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Descartes' Third Meditation: Proof of God's Existence

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Descartes' Third Meditation: Proof of God's Existence
Descartes' Third Meditation: Proof of God's Existence
In Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes is seeking to find a system of stable, lasting and certain knowledge, which he can ultimately regard as the Truth. In his methodical quest to carry out his task, Descartes eventually arrives at the proverbial fork in the road: how to bridge the knowledge of self with that of the rest of the world. Descartes’ answer to this is to prove the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to state and explain Descartes' Third Meditation: Proof of God's Existence by identifying relevant concepts and terminology and their relationship to each other and examining each premise as well as the conclusion of the proof and finally to comment on the significance of the proof in the context of the Evil Genius assumption. In order to begin explaining the meaning and significance of Descartes' Third Meditation Proof of God's Existence, I feel that it is very important to define the terms and concepts that he uses in the meditation and the terms and concepts that I will be using throughout the paper.
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.
The second concept I will examine in order to fully appreciate Descartes' Third Meditation Proof of God's Existence concerns Degrees of Reality. By this I mean a ranking of the representative qualities of either kind of reality. The lowest degree of reality deals with accidents and
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