A Critique On Rene Descartes Ontological Argument

A Critique On Rene Descartes Ontological ArgumentOf all the recurring questions of Man, one and only(a) of the most persistent is the question of our origins. Specifically the question of what, if any intimacy, caused us to exist. It has been argued by generations of minds, all seeking the definitive explanation of our world. One such(prenominal) mind was that of Rene Descartes, a brilliant philosopher of his time, throughout and beyond ours. His moods on geometry and metaphysics, among others, remain influential upon the thinkers of today.In Meditations, Descartes formulates the framework and guidelines of his First Philosophy or metaphysics, where methodic motion is used to discern the genius of being and the world. Here he describes how we can derive a relicapable method that can definitively determine what is certain and what is suspect, and further apply that method to turf out the humans of absolute ideas such as God or mathematics. The methods ground-up approach is supp osed to provide for the foundations of certain knowledge, and so it does.Descartes believes that after I call into doubt everything that can easily be relegated as uncertain (such as sense dependent data), I am left with mental ideas of things that I once experienced through the senses. Given that a chairs physical universe of discourse may be suspect, my idea of a chair may also be suspect in regard of some aspects such as appearance, yet I can non suspect the fact that I am thinking of scale, quantity, measurement, space, etc. in providing for my mental cypher of the chair. Hence for Descartes, at that place are things that are certain regardless of sense experience and it seems mentally impossibly to conceive of them as false.Given this, Descartes develops his reasoning for the existence of God as an all- unblemished being. He does this by beginning with an idea that is considered certain and attri notwithstandinging what makes us feel as if something is certain. In this case he considers something certain as something so drawly and vividly perceived that it cannot be un straight. Here he implies then that for something to be true, I just take aim to have a sack up and vivid idea of it and that alone is enough antecedent for its truth-value. He clarifies this by describing the nature of the mind to have clear and distinct knowledge of certain thing to be true because of its basis in something true that is external from the senses. So, when I distinctly and vividly perceive of something I do so in such intensity because of my recall with the higher form of the idea. Descartes then says that one can know that some properties of these higher idea forms can be known to be true because if I know of ultimate idea of a triangle, when I perceive its three angles to be equal to two right angles, it must(prenominal) be true because I cannot so vividly perceive it as a triangle unless the ultimate nature of a triangle did not contain the state of its three an gles being equal to two right angles. So then, a property of a clear and distinct object must be true by the basis of its being perceived as also being clear and distinct. Since the concept of a perfect being implies that it contains its own necessary existence, that is, for it to be perfect it must in itself contain all perfections and by extension all expressions of such. For Descartes, because it is clear and distinct that the idea of a perfect God must hold that God has necessary existence, and that if I have an idea of something and I clearly perceive it to have a property then that thing sincerely has that property, then God must exist because Gods existence naturally follows from Gods conception.The problem with this is that because of Descartes logical framework, all it takes for something to exist in the world is to somehow incorporate the idea of existence into the nature of the concept. Also, because all it takes for it to be true is that that I perceive that existence i s part of the concept just enough to be vivid and clear. such(prenominal) that I could conceive of a chair and it would not exist, but the chair were somehow ascribed with a nature of existence such that the chair has the property of existence, and that I clearly and so distinctly perceived it as such, then it would exist. So then, all it takes to create a chair into existence is to somehow be able to build it to the point that I clearly perceive it to be an existing chair. Clearly, we cannot just go around creating chairs out of thin air, so this must not be the case. So then, it should not be so that I can conclude that a thing is existing in the world just by clearly and distinctly perceiving that existence is part of the things nature. While thither must be something that carries its own necessary existence within itself, it should not be so that I am able to ascribe self-necessity to something, as that defeats its purpose.Another similar problem with the Cartesian ontological a rgument is that just because one knows a perfect Gods nature as having necessary existence, it does not follow that God is in a state of existence. This is because something that is existing, can not necessarily be in existence as a thing. Given that I were to think of the concept of God, and Gods properties, it follows by Cartesian logic that the only thing I can know to be true is that the existence of the concept God, rather than that God is existing in the world. Therefore, when I think of something, I regard it as existing just by the conception of it, regardless of whether the thing I am thinking of exists as such. So existence does not really add to the idea of something because it already exists as one conceptualizes the idea. It can be seen then that Descartes is sneaking that God is existing in the world, when he can only actually observe that on that point is a subject such as God, and that God-concept is omnipotent, omniscient, self-necessary, etc. in the world. For it would be different if there were ways we could empirically observe that God existed in the world. If God existed in the world, then we would be able to observe that a part of Gods essence is that God is existing since it would be obvious to our senses. Given that God was existing, then there would be more perceivable signs of God interacting with matter that are present, even to the point of having an experience of personally watching God affect matter as it is happening. However this is clearly not the case, for we come to our knowledge of God only through the mind, and our current understanding of the physical world. We know that God, being wholly perfect, must then contain all necessary existence within itself, otherwise it would be dependent on another for its own existence and hence not perfect. Clearly this is a logical deduction, which comes from premises that show our collective conception of what an all perfect being is. In other words, all we know is that there is a concep t of omnipotence- but not perceive omnipotence in reality, there is such a thing as omniscience-but not perceive of omniscience in reality, etc, and that there is such a concept of God who contains all these things by virtue of conceiving Gods God-ness- but no perceive of God in reality. As shown, this is the case in the world, where we can have no relevant or reliable sensory experiences that can show Gods existing in the real world.So then, Descartes is making a logical leap of assumption when he shows that the basis for Gods existing as the fact that God has necessary existence. In making that assumption, he assumes that when I have the full concept of God in my head, as in the idea of God fully and purely, then I clearly perceive Gods necessary existence, and whence I am supposed to realize that God exists-just because it seems so real to me. Descartes attributes much weight to the feeling that something is clear and distinct, when as it can be seen that it is not enough to per ceive a concept as clear and distinct and immediately assume that the concept exists. After all, one can be clear on a concept, and yet that concept could exist in reality or not. In the same way, from being clear that God as existence per se, we can be clear that the concept God as such exists, not that God is existing. The all-perfect being may in fact exist then, but Descartes ontological argument is not enough to be able to explain how such a being exists in the world.