A Brief Look at Rene Descartes

Descartes’s mission in the meditations was to doubt everything and that what remained from his doubting could be considered the truth. This lead Descartes to argue for the existence of God. For the purpose of this paper, I will first discuss Descartes’s argument for the existence of God. I will then take issue with Descartes’s argument first with his view on formal reality and varying levels of reality, then with his argument that only God can cause the idea of God. I will then conclude with

Descartes’s first, and arguably most important deduction, is that he must exist, even if nothing around him does. He deduces that “it necessarily had to be the case that I, who was thinking this, was something” (Descartes 18), leading him to his famous axiom “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes 18). Even if his senses, his prior knowledge, and anything about his physical body and life are a fabrication, his mind itself must exist. This crucial discovery is the basis of Descartes’s philosophical musings. Descartes takes this single, certain fact and expounds upon it to “confirm” that the soul, God, and many other things certainly exist outside of his mind. Concerning things outside of his mind, Descartes determines that “they are not something I have fabricated; rather they have their own true and immutable natures” (Descartes 88). Using triangles as an example, Descartes reasons that they have “a certain determinate nature, essence, or form which is unchangeable and eternal, which I did not fabricate, and which does not depend on my mind” (Descartes 88). Concerning his body itself, Descartes reasons that his mind and body are tightly joined; “when the body is in need of food or drink, I should understand this explicitly, instead of having confused sensations of hunger and thirst” (Descartes 98). By determining that things such as his body and surroundings did in fact exits outside o f his mind, Descartes can start to “confirm” what he believes to be the true nature of God by his A priori

Descartes employs what is known as an ontological argument to prove the existence of God. Saint Anselm who lived during the 11th century first formulated this type of argument. Since then it has proved popular with many philosophers including Rene` Descartes. Even though ontological arguments have lost popularity with modern philosophers there has been some recent attempts to revive them. Descartes formulation is regarded as being one of the best because it is straight forward and relatively easy to follow. It is also useful when trying to understand Descartes to keep in mind that he talks about two types of existence. There is the normal everyday existence we experience and a special type of existence which he calls, necessary

In Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes does and experiment with wax to try to prove that things actually exist in this world. This essay is going to prove how we can tell that things actually exist and what can perceive the wax.

As with almost all of Descartes inquiries the roots of his second argument for the existence of God begin with his desire to build a foundation of knowledge that he can clearly and distinctly perceive. At the beginning of the third meditation Descartes once again recollects the things that he knows with certainty. The problem arises when he attempts to clearly and distinctly understand truths of arithmetic and geometry. Descartes has enough evidence to believe these things, but one major doubt is still present; the possibility of God being a deceiver. Descartes worry is that all the knowledge that he possesses through intuition could potentially be false if God merely chooses to deceive him. So in order to have a clear and distinct perception of arithmetic truths (and other such intuitive truths) Descartes delves into the question of God’s existence (and whether this God could be a deceiver or not).

Descartes’s attempt to prove the existence of God begins with the argument that he has the clear and distinct idea of God as the “most perfect being and that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause in the effect of that cause” (40). Therefore, this idea of God can’t be from himself, but its cause must be God. So God exists. In what follows I’ll explain these terms and why the premises seemed true to him.

Rene Descartes’ third meditation from his book Meditations on First Philosophy, examines Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to explore Descartes’ reasoning and proofs of God’s existence. In the third meditation, Descartes states two arguments attempting to prove God’s existence, the Trademark argument and the traditional Cosmological argument. Although his arguments are strong and relatively truthful, they do no prove the existence of God.

My initial approach to René Descartes, in Meditations on First Philosophy, views the third meditation’s attempts to prove the existence of God as a way of establishing a foundation for the existence of truth, falsity, corporeal things and eventually the establishment of the sciences. When viewed in this light, Descartes is accused of drawing himself into a ‘Cartesian circle,’ ultimately forcing this cosmological proof of God to defy Cartesian method, thus precipitating the failure of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth meditations. This approach to the meditations, in the order with which they are presented, allows me to state that a proof of the existence of God cannot hold

Descartes reasoning shows that as part of his a posteriori claim, God’s existence depends on our idea of God as a perfect being. However, he writes that “From this I knew I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is solely to think, and which does not require any place, or depend on any material thing, in order to exist” (Descartes, Discourse on the Method, page 36). As per Descartes, the existence of his mind is partially based on the notion that it’s (his minds) existence is independent of any other being. His causal proof of God, however, depends entirely on the human mind and its ideas of what God is. Aside from these flaws in his reasoning, Descartes also mistakenly links his proofs together, attempting to propagate them and champion their creditability.

You can find Descartes’ proof of the existence of God in the Third Meditation. Although to understand this argument you have to look at his previous meditation where he begins to build his argument with the notion that in order for him to think, he must exist. From this observation, Descartes’ sees that the idea of his existence is very clear and distinct in his mind. Based upon this clarity and the fact that he has just determined his own

In the meditations, Descartes evaluates whether or not everything we know is a reality or a dream. Descartes claims that we can only be sure that our beliefs are true when we clearly and distinctively perceive them to be true. As the reader analyzes the third meditation, Descartes has confirmed that some of his beliefs are in fact true. The first is that Descartes himself exists. This is expressed in what has now become a popular quote known as the “Cogito” which says, “I think therefore I am. His second conclusion is that God exist and that he is not a deceiver. Descartes then presents his arguments to prove the existence of God. He argues that by nature humans are imperfect beings. Furthermore, humankind could not possibly be able to comprehend perfection or infinite things on their own. He writes, “By the name of God I understand a substance that is infinite, independent, all-knowing, all powerful, and which myself and everything else…have been created.”(16) Descartes uses this description of God to display the distinction between God and man.

Descartes makes an attempt to prove God’s existence throughout his third meditation. In his first premise he states that he has an idea of an infinitely perfect being. He uses the Principle of Sufficient reason to advance his argument; it states that everything must have a reason or cause. This put forth his second premise; that the idea of god must have a

If interested Descartes proof of gods existence is clearly stated in the third meditation. He begins to build most of the argument in

In the Third Meditation, Descartes forms a proof for the existence of God. He begins by laying down a foundation for what he claims to know and then offers an explanation for why he previously accepted various ideas but is no longer certain of them. Before he arrives at the concept of God, Descartes categorizes ideas and the possible sources that they originate from. He then distinguishes between the varying degrees of reality that an idea can possess, as well as the cause of an idea. Descartes proceeds to investigate the idea of an infinite being, or God, and how he came to acquire such an idea with more objective reality than he himself has. By ruling out the possibility of this idea being invented or adventitious, Descartes concludes

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) contains six Meditations. In the first two of these Descartes addresses doubt and certainty. By the end of the second Meditation Descartes establishes the possibility of certainty by concluding that he is a “thinking thing” and that this is beyond doubt. Having established the possibility of certainty, Descartes attempts to prove the existence of God. The argument he presents in the Third Meditation for the existence of God has been nicknamed the ‘Trademark’ argument. This argument deals with types of ideas, of which there are three, a principle called the Causal Adequacy principle, and a sliding scale of reality. The argument concludes that the idea of a God that is a perfect being is an innate idea that is real and was caused by God and therefore God is real. This argument will be explained with the greater detail in the next paragraph. In the Fifth Meditation Descartes again addresses the existence of God with an argument for His existence. This argument is a variation of St. Anselm’s ontological argument. This argument is also framed around his theory of ideas, as well as his principle of ‘clear and distinct perception’ and is explained and discussed in paragraph three. The paragraphs following these will discuss how convincing these two arguments from Descartes are and will deal with various objections. Many of these objections are strong enough that it will be clear why Descartes’ case has failed to convince everyone.