Descartes?Meditation III
In Meditation III, Descartes presents his argument for the existence of God. He makes this argument here because it is one of his stronger arguments. In this essay, I will summarize and critically assess this argument.
Descartes begins this meditation with a review of what he is certain of so far. He is skeptical of the existence of bodily things, but s certain that he exists and that he is a thinking thing. He decides that he could not be as certain of his existence unless all clear and distinct perceptions are certain. Therefore, whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly must be true.
Descartes thought he was certain about most things. But skepticism continued to plague him. He seemed to want to escape the problems involved in clear perceptions by relying on God's existence to make them true.
In Descartes attempt to prove the existence of God, he makes up a theory of ideas. According to him, ideas area small part of thought. All thought is made up of many ideas put together. He suggests that although ideas are images of things, they are not just simple visual representations. We can have ideas of God, of justice, or of how to drive a car. These are ideas, but they are not necessarily images of anything.
Descartes continues to suggest that some ideas are just ideas. He begins to discuss innate, invented, and adventitious ideas. He focuses his ideas on adventitious ideas. He decides that we often assume we perceive things outside our mind without any degree of certainty.
Descartes continues to reason that all ideas ar ...