400words paper

Thinking toward the First Thesis/Paper Assignment: Start-up Ideas: This is language to turn you in the right direction, but you would still need to add reasons and citations appropriately.

1. Despite the efforts of [NAME OF AUTHOR], the X problem remains because….

2. [NAME OF AUTHOR] offers the beginning of a promising solution to the X problem, but the

solution still requires ….

3. If [NAME OF AUTHOR] means p when they say q …, then their view can be strengthened by adding an additional premise, namely ….

4. If [NAME OF AUTHOR] means p when they say q …, then their view is circular and unsound.

5. The sense in which [NAME OF AUTHOR]’s account is superior to that of [NAME OF AUTHOR] is …. (This thesis statement has as sort of “built in” objection because you’ll have to tell both sides of the dispute. Note that your own position is clear from the statement itself, as it should be.)

6. As [NAME OF AUTHOR] implies, what are called innate ideas are in fact …. (Here you plan to make explicit something that is only implicit in the text.)

7. [NAME OF AUTHOR]’s solution to the problem of representation … fails or succeeds just insofar as their examples can be shown to fail or succeed.…

8. Although [NAME OF AUTHOR] argues the contrary, … the X problem remains because….

9. [NAME OF AUTHOR]’s solution to X … is more flawed than the position they opposes because….

10. If [NAME OF AUTHOR] is correct to say X, then I am an automaton, not a thinking human being. (Note that, without the citation, this thesis statement would be incomprehensible; that’s true for the other statements as well, but it is easier to see with this one.)

11. Although we use two different words for the concepts, X and Y are really identical, as [NAME OF AUTHOR] argues (…).

12. Although [NAME OF AUTHOR] argues that X and Y are the same thing under two descriptions (…), I show that they are different in that…. (see how this is opposite of #11)

Georges Dicker

Despite additional premises and his memory defense, Descartes argues in a circle when he uses the clear and distinct idea of God as proof of God’s existence (Meditations §§42–50) while requiring the existence of God to guarantee that our clear and distinct ideas are true (§62), as Arnauld pointed out (Objections and Replies §214).

Arnauld adds that one should know that one’s clear and distinct ideas are true before one argues that God exists. In fact, Descartes offers two premises to establish the criterion of clarity and distinctness before concluding God’s existence. First, he argues that ideas represent things in the world (Meditations §38), providing evidence that ideas do not depend on his will (§39); when one’s eyes are open, one cannot but see things, assuming a normal physiology and proper lighting conditions. Insofar as ideas represent things external to themselves, however, they cannot be considered by themselves alone, which is the only sense in which Descartes’ criterion was originally said to apply (§35). Second, Descartes said there is as much formal reality in the cause of an idea as the idea, i.e., the effect, has objective reality (§40). This premise, however, does not appear to escape the demon: psychopath Pete has a “clear and distinct” idea of Zeus. Accepting these premises provisionally for the sake of argument still would not rescue Descartes from his circle. Descartes responds to Arnauld with what has been called his memory defense: until one knows God exists, one cannot have certainty about “knowledge of those conclusions which can be recalled when we are no longer attending to the arguments by means of which we deduced them” (Objections and Replies §§245-7). In other words, God is not required to guarantee the clear and distinct idea of God’s own existence because the idea of God is known immediately. God’s role is to guarantee deductions no longer present to the mind.

Descartes’s explicit statement (Meditations §36) that an evil demon might be deceiving him about what is present to his mind, however, conflicts with his reply, so the memory defense would succeed at the cost of losing the first proof for God’s existence, which would in turn destroy the guarantee.

One might nevertheless note that if the guarantee were limited to remembered ideas, and Descartes’s later proof for God (§67) were sound, then Descartes would be closer to breaking the circle.

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