Comparing Descartes And Doubt

Descartes thought that he needed to subject everything he believed to the slightest possible doubt in order for him to find that one thing he could be definite of and that would therefore be revealed as something solid and certain. Descartes also noted that everything he believed has been acquired from the senses or by means of the senses but has learned that it is deceiving. He supposes then that however things can be felt, tasted, seen, smelled, heard or in short sensed, there is always a slight but nonetheless real possibility that they are all illusory. In addition, Descartes thought that maybe a powerful being is controlling his mind into thinking this way. If this is true, then what remains true then? Perhaps according to him, that nothing
is considered to be certain.
Essentially, Descartes’s entire discourse is formulated with a presumption that the intellectual activity is centered on doubt.
However, this doubt will have to be instigated only until such time when he has discovered the indubitable – that which he could never ever doubt. It is doubt that implements thought and it is just like saying, “I doubt”. Once you think of something, it is just fine to have a thought or idea in our head, however, thinking would be in its utmost if we put our ideas into question and that only happens in doubt. For example, when you think of a chocolate, that is a thought. But what is critical about that? What is the experience that will make you get the vibe that you’re thinking? Well there must be something more in order to intensify thought and that is only possible when we question
things.
Additionally, for Descartes, it is impossible to think without that element of doubt. We have to realize that such cogito will have to come up with the activity of doubting. Nevertheless, doubt is only temporary, in the sense that you are just going to do it for a purpose and that is to refresh knowledge but that doubt will just have to be there until you find the indubitable.
What about man? Cogito is actually a Latin phrase which incorporates already the self. Therefore, this is to say “I think” and will not just speak of the act of thinking itself but also the thinker. The argument essentially is that if there is thought or an idea, if there is thinking and doubting, there must be some substance that is doing the thinking and doubting. It can also be argued that he believes one must exist to think. Therefore, Descartes articulates this truth in his famous – cogito ergo sum or I think, therefore I am.
Indeed, the very act of thinking demonstrates existence.
In methodologically doubting his own existence, Descartes is thinking, and in thinking he demonstrates his own existence. Descartes essential point is that, in thinking and in asserting that he is thinking, he is demonstrating his own existence. It seems then that he has found his absolute starting point: a sample of indubitable truth. Assertion of his own existence while he is thinking is absolutely incorrigible; he cannot be wrong because to think is to exist. Therefore, Descartes claims that he is a thing that thinks: that he exists as a thinking thing. Thus, the mechanics of the establishment of the existence of a thinking thing, of a doubting mind, of an asserting being, turn on Descartes’s understanding of thought as a property of something that is substantial. Hence, once you doubt and you think, there ought to be a self and that the indubitable ought to be doubt
itself.
Moreover, following Plato, Descartes would believe that man is a composite of body and soul in as much as he’d think of these as substances. So what are the two substances present in man? Descartes would say that it is the thinking substance and the extended substance and that is explained through the argument of the wax.