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Submitted by suprafast358 on January 22, 2009
Al-Ghazali argued that certain knowledge is infallibility and disclosed in such a way that no doubt remains along with it. Anything that does not satisfy these two points is not certain knowledge. Furthermore, he was not satisfied with empiricism, rationalism, or skepticism for discovering a source or means to knowledge. He believed the source lies in mystical experience, or God. He utilized the sense of sight to label sense-perception as unreliable. Here, he provided the example of one looking at a sundial and realizing that it is not moving. However, it is moving in such small increments that the eyes simply cannot notice it, and thus, depicting sense-perception as uncertain knowledge. Ghazali explained that waking beliefs are not genuine, but dreams are a foresight of the truth, as God says that people dream about their wakefulness state, but they become awake only when they die. Furthermore, Ghazali gave the example of astronomical laws based on phenomena which occur only once in a thousand years. These are not arrived by personal observation, but by the knowledge of God and the Divine inspiration. Descartes, similarly, also doubted knowledge as learned since one cannot trust beliefs and knowledge from others. He also doubted the senses as the source of knowledge by arguing that the senses can be deceived. He supported this by giving the example of dreams, which seem like reality when one is experiencing them. Descartes believed that the senses worked in the same way in a dreaming state as in reality, so it is not possible for one to tell when one is in a dreaming state or in reality.
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