Author Archives: Emiko

The two main controversies in psychology and philosophy in the Occident in my view are the rationalist and empiricist thematically opposing perspectives. This is in regards to trying to prove the existence of things in the context of psychological and physical realities. Rene Descartes the French Philosopher and Mathematician believed that one could use the intuitive and a priori approach to rationalize the existence of God on the basis that God exists. David Hume, the British Philosopher disagreed with Rene Descartes and adopted the empiricist approach in which he said, that it was absurd to attempt to prove an argument as a matter of fact; which involved in his opinion, the human senses and could not be demonstrated  using the a priori method.

Immanuel Kant the German Philosopher believed that stating that God exists meant that God was in fact a physical being and in his opinion, stating that something relates to being is not a real predicate to physical existence without further explanation; to prove that God was a physical being who was present in physical reality that could be perceived by the human senses.

I believe that both David Hume, Immanuel Kant and even Bertrand Russell, another British Philosopher and Mathematician misunderstood what Descartes actually meant when he said that God exists. Descartes meant in my view when he said that God exists, he believed as a consequence of his Christian faith that God existed in spiritual or abstract reality. He used the word ‘exists’ to set the foundation and creation of his personal belief in his mind. As it is logically impossible to state a prima facie proof of the existence of anything, unless you actually have an initial idea of what you are trying to prove. This is by setting it in a psychological rational and situational context within one’s mind. Luitzen Brouwer, the intuitionist believed that a basic idea cannot assert the existence of a mathematical object unless one can also indicate how to go about constructing it.

The planning process of how to construct a mathematical object such as within a geometric context occurs within the human mind by adopting the rationalist method which David Hume agrees with. This is with respect to his understanding of the creation of mathematical ideas in geometry which was completed by using an a priori and rationalist method.

Descartes mistake was not considering other substantive ideas to justify his ontological claim for God’s existence. No wonder his critics claimed misunderstanding that he adopted the ‘naive’ view that God exists by just stating the two words which were misleadingly interpreted to relate to God actually physically being present within the physical world being perceived by each of the human senses by his critics.

In a psychological context, these controversies are relevant because they relate to actually trying to determine, whether the rationalist or empiricist methods or both are reliable to prove the authenticity of results of psychological hypothesis upon substantive psychological investigation.

from Emiko Okoturo

References:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Anselm.27s_argument

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/

David Hume’s Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748)