The Epistemological Status of Sensible Objects in Descartes' Philosophy

Abstract

This article attempts to understand the epistemological status of sensible objects in Descartes' philosophy, which considers knowledge of bodies through sensory perception as non-certainty, and claims that the external world cannot exist as we perceive it through our senses because they deceive us, and what comes to us through them can only lead us to error and therefore must be rejected.

This means that what is sensible in Descartes' philosophy cannot be sensibly known, and it represents one of the most important problems of modern philosophy in general, and of Descartes' philosophy in particular. In order to overcome this situation, Descartes resorted to knowing the sensible through deductive rational knowledge based on mathematical intuitions, by relying on some cognitive tools such as doubting the senses and rejecting their testimonies, and relying on geometric extension instead of sensory extension, and then connecting the natural world with mathematical thought.

In order to do this, Descartes first had to establish a new method containing rules that, if followed by reason, would lead it to the knowledge of the truth that it did not know, and to recognise the error he was committing in knowing the sensible by relying solely on the senses.