Thoughts on skepticism

After watching the blockbuster film “Matrix” I started to think about the reality that surrounds us. Are we actually living in a real world or is everything just a pure illusion? In fact, very few know that the whole skeptical concept of the film was first brought up by French philosopher Rene Descartes. Being a huge skeptic for his entire life, Descartes was uncertain with the knowledge that he had. In our daily life we also have such moments when our entire mind is filled with paranoia and uncertainty. In fact, all the beliefs that we used to have during a particular period in our lives, turned out to be false. Being a child, I used to believe in existence of Santa Clause or that I can buy everything I need for only 100 dollars. However, the growing up process showed the opposite. So how can we be so sure with the beliefs that we have today? According to Descartes, the only possible way for proving the accuracy of one’s beliefs is simply to disbelieve every single knowledge. The analogy that Descartes suggested was in a form of a basket with apples. If we are concerned that some of the apples might be rotten, then the only way to get rid of those is just dump out all the apples and carefully examine each after putting back in the basket. The same works with our beliefs. We just have to simply disbelief everything and after a precise examination of each belief, accept those about which we won’t have any doubt. For this process we might have the need of our senses. If we can hear, smell and taste a particular thing that it must be real. But sometimes our senses fail to give us truthful information. For instance, food might have different taste when we are ill, or being drunk we think that the room is spinning. However, this doesn’t mean that we cannot trust our senses. In the end, we can distinguish the faulty message from the real one if we step out of the situation and check whether we were deceived or not. But what if every single thing is a delusion? What if each of us is experiencing the same deception from the first day of our lives till our death, just like in a movie “Matrix”? British philosopher Bertrand Russell brought the “Five-minute hypothesis” and stated the universe was in fact was created five minutes before the present time. All the memories and beliefs that we had, were just creating five minutes before. Certainly, we cannot check whether the hypothesis is true or not, but still it blows our mind when we start to think deeply about it. Such kind of epistemological questions can become a moment of despair for us. However, for such moments Descartes had the answer. Apart for doubting everything, he clearly could not disbelief one thing – the fact that he was doubting. Doubt can be considered as a thought and in that case, there has to be a thinker for expressing such thoughts. Here comes the prominent quote of Descartes, which was used in the book “Meditations on first Philosophy”, where he declared, “I think, therefore, I am”. Even though, we can all doubt the existence of the things that surround us, still we cannot doubt our own existence as a thinking body. Once we have this belief, we can start to examine the accuracy of our knowledge.