Essay on Descartes Meditations
Descartes' third meditation of his Mediations on First Philosophy, he goes from searching into the nature of doubt and knowledge to proving the existence of God. Descartes uses the non-ontological argument to prove the existence of God. I believe there are problems in this argument which will be discussed in this paper. First I look at the argument itself before attempting an analysis, where Descartes’ objections and responses will be argued.
Descartes’ first major statement in the third meditation is that “whatever I clearly and distinctly grasp is true.” But, he objects, there are many things which one thinks they have a clear and distinct grasp upon, then later recognizes they only had an idea of the thing. Descartes questions if he errs because God is a deceiver. This idea I feel is a weak argument. He then sets the reader up for the argument for God with the statement that “until I know these two things, if God exists and if he deceives, I can never be completely certain of anything else.”
Before arguing for God’s existence, Descartes turns to the grouping of his thoughts. He divides his thoughts into three categories: ideas, or images of things, and emotions or judgments. According to Descartes, these ideas or emotions can’t actually be untrue, because when he thinks about something and has an idea, he is still thinking of this thing, similar to the cogito, the belief that since he is thinking, he exists. He says that the only errors in his thoughts are actually the way in which he interprets them – his judgments. Descartes then defines what he means by “the light of nature.” The light of nature seems to mean to me that one has a spur-of-the-moment reaction to believe something, and that something is beyond doubt from then on. After briefly discussing the source of ideas and how an idea of something is often quite different from the actual thing, Descartes turns to the major argument of this meditation, the non-ontological argument. Descartes’ argument is a posteriori because it is based on experience and observation. He is not arguing something into existence through definition, but through concepts.
Descartes’ first major statement in the third meditation is that “whatever I clearly and distinctly grasp is true.” But, he objects, there are many things which one thinks they have a clear and distinct grasp upon, then later recognizes they only had an idea of the thing. Descartes questions if he errs because God is a deceiver. This idea I feel is a weak argument. He then sets the reader up for the argument for God with the statement that “until I know these two things, if God exists and if he deceives, I can never be completely certain of anything else.”
Before arguing for God’s existence, Descartes turns to the grouping of his thoughts. He divides his thoughts into three categories: ideas, or images of things, and emotions or judgments. According to Descartes, these ideas or emotions can’t actually be untrue, because when he thinks about something and has an idea, he is still thinking of this thing, similar to the cogito, the belief that since he is thinking, he exists. He says that the only errors in his thoughts are actually the way in which he interprets them – his judgments. Descartes then defines what he means by “the light of nature.” The light of nature seems to mean to me that one has a spur-of-the-moment reaction to believe something, and that something is beyond doubt from then on. After briefly discussing the source of ideas and how an idea of something is often quite different from the actual thing, Descartes turns to the major argument of this meditation, the non-ontological argument. Descartes’ argument is a posteriori because it is based on experience and observation. He is not arguing something into existence through definition, but through concepts.
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The first principle of the argument: one can only make a mistake in the judgment of ideas, but not in what the ideas are. The second main point is summarized as saying that an effect cannot have more “reality” than its cause. Ideas though can never appear greater than they are as Descartes says, “something cannot come from nothing” – an effect cannot be more real or perfect than its cause.
Descartes establishes that “although one idea may arise from another, this can’t go back to infinity; it must eventually arrive at a primary idea whose cause is an “archetype” containing all that the idea contains presented.” He seems to be saying there is a primary source for ideas, according to him, God. Descartes then talks about categories of ideas to explain how some ideas must be innate. Descartes thinks that the idea of God could not have been produced by him. He defines “God” as “infinite substance, independent, supremely intelligent, and supremely powerful.” His reason for this belief is that, being finite, he could not have thought of the idea of an infinite being without that idea having come from God. He then claims that there is more reality in the infinite than in the finite, and since there can’t be more reality in an effect than in its cause, the infinite must have caused the finite.
After determining that the only possible explanation in terms of causation is God, Descartes offers some possible criticisms and responses to his argument. He asks if maybe he is greater than he assumed, if perhaps existence is not derived from God, and if anyone other than God can preserve or re-create each moment. Finally, Descartes explores how he got the idea of God. He arrives at the conclusion that the idea must be innate. So Descartes has now attempted to prove God’s existence through his a posteriori argument.
I will now attempt to provide evidence that Descartes’ arguments contain some myths and therefore do not completely prove God’s existence. I will look at Descartes’ own objections and evaluate his responses. The first objection to the underlying argument is that we cannot completely grasp the infinite. He maintains that it is enough to know that we are finite and can’t understand the infinite. But what if we aren’t finite as he supposes? We could be eternal, continually reincarnating and never remembering or realizing this. God might not be infinite – there may possibly be a problem with Descartes’ definition of God. Secondly, Descartes asks if perhaps he is “greater than he assumed.” He explains that it is not possible for humans to gain perfections, even if they are in us potentially, because the fact that our knowledge increases demonstrates our imperfection. So it seems increase will never become perfection because there could always be increase. A possible reply to this is that since we have never experienced anyone having such a great increase in their knowledge without ever seeming to stop, we cannot say for certain if such a thing is possible. Another problem with this point is that we don’t know if God always had this perfect and infinite knowledge, and if not, how he came by it.
Another objection Descartes raises is perhaps existence is not derived from God. He says that if existence came from us, we would assume that we were perfect. But supposing existence only means that we were born and are alive, who is to say that we wouldn’t still make mistakes and know we were imperfect. If right at this moment there is no God, and I am simply a product of molecules present in our atmosphere after the creation of the planet and their gradual evolution; would I assume I was perfect? Do atheists think they are perfect because they don’t derive their existence from God? This seems to be a bit of a stretch of the imagination – to assume that one attributes all perfections to oneself if they think that they are their own creators.
Then is the question of recreating or preserving each moment. He says that if we were able to preserve our existence, we would be aware of it since we are thinking beings. Descartes concludes that God is necessary to preserve and recreate each moment. The first question that springs to mind is why it is necessary at all to recreate moments in time? Is it not logical to assume that we could continue to exist even if a supreme being is not recreating the universe at each moment? What exactly constitutes a moment? Could God, being all powerful, not have created the world and ensured that it would run smoothly and have left it at that without needing to recreate each single moment?
The last major problem with Descartes’ non-ontological argument deals with the origin of the idea of God. David Hume contests this in section two of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in which he asserts that God, “as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and expanding, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.” He gives the example of a golden mountain. When we think of that idea, we are just joining two other ideas we already know. We don’t need to have seen a golden mountain to know what it looks like. Descartes’ theory of the innateness of the idea of God can be contested by this simple example. Why could we not have created God by stretching attributes to infinity and attaching them to God? Descartes responds with the unity issue, but could this not be another idea we have of God and not one of his actual attributes? Descartes does not possess any special strict rights to assert that one of God’s perfections is unity. This could be another one of his many false ideas that he should get rid of through skepticism.
Descartes attempts to prove that God exists through a non-ontological argument involving causation and the nature of ideas. This argument is flawed because all of the axioms are based on his perception of God. He has proved that ideas and one’s interpretation can be false, and even if Descartes thinks that the light of nature reveals these things about God to be true, there is room for argument and debate. The definition of God and the origin of the idea of God are both arguments that can be easily attacked and shown to have problems. We cannot truly know what exactly all of God’s attributes and perfections are, nor are these ideas necessarily innate.
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