Assume that Locke is correct in his assertion that there are no innate ideas. De

Question:This is a class disscusion question please use own words ... Thank you! its for debate
Assume that Locke is correct in his assertion that there are no innate ideas. Discuss with each other what the consequences are for Descartes' argument for the existence of God and truth.

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Assume that Locke is correct in his assertion that there are no innate ideas. Discuss with each other what the consequences are for Descartes' argument for the existence of God and truth.

I really think that Descartes falsified himself when he wrote that he thought God existed. If he had hinted that he did not believe in the existence of God, he could have died a very painful death at the time when he was living.

The Cogito is nothing more than an affirmation of the first person singular and the present indicative. It is no more meaningful to say "I think; therefore I am" than to say "I walk down the street; therefore I am" or "I s.h.i.t; therefore I am."

A lot of philosophy involves nothing more than the syntactic manipulation of abstract vocabulary. That is why a lot of philosophy is very hard to understand--even for philosophers, who often don't understand one another very well. That is one of the reasons that philosophical questions never get resolved.

Harleigh Kyson Jr.

Descartes' first argument, the basic cogito, still holds. That argument is from a self evident principle, that doubt exists. It is neither innate nor need it come from the outside. It can be proved within ones own mind.

Descartes' more complex arguments still fail, just as they already did, and for the same basic reasons.

I see why one ready to accept Descartes might think there is an interesting discussion here, but very few people accept anything beyond his cogito. If you're in that camp, I don't think Locke really changes the discussion.

A premise to Descartes' argument is that we are all born with the innate idea that God exists.

Locke disagrees. He says we are born "tabula rasa." There are no innate ideas.

So if that premise is omitted from Descartes' argument on the existence of God, then his argument is weakened.

How does the omission of that premise affect Descartes' argument?

"Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise [which he shared explicitly with Augustine): "the prior certainty of consciousness," the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one's consciousness
—which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception
—which means: the indiscriminate contents of one's consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform.
What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with [a] blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions—then of perceptions—then of sensations." [1]

"The failure to recognize that logic is man's method of cognition, has produced a brood of artificial splits and dichotomies which represent restatements of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy from various aspects. Three in particular are prevalent today: logical truth vs. factual truth; the logically possible vs. the empirically possible; and the a priori vs. the a posteriori." [2]

"The theory of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy has its roots in two types of error: one epistemological, the other metaphysical. The epistemological error, as I have discussed, is an incorrect view of the nature of concepts. The metaphysical error is: the dichotomy between necessary and contingent facts." [3]

Necessity

"As far as metaphysical reality is concerned (omitting human actions from consideration, for the moment), there are no "facts which happen to be but could have been otherwise" as against "facts which must be."
"There are only: facts which are … Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific identity, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance. The nature of an entity determines what it can do and, in any given set of circumstances, dictates what it will do.
"The Law of Causality is entailed by the Law of Identity. Entities follow certain laws of action in consequence of their identity, and have no alternative to doing so.
"Metaphysically, all facts are inherent in the identities of the entities that exist; i.e., all facts are "necessary." In this sense, to be is to be "necessary." The concept of "necessity," in a metaphysical context, is superfluous." [4]

Causality
"The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature … The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it." [4]

Identity
"A characteristic is an aspect of an existent. It is not a disembodied, Platonic universal. Just as a concept cannot mean existents apart from their identity, so it cannot mean identities apart from that which exists. Existence is Identity." [5]