Doubt and Existence

by Barbie Barlocher

13 September 2012

Discussed text: Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy

Rene Descartes’ methological doubt has paved the way for the sciences. He also started the movement towards modern philosophy. Heck, he actually helped create a lot of things such as the Cartesian plane. But quite frankly, I am totally utterly confused by Descartes and his philosophy.

Rene Descartes was quite an ambitious fellow, really. He thought that he can separate what was real from what is not by observing a method which we call methological doubt. This means everything that is not certain is subjected to doubt and is therefore set aside. In a way, it’s like starting your very own framework of knowledge with absolutely nothing on it. So, in order to achieve absolute certainty, we must first doubt everything we know. What can we not doubt then? If everything we perceive is subjected to our interpretation and our own perception of it, is the thing which we perceive just a construct of our own imagination (considering our perception of things is prone to error)? With that way of thinking, Rene Descartes proves that thing that can only be absolutely certainly real and that is the self. Since he is able to think and ask of all of these things, there must be something capable of posing these questions and therefore ‘he’ exists. The ‘he’ in this situation should not be confused with the human body as Descartes separates that which is the body from the mind, which is known as the dualistic view of the human person.

Most if not all of us has faced a situation which caused us to doubt its reality. As for me, I usually end up questioning reality every time I wake up from a nightmare or a particularly good dream. It’s because I feel as if my mind is separated from my physical body whenever I dream. While I dream, everything I experience in it feels real and it is only when I wake up that I notice something peculiar in them. Inception is a science fiction movie that deals with these same ideas.



The main quest of Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception is to go into someone’s dream to extract information from them or to create an idea in their mind as they are dreaming. In the end of it all, we are made to question if whatever is shown indeed reality or if they are still stuck within a dream.

All that aside, I think that it is in doubting that we are able to understand. It is in questioning that we are able to ask ourselves important questions. And, it is in thinking that we are able to prove something to ourselves. By quoting Descartes, I can say that because I thought about all of these I exist.