Descartes's Argument For The Existence Of God Essay

Descartes also explains the difference between being an idea and being merely an opposite of an idea. He uses heat and cold as his example; whereas heat is an idea, cold is simply non-existence of heat. That is a very important idea that he uses in his argument to exclude a potential critique of his argument.

that God exists because he is finite and God is not. God is infinite. Descartes knows that

I have an idea of a perfect being; it must contain in reality all the

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’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.

Thus these ideas could be his own, or innate. He also states that an infinite god has more objective reality in it than a finite being. Well this would be true, if god existed because we’d be limited in comparison to god because god is perfect and he contains infinite qualities, which makes infinite qualities perfect then infinite would be a higher/greater quality than finite, but Descartes has not proved god exists, and so cannot infer from gods existence that infinity is of greater perfection than the finite.

Descartes also delves into how the idea of God must come from God himself. Since God cannot be “taken in through senses,” and since Descartes himself didn’t create the idea of God, Descartes claims that the idea of God must be “innate…like my idea of myself” (182). Descartes uses this argument to claim that God “put this idea into me…like a craftsman’s mark on his work” (182). Descartes now sees himself and mankind created in God’s own image, and since he has proven God is perfect, God wouldn’t have created man specifically deceive them or to give them the capacity to err. According to this premise, Descartes infers that our senses aren’t made to err and will deliver truths when used correctly. Descartes deduces man’s ability to err stems from

The reason we cannot doubt the existence of God is because of clear and distinct perceptions that God exist. To conclude, because of clear and distinct perception, Descartes conveys that God exists.

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 also explains the difference between being an idea and being merely an opposite of an idea. He uses heat and cold as his example; whereas heat is an idea, cold is simply non-existence of heat. That is a very important idea that he uses in his argument to exclude a potential critique of his argument.

Descartes not only uses the methods of mathematical proofs but also uses mathematical concepts themselves, like geometric shapes, to serve as an example of something both clear and distinct. However, when translating the method some adjustments must be made to ensure the structure of his argument. Descartes, in explaining the qualities of a triangle, notes, “I did not see anything in all [these qualities] to assure me that there was any triangle in the world” (Discourse, 20). However, there is a fundamental difference between God and triangles. Descartes highlights the differences with the idea of “infinite perfection” (Discourse, 24).

Descartes’ first argument for the existence of God is that God is an infinite substance and he is a finite substance. So since he is a finite substance he obviously cannot be God. Descartes continues that the idea of God could not have originated in himself, so God had to put the idea into his head so God must exist. He talks about how he can doubt the existence of something’s, but since he has such a clear and distinct idea of God he knows he cannot doubt it. Since his idea of God is so clear, there cannot be any other idea truer, so there is less possibility of his idea of God being false.

After recognizing the existence of the I, Descartes examines the existence of God and whether God is a deceiver. Descartes came conclude that God exists, because the “I” has an idea of a God, and the “I” could not have originated the supreme idea of God by itself. Thus, God must have projected the idea of God to the “I”. Descartes begins this argument by acknowledging that we commonly mistake and adapt the mechanisms of how we receive ideas to be the same mechanisms as how we receive images (in the mind) of as the objects that we perceive to exist in the external world. We look at objects outside of us through our senses (eyes) and later attribute the resembling image that come to our minds to the objects we looked at. Using this method of

Descartes says that the idea of God comes from an outside source (God) but that it is within from birth, meaning that it is innate. If the thought is innate, then this means that you came up with it and know it to be true, thus making you the creator of the thought. You created the thought that there is an omnipotent, infinite being that created you. You, being the creator of the thought had to have created this idea from somewhere, is it not possible that you know this is true because you are that

Considering this statement a God could very well exist as a creator, but Descartes states that God is a perfect being and further describes God as follows,