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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
THE WITHHOLDING POLICY – CAN THE SENSES BE TRUSTED? – THE DREAM ARGUMENT – THE MALEVOLENT DEMON ARGUMENT (AT VII:18–23)
I am here quite alone, and at last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.
… Once the foundations of a building are undermined, anything built on them collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested.
(vii:18)The Meditator's overall ambition is to establish something in the sciences that is “stable and likely to last.” The previous chapter suggested that we should understand his aim to be the discovery of nonobvious truths about the world and that he needs especially to add significant true opinions to and eject significant false opinions from his belief-set, while shrinking his set of undecided opinions. We can take him as having realized that all the sorting-procedures described in Ch. 1 Sec. 2, including the Methods of Total Credulity and Total Skepticism, the Subjective and Conformity Policies, and the Authority Principle, are inadequate for this purpose. To be sure, the Meditator has not explicitly reviewed each of the five methods and found each wanting. Yet the Authority Principle and the Conformity Policy, the only two that showed any real promise, are alluded to in the text. Most beliefs acquired in childhood are either inculcated in us by certain authorities, or they are the consensus beliefs of the people around us.
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