Descartes Argument For The Existence Of God

Descartes argues that one can exist because one has the capacity to think and therefore some part of him or her must exist for them to think. Through a series of meditations, Descartes wants to prove that one can possess true knowledge, a keystone with which one can build the rest of their beliefs on. As a result, Descartes describes the belief that one cannot rationally doubt their own existence as true knowledge and uses this as his keystone for further science. To build credibility for his argument, Descartes undergoes a series of meditations to prove that one cannot truly rationally doubt their existence. Anything in which Descartes finds a reason to rationally doubt, he treats as false until he discovers something that he cannot rationally

Descartes formulates his dream hypothesis and uses this hypothesis to rationalize his doubt in one’s senses and the material world around himself, “I will regard the heavens, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, and all external things as nothing but the bedeviling hoaxes of my dreams,” (Descartes 12). Descartes doubts the material world because the material world could exist such that it impersonates a dream. It gives reason enough to rationally doubt one’s senses because any sight or sound could just exist as a stimulus in one’s mind’s illusions. However, the dream hypothesis failed to shed doubt on the rules of mathematics and logic. So while one can rationally doubt the physical world under the premises of the dream argument, they cannot rationally doubt abstract concepts such as math, geometry, or the rules of logic

Philip K. Dick proposes in his short story that someone like me could lose their body, but by some means have their mind preserved and put into a new body, (in Dick’s case he mentions an android so I will stay true to that), without recollection of the transfer. He states that the android becomes Olham in ‘mind and body’ (Dick 106). Under the premises of the evil demon hypothesis, one can doubt the reality of a material body because the evil demon could deceive one into the belief that they possess a body. Therefore the transference of one mind from one body into another body means that the evil deceiver could have conjured up this scenario and that one can rationally doubt that either body existed in the first place, but the mind never changed. Even if the mindset of Olham changed as a result, it was because of a different set of sensations, or the illusions of these sensations due to the presence of a new perspective in a new body and how Olham himself responds to different stimuli. The mind still exists and after the transfer of his mind Olham can still think independently and act upon his