/lit/ - Literature

>>17700889

He uses his impressions of god, and good and evil to justify gods existence. Its embarrassing. Religious people who get into phil always use it to attempt to eliminate the need for faith.

Put simply, existence is God.

>>17700889
>but I have no idea how he immediately jumps into
he doesn't "jump into", you haven't read him
>>17700897
you haven't read him

>>17700889
you haven't read him

>>17700897
you haven't read him

>>17700930
you haven't read him

>>17700889
>immediately jumps into "God exists." Why does me existing depend on a God?
because
-i think
-therefore i am
-i think of perfection
-only a perfect being can put in me the thought of perfection
-therefore a perfect being exists
-i call it god


The flaw is the usual flaw of the atheist rationalist reasoning even today, for instance. They define perfection thru negation of what they experience, for instance in science there are biases, so perfection is no-bias whatsoever. And this fantasy of perfection is just a fantasy and is not found in nature. The best part is that those assholes do not provide a way to reach this supposedly perfection or unbiased behavior, or not tainting ''rationalist work'' with emotions and so on.

>>17700889
He was coping

>>17701230
>-i think of perfection
>-only a perfect being can put in me the thought of perfection

who fucking says

>>17701240
humans are not perfect, so if a human thinks of perfection, it can only come from god

>>17701140
you haven't read him

>>17701245
humans are not perfect so they can't think of perfection
so they can't know if what they're thinking of is perfection
therfore they can't know if god exists
simple as

>>17701261
holy shit anon just solved philosophy

>>17700889
>>17700897
>>17700898
>>17700930
>>17701140
>>17701230
>>17701239
>>17701240
>>17701245
>>17701254
>>17701261
>>17701266
you haven't read him

>>17700930
>he doesn't "jump into", you haven't read him

Unironically, paragraph containing the first certainty ("I think therefore I am") and the paragraph containing second certainty ("God exists") actually are right next to each other.

>>17700889
>I understand his reasoning behind "I think therefore I am"
Refuted by Frege

>>17700889
He doesn't jump to it, moron. He offers 3 proofs if God's existence. First two are based on the fact that I am imperfect, so idea of something with more reality than me cant come from myself, and second as I am imperfect, I cannot be the creator. Third argument is that God is an idea who's essence necessarily includes existence.

>>17701532
>God is an idea who's essence necessarily includes existence
It doesn't

>>17701545
I didn't say it does, I said that that's his argument.

>>17700930
you haven't read him

>>17701140
you haven't read him

>>17701254
you haven't read him

>>17701476
you haven't read him

>>17701573
so?

>>17700889
Why did the swedes kill him

>>17702300
Based Elizabeth, an ancient greece respecter, btfo:ed his modernist nonsense. She asked him how the material could interact with the mind. Decuck was so shocked, he froze to death.

>>17701476
why would read someone who has been so thoroughly debunked?

Sam Harris from his podcast:
>"I have debated dozens of the greatest Christian intellects. I have read thousands of works written by theologians and philosophers defending their belief in God, and I have seen the illogical absurdities in every one of them. There is not a single argument for God's existence that has intimidated me for more than a few moments, before I saw it fall apart, in my mind, like a house of cards. Except for one. Descartes' argument for the existence of God is, in my mind, the single greatest opponent to atheism. It is irrefutable, inescapable. It haunts me at night with the sheer force of the magnitude of its argumentation, insight, and profundity."

>>17703593
lmao imagine having such an unsophisticated high school level attitude to the interpretation of texts

>>17701476
based

>>17703593
I haven't read him

>>17703852
Bro... This is cringe. Spinoza's idea of God is far more perfect than Descartes'.

>>17703984
Based

>>17700889
God's name is I AM. Every time in the old testament that it says "THE LORD" it really says in the original Hebrew "I AM".

Descartes is really saying I think therefore I AM.

But now we say instead of "I think therefore I am" (which assumes I am the one doing the thinking, an assumption.) that "Something is thinking"

>>17703593
>been so thoroughly debunked
This is like asking why an physicist should learn Newtonian physics given that it was "thoroughly debunked" by Einstein, Dirac, Heisenberg et al. in the 20th century. Descartes' 'Meditations' literally started the modern discourse on the mind-body problem. The people who have 'debunked' him may have argued against Cartesian dualism, but they were all still working within the framework he created, merely offering different solutions to the problem he articulated. So if you want to understand the discussion at all you have to be familiar with his ideas: this is why he's often the first philosopher you study in undergraduate epistemology and philosophy of mind courses.

>>17703852
Did he actually say that because if so holy shit what a fucking pseud. Why the fuck is he framing a logical argument as if it's an opponent to be defeated "in the name of atheism," as if belief atheism's putative truth is desirable and has to be defended, rather than just being the result of coolly considering all available arguments and evidence...Also he doesn't even say what the argument consists in he just talks about it in weird platitudes trying to sound smarter than he is god I hate Sam Harris so fucking much

>>17700889
Remember "I think therefore I am" immediately follows the thought experiment that a malicious demon is always ensuring that he's always mistaken whenever he counts the sides of a square. It's necessary to prove that a benevolent God exists so that he has a rational basis for his knowledge. He uses the "I think therefore I am" as the basis to prove that God exists, that there is a conception in his mind of a perfect God and that could not possibly be there without a perfect cause (God).

>>17701240
he was operating under the scholastic assumption that the cause of something has to be as real as the thing itself

>>17700889
I am not reading this thread because, frankly, odds are nobody who has posted here has said anything worth considering or that smarter people haven't already accounted for.

Op, there is a reason this argument is called "the Cartesian Circle," and you are only talking about the first half. Just websearch Kant's critique and stop looking to retards on 4chan for your opinions.

>>17700889
He was just trying to appease the catholic church at the time because he didn't want to end up like Galileo. What he's going for is a complete rebuild of human understanding stating from the ground up, mainly through the sciences, Descartes' main focus being math. It's important to note Descartes is a mathematician first and a philosopher second. "I think therefore I am" is the first step towards building yourself up to greater truth after completely starting from scratch as it is the first thing one can rationally claim to prove their own existence.

>>17705669
can you give me more of that mathematical debunking of the Catholic Church?

>>17705713
He's not trying tp debunk the catholic church through math, he's just trying to keep them off his back so he can continue to do his work without them interfering. He's simply providing a weak argument to make the church believe he's on their side.

>>17703984
based

Isnt most of what Descartes wrote just a recycling of the gnostic concepts of the monad, emanations, and pneumatics vs hylics?

>>17703852
>modern ontological arguments are ilogic and absurd but Descartes is irrefutable
does he just say whatever random shit comes to his mind?

Human reason cannot justify its own existence. The fruitful application of reason to nearly everything under the sun is clear--the study of nature/mathematics has allowed us to describe nature to such an extent that we can make use of quantum mechanics to create semiconductors, classical mechanics to build aircraft, weaponry, etc., and GR to properly adjust the clocks on GPS satellites.

Despite the successes of reason that are clear and useful, there is a failure of reason which is of greater importance to us, though it has no bearing on science. Reason cannot offer an explanation/description of itself. The logical positivists of the early/mid 20th century tried and failed. Wittgenstein, Goedel, Popper, et. al. made a joke of it all.

The nature of consciousness is something that we can't grapple with. There are no strings of symbols that can encapsulate consciousness as, by necessity, symbols are things understood by conscious actors and have no meaning otherwise. Can one write an equation (the tool of natural philosophers which is used to describe a phenomenon/property in terms of other phenomena/properties) leading to a conscious experience? No.

Descartes' cogito is an expression of the primacy of consciousness. Whether there be an evil demon or a benevolent God (or both). This is similar to the pre-Christian philosophers. Aristotle was convinced of a being outside of our immediate understanding, but lacked the tools to go further (he only had reason). The birth, life, and crucifixion of Christ is a matter of faith, but it is information of the nature necessary to push reason (which can only asymptotically approach truth) over the line and into "truth".

Whether one chooses faith is left up to him. Faith in something extra/supra rational is necessary to have a full picture. I don't limit this faith to Christian faith. The argument here is that there is something outside of our own reason and, though our own reason can prove its existence, fails.

>>17707301
While writing I thought of a cheap way that the nature of consciousness clearly escapes the conservation laws of physics. When a baby is born its body obeys the physical laws. Mother must eat matter (no pun intended) to create the physical shell, and all is in accordance. Still, in this case, 1 + 1 = 3. Two conscious beings create a third without being diminished in any way, themselves. A crude/tortured analogy, yeah. Still interesting that, while conservation laws hold and entropy is always on the rise, consciousness seems escape physical constraints. Yes, people all need food/etc, but you know what I mean.

Wtf

Fucking spastic should be disregarded.

>>17701245
And yet the world is not perfect
So God isn't real
If I can think of ways the world could be better but it isn't, that disproves God as an all powerful or good entity

Not that I'm considering this a huge accomplishment being smarter than some dude with a pedo mustache who had his first existential crisis

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>>17700897
>>17700889
we haven't read him

>>17708687
I have though...

>>17700889
>>17700897
Renaissance science man didn't believe in God, he just said so

I haven't read Descartes, but my username (Desgardes) famously borrow from him, but I digress,

I feel as though Descartes was just a rough hooligan desu. he went through phases, and one of those phases involved desperation.

If you've ever been in the army, or in the gutter, or on too many drugs, you'll know "there's no atheist in the foxhole"

But the comfortable, well read, modern man has no need for god.

I say the best man operates, when he has god in his back pocket, something he used to cherish, occasionally throws out when the opportunity presents itself worthy.

>>17708920
So what are you?

>>17707393
>1 + 1 = 3. Two conscious beings create a third without being diminished in any way, themselves.
This is actually pretty good

>>17708879
I would save this but Descartes is such a brainlet I never use any of his ideas