What about religious beliefs

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Case Study: In Meditation 4 Descartes tries to resolve what he sees as an important problem, the problem of error. Now let's put aside the whole idea that we are created as perfect as possible and that God exists, etc. Descartes thinks that in order for us to not make mistakes, all we need to do is suspend judgement on everything that we are not absolutely certain about.

Socrates was said to be the wisest person because he didn't claim to know anything, which could be simply an extension of what Descartes is saying here, that we should suspend judgement way more often than we actually do. Heck, every time we're wrong, we kind of wish that we had suspended judgement!

But, certainty is a pretty high standard, which is only reachable on the level of mathematical and logical proofs (via rationalism), and isn't something that we can achieve with our sense experiences (because it could be an illusion, dream, mis-perception, hallucination, the effects of LSD, etc.) or most the things we say that we know on a daily basis.

Question: Let's apply this to recent events: It would be difficult to protect the citizens of our country from Covid-19 when we knew little about the virus at the beginning of the pandemic. Suspending judgment may have led to inaction. However, if more people suspended their judgement on social media posts about how vaccines were dangerous or ineffective, we might have been able to end the pandemic sooner since there would be less people believing in misinformation. Suspending judgement could have both helped and hurt our responses to the pandemic. How should we make decisions when we don't have enough information to form a judgement?

Do you think that Descartes suggestion that we should suspend judgement on things that we don't know with certainty, is a practical suggestion? Is it useful? Are there parts of our lives that we should maintain a high standard of acceptance, versus other parts of our lives that we shouldn't? What about religious beliefs?

Reference no: EM133382985

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