Rene Descartes Meditation 3 Summary
Proving the Devine, Descartes Second Meditation For years scholars and philosophers have debated if god exists. One of the most prominent minds to attempt to tackle this problem was Rene Descartes. In Meditation III from his book Meditation on First Philosophy Descartes presents an argument for the existence of god. Descartes essentially argues that the idea of god has more reality then he dose and that therefore it couldn’t have originated from him or any other being with the same amount of reality as him. While Descartes argument is compelling, it commits the logical fallacy of circular reasoning witch undermines the argument he presents. Additionally, Descartes presents causality as ontologically ordered even though we do not have any
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He now knows that he exists as a thinking thing, but he still cannot prove much else about the world around him. Descartes then begins to ponder the nature of his thoughts. He classifies his thoughts into different categories such as ideas, witch he defines, as images of things, volitions, emotions, and judgments, witch are more reactions to ideas. Descartes focuses in on ideas, and then submits that there are 3 sources for ideas. They can be innate, or from ones own nature, advantageous, coming from outside my body or from ones senses, and invented by ones self, things like mythical creatures and objects that do not exist would fall into this category. Descartes focuses with advantageous ideas and makes a natural assumption that they come from outside his body. He knows that his will has no effect on advantageous ides, for example he cannot prevent himself from felling hot or cold simply through his will power. Descartes comes to the conclusion that although advantageous ideas appear to be external this natural assumption can be false. Although his power of will cannot control advantageous ideas that dose not mean that they are not created within him. Additionally, Descartes dose not know if advantageous ideas actually represent the objects they are supposed to
He now knows that he exists as a thinking thing, but he still cannot prove much else about the world around him. Descartes then begins to ponder the nature of his thoughts. He classifies his thoughts into different categories such as ideas, witch he defines, as images of things, volitions, emotions, and judgments, witch are more reactions to ideas. Descartes focuses in on ideas, and then submits that there are 3 sources for ideas. They can be innate, or from ones own nature, advantageous, coming from outside my body or from ones senses, and invented by ones self, things like mythical creatures and objects that do not exist would fall into this category. Descartes focuses with advantageous ideas and makes a natural assumption that they come from outside his body. He knows that his will has no effect on advantageous ides, for example he cannot prevent himself from felling hot or cold simply through his will power. Descartes comes to the conclusion that although advantageous ideas appear to be external this natural assumption can be false. Although his power of will cannot control advantageous ideas that dose not mean that they are not created within him. Additionally, Descartes dose not know if advantageous ideas actually represent the objects they are supposed to