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Analysis Of Meditation 3 By Rene Descartes

279 Words2 Pages

Siyi Lin
Philosophy
Essay 2/Meditation III
Word count: As Descartes mentions in Meditation I, we assume God is an powerful demon but how can we prove that God exists? In Meditation III, he tries to prove the existence of God through two ways. In his first proof, he comes up with two claims: formal reality and objective reality, and the second proof is based on various sources of ideas. Formal reality is the reality or the virtue of an existence. For instance, rock has a degree of formal reality since it exists. Descartes also makes three levels of formal reality: infinite, finite and mode. Only God has infinite formal reality due to his great power; humans and animals are finite level. Mode is property of the substance, such as color, taste

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