Things are getting more garbled, but I will attempt a response.
The scientific method is not the only way to get truth, but it is the best way to get truth in a public manner, and without strong reservations, about a number of things. Philosophy yields truths through appealing to common experience and rigorous reasoning, in matters which are not amenable to experiment or closely calibrated observation. Philosophy itself establishes the scientific method, although it gets further confirmation in the sheer fact that it works.
The whole point of Descartes' dictum is that one knows one's own existence in the very act of doubting, since someone is doing the doubting. He would not have pointed to the body, which was not so firmly established, and, indeed, Descartes accepted the mind/body problem, assuming they connected through the pineal gland. Descartes set up a parallel movement in modern thought. While science concerned itself with material objects and their traits, philosophy became more and more interested in consciousness, and the nature of our encounter with the world. This has not been prejudged by a particular doctrine, but explored by various philosophers like Kant, Hegal, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. Interestingly, Heidegger, towards the end of his life, was given some essays by D.T. Suzuki on Zen, and professed to find affinities with his thought in them. |
