Meditation V: Descartes Proof of God
BE SURE THAT EACH POINT YOU MAKE RELATES TO PROVING OR DISPROVING YOUR THESIS
Be sure your topic addresses whether a thesis from Descartes is true or false.
TOPICS TO CHOOSE FROM:
Med I: It is (true / false) that bodily sensations can be doubted because of dreams.
Med I: It is (true / false) that mathematics can be doubted because humans sometimes make mistakes.
Med II: It is (true / false) that I can doubt my own existence.
Med III: It is (true / false) that only a perfect being could generate the idea of a perfect being.
(In other words, is Descartes' proof for God valid or invalid).
Med IV: It is (true / false) that by limiting the will only to what one understands, one can avoid all errors.
Med. V: It is (true / false) that Descartes' proof of God is circular
Warning: Do not try to address all arguments in a Meditation. Instead, focus on specific arguments and one or two paragraphs from Descartes's text. The more specific, the better.
Citation Style
List the Meditation and the paragraph number....
Descartes' foundation is, "I am, I exist" (Med. II, 3).
This indicates that the quote / idea is from Meditation II, paragraph 3.
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Meditation V: Descartes Proof of God
The question of the existence of God has been a subject of debate among many philosophers most of which have not reached a consensus for centuries. Rene Descartes is one of the philosophers who have tried to prove the existence of God, but has failed to provide sufficient evidence to support his arguments. Given the apparent significance of God for his epistemological project, it is very unsatisfactory that the two official arguments Descartes poses namely: - the trademark argument of the third meditation and the ontological argument of the Fifth Meditation are so weak (Stout, 155). In these arguments, he raises striking cynical suspicions, claiming that these suspicions cannot be resolved with the absence of a non-deceiving God assuring the truth of discrete insight, but does not prove that such a God exists. . So, there are still unconvinced doubts in his claims. In this case, it can be said that there is an error in Descartes’ reasoning, which makes his argument circular.
In the third meditation, Descartes gives his presentation on God’s existence. Before discussing God, he declares that an effect cannot be more real than its cause. That is to say, anything that comes to life must be created by something with an equal or higher reality. The initial cause of an idea must have a much due to objectivity present in the idea. He writes, ‘‘In order for a given idea to contain such and such objective reality, it must surely derive it from some cause which contains at least as much formal reality as there is objective reality in the idea’’ (Descartes, p. 173). Here, Descartes claims that if he can think of any idea that has more objective reality than he could possess formally, then there is possibility of the existence of somet...