Philosophy Lecture by Greg Jesson

I attended an open lecture in November given by Dr. Greg Jesson, a member of the Luther College Philosophy department and also my professor for Intro to Philosophy.  The lecture was an argument against the view of skepticism.  Skepticism is an epistemological, or knowledge-based view that argues in its most radical form that we, as human beings, in our limited subjective experience, cannot truly know anything.  He primarily focused, in the lecture, on the work of Rene Descartes, whose meditations project was based on the notion that he had been wrong about many things, that in the past he felt so sure of, so in order to discover what really is true, he must doubt everything.  This is what is called methodological skepticism.  It is the doubting of all that is perceived as knowledge even if whether or not there is an external world or not, in order to discover what really is true.  He compares it to having a fridge, where you know that one thing in the fridge is full of deadly poison, but you have no idea which item contains the deadly poison. So what do you get rid of?  Everything! In the same way, Descartes attempts to doubt his knowledge because he believes some of it is poisoned.  Dr. Jesson wants to say that doubt is not necessary.  We know things exist. I know that I am sitting in a chair right now.  The immediate of awareness of the external world is enough evidence that the external world exists.