... both in Discourse on Method and in his First Meditation, that people's opinions, including his own, are coloured by conflicting influences, falsehoods accepted as true in childhood and custom and example rather than firm knowledge. The only way Descartes sees to remove all these impediments to firm knowledge is to systematically reject all his previous beliefs where there is 'at least some reason for doubt' until he arrives at something that cannot be doubted. This, broadly speaking, is the sceptical problem Descartes is considering. It may be confirmed by the method of hyperbolical doubt he uses. Hyperbolic doubt is such doubt that is meant to be insulated from life and cut off from action2. It follows that it involves maintaining beliefs but not knowing them. Descartes' method of hyperbolic doubt, or principles of philosophy, was that in order to ascertain the truth of things it is necessary once in one's ...

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