H. P. Grice's Dubitatum

DUBITATUM -- doubt Epistemology Doubt in its ordinary sense is an uncertain state of mind. It contributes substantially to skepticism, whose purpose is the questioning of knowledge claims and the suspension of belief. Descartes’s method of doubt differs from this sense and also from traditional skepticism. It is a procedure by which he attempted to demolish all prejudices and preconceived opinions for the purpose of establishing a firm and stable metaphysical basis for his system. In other words, Descartes established the method of doubt in order to eliminate doubt and find something indubitable. Doubt is employed in order to lead the mind away from the senses and toward rational truth. It is only a means to an end, and not an end in itself. The method of doubt plays a central role in Descartes’s first philosophy. It comprised a succession of arguments, from the unreliability of the senses, the possibility that one is dreaming, the possible error of mathematical reasoning, and finally to the malicious demon. “Because in this case I wish to give myself entirely to the search after truth, I thought that it was necessary for me to take an apparently opposite course, and to reject as absolutely false everything as to which I could imagine the least ground of doubt, in order to see if afterwards there remained anything in my belief that was entirely certain.” Descartes, Discourse on Method