Essay Sample on Rene Descartes: Quest for Truth, Knowledge & Reality in Meditations

Rene Descartes dives into a quest for truth, knowledge, and reality throughout his meditations. Before explaining his philosophy in the six meditations, Descartes begins his pursuit of truth through the methods of doubt. As such, Descartes overthrows strong foundations that previous philosophers have held for years. For example, the first stage of doubt begins by stating that the very structure that was widely accepted was false. In particular, all knowledge that comes from our senses could be deceived and therefore needs to be deemed as false beliefs. This is radical, and Descartes shows concern in his approach, "hoping that readers will gradually get used to [his] principles/ before they notice that they destroy the principles of Aristotle" (Descartes, Letter to Mersenne) (Pojman and Lewis 34). Altogether, Descartes's aim through the method of doubt is the radical, general overthrow of all his previous beliefs based on the senses in an attempt to rebuild foundations that lead to clarity of truth.

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To begin, in mediation three, Descartes uses his radical approach in an attempt to prove the existence of God because he believes that his aim can be realized only through the proof of an infinite substance (Pojman and Lewis 34). According to Descartes, if his cause was created by a deceptive evil genius, any idea that he possesses has the possibility of being deceived into something false. If he does not remove this doubt and is "ignorant of [God's existence], it appears that [he is] never capable of being completely certain about anything else" (Descartes, 48). Eliminating this stage of doubt was necessary for Descartes to achieve his goal. Moreover, Descartes needed to prove the existence of God, the infinite substance, to remove the doubt surrounded by the evil genius hypothesis to succeed in his pursuit of absolute truth (Pojman and Lewis 34).

Throughout the third Meditation, Descartes unfolds on four premises in the cosmological argument to reach his conclusion that an infinite substance exists. Each premise needs to be accepted as clear and distinct truth to receive and move on from one another. In other words, each premise builds on each other in attempts to conclude. To begin, Descartes demonstrates three categories of ideas. Factious ideas bring something into existence, adventitious ideas come from an external cause, and innate ideas are ideas embedded into the mind from the very beginning and are independent of our experiences and senses.

In premise one and two, Descartes argues that "something cannot come into being out of nothing, and also that what is more perfect cannot come into being from what is less perfect" (49). Descartes transitions into his third premises in which he explains the difference between two distinct realities of ideas. These realities are the cause and effect of each other, respectively. The formal fact of an idea is its material existence in the universe, the purpose, while the objective reality of an idea is what it represents, the effect (Pojman and Lewis 30). Growing onto premise two, the degree of the reason, the formal truth, must be equal to or greater than the degree of the impact, the objective reality.

The degrees of reality follows in the order of an infinite substance, a finite element, and a mode. Elements are deemed metaphysically independent; however, finite elements have restrictions in that they cannot be the cause of an infinite substance, only the purpose of another finite substance or mode. Also, patterns are dependent on materials for their existence. For example, an idea has the formal reality of a pattern because the mind created it, but an idea also has objective facts in that it represents a finite substance that could exist.

Descartes's argument wraps up in premise 4. In regards to the existence of God, the innate idea of an infinite substance that is embedded in the mind of Descartes, who is a finite substance, cannot be created or formed by Descartes. This would fail to meet the requirements of the cause and effect degrees of the realities from premise three. A finite substance cannot create the idea of an infinite being; however, Descartes argues that an endless substance can place this idea into the mind of a finite substance (Pojman and Lewis 23). This enables a finite substance to understand what it means to have limits because one would not be able to "understand that [one has] doubt and that [one has] desire/ unless there was some idea in [one] of a perfect being" (51). Overall, the very idea of finite can only be understood by the concept of infinite, and the idea of an endless substance must come from the cause of an infinite substance.

To be able to succeed in proving the existence of God in addition to the quest for truth, Descartes needed to address the Evil Genius skepticism. How can one be certain that God is not evil and is not deceiving us of our innate ideas? Innate ideas like simple mathematics seem to not come from experience; instead, they seem to already exist in mind and are from the start, though of as truth. However, what if an Evil Genius has been deceiving us of this very knowledge from the beginning. What if one time ten did not equal 10? Descartes quickly refutes this controversial argument by explaining what it means to be infinite.

A thing that has infinite formal reality must be limitless in that it is "supreme, eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and a creator of all things" (49). The mere meaning of evil implies that it is not perfect and that it has limits. This is, therefore, impossible in Descartes's argument: a wholly accurate being is incapable of being deceptively evil in regards to Descartes's argument. He even claims that this response to refuting the evil genius hypothesis leads him to the conclusion that "of all the ideas that are in [him], the idea that [he has] of God is the truest, the clearest and distinct" (52). Overall, Descartes tries to prove the existence of an infinite substance by showing that innate ideas are clear and distinct; their truth is independent of the senses. Besides, they come from a supremely perfect being.

Therefore, the fundamental views of God and things like mathematics are bright and distinct ideas that can be deemed truthful. Preceding Descartes's conclusion to mediation three, in particular his attempt to prove the existence of God, many objections arose. One of the most robust complaints towards the proof is the Cartesian circle. The Cartesian circle is an objection that the third meditation is in a vicious circle (Pojman and Lewis 20). While on the way to proving that there is an infinitely perfect substance, Descartes must already presuppose that an Evil Genius does not deceive him. If he did not, then none of the premises of the cosmological argument could be trusted until the conclusion of the meditation. This is not possible considering each premise is built off of one another.

Moreover, the presupposition that an Evil Genius does not deceive him is needed for Descartes to trust and move on from each premise. Also, the premises themselves are supposed to be considered transparent, distinct, and believe worthy ideas. Descartes, therefore, is in a vicious circle where he is relying on the fact that the premises are trustworthy while trying to prove that clear and distinct ideas are correct through the proof of an infinite substance.

Surprisingly, Descartes could respond to the Cartesian first and second premises of the cosmological argument through the support of the Evil Genius hypothesis. For instance, the first premise states that everything has a cause. Before Descartes has a chance to refute the Evil Genius hypothesis, he could claim that we may be deceived as a result of an evil being in that the deception is the effect. The manipulation by the evil genius is the cause of this effect. In making this argument, Descartes could succeed in being able to accept premise one as truthful and move onto premise two before proving that he is not deceived.

Work Cited

Pojman, Louis P., and Lewis Vaughn. "Philosophy: The quest for truth." (2009).