The Necessity Of Cartesian Skepticism

A portrait of Descartes (Wikimedia Commons {{PD-1923}} ),
a rationalist, substance dualist, and Cartesian skeptic.

Years before I has ever read Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy, I was already engaging in Descartes' infamous Cartesian skepticism, a form of skepticism that subjects all beliefs to doubt until only what is self-evident and true by necessity remains.  With such truths identified, one now has a solid foundation of absolute certainty upon which to construct a correct worldview.  Cartesian skepticism can be very closely related to rationalism, although one can be a rationalist without adopting Cartesian skepticism.

This is the only legitimate pathway to knowledge, for all other methodologies rely on assumed beliefs and not proven ones.  Unless a person doubts everything and then acknowledges what must be true, one will inescapably have an arbitrary, untested, unverified starting point which he or she will be unable to defend, even as other people choose different starting points that are also arbitrary, untested, and unverified.

Suppose a Cartesian skeptic talks to a naturalist, a fitheist, and an atheist who have each built their worldviews on assumptions--that nature is all that exists, that a deity exists although only blind faith grounds belief in him/her/it, and that no deity exists, respectively.  The Cartesian skeptic would appropriately rebuke all three for simply assuming their conclusions and then using confirmation bias to defend them.  And, if the Cartesian skeptic has progressed far enough into his or her rationalism, he or she could easily prove naturalism, fitheism, and atheism false by using reason.

Cartesian skepticism has the aim of discovering actual truth and avoids the self-refuting impossibility of total skepticism, which is logically incapable of being true.  It is a method that is used to obtain legitimate knowledge, not an end in and of itself.  This methodology pursues an extremely thorough, systematic, total but temporary suspension of beliefs in order to reach its goals.  This separates it from the forms of skepticism that people adopt as fads to make themselves produce the illusion of intelligence or that are not logically possible.

As I said before, though, it is impossible to secure actual knowledge without first starting with self-evident necessary truths, and Cartesian skepticism is one of the only ways to rapidly or easily discover what truths belong in that category.  This epistemology does not keep one in ignorance and doubt forever, as it alone can grant the kind of foundation necessary to truly have absolute certainty and a correct philosophical framework.  Any simpler "shortcut" to knowledge is simply a pathway to an untested assertion and not a verified truth.  It is this fact that I consistently inform those around me of--and the stakes of merely assuming a worldview are far too large to waste one's mind and rationality by living for assumptions instead of truths.