Descartes opens the First Meditation asserting the need "to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations" (AT 7:17). In the architectural analogy, we can think of bulldozers as the ground clearing tools of demolition. For Knowledge building, Descartes construes sceptical doubts as the ground clearing tools of epistemic demolition. Bulldozers undermine literal ground; doubt undermines epistemic grounds.
Descartes' ultimate aims, however, are constructive. Unlike "the sceptics, who doubt only for the sake of doubting," Descartes aims "to reach certainty
Attacking the underlying assumptions of his former beliefs, he asserts that
everything he knew in the past was based upon sense perception. The senses,
however, may be deceptive in that the minute objects are apprehended they may
appear differently from various points of view. It is highly probable that
other things which appear certain through sensation may in reality be the
products of illusions.......
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