René Descartes - Meditation #3 - A Cosmological Proof of God's Existence 

I have been dealing with existentional crisis for years and now I am finally getting to Descartes and his work. Needless to say it's only gotten worse.

I'm a first year philosophy student in France and one of my teachers is among the most eminent Descartes experts there is. While his classes were really great, these videos and especially this one since my exam turned out to be about the third meditation really made everything clear to me. Today I was eventually told I got the best possible grade and I couldn't be happier. Mr Kaplan, thank you!

Man, what a relief! I've been battling the third meditation for about a fortnight. 45 minutes very well spent!

Since I was like 8 years old, I used to watch my country’s university channel with lectures about philosophy for hours. At my 38 years old, I just went back to college and added Philosophy as my second major. Your lessons are my breakfasts. 👽♥️♥️♥️

Your a damn good teacher, you just explained the substance vs modes distinction in like 5 minutes when it has taken me ages to figure it out. I love the set up of these video, and the dark background really keeps me engaged. Keep doing what you're doing, this is amazing and fascinating to watch, I am so glad I came across your videos!

You're the only reason why I understand Descartes' third meditation. You make it so much easier to understand and you're entertaining as well. Thank you!!

I am 45 years old and RU-vid thought I wanted to watch this series. Lecture 1&2 were awesome. I waffled on this lecture(three) right up until you said you didn't agree with the proof. This made me recall that I don't have to agree with something to understand it and those who hold the view. I appreciate your energy. Stay AWESOME! RU-vid was correct.

There's a reason that virtually no Christian or Muslim apologists use the Cartesian cosmological argument. It's frankly unconvincing (and likely full of informal fallacies), even to believers. It's interesting to me because I think a lot of the people really understand what he was doing with doubting everything and especially resonate with the cogito. But, then you get to meditation 3 and it really goes off the rails. Nevertheless, great summary by Kaplan here.

I am amazed by the amount of energy you put into making Descartes meditations easy to understand. Thanks so much.

"19:46 take control of your life. you know." Hahaha. Thanks, a lot Prof. I love your content. I knew I had a gap in knowledge for not learning philosophy. And I'm glad you've made its importance apparent. It's a giant chasm of Knowledge. Thanks, a lot Professor.

What a privilege to be able to view these lectures! Thank you.

“I wrote it down, because it was important “ that’s a statement of the day - for me, that is!

How good is this guy - he explains it clearly and he’s an entertaining lecturer!

I had read this meditation many times over the past 15 years but finally got it now. THANK YOU

I don't know why but I could understand the third meditation by watching your video much better and more clearly than by reading its translation and explanations in French or my language. Thank you very much. From Tokyo.

You remind me of an Art history teacher I once had in high school. I still remember a lot of art history while I forgot almost all my general history. She was so passionate and understood exactly what we needed to understand and learn from it. She learned us to recognise a painting, building or sculpture without ever seeing it before. She didn’t want us to memorise every painting, she wanted us to be able to tell who painted a less famous piece of the artist and why we think it’s that artist who painted it. It she gave a lot of paintings and she wanted us to say what time period and art movement it belonged to and why we think that. We usually had a test with a bunch of paintings, buildings and sculptures and we had to say: -the time it was painted. (always within 50 years for example: 1400-1450 between those years it was painted. or the exact date then you get an extra bonus point.😅) - the location it was made - the art movement it belonged to. -The artist - then we had to explain how we came to that conclusion. How do you know this painting is made by this artist? What are the aspects in the painting are tipical for it’s art movement? She was the best teacher ever I loved all her classes.

Thanks very much for this! I'm not formally studying it but I've been getting into philosophy recently, and read through Descartes' Meditations earlier but didn't understand things anywhere near as well as after watching some of your lectures.

This guy was a good companion in tough moments, total respect and gratitude towards you Mr. Kaplan.

This series on the meditations is my first real dive into philosophy lessons and you make understanding seem achievable thank you. Also the moments of pause and rumination (challenging us to answer a question) I really like that engagement well done.

You're an incredibly skilled teacher, thank you so much

Wow wish to have you as my philosophy teacher, such a great understanding of this . Thanks !

Can't thank you enough! I wish there were a "love" button :) It is extremely helpful. Thank you so much!

Absolutely Excellent! Yes, I had to rewind, so to speak, twice in Meditation #3. And yes, now I get it. I admit, for the same reasons you voiced, I don't agree with the findings, buy I understand now the process. Thank you so very much!

the clearest philosophical presentation i have come across so far.

This is the most difficult and crucial part.. thanks for this very clear explanation

Man this has been a lifesaver. Thank you so much!

oh my god! to your explanation! we can never thank you enough.

You are awesome! I love philosophy but I get bogged down reading those pillars of thought. You condense it down for me to enjoy the thinking part. Your method is so cool. Keep going !

you shocked me and left me speechless with your explanation

I have just started with philosophy but many of the concepts are there in our culture (INDIA)so it's easy to relate to, The black background is good thankyou.

As someone who understands these things in Aristotelian terms, this lecture was like learning a whole different language where most of the words have opposite meanings to your native language. woooooo dawgie, that was hard!

I can't thank you enough, you really helped me with my studying.

Watching from Malawi and am really enjoying myself, you are really great presenter.

These courses are amazing! Thank you for this 🙂

Thanks Jeffery! I am somewhat embarrassed to admit I never understood what Philosophy was about. If I had, I would not have been surprised that people 100's and sometime 1000's of years ago were asking the same existential questions we all ask today and probably always will . My life would have been richer and more meaningful if I had taken the time to learn from the intellectuals of our past. I appreciate you clarifying their insights. :-)

I really satisfy with the lecture, sir. It makes me more engaged in philosophy because the text itself is harder to follow for non-English speakers.

I love the way you explain things. The proof did not work for me, yes, but I liked how ppl are able to think in such directed (determined) manner about something, and more so, of what is so impressive is how you teach it so damn well. You are a very impressive teacher.

I love this. Although it's kind of hillarious how little faith you have in us actually understanding during that quiz. 24:31- the face of a teacher desperately trying to explain string theory to a bored teenager with a gun XD Edit: also, on the 1,5 speed you get increasingly crazed towards the end of the video. All you need is a bunch of connected photos and newspaper clippings on that board. This is fun :D

It might be beneficial to work through an objective/formal reality analysis of an object of fantasy-or the idea of that object of fantasy-to put a bow on Decartes meditations. For example, a unicorn 🦄, or a sentient robot. I really appreciate your content, professor. I studied philosophy in college and this presentation on Descartes was wonderfully satisfying to revisit and refresh. Thank you for sharing. 🙂

what a good teacher you are.

Really glad you added the qualifier at the end about premises 2 and 3 of the proof not quite holding water. That's one of the places I was like, wait, that's not a "given." Point 10 also seems to be begging the question. In any case, really enjoying your lectures, thank you!

Thank you - ran into a wall with this and your breakdown was fantastic!

21:45 "that's okay, start over, your times not that valuable" 🤣 Your a fantastic teacher and a funny dude too!

Well explained such a great teacher.keep it up good work.

Excellent teacher. Learn Descartes. Than immediately forget everything he said. You’ll be smarter for it.

I'm in love with your video,,wish you a long and happy life

Descartes was a convoluted sel-fulfilling argument. Being Catholic really made it difficult for him. Moon is no different than a cat. Both are ideas. His definitions of “infinite substances” or “perfect” are poorly structured

This is awesome! My lawn chair is green dude. 😂😂 it's color, and the chair itself are med formal reality and not objective because they are not ideas. I think I learned sumthin lol. Love your videos man!

Great lectures many thanks. Small remark, "green" can be a mode but also a finite substance as an ideal type. I guess it is about how Descartes saw it.

this guy actually saved me in the night before my exam, thanks for that!

Wonderful sir. I love it . great

Brillant lecture, please consider providing notes with additional explanation and text.

An admirable series of lectures. Makes me think I would have got a better pass if we'd had the internet when I was an undergraduate. Is there any chance you could publish a list of your seminars in chronological order, please?

thank you, wonderful explenation, helpd me a lot

Wow you are a great teacher. Thanks from India 🇮🇳

This is brilliant! Please do Kant’s critique of pure reason

Fires up the bong. Time for meditation 3. "Wow, check out my hand."

That was AWESOME!!!

To me it sounds like Decartes just makes up a concept that explains why God exists but explaining why that concept in itself (Maximum Reality) is a thing at all, is equally difficult to prove. I don't really understand why should I accept that there are 3 degrees as a given, instead of only 2.

You are a great Teacher

lol... at 29:45 I forget what the word "Idea" meant for a split second. This is a great lecture

Thanks for an amazing job..

Why must Descartes God be the ONLY infinite substance? Why couldn’t a human have created the idea of god? Also, just because there is an idea of god why does that mean it must exist somewhere? I can create an idea of an all perfect all powerful unicorn but that doesn’t make it exist. In a phl101 class, really enjoyed your videos on Descartes!

This professor should get more viewers

Information clearly explained.

Great video can’t wait for college to take my philosophy classes.

I'm not even a college student but I felt compelled to rewatch this 😂

Thank you so much I have been reading this at an elementary level on my own!

First off I want to say I am thoroughly enjoying and learning a lot from these lectures - I am simply here to feed my own knowledge, not for any formal reasons and I really appreciate your teaching style. However, this particular one has made me kind of sad. I have always though of Descartes to be really on the ball with so many ideas (not that i've known this level of detail about his ideas before). But something in this meditation really brought me down .... It was point 3 of the proof: "Level of formal reality of cause >= level of objective reality of effect". .... I simply can't accept this .... and by not accepting it, it makes everything Descartes subsequently bases on it mean nothing to me ... that's why i'm sad ... why can't i accept it? - it just doesnt seem right ... its essentially saying "there is no way i can originate an idea about God because God is something I can't even imagine ... " how can i accept this? ... it reduces this whole proof to "God must exist because God is something I can't even imagine but I just did" ... to me .. someone came up with the idea of God ... and part of that idea was "its impossible to have an idea of God" ... its circular ... and that upsets me because I really want to believe in Descartes ....

I need to get this out. At this point, my opinion of Descartes went from "hm, alright. That's a good basis. Very intelligent, curious to where this goes." to "oh come on ... this was so promising, and then he went running head first into circular logic? Disappointing." I'll watch the rest when I have more time and can look past that he's flipping everything upside down and starts with a supposition, and does pages of mental gymnastics to prove that supposition.

thanks a lot sir....

Thank you. ( From Malaysia）

Amei demais.

He was a mathematician and these levels feel to me like they were dimensions rather than scales. Like, a square cant possibly know a cube exists, unless the cube somehow informs the square. Not that the proof holds up, but makes it more understandable where his head was at.

The way you write backwards so quickly is amazing

To me rather than proving the existence of God, it proves the existence of reality itself outside of the individual mind. Or the way I understood it, was basically "I myself am not capable of creating the objects of my ideas, so there must be something outside of myself that creates the object of the idea.

Thank you professor Kaplan. Very helpful, I have an exam tomorrow, it's 4am and I'm cramming lol

what makes something more real/perfect than other things and how do you prove it?

Dude came up with the whole "we're living in the matrix" long before that became technology feasible!! What a hero!

I have never written a philosophy essay and my dumb ass thought It would be ez to object to Descartes meditation 3 for my philosophy module in my joint honours (well now I have a chance😂, thx for explaining all the background stuff i had no knowledge of... I'm actually quite interested in the essay now)

Nice work with a difficult text

I’m very taken with these videos. Great for the ageing enthusiast.

i love you so much

Hi Jeffrey! I found Aristotle's classifications of substance and mode very eye opening! I have a question though and I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Aristotle's claim that a substance needs nothing else to exist while the mode depends on the existence of the substance seems to be very important for building the foundations of essentialism. However, if we were to think about about the existence of objects in a more Structuralist manner, would it perhaps be more fair to say that substances need nothing else to exist except for other substances? Do we not need the existence of many objects at once in order to make the distinctions necessary to deem one object separate and distinct from another?

What is the difference between step 2 and step 3 that makes the move controversial? They just seem like the same idea with step 3 being a more descriptive but not novel version of step 2.

Jeffrey, in your blurb that accompanies the video out left out a 'not': You said "Descartes does himself has enough formal reality to be the source of his own idea of God" but I think you must have meant to say "Descartes does NOT himself has enough formal reality to be the source of his own idea of God",

Good God, you explain well. Does it take a lot of your energy?

You are genius! I lacks words to describe your personality. God bless you. I will offer one Mass for your private intention.

16:40 I figured the answer was "medium" here, but it got me thinking. Wouldn't every physical object be considered a "mode" in this instance, while the actual substance is each individual atom? the mode of the marker is its "marker-ness", which is dependent on this specific arrangement of atoms, no?

I feel like I could get a solid C if I was tested on this. I think I'd have to watch it again on a bigger screen while I wasn't doing something else to get a really firm grasp on it. The concept makes total sense to me though. Kind of like in factories, and injection molding machine can't make another injection molding machine, it can just make the object it was designed to make. However some machines capable of making a die for an injection molding machine are able to make at least most of the components of another machine that could make injection mold dies.

26:54 Does this not rely upon there being the presupposition that God actually "is" in order to use in this framework, like the moon? The idea of an idea for instance references something unknowable in Descartes framework. Can this framework be applied?

I've been through a great many of your videos, and find them eminently enjoyable. I have a VERY high tolerance for weird -- my undergrad was Physics, and this was positively commonplace compared to things like General Relativity or the Statistical Proof of Entropic expansion. This didn't feel at ALL weird; what it felt was ad hoc. Despite the different language, it seems methodologically almost an exact recapitulation of Ancient Greek Ontological arguments... all of which only work if you add in a Proposition Zero involving a TON of divine attributes that are nowhere defended. It's not Descartes' fault that his context made God so very axiomatic that defining him into existence felt inevitable. He was a great mathematician, and they frequently fall prey to thinking they can define brute facts into existence.

Thank you very much! Isn't his proof of god also a proof of objective reality as we understand it (formal reality in Descartes' terms)? Because until after the proof, he is not sure if his ideas actualy correspond to a formal reality other than himself (the imperfect substance which is his mind).

It is circular logic based on biased assumptions, The first being that God is the only maximum or that there is a maximum at all. The second assumption is that the mind, in its purest form, is only medium. This next statement will sound weird, but it is true. You know things that you don't actively know that you know. Your mind is constantly working on things in your subconscious that you are not actively aware of and you do not know how much it can really do, since it is subconscious. I have a personal example of this. It's a minor thing, but it shows the principle. I was young and I was reading a book. I came across the word twit for the first time and I thought to myself "What is a twit?" I immediately had a strong and clear thought "It's a condensed version of the word nitwit." I know for a fact I hadn't thought about it before. I hadn't had time to think it through before I knew the answer. The thought that came to me was so loud and clear I looked around to see if someone was in the room and maybe I had asked the question out loud, but I was alone. My subconscious had been working on it faster than I could even think the question. There is no way to say how limited a pure mind would actually be. If all that exists is one pure mind, and it came up with the idea of everything that "exists" through imagination, then it would have to be far more powerful than we/it thinks it is. The third assumption is that the min/med/max is a valid way to divide everything. If all that exists is the one pure mind, then everything falls into the minimum category by default, because it is all thought, and the only other category is that of the mind that is thinking it all.

And my brain explodes into a fine confetti of green cats.

Oh I like you so much bcoz you’re a cat person and a damn good teacher, too 😻

I dont understand this "The level of objective reality of an idea is the level of formal reality of its object" right? So whatever is medium level of objective reality of an idea is also medium level of formal reality of its object, and vice versa. I dont see how another interpretation is possible , but clesrly i am wrong bc in the video it says that the idea of a cat has a formal reality of minimum level while the object of a cat has an objective reality of medium level. How does these two statements add up?

13:20 Isn't saying that the mind doesn't rely on anything to exist contradictory to the second meditation, where Rene seems to only know that his mind exists because he is thinking? in fact, saying that ideas rely on the mind is the exact opposite of what he said in the second meditation. Am i missing something here? It seems to me that the mind itself is also a mode.

just realized how good at writing backwards this guy is

I can't thank you enough