Descartes and Meditation Three
At the beginning of Meditation three, Descartes has made substantial progress towards defeating skepticism. Using his methods of Doubt and Analysis he has systematically examined all his beliefs and set aside those which he could call into doubt until he reached three beliefs which he could not possibly doubt. First, that the evil genius seeking to deceive him could not deceive him into thinking that he did not exist when in fact he did exist. Second, that his essence is to be a thinking thing. Third, the essence of matter is to be flexible, changeable and extended.
The next very important step for Descartes is to establish a criterion of certainty. By examining the truths which he discovered in the course of his second meditation, he decides that all of them have in common the properties of being clear and distinct. Descartes says, “So, I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.” Descartes adds another item to the list of things which he knows clearly and distinctly---ideas.
At this point Descartes has yet to completely remove the hyperbolic doubt. How is it that Descartes can remove what seems to be an un-removeable doubt? His answer---he is going to prove that God exists and that God is not a deceiver. In other words, in order to get rid of the evil genius, Descartes must show that such a being could not exist. The only way to do this effectively, holds Descartes, is to prove that another being, namely a God who is not a deceiver, does exist. If such a God exists, then an omnipotent Evil Genius is not possible.
How is it that Descartes goes about proving that God exists? His means are limited. He...
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...t length about how it is possible that we imagine things and ‘create’ things in our mind. Descartes sees imagination as a recombination of prior experiences but is it not possible that we can imagine something that we have not previously experienced? I can imagine an alien creature which I have never experienced through any medium, be it literature, film or comic, that is in no way a recombination of such prior experiences. Can not God be such an imagination? Even when I do imagine God there is no strict correlation between that objective reality and any formal reality involving God. If God did exist it would seem that he would not have formal reality because, due to his infinite nature, he would transcend such a reality. God’s domain would be the objective where infinitude is a likely possibility not the formal where infinitude is a definite impossibility.
Descartes second argument for proving God’s existence is very straightforward. He has four possibilities that created his existence. Through process of elimination he is left with God being his creator.
Descartes argument for his existence came from the doubt he had about everything around him. This doubt was generated by the idea of an evil genius. Descartes invented the evil genius to be an all-powerful and all-deceitful being. By creating the possibility of an evil genius, Descartes found the doubt he needed in order to be able to doubt everything he once believed. The evil genius was able to deceive ...
Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.
In the “Mediations of First Philosophy” Descartes tries to prove the existence of God in the third meditation. He does this by coming up with several premises that eventually add up to a solid argument. First, I will explain why Descartes ask the question, does god exist? And why does Descartes think he needs such and argument at this point in the text. Secondly, I will explain, in detail, the arguments that Descartes makes and how he comes to the conclusion that God does exist. Next, I will debate some of Descartes premises that make his argument an unsound one, including circular reasoning. Finally, I will see if his unsound argument has diminished and undermined his principal goals and the incorrigible foundation of knowledge.
My thoughts on God are clear and distinct that he is existent. Descartes’ now has ‘rebuilt’ the world, solely because of his power and reasoning. Descartes’ is only able to use his power and reasoning because he knows God is a guarantor of his ideas and thoughts. As Descartes thinks about his own imperfections, it leads him to think about perfection, and how it has to come from something superior to him.... ...
In this paper, I will explain how Descartes uses the existence of himself to prove the existence of God. The “idea of God is in my mind” is based on “I think, therefore I am”, so there is a question arises: “do I derive my existence? Why, from myself, or from my parents, or from whatever other things there are that are less perfect than God. For nothing more perfect than God, or even as perfect as God, can be thought or imagined.” (Descartes 32, 48) Descartes investigates his reasons to show that he, his parents and other causes cannot cause the existence of himself.
In the second meditation, Descartes is searching for an Archimedian point on which to seed a pearl of certainty. By doubting everything in his first meditation, Descartes consequently doubts his own existence. It is here that a certainty is unearthed: “If I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed”(17). However, Descartes “does not deduce existence from thought by means of syllogism, but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind,” or in other words, by natural light (Second Replies:68).
He argues that if he does not solve God’s existence, he will not be certain about anything else. Thus, Descartes says that he has an idea of God and, therefore, God exists. However, in order to be certain of His existence, Descartes provides proofs that will illustrate his reasoning. The four proofs include formal reality vs. objective reality, something can’t arise from nothing, Descartes cannot be the cause of himself, and therefore, the bigger cause is God. Now that Descartes knows God is real, he must solve another aspect, which is if God can be a deceiver.
He claims “cogito, ergo sum,” meaning I think, therefore I am. By saying this Descartes shows that in order to be thinking you must exist and therefore are not the puppet of an Evil Demon. As said by Keith Crome in his essay on the Evil Demon, “as Descartes observes, for all that there is an all-powerful and cunning deceiver dedicated to constantly deceiving he cannot bring it about that I am nothing, because it is indubitable that if I am deceived, I exist.” This just points to the fact that in order to be controlled and realize the fact you must actually have to be real. And to that point if there were to be an evil demon controlling all our actions, why would he allow for the doubt that we are in charge that gives rise to the theory itself? If it was truly in control, wouldn’t we go about life never questioning whether or not we are real? In relation to my initial answer, the evil demon does not change much, because either he is or he isn’t, and there is no certain way to know. All we have for certain is “I think, therefore I am” to prove that we are thinking beings and that is enough to contradict the Evil
Descartes proof of the existence of God is derived from his establishment that something cannot come from nothing. Because God is a perfect being, the idea of God can be found from exploring the different notions of ideas. Descartes uses negation to come to the conclusion that ideas do not come from the world or imagination; because the world contains material objects, perfection does not exist.
Descartes’ first two Meditations are arguably the most widely known philosophical works. Because of this, one can make the error of assuming that Descartes’ method of doubt is self-evident and that its philosophical implications are relatively minor. However, to assume this would be a grave mistake. In this paper, I hope to spread light on exactly what Descartes’ method of doubt is, and how, though it furnishes challenges for the acceptance of the reality of the external world, it nonetheless does not lead to external world skepticism.
Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six different steps that he named "Meditations" because of the state of mind he was in while he was contemplating all these different ideas. His six meditations are "One:Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", "Two:Concerning the Nature of the Human mind: that it is better known than the Body", "Three: Concerning God, that he exists", "Four: Concerning the True and the False", "Five: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and again concerning God, that he exists" and finally "Six: Concerning the Existence of Material things, and the real distinction between Mind and Body". Although all of these meditations are relevant and necessary to understand the complete work as a whole, the focus of this paper will be the first meditation.
Firstly, Descartes talks about “proofs” of the existence of God, explained in his third and fifth meditation. Meaning, his proofs are shown by experiment to prove that God exists. He reinterprets Archimedes ' saying, “required only one fixed and immovable point to move the whole earth from its place, I can hope for great things if I can even find one small thing that is certain and unshakeable (Descartes 159).” That he could shift the entire earth
The first meditation focuses on doubt. As it starts Descartes’s is having doubts on all of his opinions, knowledge, wisdom etc. He ends up deciding that instead of doubting opinion by opinion, it will be easier to doubt the foundation from which the opinions have been built on. Then he says that not to trust, ones senses because they can be wrong. Descartes provides examples like dreaming, god or painting a mermaid (based on the senses, but not proven to be true referring to mermaid). At first he thinks only complex things can be questioned not simple things. But, upon further examination he realizes that he can doubt simple things. So he uses examples to show why he can doubt things.
Meditations One, written by Descartes, is a philosophical journal with a purpose of obtaining certainty on all of his beliefs. There are three stages in this paper that Descartes touches on, all having to do with skepticism. The first touches on how we rely on our senses to tell us information, but it could be possible that our senses are deceiving us. So, he says not to trust our senses because they could be completely wrong from what is actually real. His second point is how this could all be a dream, and that our senses tell us things, but they could be fooled because none of what he thinks is happening around him is actually happening in reality. Conversely to this point, he states that things like science and math cannot be altered