Descartes’s modal reliabilism

Abstract

This paper’s objective is to undermine the standard reading on Descartes’sMeditations, a reading which, abstracting from the skeptical challenge of areduction of reason to absurdity which Descartes is responding to,overstresses the epistemological priority of the Cogito argument, and which,ignoring the anti-skeptical strategy deployed by Descartes, is blind to thefact that, instead of trying to garner better support for nuclear propositions,he attempts to subtract grounds for doubt, working himself into anenlightened position from which those radical scenarios no longer makesense. Descartes’s proposal is a modal or metaphysical version of reliabilismanalogous to the contemporary one defended by Ernest Sosa, a positioncapable of overcoming skepticism without a vicious circle and whichdemonstrates that a correct use of reason yields a theory on how things arein the world which precludes the unreliability of our cognitive faculties.