• Joseph Lynch
    2
    Hi everyone,

    I was just wondering if anyone could help me out in relation to some of the content in Descartes' 6th meditation. I am focusing on his refutation of global skepticism throughout the meditations and his eventual proof of an external world.
    As far as I am aware Descartes has argued that given that his ideas come from him often against his will and presuppose no use of the intellect they cannot be produced by some faculty of the mind which is in its essence a thinking thing. They also cannot come from God since our ideas can often be deceptive and this would contradict the essence of God. Hence, they must come from corporeal bodies in an external world. Furthermore he has a strong inclination towards believing this and God would have to be a deceiver if these beliefs were wrong but had not given Descartes a faculty to know that he was incorrect, and as above, God cannot be a deceiver and thus Descartes' strong inclinations must be correct.
    Please feel free to correct me if any part of the above argument is incorrect.
    I was just confused as to how sensations such as pain, joy and hunger connect to this theory. How can hunger be caused by an external object? I understand that sometimes I get hungry when I smell food, however if I sat in a secured room with no food nearby I would still experience hunger after a certain period of time and hence this sensation cannot be dependent on external objects can it?
    Just wondering if anyone could help me out in this regard on how Descartes accounts for sensations, or is it sufficient to prove that our sensory experiences come from external objects and thus the external world can be proven without reference to sensation at all?
    Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)
  • tim wood
    8.7k
    I'll only suggest that you think through what sensations are and how they work, and what is meant by "external." As to Descartes' thinking on the reliability of God, I think you've got that pretty much. Whether you've got it close enough depends on the details, and my memory won't suffice for those.
  • Gregory
    4.6k
    Descartes thought our thoughts of God had a certain perfection that assure of us His existence. This i done in three ways. One, because the idea is to.perfect to come from anyone but God. Two, what is in the mind perfectly must be true objectively. Three is Anselms ontological argument. Descartes uses as there and says God can't let our reason be deceived in understanding the world
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