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11 Descartes, Meditations IIIb (AT VII
42-52, cf. Discourse IV, AT VI
33-36) Over the second half
of Meditations III Descartes
completed his first proof for the existence of God and offered a second. Each proof introduces a technical notion
that has far-reaching significance for the rest of his philosophy. In the first proof, the notion is that of
material falsity, in the second, it is that of constant creation. QUESTIONS ON THE
1. What are
the three main types of ideas from which all other types of ideas may be
formed?
2. What would
justify our considering an idea to be materially false?
3. How did Descartes
define the term “substance?”
4. Why did
Descartes think that even his ideas of the extension of corporeal things
could have been invented by him on his own?
5. What is the
particular feature of the idea of God that Descartes found it impossible to
explain as an effect of his own nature?
6. Why should
I think that my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself?
7. Why could I
not have created myself?
8. Why does
conservation not differ from creation?
9. Why could a
chain of human ancestors stretching back to infinity not have produced me? 10.
Why could a number of partially perfect things
not have worked together to each contribute a small part of what I find in
myself? NOTES ON THE FIRST PROOF Having determined over
the first half of Meditations III
that the cause of an idea must contain at least as much as is found
objectively in the idea, Descartes proceeded to inquire which of his ideas
could possibly be caused by himself, as a thinking thing, and which contain
something he could not be supposed to have created. As a first step, he reviewed his ideas once
again, this time classifying them, not on the basis of how they appear to
originate, but rather on the basis of what they contain. The broad classes into which he now grouped
his ideas are: 1. inanimate bodies 2. animals 3. human beings such as himself 4. angels and demons 5. God He observed that were
we in possession of the ideas at the extreme ends of this series, we could
readily produce the intermediate ones by combining them with different
aspects of what we find in our ideas of ourselves. Thus, were we in possession of ideas of
inanimate bodies, we could create all our ideas of animal bodies by imagining
various combinations of our ideas of inanimate bodies with the ideas of the
different life functions we find within ourselves as living things. Similarly
our ideas of ghosts and spirits could all have been created by imagining
different combinations of the things we find in our ideas of ourselves and
our ideas of the grander perfections we conceive to be in God. And, of course, all of our ideas of other
human beings could have been created by our own imaginations merely by
repeating in different arrangements and degrees the ideas we find to be proper
to ourselves. But what about our
ideas of God and inanimate bodies?
Could we have caused these ideas, or do they contain something that
goes beyond anything we can find in ourselves, so that we would have to
conclude that they must have been caused by some other thing that actually
possesses that added content? This certainly seems
to be the case with our ideas of inanimate bodies. Insofar as we are assured only that we are
thinking beings, we cannot think that we are extended in space (we might just
be immaterial spirits), or that we have any of the attributes that go along
with taking up space in some determinate way or other: size, figure,
position, and motion. And insofar as
all we can say about ourselves is that we think, we cannot affirm that we are
actually coloured, hard or soft, heavy or light, moist or dry, scented, or
possessed of any other sensible qualities.
Of course, all of these things, extension, figure, size, position,
motion, and sensible qualities are to be found in the ideas that are
contained within us, but the question at issue is how this content could be
present in our ideas if it is not actually in us as a property of our
being. How could we have ended up with
ideas that represent extended, sensible things if we are merely thinking
things that do not possess any of the simple natures
characteristic of extended, sensible things? At this point,
Descartes would appear to be confronted with a choice between one or the
other of two options: suppose that extended, configured, sensible things must
exist in order to be able to cause his ideas of these things, or at the very
least suppose that he himself must have an extended body with these sensible
qualities actually inhering in it. Surprisingly, however,
Descartes claimed to be unable to clearly and distinctly perceive his way
through to either of these conclusions.
To explain why, he first enumerated the different simple natures he
found to be characteristic of his ideas of inanimate bodies. These are, first of
all, the various sensible qualities: heat and cold, colour, solidity, and so
on; then the various qualities that arise from being extended in a particular
way: shape, size, position, motion; finally, certain other qualities that
arise just from being an existing thing: substance, endurance, identity over
time, number. He observed that the
qualities in the third group are ones we already find in ourselves considered
just as thinking things. But what
about the others? There is something
that bothered Descartes about the sensible qualities: they all come in
opposite pairs. Colours, for instance,
are bright or dark, sounds loud or soft.
These opposite qualities are such that they cannot both exist in the
same place at the same time, so that one of them appears to be just the
exclusion or negation of the other.
But if one member of each pair of opposite qualities is really just an
idea of nothingness or privation, then it can’t have come from anything
outside of us. Its cause must be some
imperfection in our nature, leading us to represent nothing as if it were
something. It is in this
connection that Descartes introduced the important notion of material
falsity. A materially false idea is an
idea that represents nothing as if it were something. Such ideas cannot possibly have an external
cause, since if they are in fact of nothing, then “nothing” is, as it were,
all that exists outside of us when we experience them. And if there is nothing outside us to cause
the ideas, there is no other alternative but to suppose that we ourselves
must be their case. As will be seen in
subsequent chapters, the notion of material falsity is what really forges the
distinction that Descartes wanted to draw between those qualities that
actually inhere in objects in the outside world and merely subjective
sensations in us. It plays a crucial
role in ensuring that when Descartes did get to the point of demonstrating
the existence of an external world, his demonstration would not be too
strong, and establish that objects in the external world must have sensible
as well as purely mechanical properties. But it is not as
compelling a consideration as Descartes made it out to be. If our ideas of sensible qualities are
actually due to some imperfection in our nature rather than to something
existing outside of us, then the blind ought to be able to form ideas of
colour, which they cannot do, and similar points could be made for those
lacking other sense organs, or possessing those organs but lacking the
requisite experiences with the right sort of objects (as those who have never
tasted pineapple cannot form the idea of such a quality). To preserve his position Descartes would
have to maintain that even though I produce these ideas myself, my capacity
to produce them is not within my control, but is only actualized under
particular circumstances. But then it
is not clear what sense can be made of this claim without supposing that
there are external objects that affect us in some way or other in ways we are
sensitive to, even if these objects do not exactly resemble the ideas we
form. Otherwise, it is not clear what
would constitute a “circumstance” in which ideas are produced in contrast to
one where they are not produced. And
the residual problem of how any sort of “circumstance” could result in the
production of an idea with qualities it does not exhibit without violating
the containment account of causality (discussed in the previous chapter)
remains. But, to return to the
argument at hand, even if we can be convinced that of any two opposite
qualities, one could very likely be caused by nothing, or rather, by some
imperfection in our nature, what about the other? If the one that is caused by some
imperfection in our nature is privative, would the other not have to be something
positive and real? And would something bearing that real quality not have to
actually exist in us order for us to be able to produce ideas of that
quality? Descartes still found
that he could not convince himself on this score. What bothered him is that it is not always
clear which of two opposed qualities is the real one and which the
privation. Both can seem to be equally real and
positive. Today we think that cold is
just the absence of heat, darkness the absence of light, and so on. Yet, despite the fact that cold is just the
absence of heat, it does not feel like nothing to be cold. Those of us who are cold experience this as
a very real sensation. Similarly, though
darkness may be just the absence of light, we do not see nothing
in the dark; we see black, which is not the absence of pigments (that is
white) but the mixture of all of them.
Qualities like being light or dry are likewise so far from being
obviously privative that the ancient Greeks thought that they were the
positive ones and that to be moist and heavy was to lack real, positive
qualities. (This view was likely
grounded in the observation that light, dry materials rise heavenwards and so
ought to be more perfect.) But,
Descartes observed, if the opposite qualities are so much like one another
that it is uncertain and controversial which is in fact the real one and
which the mere privation, and I must be the cause of the privative one, then
I ought to be able to be the cause of the positive or real one as well. After all, if I can produce the one, and
the one does not look any less real than the other, then I ought to be able
to produce the other as well. Thus, none of our
ideas of sensible qualities, neither the privative nor even the positive, can
with any certainty be supposed to require an external cause. This leaves just one
group of simple natures to be considered, those having to do with extension
and its modes of shape, size, position, and motion. Descartes claimed that he had reason to doubt
that even his ideas of these simple natures must have come from actually
extended things. This is far from
obvious since, according to Meditations
II, we cannot be sure that we are anything more than thinking beings. We do not know whether we have bodies. But, if we do not ourselves have bodies,
and no bodies exist outside us, where could we get the ideas of the modes of
extension from? Descartes could not
answer this question by saying, as he did about sensible qualities, that
these ideas are so confusedly perceived that they might, for all we know,
refer to nothing at all. Our ideas of
extension and its modes do not come in opposite pairs. And far from being confusedly perceived
ideas of nothing, the modes of extension are so clearly and distinctly
perceived that they can be described by the science of geometry — a science
that is rich in detail. These ideas,
moreover, impose constraints on our thought.
Think of a plane surface with two equidistant points marked on
it. Now think of a third point
equidistant from each of the other two.
There are only two spots you can imagine this third point to occupy. Why exactly two rather than one, or more
than two? Something about the nature
of a spatial plane imposes a constraint on our imagination, forcing us to
recognize exactly this result and no other.
Similarly, something about the nature of three dimensional space will not allow us to conceive more than four
equidistant points. But there is no
impossibility with four or three or two.
When we contemplate these facts, we realize that they are not up to us
to decide. Something about the nature
of space itself constrains us to conceive things in this way. But if space is constraining our thoughts,
then it cannot be nothing. Nothing cannot impose
constraints on how we think of things.
So space or extension must be something positive and real. At this juncture in
the argument, it would seem that Descartes ought to either admit that
extended bodies must exist outside us and impress us with ideas of their
simple natures, or that we must ourselves be extended, and have concocted our
ideas of other bodies from the ideas of extension we discover in ourselves. However, Descartes did not do this.
Instead, he claimed that since we are substances, and since the modes of
extension are merely modes of a substance, and since a substance is so much
greater and more perfect than a mode, perhaps we could cause our ideas of
extension eminently, even though formally we might not contain extension. “As for all the other
qualities from which I put together my ideas of corporeal things, that is,
extension, shape, location, and motion, they are, it is true, not formally
contained in me, since I am nothing other than a thinking thing, but because
they are merely certain modes of a substance and I, too, am a substance, it
seems that they could be contained in me eminently.” (AT VII 45) As noted in the
previous chapter, an eminent cause is supposed to be a cause that is of a
higher order of being than its effect, and hence more real or perfect than
its effect. The cause does not
literally or actually contain what is to be found in its effect, but because
it is something greater, it is supposed to be able to bring about something
lesser. The notion of eminent
causality was forged to explain how God, who is not supposed to be extended,
should nonetheless have been able to create an extended world. But Descartes invoked it to claim that
since we are substances, that is, things capable of existing on their own, we are incomparably more perfect than any mere
property, which can only exist insofar as it inheres in some substance. We might, therefore, be able to eminently
cause our ideas of extension just as God eminently causes actually extended
things. It is worth reminding
ourselves that Descartes did not need to establish that there are eminent
causes, or that we actually are the eminent cause of our ideas of
extension. It was enough for him to
establish that these things might be possible. After all, he could not afford to accept
anything that is less than absolutely certain. And where certainty is at issue any doubt,
however extravagant, holds a veto. In
this case, the certainty in question is certainty of the existence of
extended or material things. Any doubt
— any story about how we might get ideas of such things even in their total
absence — holds a veto. At the same time,
however, even the most extravagant doubt must have some intelligibility. Were self-contradictory or groundless
doubts allowed to hold a veto as well, then there would be no sense
proceeding, because whatever results were obtained, it would be possible for
someone to veto them merely by uttering the words, “I doubt that,” without
having to bother to demonstrate that their doubt makes any sense. And where a notion like that of eminent
causality is concerned, it is not clear that the doubt does make sense —
particularly not for someone like Descartes, who wanted to insist that
something cannot come out of nothing.
As noted in the previous chapter, it is not clear that Descartes can
insist both that something cannot come out of nothing and that there are
eminent causes. In his favour,
Descartes could appeal to the case of sensible qualities. Insofar as we are thinking things, we are not
red or green, hot or cold, yet we manage to produce ideas of these
qualities. So, as a matter of fact, we
must be able to produce ideas of things we ourselves may not literally
contain. Still, this is not a
good position to be driven into. An
opponent could say that allowing that we can produce ideas of things like red
or hot even though we ourselves are not literally red or hot just goes to
prove that Descartes was wrong that something cannot come from nothing. Or the opponent could appeal to Descartes’s own claim that there is an important
difference between our ideas of modes of extension and those of sensible
qualities to argue that conclusions concerning the possibility of our being
able to create ideas of the sensible qualities do not imply a similar ability
regarding ideas of extension. Ideas of
sensible qualities could be materially false whereas ideas of extension and its
modes exhibit no opposition but instead constrain our thoughts to conform to
certain patterns. So they must be
something positive and real. Things are just as bad
for Descartes if we let him have them his way. Suppose we grant to him that we, being
substances, have the ability to produce ideas of any mere mode, be it materially
false, like hot or red, or undeniably real, like extension. To say that I have the ability to produce
the idea of any mode is tantamount
to saying that I have the ability to produce the idea of all of them. But what is
God, other than the ens realissimum
— the unique substance that is possessed of all the real or positive qualities? If I am a substance, and so can form the
idea of substance, and if I can addition form the ideas of any mode
whatsoever, then there would seem to be no more barrier to me forming the
idea of God — a substance possessed of all the real or positive qualities —
than there is to me forming the ideas of material things. Descartes wanted to have it both ways. When considering our ideas of material
things, he wanted to claim that we can form ideas of modes we may not
ourselves possess. When considering
our idea of God, he wanted to claim that we cannot form ideas of modes we do
not ourselves possess. It is not clear
that he can get away with this. Even setting all of
this aside, Descartes’s claim that because I am a
substance I ought to be able to form ideas of any mode whatsoever neglects a
claim he made elsewhere, to the effect that there are substances of very
different sorts. I am a substance of a
certain sort: a thinking substance, and quite possibly an unextended thinking
substance. This means that lacking
extension is characteristic of the sort of substance I am. My sort of substance should therefore in no
way be able to be the eminent cause of ideas of extension since the
modifications of extension belong to a substance of a radically different
sort, an extended substance. If I am
not also an extended substance in addition to being a thinking substance, I
should not be able to form ideas of extension all on my own. And Descartes was unwilling to allow, at
this point, that I am extended. Be this as it may,
Descartes rightly or wrongly thought that he could not be sure of being the
cause of everything that he found in his ideas of inanimate bodies. So of the five types of ideas listed
earlier, four turn out upon examination to be ones that we could cause all by
ourselves. This just leaves the fifth,
the idea of God. And here, Descartes
claimed, there is an idea that we really could in no way have created on our
own. Setting aside the
problem that has just been raised, Descartes’s
argument went like this: Our idea of
God is the idea of an infinitely perfect being. That idea must have some cause that
formally or eminently contains everything that is objectively contained in
the idea. This means that it must have
a cause that is infinitely perfect.
But we very clearly and distinctly perceive that we are not infinitely
perfect. We doubt and are deceived,
and are uncertain of many things, and those are not perfections. Consequently, some other being must exist
that could cause us to have the idea of God.
Since this being must be infinitely perfect it could only be God. So God must exist. The remainder of this
part of Meditations III is devoted
to considering and responding to objections. The first objection
Descartes considered is that we could create our idea of God by forming the
idea of a finitely perfect being and then simply denying or removing this
finitude. Those taking this approach
must maintain that God is really inconceivable. While we can string the words, “not finite”
together, we only ever conceive finite things — one finite thing that is in
some way less than another. Indeed,
that is the whole point of the objection — that we can arrive at the verbal
formula “infinitely perfect” without having the true idea of infinite
perfection. Descartes’s response
to the objection takes off from this fact.
He claimed that nothing can appear finite except by way of contrast
with something greater or better than itself.
I myself would appear perfect to myself unless I were aware of some
being more perfect than I am. (There
is something to this, which is captured in the observation that many
impoverished people are happy only because they do not know how badly off
they are. They start to become
discontent only when they become aware of others who are better off. It has been conjectured that the reason the
Soviet block fell from West to East is because people in This is not a very
convincing reply to the objection and many people at the time were not
persuaded. Locke, for instance,
observed that, rather than form the idea of finitude by contrast with what is
more perfect, we form the idea of infinity by addition. Take a line segment, add it to itself, and
then conceive the process of adding new segments end to end to go on forever
and you form such an idea of infinity as any of us can ever manage to have. Be this as it may,
Descartes turned to consider a further objection: that his idea of God could
be materially false, like his ideas of sensible qualities. His response to this objection was that
materially false ideas are ideas that could be ideas of nothing at all. But the idea of God is very clearly an idea
of something positive and real, indeed, of infinite reality and
perfection. Even though we could not
possibly grasp everything that is involved in this infinite reality and
perfection (our finite nature will not allow that), whatever we can grasp
that is in any way positive or real is something we take to be contained in
God, either formally (as with goodness) or “eminently” (as with extension). Finally, Descartes
considered an objection grounded on the fact that his knowledge and abilities
seem to be increasing over time.
Someone might take this to imply that we have the potential to become
infinitely perfect. Perhaps this
potential for infinite perfection would suffice to supply him with an idea of
an infinitely perfect being. His
principal reason for rejecting this objection was that what exists only
potentially does not exist yet and so cannot be a cause. This reply is interesting for its implicit
rejection of the Aristotelian notion of potency as a kind of currently
existing thing, responsible for enabling growth and development along certain
lines rather than others, and so as something that already involves a kind of
advance version of the end state of a thing. Descartes’s
rejection of that notion is stark: “… the objective being of an idea cannot
be produced by a merely potential being (which
strictly speaking is nothing), but only by an actual or formal being” (AT
VII: 47, my stress). COMMENTARY
The most serious objections to Descartes’s
first proof of the existence of God are not ones he mentioned in Meditations III. They are that the argument is based on
premises that are not clearly and distinctly perceived to be true (a point
already alluded to above and in the previous chapter), and that, even if it
was, the reliability of clear and distinct perception as a means of knowledge
immune to all doubt has not yet been established, so that the argument ends
up going in a circle. Descartes
declared at the beginning of Meditations
III that he would not be able to trust his clear and distinct perceptions
until he had demonstrated that God exists and would not allow him to be
deceived. To prove the existence of God by appeal to a clear and distinct
perception of the principle that the cause of an idea must formally or
eminently contain everything that is objectively contained in the idea, yet
admit that the clear and distinct perception of such principles can only be
trusted after God’s existence has
first been proven is obviously circular.
This is a famous objection, first raised by Marin Mersenne
(inset) and Antoine Arnauld, authors of the second
and fourth set of objections to the Meditations. Arnauld’s
statement of the objection is as follows: My only remaining concern is
whether the author does not commit a vicious circle, when he says that we
have no other basis on which to establish that what we clearly and distinctly
perceive is true, than that God exists.
But we can be certain that God exists only because we clearly and
evidently perceive this fact.
Therefore, before we are certain that God exists,
we ought to be certain that whatever we clearly and evidently perceive is
true. Descartes attempted to
reply to this objection in a supplement to the Meditations not included in the course text but readily available
online (see his “replies” to the second and fourth sets of objections to the Meditations). The reply turned on drawing a distinction
between truths that are immediately perceived at a single glance, such as the
truth that I exist or the purported truth that something cannot come from
nothing, and truths that only come to be known by a chain of argument, such
as the conclusions of long demonstrations in arithmetic or geometry. Descartes maintained that doubt is not
possible in either case except insofar as one is not currently engaged in
perceiving the intuited or demonstrated fact, but merely remembers having
done so. When performing long
demonstrations, this would have to be the case, since the earlier parts
cannot be held in mind along with the later ones, but one must merely
remember that the point was proven without any longer perceiving the
proof. It is only when we merely
remember the proof that we can worry that we might have been deceived, not as
long as we are actually perceiving it. As long as the proof for the existence of
God is one that can be perceived all at once and that does not involve any
steps that need to be remembered, it can be the object of an intuitive
certainty and beyond doubt. Moreover,
once it has been perceived, it can be appealed to in order to warrant the
conclusions of longer demonstrations.
We need merely perceive, once again, the intuitively obvious fact that
an all good God exists who would not deceive us and who has given us memories
and reasoning powers that would not deceive us as long as we use them properly,
and then remember that a proper use of our reasoning powers led us to the
conclusion in the past. This would put
us in a position to rely on that conclusion in subsequent demonstrations
without having to run through the proof all over again. This reply has not
quelled all doubts and the question of whether Descartes can escape the
charge of having engaged in circular reasoning continues to be debated in
philosophical journals today. But
despite its popularity the real problems with Descartes’s
argument lie elsewhere, with its reliance on a causal principle that cannot
plausibly be maintained to be clearly and distinctly perceived and that is
contradicted by his own admission of the phenomenon of eminent
causality. Someone capable of
insisting that he might himself have been able to cause his ideas of
extension and colour even though he contains no such things is in no position
to claim that a cause must contain whatever is found in its effect, and so to
rely on the kind of causal argument presented here. NOTES ON THE SECOND PROOF Descartes himself
seems not to have been entirely convinced by his first argument for the
existence of God, since he remarked that when he was not carefully meditating
on the causal principle on which the argument rests, he found himself
doubting whether the idea of an infinitely perfect being can only be caused
by an infinitely perfect being. (“But
when I pay less attention and when images of sensible things obscure the visioni in my mind, I do not so readily remember why the
idea of a being more perfect than myself must necessarily proceed from some
entity that is truly more perfect than me.” AT VII 47-48). This residual doubt prompted him to offer a
second argument. The second argument
was not likely intended as an improvement or corrective to the first, but
merely as an aid to assist us in more readily intuiting and remembering the
force of the first. (It is a variant
on the same line of argument found in the first rather than an entirely
distinct argument, and so has more the status of a conceptual aid than a
supplement.) This is entirely in keeping
with the notion that all that the first argument needs to be made immune to Mersenne’s and Arnauld’s charge
of circularity is for it to be grasped at once, as a whole, in a single “intuitive”
judgment, rather than “inferred” by reasoning from premises, where there is
always some avenue for a demon deceiver to do its work. The second argument
appeals to the causes of my existence, rather than the causes of the
existence of my idea of God, but it still ends up turning on the fact that I
exist with an idea of God in me. The
argument opens by dividing the possible causes of my existence into two main
groups. The causes could either be
God, considered as an infinitely perfect being, or something less perfect
than God. I am one sort of thing less
perfect than God, because I am troubled by doubt. But I am at least certain that I exist. So Descartes opened by considering the
possibilities that I might have caused myself or might have simply always
existed. He considered the first of these
possibilities to be ineligible because, were I powerful enough to create
myself, I ought certainly to have been powerful enough to give myself more of
the perfections that I think of when I think of an all perfect being. After all, if I could bring myself into
existence out of nothing, I ought surely to be able to do something as easy
by comparison as give myself better powers of knowledge. But what if I simply
always existed? It is here that
Descartes made a profoundly important remark.
“For it is obvious to anyone who pays close attention to the nature of
time,” he said, “that plainly the same force and action are needed to
preserve anything at each individual moment that it lasts as would be
required to create that same thing anew . . . conservation differs from
creation solely by virtue of a distinction of reason” (AT VII 49). When time passes, what
exists now, the present, becomes past. But the past no longer exists. To say that the present becomes past is to
say that it gets destroyed. But if
what exists now gets destroyed in the very next instant by the passage of
time, how is it that we still see it continuing from one moment to the
next? Obviously, what got destroyed
must have been recreated. And since
the passage of time destroys everything that exists from moment to moment,
everything must be constantly recreated from moment to moment. This is why conservation does not really
differ from creation, and why the same force and power is required to
preserve a thing in existence as to create it in the first place — preserving
it just means constantly recreating it from one moment to the next. This is called the
doctrine of constant creation.
According to it, the world was not just created in the beginning, but
must be continually recreated from moment to moment. Were it not to be recreated, it would blink
out of existence. The doctrine of
constant creation will be important for a proper understanding of Cartesian
physics, and in the hands of Pierre Bayle, it was exploited to buttress a
more profound sceptical argument than any Descartes ever envisioned. In this context,
Descartes appealed to the doctrine to make the point that, even were I always
to have existed, some cause would be required to conserve me in existence,
that is, to recreate me from moment to moment. But this cause could not be myself for the reason already given — were I powerful enough
to bring myself into existence, I ought to be powerful enough to give myself
better powers of knowledge. Since the
latter is not the case, we can reject the former as well. The remainder of Descartes’s second argument for the existence of God
considers the possibility that some other being that is less perfect than
God, such as my parents, or some other succession of such beings, such as a
chain of ancestors back to infinity, might have been the cause of my
existence. To reject this possibility,
Descartes observed that the same reasons that make it implausible that I
might have caused or might be sustaining myself, apply to these beings. Any being supposed to cause me to exist
would itself have to have been caused to exist. But it couldn’t have been caused to exist
by itself, since then it should have been able to make itself all
perfect. But, ex hypothesi, the being is one that is
less perfect than God. And to suppose
that the being was caused by some other imperfect being which was in its turn
caused by some other imperfect being, and so on to infinity is inadequate not
only because it raises a problem with infinite regress, but because it does
not account for how I have come to exist with an idea of God in me. Suppose each of those infinitely many past
causes existed with an idea of God in it to pass on to me. That would still not explain how the idea
of God came to be anywhere in the whole series. The cause of an idea must contain at least
as much as is found in the object of the idea. As long as none of these past causes is
God, none is adequate to cause the idea of God. As long as any one is adequate to cause
this idea, it must be God, and the point is proven. COMMENTARY Descartes’s second the
argument for the existence of God is liable to the same objections. The argument still invokes the difficult
and questionable principle that the cause of an idea must formally or
eminently contain everything that is present objectively in the idea. And it supplements this appeal with an
appeal to other, equally difficult and questionable causal claims. Descartes tried to justify the claim that I
could not have caused myself by claiming that a being is a substance whereas
a quality is a mere accident of a substance, and that anything with a power
to bring something as grand as a substance (such as myself) into being out of
nothing ought to be able to bring a mere accident of a substance (such as
increased knowing powers) into being.
But, as noted earlier, the distinction between substance and accident
is an artefact of an Aristotelian view of nature that Descartes in other
places claimed to have no use for. One
might object that a substance is nothing more than the bundle of its
qualities, so that to cause a thing or substance to come into being just is
to cause the bundle of its qualities to come into being. It is not like the case where something
exercises a stronger power. The
exercise of a stronger power necessarily implies the ability to exercise that
power more weakly. So, if creating a
substance requires a stronger power, then indeed the thing that does so can
be supposed to have a weaker power to create mere modes. But if a substance is just a bundle of
qualities then the thing that caused and sustains me is not exercising any
stronger power than the power used to create a bundle of qualities. Perhaps it uses all the powers it has just
to make the bundle of qualities I observe myself to have and I am nothing
more than that bundle of qualities. ESSAY QUESTIONS AND RESEARCH PROJECTS
1. Descartes’s notion of
eminent causality is drawn from medieval philosophy. Undertake a research project to discover
just how this notion was understood by medieval philosophers. (Note that rather than speak of eminent
causality, the medievals might have instead
discussed eminent containment of a form, which they would have contrasted
with literal exhibition of a form.)
Determine whether the medievals managed to
articulate a clear, coherent sense in which it is possible for a thing to
contain a form it does not literally exhibit.
Then determine whether Descartes had any right to employ this notion
(note that, despite the doubts of Meditations
I, he only needed to make a case that it is possible that there might be
eminent causes). If he dids have a right to employ the notion, did he also have
a right to make the further claim that he could be the “eminent” cause of his
idea of extension?
2. Outline Descartes’s reasons for denying that we could have caused
our ideas of God. Comment on whether
these reasons are compelling. If not,
say why not. Consider whether there
might be other reasons for supposing that we cause our ideas of God ourselves,
in addition to the ones that Descartes considered.
3. Obtain a
complete copy of Descartes’s Meditations. (Complete
copies contain, in addition to the six meditations, six sets of objections
together with Descartes’s replies to those
objections.) In the standard
pagination of the Adam and Tannery edition, Mersenne’s
charge that Descartes argued in a circle is to be found at pp.124-25, Arnauld’s at p.214 and Descartes’s
replies at pp.140-141, 144-46, and 245-46.
Comment on whether Descartes’s answer to Mersenne and Arnauld is
adequate. |
