In Descartes second meditation, he established that because he is a thinking being, he exists. In the third meditation, Descartes attempts to build upon this foundation by questioning whether or not anything exists outside of him. In order to do so, he must distinguish between those of his thoughts that come from outside, and those, which only seem to. Descartes begins by analyzing the nature of thought and dissects what consists our ideas. An idea maybe an image, a form or a judgment and Descartes claims that the image or the form can never be false. The only idea that can deceive is thought. He states, " Thus the only remaining thoughts where I must be on my guard against making a mistake are my judgments. And the chief and most commo

Once Descartes establishes his cause and effect theory, he moves on to proving if anything exists outside of himself. Descartes states that he has many ideas - ideas of "God, corporeal and inanimate things, angels, animals, and finally other men like myself (p.92)." He goes through each category and argues that aside from the idea of God, all his other ideas could originate from himself. Basically, he establishes that since he is a substance, with shape, size, and form, he contains as much formal reality as there is objective reality in any of his ideas. Only his idea of God contains more objective reality than he could possibly possess in actual form, since God is beyond shape, size and form. Descartes is now left with a single idea, which along with his theory of the existence of God must reveal an existence apart from his own.

At this point, Descartes is still dealing with the metaphysical. By applying this theory to his ideas, Descartes provides himself a foundation to judge between true existence and existence that is merely perceived. In order to show that ideas are subject to the cause and effect theory, Descartes points out a difference between formal and objective reality. Objective reality is the reality presented in a picture or idea and formal reality exists in the object of the picture or the idea. There cannot be more objective reality than actual reality; otherwise the surplus reality must come from nothing, which is impossible. Once this is established, Descartes extends his theory of cause and effect to metaphysical ideas. He states, "...In order for an given idea to contain such and such objective reality, it must surely derive it from some cause which contains at least as much formal reality as there is objective reality in the idea (p91)." To complete this theory Descartes attempts to solve the problem of how ideas originate.. He does so by arguing that although ideas - by their definition - can only contain objective reality, that they must come from something that contains formal reality. Therefore there must be a first cause, which possesses more or the same amount of reality as the effect to pass reality onto the effect.

Descartes defines God as "a substance that is infinite *eternal, immutable* independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both my

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Approximate Word count = 1576
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)