Mind and Body - Descartes

Meditations on First Philosophy

Next comes the real deal. In the third meditation, Descartes examines the existence and the notion of God.

1. I WILL now close my eyes, I will stop my ears, I will turn away my senses from their objects, I will even efface from my consciousness all the images of corporeal things; or at least, because this can hardly be accomplished, I will consider them as empty and false; and thus, holding converse only with myself, and closely examining my nature, I will endeavor to obtain by degrees a more intimate and familiar knowledge of myself. I am a thinking ( conscious ) thing, that is, a being who doubts, affirms, denies, knows a few objects, and is ignorant of many,-- who loves, hates, wills, refuses, who imagines likewise, and perceives; for, as I before remarked, although the things which I perceive or imagine are perhaps nothing at all apart from me and in themselves, I am nevertheless assured that those modes of consciousness which I call perceptions and imaginations, in as far only as they are modes of consciousness, exist in me.

Descartes attempts to find reason behind this common comprehension within the mind, and suggests that it is, in fact, the will of a deity, of perfection, of God, that is the prime mover of these ideas and notions. For where else is there to search for such answers to the notion of perfection, the idea of a perfect circle, the truth in the realisation of counting numbers?

Once again, we find the notion of perfection relies on the belief of the idea of perfect creation, and thus, this ideal emanating from the perfect being, namely God. Like Descartes postulated, the shape of a circle is never found to be perfect in nature, or experienced as flawless in our sensory world of matter. Yet the idea of the perfect circle exists within the mind?

For, without doubt, those that represent substances are something more, and contain in themselves, so to speak, more objective reality that is, participate by representation in higher degrees of being or perfection, than those that represent only modes or accidents; and again, the idea by which I conceive a God sovereign, eternal, infinite, immutable, all-knowing, all-powerful, and the creator of all things that are out of himself, this, I say, has certainly in it more objective reality than those ideas by which finite substances are represented.

Where does this idea come from, and how did it get there? or more to the point, who put it there?

14. Now, it is manifest by the natural light that there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect; for whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its cause ? And how could the cause communicate to it this reality unless it possessed it in itself? And hence it follows, not only that what is cannot be produced by what is not, but likewise that the more perfect, in other words, that which contains in itself more reality, cannot be the effect of the less perfect; and this is not only evidently true of those effects, whose reality is actual or formal, but likewise of ideas, whose reality is only considered as objective.

.... And although an idea may give rise to another idea, this regress cannot, nevertheless, be infinite; we must in the end reach a first idea, the cause of which is, as it were, the archetype in which all the reality or perfection that is found objectively or by representation in these ideas is contained formally and in act. I am thus clearly taught by the natural light that ideas exist in me as pictures or images, which may, in truth, readily fall short of the perfection of the objects from which they are taken, but can never contain anything greater or more perfect.

His real proof for the existence of God lies in his reasoning that someone, or something had to place the idea of perfection within the mind. That chickens must come from eggs. Whether "I" exist alone, in my mind, and all else is unreal, a deception, there must still be at least one "other", who has planted the seed of perfection, the reasoning of numbers, of counting, in my mind. If this notion was planted by another mind, from an extended material form, [a man], then this seed may be traced back to the primordial Adam, but who had planted his seed of perfection, of idea, or notion of perfection?

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So if God does exist, is he out to deceive us, both in our sensory world and our ideas and thoughts? Descartes contemplates this possibility also. For this he appears to make a leap of faith. Using the realisation of the truth inherent in the perfect ideas of shapes and numbers, and counting, he uses this as a tool, a yardstick to measure if he is being deceived, and appears to use these perfect notions against any possibility for error. Would a deity deceive us with the use of perfection? He concludes the answer must be no.

And in truth, as I have no ground for believing that Deity is deceitful, and as, indeed, I have not even considered the reasons by which the existence of a Deity of any kind is established, the ground of doubt that rests only on this supposition is very slight, and, so to speak, metaphysical. But, that I may be able wholly to remove it, I must inquire whether there is a God, as soon as an opportunity of doing so shall present itself; and if I find that there is a God, I must examine likewise whether he can be a deceiver; for, without the knowledge of these two truths, ...[it being now true that I am, or make two and three more or less than five], I do not see that I can ever be certain of anything. And that I may be enabled to examine this without interrupting the order of meditation I have proposed to myself which is, to pass by degrees from the notions that I shall find first in my mind to those I shall afterward discover in it, it is necessary at this stage to divide all my thoughts into certain classes, and to consider in which of these classes truth and error are, strictly speaking, to be found.

And so Descartes draws the conclusion...

22. There only remains, therefore, the idea of God, in which I must consider whether there is anything that cannot be supposed to originate with myself. By the name God, I understand a substance infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and every other thing that exists, if any such there be, were created. But these properties are so great and excellent, that the more attentively I consider them the less I feel persuaded that the idea I have of them owes its origin to myself alone. And thus it is absolutely necessary to conclude, from all that I have before said, that God exists.

24. And I must not imagine that I do not apprehend the infinite by a true idea, but only by the negation of the finite, in the same way that I comprehend repose and darkness by the negation of motion and light: since, on the contrary, I clearly perceive that there is more reality in the infinite substance than in the finite, and therefore that in some way I possess the perception (notion) of the infinite before that of the finite, that is, the perception of God before that of myself, for how could I know that I doubt, desire, or that something is wanting to me, and that I am not wholly perfect, if I possessed no idea of a being more perfect than myself, by comparison of which I knew the deficiencies of my nature ?

Therefore to surmise..

1. I have an idea of God (an infinitely perfect substance).
2. That idea must have a cause.
3. Nothing comes from nothing.
4. The cause must have at least as much formal reality as the idea.
5. I am not infinitely perfect.
6. I could not be the cause of the idea.
7. There must be a cause that is infinitely perfect.
8. God exists.