Descartes
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Paper Proposal I
1. Thesis:
Descartes seems to jump to his conclusion of the existence of God without much reasoning listed. I will argue that what he has written in his Discourse on Methods and Meditations is not a good enough argument to prove Gods existence decisively.
2. Argument:
Descartes has five arguments for the existence of God:
1. All we can know about finite substances is they are spatially extended.
2. The mind can produce items about finite substances because it has an idea of itself as a finite substance.
3. As a finite substance, the mind could not produce the idea of an infinite substance.
4. Therefore, the idea of an infinite substance must be implanted by a God.
Descartes argument is basically: I could not have the idea of God, if a God did not exist to implant the knowledge of an infinite object into my mind. I want to argue for a number of points brought up by Tweyman, but my main argument will be that a finite can have an understanding of an infinite object. As stated in Descartes, a finite object can understand what defines a finite object. If a finite object can define what is a finite object, then it can, also, know what is not a finite object. Anything that is not a finite object must be an infinite object. I will, also, try to dispute some of Stamos arguments to make sure that the argument Im forming does not contain any holes.
3. Literature & Its Use:
A) Descartes Discourse on Methods and Meditations.
(I will draw from Descartes Methods to document his views about why he thinks that he can prove the existence of God.)
B) Stanley, Tweyman, “The idea of God and Descartes Proofs of Gods Existence in the
Third Meditation”, Dialogos, Vol 39, #84, July 2004, 71-76.
(I will try to help justify Tweymans reasoning for not believing that Descartes gave enough evidence to prove the existence of God.)
C) David, Stamos, “The Nature and Relation of the Three Proofs of Gods Existence in
Descartes