Descartes Deductive Proofs For God
The Problems with Descartes Deductive Proofs for God Descartes “Meditations of First Philosophy” put forward two arguments for the existence of God, both of which are a priori. These arguments are the Trademark argument and the Ontological argument. I shall be describing these arguments then demonstrating that they are unsatisfying in proving God’s existence. To do this I shall be discussing criticisms put forward in response to both the Trademark and Ontological arguments. These criticisms I shall be discussing are the Cartesian Circle, the origin of all ideas from experience and the problem of omnipotence and evil. Descartes first argument he puts forward in the Third Meditation and that is the Trademark Argument. This argument is founded
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We go through our lives encountering different experiences and from these we draw concepts that we remember and recall throughout our lives. This ability to recall also allows us to create other concepts that we have not experienced through imagination. We do this by mentally applying different operators to our concepts; we can compound two or more ideas together, we can augment or diminish ideas, and we can negate ideas. This is how our idea of perfection is created. We do not experience real perfection in our world because this is an imperfect world. Instead we experience examples of imperfection or incomplete perfection. From these concepts we can create an understanding of real perfection for ourselves. We can negate our idea of imperfection and we can augment our idea of incomplete perfection until we create a perfectly perfect concept of perfection. This explanation of the origin of our idea of perfection is much more plausible than the belief that God put the idea in us because it is the simpler argument of the two and as Occam’s Razor says the simplest idea is most likely to be true. It also more accurately illustrates our actual experience of gaining concepts, we feel this understanding happening inside our brains. We also feel the creation of new ideas in our mind every time we imagine something so I know from personal experience that this works. This criticism was put towards Descartes and …show more content…
Here he gives the Ontological Argument. Up until now Descartes has been trying to prove that we can trust all of our experiences and that the world is the way it seems. By Meditation Five Descartes has managed to conclude that we can trust our clear and distinct perceptions when we perceive them. When we don’t perceive though, there is room for doubt and we cannot trust our knowledge. Descartes then drew the conclusion that God is the cause of all our clear and distinct perceptions and as God isn’t a deceiver we can trust our perceptions. In order to back this theory up Descartes again attempts to prove His existence again with the Ontological Argument. This argument also starts with a premise about our definition of God, namely that God must be perfect. It is part of the definition of God that He is perfect so is necessarily the case. Descartes then goes on to point out that existence is a type of perfection. If you think of two identical things, and one exists and one doesn’t, then the one that exists is going to be more perfect than the one that doesn’t. As God is the most perfect being He must poses all the attributes of perfection and existence is one of them. Therefore God must
We go through our lives encountering different experiences and from these we draw concepts that we remember and recall throughout our lives. This ability to recall also allows us to create other concepts that we have not experienced through imagination. We do this by mentally applying different operators to our concepts; we can compound two or more ideas together, we can augment or diminish ideas, and we can negate ideas. This is how our idea of perfection is created. We do not experience real perfection in our world because this is an imperfect world. Instead we experience examples of imperfection or incomplete perfection. From these concepts we can create an understanding of real perfection for ourselves. We can negate our idea of imperfection and we can augment our idea of incomplete perfection until we create a perfectly perfect concept of perfection. This explanation of the origin of our idea of perfection is much more plausible than the belief that God put the idea in us because it is the simpler argument of the two and as Occam’s Razor says the simplest idea is most likely to be true. It also more accurately illustrates our actual experience of gaining concepts, we feel this understanding happening inside our brains. We also feel the creation of new ideas in our mind every time we imagine something so I know from personal experience that this works. This criticism was put towards Descartes and …show more content…
Here he gives the Ontological Argument. Up until now Descartes has been trying to prove that we can trust all of our experiences and that the world is the way it seems. By Meditation Five Descartes has managed to conclude that we can trust our clear and distinct perceptions when we perceive them. When we don’t perceive though, there is room for doubt and we cannot trust our knowledge. Descartes then drew the conclusion that God is the cause of all our clear and distinct perceptions and as God isn’t a deceiver we can trust our perceptions. In order to back this theory up Descartes again attempts to prove His existence again with the Ontological Argument. This argument also starts with a premise about our definition of God, namely that God must be perfect. It is part of the definition of God that He is perfect so is necessarily the case. Descartes then goes on to point out that existence is a type of perfection. If you think of two identical things, and one exists and one doesn’t, then the one that exists is going to be more perfect than the one that doesn’t. As God is the most perfect being He must poses all the attributes of perfection and existence is one of them. Therefore God must