Descartes And David Hume Research Paper

Some have said that philosophy is a dying art. It seems that many simply do not care what men from a few hundred, to a couple of thousand of years ago, have to say. This should not be the case, as philosophy is always evolving, with new ideas being created, and old ones being updated to better fit the changes of society.One a such question that has, and will stay with humanity forever is “How do we know what we know to be correct?”. This stems from the philosophical field of epistemology, meaning the study of knowledge. This is where the works or David Hume and René Descartes come into play. Hume was a Scottish philosopher whose epistemological work revolved around the idea that our senses relay the truth to us. Descartes believed did not trust
If one were to ignore the influence of all of the information we are constantly being bombarded with, the would be viewing the world more like Hume, than Descartes. Hume believed that all that humans perceive, is what is actually there in reality. Descartes on the other hand, saw human perception as a very deceptive thing, as there is no way to prove anything we sense to be real. This stems from his belief that the only thing which we can know for sure, is the existence of self, as said in his most famous line, “Cogito ergo sum”, which translates to “I think, therefore I am.” (Descartes, 1641) This is more applicable to modern society, as although an extreme example, a more modern version of this philosophy would include attempting to block out any and all input what could possibly be biased or incorrect, and focus on what is known truth. With the recent major elections in the Canada and United States, media bias has been brought to the forefront of many people’s minds, this in turn means that many have been and will be keeping very close track of what their news sources are telling them, making Descartes philosophy on epistemology regarding what we can believe as true, more relevant to modern