What Exists: Descartes, Berkeley, And Russell

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Descartes, Berkeley, and Russell


The world is a dubious place, but there are a few things that are fairly certain. Many philosophers over the ages have tried to study what is “real”, and what we cannot rely on. Why do we think the way we do? Is there an outside force, God, who is the holder of these ideas or is it in our own minds? Are material substances around us, and continue to be there when we are not in the room? Or are there not really any material substances? Does something need to be material to be real? What do we really know? We are going to discuss the answers to these questions that were presented to us by such great philosophers as Descartes, Berkeley, and Russell. Most of all how did these philosophers come to the conclusions they did and why?
Rene Descartes, in his first meditation, tells us that everything in this world is dubious and that we cannot rely on our senses/perceptions. “All that up to the present time I have accepted as most true and certain I have learned either from the senses or through the senses; but it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive, and it is wiser no to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived.” (Descartes 108) This is the basis for Descartes study; he must now work his way up and figure out what is certain and not dubious. In meditation two, Descartes gives us his proof of one sure thing, he exists as a doubter, a thinker, a mind. “But there is some deceiver or other, very powerful and very cunning, who ever employs his ingenuity in deceiving me. Then without doubt I exist also if he deceives me, and let him deceive me as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing so long as I think that I am something.” (Descartes 111) Descartes reasons that he is certain that he exists because he thinks. He has perceptions and therefore, exists. Now that Descartes has proven his own existence it is time to prove other th...