aws of thinking, like the principle of sufficient reason and the principle of contradiction. This a most important feature of his method that must not be overlooked.Descartes' universal methodic doubt is not merely simulated for the sake of an unprejudiced search after truth; it is a real, genuine doubt. "As I desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought...that I ought to reject as absolutely false all in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable." (3)Mark the words: "to reject as absolutely false." He does not intend to hold his mind in a state of suspended judgment, or merely to leave his spontaneous convictions aside for the time being, in order to investigate their possible validity, which would be methodic doubt as generally understood; he is convinced that he ought "to reject them as absolutely false," and he actually carries out his plan, so that he really rejects everything down to the one indubitable fact: "Cogito, ergo sum -- I think, therefore I exist."This is more than mere doubt, because a doubt presupposes a suspended judgment due to the absence of all reasons for and against a proposition (negative doubt) or reasons of more or less equal value for an against it (positive doubt). Descartes "supposes, for a time, that all these opinions are entirely false and imaginary," (4) and he "will continue always in this track until he shall find something that is certain, or at least, if he can do nothing more, until he shall know with certainty that there is nothing certain." (5) He assumes the attitude that all spontaneous convictions and laws of thought are errors.It makes little difference whether Descartes could and did, actually and really, doubt everything without exception; or whether he merely thought he could and did. The fact is, he did thus doubt everything in principle. He ...
