Descartes Circular
...bitability criterion, Descartes finds a belief that meets the qualification of being true. The belief is the existence of the mind, i.e. the whole “I think, therefore I am” statement. The uses of the indubitability criterion lead to the egocentric predicament, which is that Descartes proved that his own mind existed, but how can he prove the truth of any of the beliefs of the external world? In my mind, I take this to mean that we know our minds exist, but how can we confirm that our beliefs dealing with things such as God are actually true? To achieve this, Descartes went to the clearness and distinctness criterion. To prove the existence of God, Descartes came up with an argument that, he believed, proved God’s existence. The argument itself relies on a scale of reality and a casual principle that Descartes got from medieval philosophy. The casual principle states that the cause of something must have at least as much reality as that something. The casual principle presumes that there is a scale of reality, which is a scale that shows some things being more real then others. Things that are more powerful or more perfect then other things are higher up on the scale of reality. Since God is all powerful and is perfect he is on the top of the scale. The argument that God exists, according to Descartes, is as follows: Descartes first shows that we have an idea of God and that because God is at the top of the scale of reality, then the idea of God must be on top of the scale as well. In the scale of reality, an idea is on the same level as the object of the idea is. The next part of the argument deals with the casual principle and how, when using it to prove the existence of God, that the idea of God must have been caused be something as real as the idea itself. So in other words, there must have been something real that gave people the idea that there is a God. In the next piece of the argument, Descartes argues that the only thing that could have possibly caused the idea of God in fact is God and in order for God to have caused that idea, then God must exist. I take this to mean that God is the only one who could have given people the idea that he exists and since God is the only one that could have done it then he must be real. The next couple parts of the argument that God exists deal with the clearness and distinctness criterion. Descartes argues that God is perfect, which means he will never deceive us seeing as how deception is an imperfection. Since God cannot deceive us, then it...