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Descartes Ontological Argument

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In the Third Meditation, Descartes claims that one’s perception of the infinite is necessarily prior to that of the finite . I will present his argument below in explanation of what his claim actually purports. Descartes makes this epistemological claim because it has ontological implications: with this claim, an idea of God and his causal axiom, he can produce the ontological proof of God which I will also reproduce below. Additionally, the initial claim allows Descartes to also supply an argument that both rejects infinite regress and supports the notion that an infinite substance creates and sustains finite substances – this argument will also be presented below. After I have explained the claim itself and shown its implications, I will …show more content…

The claim itself is an epistemological one – that to perceive the finite one must have perceived the infinite because the finite, by Descartes’s definition, is simply a negation of the infinite . He claims its analogous to knowing rest from motion and darkness from light. One is immediately drawn to question whether or not he has a conception of the infinite, since it is an open question whether or not one can even conceive of the infinite. Furthermore, one can concede to Descartes his causal axiom and that he has a conception of God. However, one can stipulate that Descartes is mistaken about God’s infinite being and that there is actually a greater being than God, God+. Is it conceivable that God has been delegated to create all finite substances and so for some reason they all have an innate idea of Him. However, God+ created God but no one until now has stipulated God+, a conceivable idea. One needn’t negate the idea of God+ to understand God, especially because most people have never thought that such a being would exist. Therefore, one is able to conceive of a finite substance before infinite – it is a dubious claim that one must conceive an absolute to conceive a part in the same way that one does not need to conceive the universe to conceive of their village. Therefore, I find little epistemological merit in the

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