Descartes Meditation Three Analysis

The Meditator is alone, no trees, no people, no oceans, no mountains, no earth, no moon; just him and his isolation. In “Meditation Three”, Descartes goes much deeper than just his famous philosophical ideal — if “one can think one can be”(Descartes 19). He goes on to explain how there must be a God. He states that if there was not a God, people would have created themselves. If this were to be true, everyone would create themselves as perfect people. Descartes believes that there must be a God. God created humans and other humans and other objects to allow humans to think. This human ability to think allows them to exist. If nothing else were to exist and the Meditator was alone in the universe then he could not think and without thought,
Without God to create other objects, the Meditator has nothing to think about or to have first impressions of. As Descartes makes the premise for thoughts that one needs to have intentionality, to have intentionality, other objects are needed. For example, if Tom from Pittsburg wants to think about an alien dog he would have to have intentionality. To have intentionality of the alien dog, he would need an object, in this case a space dog. If a person sees snow for the first time, they are able to think that it is cold, fluffy, beautiful — a plethora of thoughts. Without the “snow”, the Meditator has no thoughts of the snow to adhere it to. Existence is the essential ingredient of the argument; Descartes states that the criteria for the hypothetical situation at hand is that if one can think then they can exist. Without other objects nothing exists…including the Mediator. The Mediator himself may try to say that since he is physically alive, something exists. But he himself cannot see other objects to provide a template of thought — he cannot come up with thoughts of non-present objects , consequently, he really cannot think at all. If he is alone in the universe, the Meditator has no knowledge of Disneyland and therefore cannot think of such a
Given the scenario that the Meditator is all alone in the universe and using not what is said, but what isn’t said in Descartes’ argument, it is impossible for the Meditator to actually exist. Descartes argues that he “is at least a thing that thinks” (Descartes 19). Reversing the argument, if his mind has nothing to think about, it cannot think. Therefore, without thought, he is not something that thinks and,ergo, is not something that is. For one to have a thought, intentionality is necessary. Intentionality is “the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs” (Stanford Encyclopedia). In this situation, the Meditator cannot have intentionality for objects that do not exist. For example, if a person lives in an environment without trees, conversation about trees instigated by a visitor from an environment with trees would be impossible to understand. The person that has never seen, touched, or smelled a tree wouldn’t be able to have thoughts about it. This shows how thoughts cannot exist in such a situation because intentionality is the key premise for a thought to occur. The argument boils down to whether or not the Mediator can exist in such a scenario. The strongest point that proves that the Meditator cannot exist is that to be able to exist one must have thoughts. In a world with objects, every human exists because they have objects for which to think