• "Labor of Total Destruction" 
•  Must doubt everything, withdraw our minds even of those who seem certain (our senses deceive us).
• Adopts a method of radical skepticism which only admits the validity of that which can not be doubted.

• Dreaming Arugment
• The Deceiving God Argument
• Evil Genius

• questions the validity of sensory perception
• experiences i have while asleep are all caused by internal processes
• if i can have these experiences while asleep - why should i believe i am dreaming?
• the now always dreaming doubt

• questions the reliability of my coginitive equipment
• why would a good God deceive me? because sometimes I am deceived
• if he is good why would he allow me to be deceived?
• firmly holds in mind an omnipotent (all powerful) God who would not deceive him

**The most problematic and brings the most into doubt

• Complete doubt about my cognitive equipment
• What if I'm created in a way where I am deceived all the time?
• Perhaps I never know the truth

• I am, I exist
• If I am a thinking thing it cannot be true that I do not exist - this is one thing thats true to me

• C&D Rule
• "Whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true"

Cartesian Circle

(understand the order and why he does this)

1. C&D Rule
2. Descarte has laid down his "rule" for certainty before he has certainty of God
3. "idea that I have of God is the truest and most clear and distinct of all my ideas"
4. It is only becuse God is truthful that we cannot be deceived about appearences of bodies independent of our minds.

• God exists and his essence is supreme-perfection, he exists by:
• 1. innate idea of supreme perfect
• 2. can't lack perfections
• 3. to lack existence, is to lack perfection and God is perfect

• philosophical questioning of topics removed from the realm of the physical/natural world.
• questions of the Truth, immortality of the soul, God and freedom/free will

• our knowledge starts from something we know
• our knowledge is innate
• our senses deceive us

Hume - opposite of excessive skepticism

can't hold EVERYTHING to skepticism

a more common sense approach

difficult to understand or ambigous

(Hume - when we compare human reason in day to day vs. using reason in abstruse philosophy)

Natural Religion

(know vs. revealed religion)

• We know God exists because he can be observed.
• tied to experience and the natural argument.

whatever exists must have a cause or reason for its existence - its impossible for something to produce itself/or be the cause of its own existence.

*always tied with reason alone/away from physical world

Hume-

What type of speculations does Philo believe to be beyond the scope of human understanding?

1. State my maxim - "I should kill myself out of love"

2. Make it universal - "Everyone should kill themself out of love"

3. Is this a contradiction? Yes because out of self love, you would preserve yourself

4. Do I act? No - because I have a contradiction

Machines. He says - The human mind is responsible for the machine that exist in the world. Just as the human mind is responsible for the machines, God with His creative intelligence, is responsible for the creation of the world.

Theodicy - If there is an infinite, all powerful God, why is there suffering?

We have no reason to infer God is benevolent, merciful, just.

• "the cause of the causes of the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence but nothing more can be said"
• no conclusion can be drawn from human intellgence alone, can't infer by experience that God is moral.
• he is willing to agree with the design argument (God exists b/c his nature is similar to humans in the natural world) but WILL NOT say based on our experiences of the world that God is moral

- a good will can be good without qualification (limitation) b/c without good will talents of the mind (courage, perserverance) can become evil and harmful

-nothing happens, usefulness and fruitfulness doesnt add or take away, it an action is good in itself,  its still comparably higher

- it still has good worth

duty = actions are genuinely good/moral **only one thats morally good**

immediate inclination = desire/ want to do something

impelled inclindation = only the person doing it knows (not genuine)

example:

1. shopkeeper does it because he wants to - for sake of it

2. shopkeeper does it b/c he wants to stay in business (for some other reason, not to be moral)

• I ought to act in a way that i can also will that my maxim should become a universal law"
• False promise = no one can trust anyones word if false promises become universal law

Imperative = the formula of a command of reason, expressed by ought(moral philosophy)

2 types:

hypothetical - what you ought to do to get some end (achieving something else that you want)

categorical - never concerned with outcome , just motivation

• Formula of the Universal Law of Nature
• Formula of the end-in-itself
• Principle of Autonomy of Will
• Principle of Kingdom of Ends

Absurd= for God, all things are possible

The knight of infinite resignation will renounce the girl and recognize the impossibility of her. The knight of faith will win the girl on the strength of the absurd and faith.

• Refers to the condition that the particular individual suspends his obligation to the ethical and universal and rises above it.
• When ones duty to God outweighs his duty to the ethical - the duty to God and his command outweighs the ethical.