Philosophy 100 (3) - Essay Example

What people experienced was not truly what existed; what truly existed were the Forms, and this meant that people existed was just, in Plato’s opinion, a reflection of what truly existed. In this same vein, Descartes built his theory of knowledge up on the basis of the elimination of thoughts that he felt that could possibly be false. Plato felt that what people existed was false, and Descartes felt that what was true could only be built up from the knowledge that couldn’t be proved false; Plato would have felt that the Forms were the only things that couldn’t be proved false.

Both of the philosophers based their theories of knowledge on knowledge that they both considered to be impossible to prove false. For Descartes, this knowledge is referred to as the Cogito, or cogito ergo sum, which can be paraphrased as “I think, therefore I am.” 2) The cogito was the result of Descartes systematically determining what could be proven false. The metaphor that he used was of an old, decrepit house; the house needed to be taken down piece by piece until only the foundation was left.

Once only the foundation was left, true knowledge could be built up from this solid foundation. Descartes went so far as to claim to the fact that the sun would rise the next morning could possibly be false. This is sort of a precursor the black swan metaphor, which states that no matter how many times a person might go out and count swans and all of the swans turn out to be white, even if a person counts five million white swans, there is nothing inherent about this knowledge that states that the next swan will also be black.

For all intents and purposes it could be black. Instead of going through and showing that everything that people know could possibly be false, he took a short cut by describing an great deceiver that had the ability to make