Rationalism

Part I of Essay
can be defined as the position that reason alone, without the aid of sensory information, is capable of arriving at some knowledge, at some undeniable truths. Rene Descartes used the rationalist approach to knowledge to answer the question "What can I hold as true beyond ....

Part II of Essay
.... his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colors, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity… (330) Ultimately, Descartes discovered what he felt was the one irrefutable truth. He could not doubt that he existed, and he also could not doubt that he was a "thinking thing". From this he concluded that the self that thinks clearly exists, which is the conception of the phras ....