The Inception of Descartes Doubt

THE INCEPTION OF DESCARTES DOUBT

Descartes initiated the meditations by recalling back deceptions that he had encountered throughout his life. The thought of deception flourished into his thinking until he had the idea of what if we’re just in a dream since no one can account of a strangeness of their dream until they wake up. With these an idea within him propagated and that which is that we should doubt everything. We must dismiss everything we know especially those that we acquired by the senses. Similarly in the movie, Inception, to know whether Cobb is in a dream or not he spins his totem and by doing so we can see that he doubts in order to distinguish reality from dreams since the totem is the only way to distinguish whether one is still dreaming or not. The times when his totem tumbles and stops are the dreams that are real or of reality. But before this we can see a flashback wherein Mal and Cobb argues of what reality is. Note that no one used their totems in distinguishing whether they really are in reality instead Cobb used their children and his incapability to control things as his totem.  

Marveling now into the journey of Descartes regarding his discovery of the cogito we can see his proposal of the Cartesian project where he mentions that there must be a path for doubt in order to eradicate disputes regarding the nature and reality of ideas. Only through the project can he now determine which is indubitable. In doing so he does not need to browse on all of his thoughts to find if there is something doubtable about it instead he would just evaluate it foundations. Afterwards, he discovered that composite subjects like physics, astronomy, medicine, etc. are doubtable whereas arithmetic and geometry of which only compromises of simple relations to be the indubitable since the basic or the foundation will always be the foundation. For example, isn’t it that even when dreaming 2+2 is still equal to four? The same reason applies why the idea must be basic in planting a seed to one’s mind, the idea must be basic so that the acceptor won’t consider it foreign and easily apply it since nothing is wrong or susceptible about it. Therefore similarity of Descartes clear and distinct idea of with Inceptions basic idea lies in its nature of being straightforward and plain. However the distinction lies in the process of getting to it. Note that in the cartesian project to arrive into a clear and distinct idea one must disregard everything the she/he once knew about while in inception Cobb and his colleagues used Fischer’s background and emphasized his impressions of people around him in order for him to come up with basic idea. Yes inception did require doubt but it didn’t require forgetting what you first knew about things.