Descartes' Meditations And Proofs Of God's Existence - Essay Example

Descartes' Meditations And Proofs Of God's Existence The two proofs of God's existence in the Meditations (3 and 5). What do the proofs involve? What exactly do they set out to demonstrate? Do they succeed or fail? According to Plato, “everything which is born must necessarily proceed from something else; but it is difficult to find the author and father of the universe, and impossible, when he is found, to render him intelligible to all the world.” (cited in Simon 1857, p. 1) This statement pretty much generally sums up the dilemma of defining the existence of God or providing proofs that he exists. While a great proportion of mankind firmly believes in the existence of God, this belief is driven by faith – a variable that does not depend on reflection or rationality for its legitimacy. Throughout the ages, there had been much theorizing about the subject because, fundamentally, it is the foundation of the world’s religions and, certainly, their main tool to propagate. In the past, unadulterated faith was quite common, with people do not see the need for the examination of religious belief and God’s existence against the tenets of reason and could scarcely explain, say, the existence of God, when called upon. But as the world is plunged towards modernity and rationalism, there are more and more people who want to measure God according to reasonable definition and quantified evidence. One of the philosophers who have posited a systematic outline of proofs that God exists was Rene Descartes. This paper will identify Descartes proofs in his Meditations, particularly in Third and Fifth Meditations. Particularly, this paper will answer the questions: What do the proofs involve? What do they set out to demonstrate? And whether they succeed or fail in their purpose. The Third Meditation The Third Meditation emphasized on the metaphysical result in its discourse of God’s existence. Here, Descartes offered two proofs of such metaphysical results and that both of them are effects. The idea is that the occurrence of particular effect is so extraordinary that it could only be caused by the existence of a supreme being. For someone who would chance upon Descartes’ Meditations, the feat of understanding his ideas is quite daunting. The Third Meditations for instance seem to appeal to causal principles which are already too old, existing from the Medieval Ages particularly in the discourse of the different modes of being as well as the degrees of reality. For the first proof that Descartes offered, he cited himself – his own existence – the truth that he, as with all men, have so far affirmed. The philosopher queried himself that it is about the knowledge of his own existence as a thinking creature that makes it so certain and his answer: There is nothing that assures me of its truth, excepting the clear and distinct perception of that which I state… and accordingly it seems to me that already I can establish as a general rule that all things which I perceive very clearly and very distinctly are true. A later exposition of a specific aspect about the truth gleaned from the understanding of the certainty of self was given. It was about how Descartes was taught by nature from what he learns from his so-called “natural light” stressing that nature is an excellent source of “spontaneous inclinations” and that it is only through this “natural light” wherein truth can be determined. He said: For example… it has been shown that I am from the fact that I doubt… And I possess no other faculty whereby to distinguish truth from falsehood, which can teach me that what this light shows me to be true is not really true, and no other faculty that is equally trustworthy. There are critics who pointed out that Descartes admitted that he cannot be certain of his assumptions unless he has a satisfactory proof of the existence of God. (Gaukroger 2006, p. 41) This line of thinking is anchored on how, for instance, can God be perceived and that no one can provide proof of the veracity of distinct ideas of God because no physical or some tangible evidence could be found. However, in a careful reading of Third Meditation, we are acquire insight in regard to the plausibility of Descartes’ natural light and his notion of what constitutes clear and distinct criteria for truth. With Descartes assumptions, he did not claim that what he was able to understand clearly and could not help but think as true, was the proof offered that a creature or a thing exists. Instead, what the philosopher wanted us to know in his discourse about his own existence and its truth was the logical relationship between his thinking, his consideration of the issue of his existence and his existence. Descartes wrote: Now, admittedly, it is not necessary that I ever light upon any though of God; but whatever I do choose to think of the first and Supreme being, and bring forth the idea of God from the treasure house of my mind as it were, it is necessary that I attribute all perfections to him, even if I do not at that time enumerate them or attend to them individually. And this necessity plainly guarantees that when I later realize that existence as a perfection I am correct in inferring that the first and supreme being exists. The emphasis of the affirmation of the truth of one’s own existence and the Descartes’ concept of natural light allow us to determine what is clearly and distinctly true. It serves as some form of a first principle so that there is a basis for the connection between thought and existence. Here the distinction and clearness becomes the criteria of truth while the natural light is employed as the tool for men to recognize the truth. These are the foundations in which Descartes posited the existence of God. These assumptions became proofs because these are something, that according to the philosopher, we can be certain of. For the philosopher, it is through the criteria and the natural light that we acquire insights and certainty in regard to both the understanding of the realness of cause and effect as well as the idea that the objectivity of reality is ultimately rooted on some formal reality. With these principles, Descartes was able to claim that the only possible cause of the idea that there is a God, a perfect being that people have in mind, is the actual perfect being the exist outside it. It is not unlike we have come to know the idea of a leaf – its color, its details and difference from others, its scent – because we have perceived it clearly and distinctly. And so God, because he exists in our mind with such clarity and distinctiveness, must be, therefore, true. To this aspect, I further cite another Descartes argument: “When I was examining recently the question whether something exists in this world, I noticed that, from the very fact that I considered that, it followed evidently that it existed, I really could not help but judge that what I understood so clearly was true.” This clearness and distinctiveness of God as an idea would be later explored in Descartes Fifth Meditation. Fifth Meditation The main objective of the Fifth meditation is to prove the existence of God by appealing to reason exclusively as Descartes discussed the existence of God in the context of reason. The philosopher’s assumption is that God is the general cause of all motion and that he created all matter and motion, preserving their total quantity in the universe. (Achinstein 2004, p. 11) Here, the idea of God’s existence is rooted from the conception of his essence. The argument may be translated this way: Part of God’s essence is to be perfect and hence, his existence is given because not to exist would render him imperfect. According to C.G. Prado (1992), it is here where Descartes borrowed his arguments from the medieval philosopher and theologian, Anselm of Canterbury in order to point out that the very concept of God is such that necessitate instantiation, that is, the concept is such that it must be the concept of an actually existent being rather than only of a possibly existent one. This ontological argument used the analogy of the existence of matter as point of reference: “Recall the derivation of the concept of extension or matter. Clearly, once we have the concept of matter it is possible to think that perhaps there is no matter at all, though if there were it would be extended.” (p. 78) Unlike matter, for Descartes, the concept of God is a proof in itself that God exists. The ontological argument has elucidated a truth about God that is dependent on the Third Meditation’s already established criteria that stresses whatever we see clearly and distinctly is true. It is in the Fifth Meditation where Descartes outlined the most important application of the criteria of truth through the main argument introduced in the section. Here he said: “What I apprehend as intrinsic to the nature of a thing, is indeed one of its attributes.” Again, here we see two elements that were found in the Third Meditation – the argument about the truth of the existence of oneself and the criteria in which truth must be determined. To explain Descartes’ Fifth Meditation, one may use Torrance thoughts as foundation. He said: I understand that the idea of a perfect being innate in me necessarily involves its existence outside me. But obviously it is involved necessarily only in my idea of such a being… In no sense does it attain to certitude. (in Barth, Bromiley and Torrance 2004, p. 358) Torrance’s statement may be controversial at first glance, but this has been sufficiently addressed in the Third Meditation, particularly in regard to Descartes’ concept of clearness and distinctiveness. It was in fact according to this line of thinking why such idea was introduced – to be addressed in the Third Meditation. As stated previously, the Fifth Meditation is reliant on the Third Meditation. This may be illustrated in the way an atheist thinks about God’s existence. Explaining that God exists necessarily or in virtue of his essence is going to be futile because the unbeliever would not be certain that whatever he, in the context of Descartes criteria, clearly and distinctively perceives is true. The offshoot is that the atheist cannot know this last fact until he or she learn and acquiesce that God exists. Descartes offered some explanations and examples in regard to what was the kind of conception that he meant. He cited, for instance, that conceiving a mountain with a valley or imagining a white winged horse although no horse with wings exists is different from conceiving God’s existence. He argued that this is because, with thinking that God exists, his thoughts are imposing necessity upon things where in the first two examples there is no such imposition. He added, that “the necessity of the existence of God determines me to think in this way. For it is not within my power to think of God without existence though it is in my power to imagine a horse either with wings or without wings.” Even though the proof that Descartes put forward in the Fifth Meditation may be considered to have stemmed from deduction from intuition in regard to perfection and God’s essence, he repeatedly emphasized, as mentioned elsewhere in this paper as well, that the existence of God is self-evident. Conclusion The distinction on how the Third and Fifth Meditations were addressed by Descartes may be illustrated in the analogy suggested by Torrance. To quote: If the Fifth Meditation, the idea of God is produced out of the treasury of the human mind, in the third it is deduced from its deficiency. In the former it resembles mathematical apprehensions as a positive work of my mind and thought: in the latter it is its negative presupposition, the power which is reflected in a weakness. (p. 358) Torrance, however, points to the fact that despite all of the above marked differences in providing proofs, a wider and more fundamental coherence becomes apparent – that in both cases, the proofs are linked to my thought and that the asserted real existence of its content stands or falls with the asserted existence of myself as a thinking subject. (p. 358) According to Descartes: “the nature of my mind is such that I could not prevent myself from holding them to be true so long as I conceive them clearly; and I recollect that even when I was still strongly attached to the objects of sense, I counted as the most certain those truths which I conceived clearly.” There is a belief that God is the originating principle of all morality and knowledge and that to give up this fundamental truth would result to the proliferation of skepticism and the deliverance of the soul to annihilation, forever gone or damned. The belief of God, hence, is some form of defensive or comforting mechanism that helps human to get by and feel secure amid the afflictions and life’s exigencies as well as our helplessness as people live longer. With the Third Meditation, Descartes offered proof of God’s existence following the approach of explaining the connection of idea to reality. This is the causal argument that by insisting that we could only get the idea from something adequate to causing that idea, then surely, that idea presents a truth and existence outside of the mind that conceived it. The Third Meditation appeals to causality where the Fifth appeals to the ontological questions. With the Fifth, Meditation Descartes argued that unlike the concept of matter, God by itself entails that God exists. Because Descartes set so much store in the foundational character of our knowledge of God in his defense of God’s existence, he had to use theistic arguments in the epistemological aims of his Meditations. As a result, this clearly showed in the arguments that he employed. Fortified, without our own consciousness - by the events which have left their traces upon our souls - this belief in the existence of God becomes at last an imperceptible portion of our nature. We feel it to be essential and irresistible, that without reflecting or comprehending, were pose upon it with confidence and security, as a child relies on the love and protection of a father. This is what Descartes have successfully made us understand and that this understanding is fundamental in how we attribute success to his proofs of God’s existence. This also addresses the critics’ reservation in regard to his concept of clearness and distinction. As this paper have cited Descartes was able to differentiate the truth and reality that comes out of an idea from that conception that comes out of merely thinking such as the example previously cited about the winged horse. His notion of the “clear and distinct” criteria is entirely unique and sufficiently supported his argument of connecting idea to reality, in effect, successfully distinguishing God from the other conceptions driven from material thoughts. Bibliography Achinstein, Peter. Science rules: a historical introduction to scientific methods. John Hopkins University Press, 2004. Descartes, Rene. “Meditations.” Retrieved 12 Dec. 2009 http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20100-08/Immortality%20and%20Philosophy%20of%20Mind/Descartes%20P-S2.htm Gaukroger, Stephen. The Blackwell guide to Descartes' Meditations. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006. Simon, Jules. Natural religion. J.W. Cole (trans). Oxford University Press, 1857. Prado, C.G. Descartes and Foucault: a contrastive introduction to philosophy. University of Ottawa Press, 1992. Read More