Third Meditation
...like the ontological then the cosmological argument. His meditation is about what is real and how to prove it is. He mainly wants to prove the existence of God, which would prove all other things to be true. Anselm's ontological argument is that the greatest thing that can be thought of is the existence of God. St. Aquinas' cosmological argument is that God was the first to exist and he created everything the way it is today.
Descartes' Third Meditation is all of his ideas and thoughts on what is considered to be real. He is doubtful of bodily things but is certain that he exists and that he is a thinking thing that doubts, understands, imagines, and senses. Descartes says that you can only be certain of something if it is clear and has distinct perceptions; this is known as natural light. At first he thought he was certain on all sorts of different things. Then he realized that he hasn't been perceiving things as themselves, but only the ideas or thoughts of those things. He's also not certain about anything because he thinks that God could be deceiving him and to assure this isn't happening he must understand God (Descartes, 24-36).
He starts off by classifying his ideas into different categories. The first category is made up of simply ideas, such as images and pictures of his thoughts. Next category consists of emotions, violations, and judgments towards an object of thought. Through this he reasons that he cannot be mistaken with regard to ideas on their own, nor with regard to volitions or emotions. He can only make mistakes towards these ideas through his judgment of them (Descartes, 24-36).
Descartes wants to escape the problem involving clear and distinct perceptions by relying on God's existence to make them true. The problem is that he wants to prove God's existence by claming it as a clear and distinct perception; this is known as the Cartesian...
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