While Rene Descartes' method of finding truth was innovative and scientific, his proofs for the existence of God were ultimately very weak. In the Discourse on Method, Descartes outlines his scientific method at length. He succeeds in his desire to find true and innate ideas. However, the arguments posited for the existence of God by Descartes in the Meditations are not entirely convincing. It seems strange that if the ideas on which he makes his conclusions were correct, that the actual conclusions would be faulty. It was fallacy in his logic, not his method. In this paper, I plan to demonstrate that some of the logic used by Descartes was flawed; namely, he makes hasty assumptions from his facts and does not always follow his own rules.
Descartes intended to reach new and unknown truths with his method. Syllogistic logic, in his opinion, only demonstrated that which we already know. Descartes wanted to start a new method from scratch, one that questioned everything he knew before. He wanted to reduce complex ideas to simple ones through analysis, and then re-build the ideas through a sort of synthesis. He would intuit to clear and distinct ideas which left no room for doubt. These clear and distinct ideas are the building blocks in his philosophy. From these facts, he could deduce unknown and true knowledge. The third part of the method is enumeration, so that one makes sure nothing has been omitted. Descartes uses this very mathematical system because he admires the certainty of mathematics. He believes we can achieve certainty under his system through the fundamental operations of the mind, intuition and deduction. This will help us correctly use the powers of the mind to come to new knowledge and truth. This method can be applied to everything. We only need one ...