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The previous sorts of error apply to particular classes of object or condition: refraction (so far as common errors of perception are concerned) affects the appearance of sticks in water and a few other things; jaundice, so it is said, affects apparent color. But anything I can perceive, I can dream that I perceive. Confronted with an apparently bent stick, experience of refraction-illusions can put me on my guard - it is a special feature of the situation that it is an apparently-bent-stick situation, i.e. possibly a refraction-illusion situation. But since I can dream anything I can perceive, any situation, so far as its apparent constituents are concerned, could be a dream situation; and since dreams are marked, often, by total conviction, conviction which, moreover, often remains even if I raise the question of whether I am dreaming, the fact that I am and remain totally convinced that this is now not a dream situation makes no contribution, either, to genuine certainty that it is not one. So any given situation apparently of perception could be a dream situation: but if it is a dream situation, then my apparent perceptions are...
So on any given occasion, it is not certain that my perceptions are verdical; any given situation could be illusory.
The idea that I might, on a given occasion, be mistaken involves the notion of what is often called epistemic possibility, a possibility relative to what one knows. Descartes' method of doubt has been significantly appreciated but also criticized at the same time.
Critics feel that Descartes method of doubt would put all beliefs under suspicion. "The First Meditation is short but devastating. After some preliminaries, Descartes raises a series of increasingly disturbing reasons for doubting increasingly large collections of our beliefs, until, it seems, there is "not one of [our] former beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised" (2:14-15; at 7:21)." (Broughton, p.21)
Works Cited
Janet Broughton, Descartes' Method of Doubt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)
Gary Hatfield, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations (London: Routledge, 2002)
Works Cited
Janet Broughton, Descartes' Method of Doubt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)
Gary Hatfield, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations (London: Routledge, 2002)
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Carrying it to the next logical step, he says that all opinions are false until proven otherwise, and perhaps it is not he himself who is responsible for his own deception, but rather it is "some deceitful demon" who is so clever and capable that he can blur the reality of "the sky, the air, the earth" into a dream or illusion. Meantime, Williams writes that Descartes is the kind of
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Sensory experiences are nor reliable for making any statements, since people often mistake one thing for another. (Descartes talks about mirages). Knowledge based on reasoning is not always trustworthy, because people often make mistakes. (adding numbers is a classical example). Finally, knowledge is deemed by Descartes to be illusory, since it may come from dreams or insanity or from demons able to deceive men by making them believe that
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