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The trademark argument [1] is an a priori argument for the existence of God developed by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes. The name derives from the fact that the idea of God existing in each person "is the trademark, hallmark or stamp of their divine creator".
Descartes' proofs of God's existence presuppose the reliability of clear and distinct perceptions. Many commentators, both at the time that Descartes wrote and since, have argued that this involves a circular argument , as he relies upon the principle of clarity and distinctness to argue for the existence of God , and then claims that God is ...
Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which center on the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a "clear and distinct" idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early 18th century, Gottfried Leibniz augmented Descartes' ideas in an attempt to prove that a "supremely perfect" being is a coherent concept.
Other arguments for the existence of God have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Thomas Aquinas, who presented his own version of the cosmological argument (the first way); René Descartes, who said that the existence of a benevolent God is logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful.
Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated (Latin: Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animæ immortalitas demonstratur), often called simply the Meditations, [1] is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641.
The method of doubt cannot doubt reason as it is based on reason itself. By reason there exists a God, and God is the guarantor that reason is not misguided. Descartes supplies three different proofs for the existence of God, including what is now referred to as the ontological proof of the existence of God.
Descartes, however, was very much aware that experimentation was necessary to verify and validate theories. [96] Descartes invokes his causal adequacy principle [126] to support his trademark argument for the existence of God, quoting Lucretius in defence: "Ex nihilo nihil fit", meaning "Nothing comes from nothing" . [127]
For Kierkegaard, Descartes is merely "developing the content of a concept", namely that the "I", which already exists, thinks. [58]: 40 As Kierkegaard argues, the proper logical flow of argument is that existence is already assumed or presupposed in order for thinking to occur, not that existence is concluded from that thinking. [60]