Discuss the extent to which Descartes has overcome his doubts of the first Meditations.
In Descartes' meditations, Descartes begins what Bernard Williams has called the project of 'pure enquiry' to discover an indubitable premise or foundation to base his knowledge on, by subjecting everything to a kind of scepticism now known as Cartesian doubt. This is known as foundationalism, where a philosopher basis all epistemological knowledge on an indubitable premise. Within meditation one Descartes subjects all of his beliefs regarding sensory data and even existence to the strongest and most hyperbolic of doubts. He invokes the notion of the all powerful, malign demon who could be deceiving him regarding sensory experience and even his understanding of the simplest mathematical and logical truths in order to attain an indubitable premise that is epistemologically formidable. In meditation one Descartes has three areas of doubt, doubt of his own existence, doubt of the existence of God, and doubt of the existence of the external world. Descartes' knowledge of these three areas are subjected to three types of scepticism the first where he believes that his senses are being deceived 'these senses played me false, and it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us'. The second of the forms of sceptic
Human beings are capable of simultaneous thought, this is best illustrated when a person is dreaming as the person will be receiving sensory data from both the external world and from the dream therefore the human is thinking on more than one level at a time which could result in there being two existence's. The argument states that we all have the idea of God in our head ('. Descartes first argument for the existence of God is known as the Trademark argument. If Kant's objection is correct the ontological argument fails to prove anything because it is based on the idea that existence is one of God's attributes and according to Kant existence cannot be one of God's attributes as it is not a real attribute; existence is not at predicate. If it is possible to prove by purely logical means that certain things do not exist it should follow that we can prove by the use of such pure reason that certain things do exist such as an ontological proof for the existence of God. The aforementioned malign demon was Descartes third method of doubt as he realised God would not deceive him. This conclusion to Descartes' meditations would have been an acceptable conclusion if he had succeeded to prove the existence of God to a satisfactory degree, however this was not the case so instead his 'proof' of the existence of corporeal things is clouded by a thin veil of theology. ism revolves around whether Descartes is dreaming or not 'I see so clearly that there are no conclusive signs by means of !which one can distinguish between being awake and being asleep'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**Descartes meditations on first philosophy. Descartes needed God to prove the existence of corporeal things because God, being a 'Being of all perfection's' would not lie to him about the existence of such things. 'The trademark argument has been subjected to criticism, John Cottingham's criticism was that he does not have the idea of God in his head therefore God does not exist. ') as we are not able to create the idea of a perfect Being this idea must have been planted inside us by God, as a designer leaves a trademark. The Fideists might agree that we can prove by purely logical reasoning that certain things do not exist, it can be proven that square circles and largest primes do not exist.
Common topics in this essay:
Bernard Williams,
God Trademark,
Fideist's Kant's,
William Ockham,
Fideists Fideists,
Descartes God,
Him' Descartes',
Thomas Aquinas,
God Descartes,
John Cottingham,
existence god,
ontological argument,
external world,
trademark argument,
god's existence,
idea god,
prove existence,
existence external world,
existence external,
indubitable premise,
prove god's,
prove god's existence,
doubt own existence,
prove existence god,
argument trademark argument,
|
Acceptance Essays
