Last-minute Creation (handout) The Philosophy of Descartes
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It might seem that Descartes' appeal to God in Meditation 4 as a guarantee that for the most part our memories can be trusted is not well-founded. By looking at the question of last-minute creation, a solution is proposed. Can we prove that we and our memories did not all come into existence just five minutes ago, or – as creationists have suggested – that the world and all its fossils did not just come into existence in 4004 BCE? Last-minute creation fantasies raise scenarios that are merely logically possible, but are not compatible with our best theories in geology, biology and other sciences. Descartes' appeal to God faces a different challenge, and objections to it are removed once the logic of his argument is made clear.
Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions.
It might seem that Descartes' appeal to God in Meditation 4 as a guarantee that for the most part our memories can be trusted is not well-founded. By looking at the question of last-minute creation, a solution is proposed. Can we prove that we and our memories did not all come into existence just five minutes ago, or – as creationists have suggested – that the world and all its fossils did not just come into existence in 4004 BCE? Last-minute creation fantasies raise scenarios that are merely logically possible, but are not compatible with our best theories in geology, biology and other sciences. Descartes' appeal to God faces a different challenge, and objections to it are removed once the logic of his argument is made clear.
Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions.