This week’s readings continue a similar theme to last week’s. Descartes, a “rationalist”, goes to great lengths to doubt everything he thought he knew in search of something certain, something foundational. His ultimate conclusion was that internal awareness and conceptual knowledge should serve as the starting point for inquiry. Locke, a empiricist, attacked the idea of any innate knowledge, arguing that there is no universal standard known by all, and that knowledge is constructed solely from sensory experience and then subsequent internal processing by the mind.
For this discussion, post a reflection covering two parts: 1) What do you think of Descartes’s doubts? Too much? An appropriate way to try to get to something certain? 2) Discuss an example from your own life where you really had to reevaluate something big – love, faith, work, meaning/significance, goals – and explain the foundational standard you used for making your decision. Did doubt and self-reflection help you clarify your foundations, or did they serve as an obstacle? Go deep – don’t just say “my faith” or “the Bible”, because you can still ask what made “your faith” or “the Bible” serve as the standard of judgment. Explain how you navigated your inquiry. Try to reference the internal standards of Descartes’s introspection or Locke’s more practical, experiential and constructive approach in your discussion post.
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