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Rene Descartes might be regarded as the father of modern philosophy; he contributed to many areas of human thought such as mathematics and music (Bailey 24), and has developed an original scientific view upon existence and scientific knowledge. After dealing with many sciences, Descartes had concluded that human knowledge was based on many postulates regarded as irrefutable, which were in fact constructed on a conflicting basis. In his Meditations Descartes discusses the nature of human knowledge, and suggests the radical reconstruction of science in a way similar to axiomatic system used in mathematics (Bailey 25). According to Descartes, since it is not possible to test the verity of every belief and statement in sciences, it is only possible to test knowledge against a method of doubt (Garber 54): if and only if the knowledge was obtained from a reliable and infallible resources, it could be considered true.
Descartes found out that it was not possible to trust human perceptions because each of the five senses could be deceived by delusion. The only thing that a human being cannot doubt is one’s ability to doubt. Descartes selected as axiom human ability to think and reason, and has formulated his famous “I think, therefore I am” (Garber 58). By putting a sign of equality between thought and existence, Descartes has also laid a background for Cartesian dualism, where mind and body were considered as two different substances. The existence of God, according to Descartes, was also closely related to reason: God, as the utmost thought, acts as a guarantor of human reason (Bailey 28) and vise versa, the existence of human reason is the evidence of God’s existence as a part of the rational thinking system, as the core of it.
In fact, Descartes was the first person who applied rational scientific approaches to decomposing philosophy. However, Descartes stated that his rational perception and method of doubt allowed to build a fundamental system of knowledge, but did not consider the possibility of settling on other axioms, as it happened in mathematics (for example, in the non-Euclidian geometry). For one, Descartes associated human beings with their ability to think rationally. However, let us consider the person whose ability to think logically is partly damaged, but all other reactions are normal. This person, although unable to act and think rationally all the time, will still have the emotions, thoughts, interests common to other people, but will often act against the “common reason”. Should this person be considered a thinking being? Does this person truly exist? Descartes axiomatic does not provide an answer for this problem; most likely, the person in this example should not be considered a thinking entity (and thus does not exist) in this perspective. At the same time, there are no defined limits of “rationality” and limits of thinking. The very idea of thinking in Descartes system can be also questioned using his method of doubt, and the justification of the answers might go beyond the boundaries of human cognition.
The very notion of thinking arises one more issue in Descartes’ concept: if a human being is left totally alone, how can he or she determine to what extent thinking or self-concept takes place? Does this rational approach actually matter if a person is left by oneself? How could one determine non-existence, if the only available state was existence? In my opinion, the concepts of thinking and existence emerge when at least two human beings communicate and exchange information. However, in this situation they can share their perceptions and compare their reality to the reality of other entity, and if these perceptions coincide, they can be accepted as the starting point for the axiomatic system. Descartes system is based on a very generic and deeply rational approach, but it is only one of the possible axiomatic systems which can be used as a basis for testing and establishing knowledge. The greatest achievement of Descartes, in my opinion, is the idea to apply axiomatic framework to philosophy and cognition.