Cartesian model of perception?

Question:What exactly does the Cartesian model of perception say? I only know that as a consequence, there came about global skepticism about the senses as a source of knowledge.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: What exactly does the Cartesian model of perception say? I only know that as a consequence, there came about global skepticism about the senses as a source of knowledge.

"Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of [ ] "the prior certainty of consciousness," the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one's consciousness —

which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception—

which means: the indiscriminate contents of one's consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform.

What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with [the] blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions—then of perceptions—then of sensations."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the locus for discussion of skepticism has tended to be radical epistemological varieties of skepticism, and this is certainly a trend that has continued into contemporary debate. In historical discussion, for example, the two most influential forms of skepticism have, arguably, been the radical epistemological skepticism of the classical Pyrrhonian skeptics and the Cartesian form of radical epistemological skepticism that Descartes considers in his Meditations. The former consists of a variety of skeptical techniques that counter any grounds that are offered for belief with grounds for doubt (or at least non-belief) that are at least as persuasive. Since no belief is more reasonable than its denial, the Pyrrhonian skeptics concluded that one ought to be skeptical about most (if not all) of one's beliefs. Cartesian skepticism reaches a similar conclusion, though this time by highlighting through the use of skeptical hypotheses that we cannot be certain of any (or at least hardly any) of our beliefs and thus must retreat to skepticism. Roughly, a skeptical hypothesis is an error-possibility that is incompatible with the knowledge that we ascribe to ourselves but which is also subjectively indistinguishable from normal circumstances (or, at least, what we take normal circumstances to be), such as that we might be currently experiencing a very vivid dream. Since such scenarios are subjectively indistinguishable from normal circumstances, the Cartesian skeptical move is to say that we cannot know that they are false and that this threatens the certainty of our beliefs.

Descartes, as a rationalist, argues that true, certain knowledge comes from reason. The senses, on the other hand, can deceive you.

The only way to have trustworthy knowledge is to employ a system of doubt and rebuild your knowledge on a sound, rational foundation. They first foundation is that the self exists (I think, therefore I am). He can then more forward from there to show that God exists and then that matter exists.

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." -- Rene Descartes

I suggest you drop Cartesian dualism and seek the truth in a philosophy that embraces the oneness of the cosmos. Perception is the act of the cosmos experiencing itself, there is only one thing. If one imagines an individual self, (sometimes referred to as I) it could lead to one imagining that there are millions of these individual selfs, an absurd proposition.