprung forth. Accordingly, if there is a clear line of deduction stemming from the knowledge that atoms exist to the notion that the universe is filled with ether, if it is subsequently found that the universe is not filled with ether, then it must be determined that our knowledge of atoms was in error. To Descartes, although the senses can be source of certain bits of information, they are constantly in error, and lead to somewhat arbitrary distinctions between different features of the external world. Ultimately, this is why, according to him, we should embrace rationalism over empiricism; we should believe things about the external world that possess no clear logical flaws, and not rely entirely upon what our senses tell us.

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes… READ MORE

How to Reference "Clifford Descartes to a Large Extent" Term Paper in a Bibliography

Related Term Papers:

Descartes Method of Doubt Term Paper

Descartes' Method of Doubt

Right, that's actually the paragraph I thought that you were referring to.

This paragraph contains important information not found in the rest of the essay because… read more

Term Paper 4 pages (1422 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Philosophy / Logic / Reason

---

Persuasion "There Is a Persuasive Element Essay

Persuasion

"There is a persuasive element to most, if not all good informative talks."

Persuasion is one of the important kinds of speech among informative and commemorative speeches. These three… read more

Essay 3 pages (1040 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Philosophy / Logic / Reason

---

Similarities in a Room of One's Own and to the Lighthouse Term Paper

Similiarities in "A Room of One's Own" and "To the Lighthouse"

Similarities Between Woolf's Essay and Novel: A Motif of Gender

Quite a significant amount of the literature written by… read more

Term Paper 5 pages (1583 words) Sources: 2 Topic: Literature / Poetry

---

Descartes Rationalism and Me Essay

Descartes Rationalism

A Rationalist is a person who believes that ideas and thinking is a path to knowledge. Descartes who was the philosopher of early modern period is famous as… read more

Essay 5 pages (1351 words) Sources: 1 Topic: Philosophy / Logic / Reason

---

Descartes and the Life of the Mind Term Paper

Descartes and the Life of the Mind: In Support of "I think, therefore I am"

The legitimacy of the argument, "I think, therefore I am" is indeed one of the… read more

Term Paper 7 pages (2236 words) Sources: 1 Topic: Psychology / Behavior / Psychiatry

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>