Preview

Rene Descarte's Argument Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
844 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Rene Descarte's Argument Analysis
Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He was the father of the theory “I think, therefore I am,” he was a rationalist and strong believer that anything can be solved by thinking. He touched on one of the most controversial topics, the belief of God. This is known as the trademark argument in which I believe is not sound.
Descartes as a philosopher, questions everything around him. He even questions whether or not he truly exists as a person. He believes he does exists as a thinking thing, so he decides he needs to figure out if it is possible to find more self-evident truths, to prove his theory. Descartes tries to develop a system for certain knowledge, but within his innovative plan he finds a flaw. The clear and distinct thoughts are only undoubted, so as long as Descartes attends to them they seem reliable, but as soon as they fall out of awareness, the doubt creeps back in. (page 26) He then begins to question that it may have been an evil demon that caused him to believe the certainty of his truths (page 29), Decartes system of knowledge doesn’t seem too reliable at
…show more content…
You cannot group things together on how much they exist, that is unreasonable. It is simple, either things exist of they do not. He also says that infinite substance is that god exists because god planted the idea into his head, there is absolutely no way he could have derived the idea of god by himself through his own mind. Descartes believes that since we are flawed as human beings and we can perceive something more perfect than ourselves, it must exist. Actually if you think about it, since we are flawed as humans we wouldn’t perceive perfection unless it existed, he says that if we can conceive perfection than it must exist, which someone would have no idea

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Descarte would also agree with the statement, as in his ontological argument he sets out that God is a perfect being, a part of being perfect is existing, and therefore God must exist. Descarte also uses the idea of the triangle in his argument, he writes that even if we think of triangles having four sides, the truth will not change; the triangle will remain to have 3 sides. For Descarte the triangle is God, he believes that God is immutable and will not change even if humans think he does not exist. Descarte would argue…

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Descartes’ arguments for his methods of doubt were things may not be as they seem based on the perception of our senses may be skewed, our dreams may lead us to believe that what we dreamed might be real and that what we know as God may be false or that God may be a demon instead.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The existence of God has an extreme influence on the majority of philosophical debate and questioning and no more so than with Descartes and his meditations. His meditations and his method of approaching philosophical questioning all derive from a rationalist ideology. Therefore he argues that all humans are thinking beings and have ideas prior to experience due to their intellectual existence and not of a sensual one. His meditations are primarily to dismiss Empiricism and to reveal that doubt is necessary to our life. Perhaps even to warn us of the dangers of our own deceitfulness and not to trust anything forced upon us by our perceptions. That is why God is so important to his meditations; as Descartes believes God is perfect and cannot be deceived and cannot fail us therefore in his trust we do not need to doubt.…

    • 1278 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The essence of the main argument in the fourth Meditation of Descartes is to establish that there is a difference between God: his creator and himself, and how this difference does not taint the infinite abilities of God. Descartes commences his argument by first establishing his idea of being a thinking being. In his previous book, The Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy he sates,…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Descartes sets out on a mission to guarantee that every one of his beliefs is certain without any doubt. He considers that he should free himself of all false learning keeping in mind the end goal is to acquire any genuine information. Descartes chooses to question all that he has learned from truth in the past. He will depend on his thinking capacity to reconstruct his own particular knowledge, starting with a foundation of things which he is most sure about. Descartes declines to acknowledge anything that has any hint of doubt. His purpose behind doing such is because he genuinely trusts this is the best way to find the practical presence of something that cannot be questioned. Descartes uses a strategy in his endeavor to obtain information.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Descartes talked about the essence of material things and prove that God exists again. Descartes said that it is obvious that whatever is true is something, and he have already demonstrated at some length that all that he know clearly is…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fact that Descartes is even considering the mere question of his own existence just proves that he indeed exists and that is certain. Further, he argues that we are essentially thinking things (res cogitans) that can know our minds clearly and distinctly. Descartes pitches a tent for himself firmly in the rationalist camp, as opposed to the empiricist camp. He constantly emphasizes that the clear and distinct perceptions of the intellect are the only sure means of securing knowledge, and ultimately concludes that the senses are not designed to give us knowledge at all, but are rather meant to help us move through the world in a very practical…

    • 894 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first doubt that Descartes highlights is that of his senses. He says that all of the information he has received has been through his senses and that sometimes his senses mislead him. Descartes is sure in his existence. To him, this is impossible to doubt and he justifies this…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Descartes Meditation Iii

    • 1297 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In earlier meditations Descartes proved that he existed through the Cogito argument. Descartes must now move on to examine and explore questions about the world around him, but instead of doing this he first stop to examine the question of whether or not God exists. Descartes wants to know that he was created by an all knowing, perfect creator that is good and wants to make sure that he was not created by an evil spirit or demon. If Descartes can prove that he was created by a perfect all knowing creator then his ideas must carry some semblance of truth, because God is not a deceiver and he must of placed these ideas in Descartes. Descartes has good reasons for searching for the answer to the question of God's existence, now he has to come up with a good sound argument to prove it.…

    • 1297 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Firstly, Descartes in the third meditation sets out to prove that God does indeed exist. To begin with, he considered that the source of an idea must be as real as the idea itself. He thought that since his idea of God had overwhelmingly unlimited content, then the one who caused the idea must be infinite and that it must be god, and thus asserted that what is more perfect cannot arise from what is imperfect. In his conclusion, Descartes says that God is a substance that is omnipotent, omniscient, independent and infinite. He argued that if the objective reality of an idea could not come from him, then it could have come from something else. The basis for the arguments he put forward lies in the…

    • 1107 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Locke Vs Descartes

    • 1643 Words
    • 7 Pages

    After researching Locke’s ideas and how they ultimately derive from experience, as well as examining his account of the origin of the idea of God, it is evident that Descartes’ alternative source of our idea of God challenges and contradicts Locke’s account. Locke states, “Experience is the source of all our ideas” (366b). On the other hand, Descartes says the following about God: “ God a certain substance that is infinite, independent supremely intelligent and superbly powerful…” (51b). Following these concrete thoughts by these philosophers, one is able to compare these philosophers’ ideas side by side thus creating an analysis. Locke’s beliefs about the origin of the idea of God are ultimately supported by the idea that humans have their…

    • 1643 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Descartes thought that he needed to subject everything he believed to the slightest possible doubt in order for him to find that one thing he could be definite of and that would therefore be revealed as something solid and certain. Descartes also noted that everything he believed has been acquired from the senses or by means of the senses but has learned that it is deceiving. He supposes then that however things can be felt, tasted, seen, smelled, heard or in short sensed, there is always a slight but nonetheless real possibility that they are all illusory. In addition, Descartes thought that maybe a powerful being is controlling his mind into thinking this way. If this is true, then what remains true then?…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Descartes

    • 910 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the Meditations on First Philosophy, we find Descartes at a point trying to suspend all beliefs that he held from his youth by destroying his unstable house of knowledge to build a more concrete foundation of certainty. In an attempt to rid himself of skepticism of his own beliefs, Descartes devises the method of doubt to eliminate all his current beliefs that could not possibly be true, leaving him only with the things in which he could be certain of. In this, Descartes doubts all and formulates skeptical hypothesis in pursuit of certainty. In each faculty, there is a set of beliefs one might claim to have knowledge on. Everything that can be doubted is discarded; everything that remains goes through a more powerful skeptical hypothesis until only the truth remains. In this, he examines all aspects of the question and proceeds in an orderly manner to be certain that nothing has been omitted. He uses the argument of deceptions in our perceptions, the proposal that all our experiences may be dreams, and that God or an evil demon may be attempting to deceive us.…

    • 910 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Descartes decided to believe in nothing that he could not discern as clearly and distinctly true. Descartes imagined the possibility of a mischievous demon, who disordered reality in order to deceive humans that anything was possible if he could not prove that it wasn’t the case.…

    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The objection is one that discusses how God may not even exist and that his essence is different from his existence. Descartes used the metaphor of a valley and mountain and how they are connected by having ascending and descending slope. Valleys lead into mountains and then back to valleys. Even though this valley and the mountain show the connection, there is not any proof of this valley existing. Descartes counters this objection by saying that we can very easily imagine a horse with or without wings or a mountain without a valley, but we cannot imagine God without him existing. The other objection that someone would make about Descartes logic and reasoning would be that God’s existence would never come into play if we never thought about his existence in the first place. Descartes replies by saying that by thinking of beings greater than ourselves ultimately leads us to thinking of God. In other words, God is legitimate whether we think about his existence or not. We ultimately are compelled to end up at this idea.…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays