Descartes Meditation 4 Essay

Humans are finite substances so they cannot come up with the ideas of infinite substances unless it were given to them by an infinite substance. Descartes continues that while we advance gradually each day these attributes could never exist within us because we are only potentially perfect whereas God is actually perfect. Furthermore, Descartes argues that only God could be the author of his being because if it were he or his parent’s other finite substances that authored his being then he would not have wants or doubts because he would have bestowed upon himself every perfection imaginable to a finite being. Therefore, God exists because Descartes could not have thought of God because he is a finite substance thus the idea of God must have come from an infinite substance.

To expand on his first argument, Descartes' deceiving God argument states that our deceptions are caused by an all powerful God. Humans are capable of being deceived because we are imperfect, unlike God, who is essential flawless. If we can agree on the definition of God, an all powerful and omnipotent being who created us, then we can argue that he has the power to deceive even our most reliable senses. Descartes expresses his compounding doubts as "How do I know that he did not bring it about that there is no earth at all, no heavens, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, and yet bringing it about that all these things appear to me to exist precisely as they do now?" (Descartes 491). This excerpt

In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes makes a point that there is a distinction between mind and body. It is in Meditation Two when Descartes believes he has shown the mind to be better known than the body. In Meditation Six, however, he goes on to claim that, as he knows his mind and knows clearly and distinctly that its essence consists purely of thought. Also, that bodies' essences consist purely of extension, and that he can conceive of his mind and body as existing separately. By the power of God, anything that can be clearly and distinctly conceived of as existing separately from something else can be created as existing separately. However, Descartes claims that the mind and body have been created separated without good reason. This

The concept of where error comes from and why error occurs, arise in meditation four. He begins by claiming that God is not the source of error. Descartes states “It is impossible for God to ever deceive me, for trickery is

My intent in this essay is to illustrate that the arguments regarding the existence of God and the fear of deception in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, are quite weak and do not justify his conclusions. To support these claims, I will begin by outlining two specific meditations and explain the proposed arguments. Later, I will critically analyze his arguments, revealing unjust conclusions. Doubts surrounding the text include the suggested characteristics of God, the condition of perfection, and the nature of deceit. A wrap up will include a discussion on whether or not Descartes (also referred to as Renatus) succeeded in his project.

In “Meditations IV” Descartes commits to explain human error without contradicting his previous argument that god is not a deceiver. He crafts his argument carefully because his previous explanations of God’s nature claim that perfection is to lack for nothing and to err is to lack for something. If God a perfect being created us, then what is the source of our errors? According to Descartes error occurs when we extend our will beyond what is clear and distinct in the intellect; both faculties that God gave us are perfect, however, our intellect is more limited than our will and when we affirm or deny ideas using our will that are not clear and distinct in the intellect, we make errors.

Descartes started Meditation IV by stating that God doesn’t deceive. I think that the start of his argument falls into the same problem with Meditation III that the principle of sufficient reason is assumed because we don’t have sufficient knowledge about God; therefore, we cannot conclude that God doesn’t deceive. Similarly, he concluded that his error is a defect of God, which God cannot be hold accountable. We don’t have sufficient knowledge to assume that God doesn’t give bad faculty.

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.

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.

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

In this essay I will talk about Descartes meditation three in that god exits and that god is not deceiving us.

Descartes talked about the true and the false, and how we make mistakes in Meditation Four. Descartes believed that error as such is not something real that depends upon God, but rather is merely a defect. And thus there is no need to account for my errors by positing a faculty given to me by God for this purpose(546). He thought that the reason why we make mistakes is that the faculty of judging the truth, which we got from God, is not infinite(546). When Descartes focused more closely on more closely on himself and inquired into the nature of his errors, he noted that errors depend on the simultaneous concurrence of two causes:

Rene Descartes in his book Meditations on First Philosophy gives two distinct and valid arguments into the existence of God, which he explains in the Third Mediation and the Fifth Meditation. In the third meditation Descartes explains God as a substance that is eternal and extremely powerful. He calls these objective realities in which make up only a little of what God truly is. He goes onto explain that must have far more than just objective reality but formal reality as well. He knows that the concept of an everlasting and all-powerful creature couldn’t have been created in him and comes to the conclusion of something (God) being the culprit of this idea of him.

Descartes rationalizes that “something can’t arise from nothing and that what is more perfect – that is contains in itself more reality – can’t arise from what is less perfect.” In other words, a substance that has the best qualities in the universe is considered perfect and anything else with worse qualities is less perfect. For example, a drawing of stick figures to represent people is not perfect because there are drawings that portray people more accurately – making these drawings perfect and the drawings of stick figures less perfect. Descartes also states that “by the word ‘God’ [he] understand[s] a substance that is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent, supremely intelligent,