Introduction
A famous treatise Meditations on First Philosophy, published by the French mathematician, philosopher, and scientist René Descartes in 1641, contains several ambitious claims. First of all, Descartes attempted to prove the existence of God through logical arguments. One might say that Descartes’s philosophy viewed God as a cause for why everything in the universe exists. However, unlike traditional adherents of religions, Descartes derived God from a series of seemingly rational inferences. In other words, the French philosopher proved God’s existence similarly to how a mathematician proves a theorem or at least made quite a daring attempt of doing that.
The Meditations on First Philosophy are not limited to deriving logical proofs of God’s existence. In addition to that problem, Descartes pondered upon the questions of God’s nature, human will, and the causes of errors that humans make. He utilized a similar rationalistic approach to derive an argument why humans make mistakes and why God cannot be blamed for them. In both cases, he created impressive logical constructions to prove God’s existence and explain the nature of errors. However, while the technical aspect of Descartes’s argument building seems to be correct, his eventual conclusions about God’s existence are highly questionable.
Both arguments in favor of that claim are not convincing because they are based on “self-evident” assumptions. Nevertheless, Descartes’s explanation of human errors and way of avoiding them seems to be reasonable, despite stemming from the necessity to defend the previously proclaimed idea of God’s perfection.
Third Meditation. Cosmological Proof of God
After concluding that he exists because he is a thinking thing that doubts, affirms, and denies, Descartes makes a transition to his first argument in favor of God’s existence. In the beginning, he claims that three types of ideas exist: innate, adventitious, which come from experience, and invented, which are created by imagination (Descartes 27). After that, Descartes defines God as an “infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful substance” that created him and everything else (32). Furthermore, Descartes claims that an innate idea of infinite substance such as God cannot derive from himself since he is a finite substance himself (32). Then, Descartes examines possible causes of his creation and rules himself and other imperfect creators such as his parents out.
Overall, the inability of everything else to cause the infinite ideas of God and perfection proves God’s existence. As Descartes claimed, “it cannot be that I should exist with the nature I possess unless in reality God also exists” (37). Therefore, this Descartes’s argument is cosmological in its nature since it stems from the assumption that God was the only adequate cause of certain ideas.
However, this argument seems relatively weak since it is based only on Descartes’s assumptions. As a result, God becomes a conceptual stretch, a necessary addition to the picture of the world. Descartes’s cosmological proof is questionable from multiple perspectives. For instance, it might be possible that an innate idea of God does not exist in a particular human being. In theory, that would make God non-existent to that person.
Moreover, people from different times and ages had completely different religious beliefs and ideas of God or Gods. As such, some of those Gods would not fit Descartes’s criteria of perfection and, therefore, would automatically become non-existent. For example, Ancient Greeks and Romans had their own pantheons, and their gods were prone to human vices such as lust, jealousy, greed, and anger. Those gods were imperfect, but they definitely existed for the adherents of those religions. Overall, Descartes’s cosmological proof of God’s existence is narrow and unconvincing. He did not provide a definition of God’s perfection and limited his understanding of God to an obscure “perfect” entity that exists only to serve as a cause of everything that humans cannot explain.
Fifth Meditation. Ontological Proof of God
In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes provided another proof of God’s existence. Unlike the cosmological argument from the Third Meditation, this proof has an ontological nature, as Descartes tried to build it out of pure logic. Since God was previously defined as an infinite and perfect being, Descartes argued that existence cannot be separated from God’s essence (47). As such, trying to claim that a supremely perfect being like God lacks existence is similar to claiming that a mountain can exist without a valley (Descartes 47). Therefore, God undoubtedly exists because the lack of existence would have made him imperfect.
While the cosmological argument was unconvincing, the ontological proof of God’s existence seems to be even more arbitrary. Descartes’s ontological proof leaves a strong feeling that he forcefully attempted to prove the existence of such a spiritual concept as God with formal logic. As a result, the ontological proof is based on a mere assertion that existence is a necessary part of perfection. Essentially, the whole ontological argument fails to explain why a perfect being necessarily exists since the only answer provided by Descartes is “it must exist because I think so”. Overall, ontological proof of God’s existence seems to be a mere appeal to the audience of the 17th century.
Descartes tried to provide a plausible explanation that God and rational thinking can be the elements of the same paradigm. Due to his impressive abilities, Descartes constructed seemingly compelling arguments; however, both are based on assumptions and conceptual stretching.
Meditation 4. Why Humans Make Errors
The proofs of God’s existence were not convincing to me. However, Descartes’s explanation of human errors is more compelling since it goes beyond a simple statement that God is perfect and humans are not. In fact, after reading Descartes’s argument, one might argue that humans are perfect in a way that God gave finite intellect to finite substances, as it was intended. Descartes believed that humans have absolute power over their actions and beliefs (Naaman-Zauderer 25). As a result, all errors come from extending an infinite will to matters that a finite human intellect cannot comprehend (Descartes 42). Even if one finds proofs of God’s existence unconvincing, this conclusion still holds value.
For instance, a connection to Descartes’s origin of errors can be found in modern cognitive psychology. A so-called Dunning-Kruger effect holds that individuals with low competence consider themselves more competent than they are (Anson 1). As a result, they are likely to make mistakes due to their overconfidence. In that regard, their errors would fit Descartes’s theory because overconfident individuals would apply their will to tasks that they cannot handle. Overall, I find Descartes’s explanation of human errors quite valuable even for the modern age. I also think that Descartes was right when he suggested avoiding mistakes by limiting one’s activities to matters that one can understand. In my opinion, the world would become a better place if people followed Descartes’s advice.
Conclusion
René Descartes was a brilliant scientist who pioneered the scientific method and rational thinking. Without trying to belittle him, I find his proofs of God’s existence an unconvincing attempt to fit the spiritual concept of God into the rationalist paradigm. Both cosmological and ontological arguments are based on Descartes’s personal assumptions and appear to be arbitrary. However, his explanation of human errors seems plausible even in the modern age and finds some degree of confirmation in contemporary cognitive psychology.
Works Cited
Anson, Ian G. “Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect.” Political Psychology, vol. 39, no. 5, 2018, pp. 1–20.
Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies. Translated by Michael Moriarty, Oxford UP, 2008.
Naaman-Zauderer, Noa. “Human Action and Virtue in Descartes and Spinoza.” Philosophical Explorations, vol. 21, no. 1, 2018, pp. 25–40.