RENÉ DESCARTES’ CONCEPTION OF CERTAINTY: From the Infallibity of human mind to its Reliability

ABSTRACT: This article describes the Cartesian conception of certainty in its epistemological approach. Its main question is:“Can we really know with certainty?” On the one hand, René Descartes says that we can know with certainty if we respectively doubt our former knowledge, the senses, dreams, evil genius and even the mathematical truths. On the other hand, he argues that we can know with certainty if and only if we rely on the followingfour epistemological requirements: “evidence” about reality; “division” that deals with the various parts of the same reality; “order” helps to move from simple ideas to the complex ones; and enumeration dealing withthe relevant and holistic ideas about reality. In his epistemological approach of certainty, Descartes affirms that human reason/mind is both infallible and reliable. However, this article also aims at showing and even proving that human reason is reliable without being infallible. Since we can partially know something about the whole reality, our new epistemological approach deals with “probability” instead ofdealing with certainty.