Did Rene Descartes God Exist

678 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Descartes arguments of why God exist

Ever since Descartes found a piece of certain knowledge, he started to look for more of these self- evident facts. Descartes found that he had quite some of them; prominent among these being the facts of math and logic, he is optimistic about his chances for developing a system of certain knowledge. After he realized that a problem exists in his plan. These obvious a perceptions are just indubitable so long as he is attending to them. As soon as they fall out of awareness, the doubt can creep back in. again, he could begin to wonder if it was an evil demon that made him to believe in these facts. But, things did not look rosy for the system of certain knowledge, he needed to keep any truth eternally before his mind, then he could not expect …show more content…

Therefore, he came up to prove that God exists.
He has two important arguments about the existence of God. One of them, is the idea of God of a perfect being and the other one witch is more perfect to exist than not to exist, so, God must exist.
The other argument that he gave for this conclusion is more complicated. This argument based on the contrast between two types of reality. Formal reality is the one that anything has the virtue of existing. Formal reality has three grades: first is infinite, second one is finite, and mode is the third one. Believe that God is the only existing thing that has infinite formal reality. All materials have finite formal reality. At the last, modes have modal formal reality. One idea, insofar is considered as an existence piece of thought, with modal formal reality.
All these ideas have another sort of reality, unique and only for them. When they are considered in their relation to the objects they represent, those ideas can be told to have objective reality. There are three grades of objective reality that mirroring the grades of formal

Show More
Related

  • Substance Dualism In The Itch By Atul Gawande

    796 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first argument comes from knowledge and extension. From knowledge, he says if he clearly and distinctly understand one thing as distinct from another then he is certain that he exists as a thinking thing but he still isn 't sure about the existence of his body. Therefore, he is a thinking thing and nothing else. From extension, he is a thing that thinks and not an extended thing but he has a distinct idea of body as an extended thing, therefore his mind is distinct from his body. The second argument he makes is that material objects exist. He can understand himself without imagination and sense, but he cannot understand imagination and sense without attributing them to a thing that thinks. Movement is also a power of mine but movement is a power only of extended things. This leads him to the conclusion that although he is essentially a thinking thing, he is not only a thinking thing. He also has an extended body that we are certain of. We not only have the power of passive sense but an active sense too. This active sensing does not require intellect and comes to us against our will. Therefore, it is either God or and external extended body and since God is no deceiver, material objects

    Read More

  • Rene Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy

    1961 Words  | 4 Pages

    Descartes second argument for proving God’s existence is very straightforward. He has four possibilities that created his existence. Through process of elimination he is left with God being his creator.

    Read More

  • How Did Descartes Conceit The Existence Of His Own Existence?

    577 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through Descartes’s Meditations, he sought to reconstruct his life and the beliefs he had. He wanted to end up with beliefs that were completely justified and conclusively proven. In order to obtain his goal, Descartes had to doubt all of his foundational beliefs so that he could start over. This left Descartes doubting the reality of the world around him and even his own existence. In order to build up to new conclusively proven and justified true beliefs, Descartes needed a fixed and undeniable starting point. This starting point was his cogito, “I think, therefore I am.” In this paper I will argue that Descartes’s argument that he is definite of his own existence, is unsound.

    Read More

  • Explain Anselm’s version of the Ontological Argument for proving God’s existence and Gaunilo’s criticism

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Ontological argument was presented in his work “Proslogion” in two parts. It should be noted that this entire argument was formed from reason which is the process of forming conclusions and judgements through logic. As a result, a prior (first hand) knowledge is used. The first part is focused on proving God’s existence.

    Read More

  • An Examination of the Second Meditation of Descartes

    1585 Words  | 4 Pages

    Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.

    Read More

  • Descartes Meditation 1 Analysis

    958 Words  | 2 Pages

    In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes narrates the search for certainty in order to recreate all knowledge. He begins with “radical doubt.” He asks a simple question “Is there any one thing of which we can be absolutely certain?” that provides the main question of his analysis. Proceeding forward, he states that the ground of his foundation is the self – evident knowledge of the “thinking thing,” which he himself is.

    Read More

  • Descartes Third Meditation: Proof of Gods Existence

    1356 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first of these concepts deals with kinds of reality. By this I am concerned with reality's relationship to the mind. The two kinds of reality introduced are subjective and formal. Subjective reality involves those things which are mind dependent, more commonly thought of as ideas. It is an object which possesses both discernible and tangible characteristics capable of being verified by all those who observe it, even without previous knowledge of such objects. It should also be noted that objects of formal reality are generally the cause of objects of subjective reality.

    Read More

  • Rene Descartes

    401 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the face of Rene Descartes extreme doubt, he found that he hoped to use skepticism to find complete certainty. When doubting something, Descartes would start by asking if it is rationally possible to doubt everything. When proceeding to do this, he will find if there is any undoubtedly truth. Instead of Descartes trying to examine every belief that he holds, he examines the origins of different types of beliefs. In doing this, he rejects any idea that could be mistaken, and will reject it right away.

    Read More

  • Descartes Proof Of God

    1660 Words  | 4 Pages

    He concludes he did not create the idea of God. A finite being is incapable of creating an idea of an infinite possibility. Therefore, God must have created the idea already in him when he was created. Concluding that God exists. He also touches upon the idea in which he resolves that it cannot be a deceiver.

    Read More

  • Borge's Use of Berkeley's Idealism

    1859 Words  | 4 Pages

    Berkeley expands this principle further to justify the existence of God, arguing that for ideas to be perceivable, they must be perceived. Thus, anything that cannot be perceived by the mind can only exist in the mind of Go...

    Read More

  • Descartes and Knowing with Certainty of God's Existence

    774 Words  | 2 Pages

    using certain truths. To arrive at these truths Descartes doubted everything and especially could not trust authoritarian knowledge. This was known in the four "D's" as doctrine. The other three "D's" included the deceiving senses (empiricism), dreams (intuition), and demons (innate putting wrong ideas into our minds). Originally he doubted empirical thought because he could not even trust his senses. He used his senses only as a tool for doubting. Through doubting he felt that he could clear prejudices, which would allow him to arrive at certain truths. The goal of this destructive process was to find one clear and evident intuition that could be 100 percent certain. What he originally arrived at for a conclusion, was that everything could be doubted except doubting. However, to arrive at a truth he had to begin with a clear, evident intuition (an innate idea). This would be followed by moving from universals to particulars through deductive reasoning. He moved from the simple onto the complex incrementally, or step by step. He discovered the "I" to be the only certain truth, as his mind had to exist for him to be able to doubt. As stated earlier, Descartes truths had to begin with intuition, or an innate idea. This was the beginning of his constructive program of certainties. The first certainty wa...

    Read More

  • Descartes And The Existence Of a Supreme Being

    1059 Words  | 3 Pages

    “And although an idea may give rise to another idea, this regress cannot, nevertheless, be infinite; we must in the end reach a first idea, the cause of which is, as it were, the archetype in which all the reality that is found objectively in these ideas is contained formally.';

    Read More

  • René Descartes' Argument on the Existence of God

    1537 Words  | 4 Pages

    The problem with René Descartes' argument about the existence of God has to do with his rationalist deductive reasoning. Descartes deduces that truth about the existence of God lies within his idea of a perfect God and God's essence (as a perfect being who must exist in order to be perfect). A rationalist philosopher, Descartes discounts human knowledge as a product of our sensory data (our senses) but supports the epistemological stance that our knowledge is obtained through the reasoning processes of our own minds. Because Descartes believes deductive inference is the only path to absolute certainty, he endeavors to use logical arguments and principles (a mathematically natured process of reasoning) to validate the existence of God. But how can principles of logic be used to prove the existence of God? Descartes' attempts to stay deductive when attempting to prove the existence of God are indeed laudable, but some of his arguments are lacking. In proving the existence of God, his two main arguments are as follows: the idea of a perfect, infinite being in his own head could only have been created by God Himself, and God's existence cannot be separated from His essence .

    Read More

  • Descartes Argument For The Existence Of God

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the argument, he states that in his mind he has the idea of perfection and every idea has a cause. Thus, "the idea of perfection must have a cause". Therefore, the only thing that could be responsible for this idea of perfection must be just as perfect as the idea of perfection; because "ideas and their causes have common properties". This means that a perfect thing caused the idea of perfection and the only perfect thing is God. As a result of all the above mention reasons, God must exist. Moreover, considering that God is perfect, he would not be capable of deceiving him; so the way he perceived the world must be how the world truly

    Read More

  • Rene Descartes and the Source of Knowledge

    2129 Words  | 5 Pages

    Descartes is clearing away all knowledge that can be called into doubt. By doing this he hopes to create something real and lasting in the sciences, a foundation to build on. This indisputable fact will become the starting point or origin of all other true knowledge he can build upon it. He starts the first argument by attacking the very beginning of knowledge, human senses. Descartes states, "Surely whatever I had admitte...

    Read More

More about Did Rene Descartes God Exist

Open Document