PHIL1003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Begging The Question, Agnosticism, Dennis Amiss
Four hypotheses to external-world-like experience
• Note that is not being supposed that an evil genius can make an eternal
truth false, but that he makes us believe the wrong eternal truths
• Cogito Ergo Sum
o I think therefore I am
• Getting beyond the Cogito to build up knowledge
o Clarity and distinctness
o The problem of course, is that with other things that seemed
clearly and distinctly perceived, such as 2+3 = 5, it is possible that I
could be deceived by the evil genius into believing that I have a
clear and distinct perception of its truth
o Exit demon, enter God
▪ Answer: undo the possibility of an evil demon
• Descartes holy strategy
o If Descartes can show that God exists, then the slightest doubt
which is in all truths (other than Cogito) that seem clearly and
distinctly perceived, will be removed. There could be no possibility
of an evil demon, since God is all good- Descartes will then have
secured his rationalist criterion of justification
o Proof of Gods existence
▪ P1: I think, therefore I am
▪ P2: I have an idea of God as a being with all the perfections
▪ P3: Existence is a perfection
▪ C1: A perfect being has existence
▪ P4: Whatever has existence exists
▪ C2: A perfect being, God, exists
o The natural light of reason is therefore underwritten by God
▪ God would not falsify our world and deceive us like an evil
demon would
• See: intrinsic qualities of God
▪ God underwrites my faculty of reason
• Dreaming – not!
o I can now know that I am not dreaming. That there is an external
world
o For ) now notice that there is vast difference between the two, in
that dreams are never linked by memory…when ) distinctly see
where things come from and when they come to me … then [given
God is not a deceiver] I am quite certain that when I encounter
these things that ) am not asleep but awake Meditations V)
o Note that this criterion can only be applied when awake
• External (Corporeal Objects)
o But since God is no deceiver, it is very manifest that he does not
communicate to me these ideas immediately and by Himself, nor
yet by the intervention of some creature in which their reality is
not formally, but only eminently contained.
For since he has given me no faculty to recognize that this is the
case, but, on the other hand, a very great inclination to believe that
they are conveyed to me by corporeal objects, I do not see how He
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