Essay About Descartes Doubts And Immaterial Substance

Descartes Meditations
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Meditations is a discussion of metaphysics, or what is truly real. In these writings, he
ultimately hopes to achieve absolute certainty about the nature of everything including
God, the physical world, and himself. It is only with a clear and distinct knowledge of
such things that he can then begin understand his true reality. Descartes starts by looking
at our usual sources for truth. Authority, which is churches, parents, and schools, he says,
are not reliable sources for truth because time shows we all die, and that we are
eventually proved wrong, much in the same way the accepted truths of science have
changed dramatically over the course of history. Also, he considers the generally excepted
view that our senses dependably report the absolute nature of reality. Simiar to authority,
Descartes discards the senses as a source of truth because of the “Dream Argument” or
the belief that based on the senses there is no definite way of proving that you are
dreaming or that you are awake. Therefore it is possible that everything we believe is
false, making the senses an unreliable source. Upon establishing this, Descartes doubts
the existence of a physical or external world. Despite that he has an idea of things in the
world, he has no way of knowing if they exist past his own mind. Another point he
addresses is mathematics. He soon realizes maths truth isnt completely reliable because
of the “Demon Hypothesis”, which acknowledges the possibility of an all powerful being
that is deceiving him about everything, including mathematics. As a result, Descartes
ponders the possibility that he has no way of being completely positive about anything,
even his existence. It is only after some deliberation that he decides that it is impossible
to be incorrect about everything because he has doubt, and to posses doubt, there must be
a doubter. Hence, he doubts, therefore he exists. With the assurance of his existence, he is
presented with the deeper question of what he, himself, actually is. Descartes knows that
he is not just a body based on his doubt of the senses. Despite the fact that he feels he is
not a body, he does believe he has properties, such as doubt, that make him a substance.
From this he concludes that his is an immaterial substance and that his essential property
is self-consciousness because you can have no real proof of yourself except through your
own thoughts or consciousness. Descartes states this belief in the statement, “Im aware
that Im aware.” He established the first absolutely certain foundation of truth that he was
seeking. Hoping to discern the existence of anything else aside from himself, an
immaterial substance, Descartes considers a variety of ideas he has within his mind and
contemplates whether he could have conceived them himself or not. Predominantly, he
finds that he has the idea of a perfect being. Descartes is imperfect in that he is not all
knowing (omniscient) or all powerful (omnipotent), and is most certainly mortal. Another
way in which Descartes proves the existence of God is through an “ontological” proof.
This states that an essential property of a perfect being is existence, or that the idea of a
perfect being proves that there must be one because the definition of a perfect being must
include that it exists. At this point he observes that his existence depends upon God, or
that only God exists necessarily, while everything else exists contingently. Descartes
concludes that the reliability of mathematics can no longer be doubted because God
guarantees the truth of all self-evident ideas,(self-evident not meaning obvious), but ones
that can be calculated through mathematical physics. Therefore, Descartes now knows
that a perfect being exists and that he is not alone. knows what one will do in the future,
then one must do what God knows he will do in the future. This means that one has no
choice in what God knows he will do, since God already knows that he will do it,
therefore eliminating his freewill. These are some of the considerations when thinking
about Descartes proof of Gods existence. In the Sixth Meditation, the last section in our
text, Descartes hopes to prove the existence of the external world and matter (physical
objects located in space). To do this first he again acknowledges the existence of minds as
an immaterial substance and God. Next, he shows that external ideas, or images of things
are neither fashioned by himself or by God because he has ideas of things that dont
depend on his will. From this he can say that he will know matter exists if its image was
not a product of the mind or God. To prove this credits the existence of external ideas to
the imagination, which is the psychological power of receiving and processing images.