Skepticism Argument Analysis

The philosophical theory of skepticism claims that certain knowledge is impossible because beliefs are unjustified or unreliable. Descartes suggests the possibility of an evil deceiver; an all-powerful but evil being out to deceive us that makes our minds skip every time we think or draw conclusions. Descartes says, “I shall therefore suppose not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius of the greatest power and cunning, who has employed all his energies to deceive me.” He maintains that if there is an evil deceiver, then we could be wrong about our beliefs concerning science and mathematics; in other words, the things we consider most certain. Thus, if there is a god, then it is possible that our beliefs about science and mathematics could be false. If they could be false, we must doubt them. …show more content…
The conclusion here is that we must reject beliefs about science and mathematics as false. For this argument to be valid, we must assume that the evil deceiver exists and is able to deceive us. The second premises of this argument is there is no god, then chance rules and it is even more possible that our beliefs could be false; if there is no god, we must doubt those beliefs. The conclusion here is also that we must reject beliefs about science and mathematics as false. For this argument to be valid, we must assume that the only possibilities for causation are god or chance and nothing else is possible. Both of these arguments are invalid as they stand because we must assume certain things. There are underlying unstated assumptions that must be made for these arguments to be