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. At the…

Descartes Proof for the Existence of God The purpose of my essay will be to examine Descartes’ argument for the existence of God. First, I will review Descartes’ proof for the existence of God. Then I will examine the reasons that Descartes has for proving God’s existence. I will also discuss some consequences that appear as a result of God’s existence. Finally, I will point out some complications and problems that exist within the proof. The basic problem with most religions in the world has…

Once Descartes has "proved" his existence by way of the Cogito argument, and has determined what it is that belongs to his essence of being a thinking thing, he must move to examining questions about the world around him. However, before doing this, he thinks it better to examine the question of the existence of God. If he can prove that he was created by a perfectly benevolent creator, then his innate ideas must carry some semblance of truth, as God is not a deceiver and has placed these ideas…

One of the most important ideas upon which Descartes’s proof of the existence of God rests is that rational minds face constraints. While God is the absolute infinite, humans and other beings exist with limitations on their actions. One of these limitations is human intellect, which Descartes names as one component of the cause of our tendency toward error as humans. The finite nature of human intellect, he argues, combines with an infinite will which causes us to seek an understanding of phenomena…

Descartes’ attempt to prove the existence of God begins with the Trademark argument. He reasons that by having an idea of an infinite being with a certain degree of “objective reality”, “there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause in the effect of that cause” (40). Descartes’ idea of God has more objective reality of any of his ideas. Therefore, God must be the cause of his idea as a result of his existence. In what follows I will explain these terms and why the…

Descartes' Proof for the Existence of God Many readers follow Descartes with fascination and pleasure as he descends into the pit of skepticism in the first two Meditations, defeats the skeptics by finding the a version of the cogito, his nature, and that of bodies, only to find them selves baffled and repulsed when they come to his proof for the existence of God in Meditation III. In large measure this change of attitude results from a number of factors. One is that the proof is complicated…

Descartes: The existence of God Over the course of his treatise Discourse on the Method, the philosopher Rene Descartes attempts to refute radical skepticism, or the idea that we can know nothing with the mind, because what we consider reality may simply be a delusion or a dream. Descartes begins, however, by taking a posture of doubting everything, and then attempting to discern what could be known for certain. Rather than attempting to affirm his existence, "I thought that a procedure exactly…

The existence of God has been a question since the idea of God was conceived. Descartes tries to prove Gods existence, to disprove his Evil demon theory, and to show that there is without a doubt something external to ones own existence. He is looking for a definite certainty, a foundation for which he can base all of his beliefs and know for a fact that they are true. Descartes overall project is to find a definite certainty on which he can base all his knowledge and beliefs. A foundation…

Descartes sets out in his meditations to prove that something exists beyond any doubt. He determines that the only way to prove anything outside of his mind is to prove the existence of his idea of God. The ideas that come from his process are interesting, but he doesn’t prove the existence of God is undeniable. Several arguments Descartes uses to claim God exists, don’t hold up to what he has proved up to that point in his meditations. The first being his use of the causal principle on which the…

Paper: Descartes’ Second Argument for the Existence of God 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…