Descartes by invoking Cogito in the second meditation was able to control metaphysical doubts supervening on his initial conquest that was based on conscious will. However, the Cogito has refuted the mathematical and physical hypothesis of a deceiving God only momentarily in regard of ascertaining of our self-esteem. The understanding of conscious will is a feeling that one is doing things (Cunning, 2010). This feeling occurs in almost everything we do, implying time and time again we consciously cause actions. But the feeling may not be an accurate expression of what is happening in our bodies as our actions are pronounced. The sense of conscious will can be fooled. Descartes has envisaged his self as a thinking thing. However, is posting was left reliant on the persistence of his self-reflection and was also isolated. Hence, to show the possibility of knowledge of metaphysics, Descartes wants to eradicate the possibility available to the septic. Descartes does this by proving the existence of God (Descartes, 1999).
The argument of Descartes meditation III proofs for the existence of God can seem demoralizing. Meditation III appeals to “special causal” principles that seem mysterious. The theory also reflects medieval doctrines about different modes of being and degrees of realism. The theory is based on the cause of things. The cause for “y,” must have at least as much reality as “y.” This theory presupposes that there is some degree of realism, with some life form a little bit real than others. An object is placed higher on this scale of realism if it is more perfect or more powerful than another. Therefore, at the top we have God (Descartes, 2010). This study seeks to show that in his third meditation, Descartes represents a substantial Justification beyond the appeal to the alleged clearness of thought for the principle of special causal. The argument is that Descartes does not allow the reader of his meditations to this premise at the onset of the proof. Despite having the idea of God, he may imagine the idea in a way that restricts his entitlement to some claims about it. For instance, the critical claim that his idea has special reality (Descartes, 2010). The paper also analyzes the elimination of such misconception in the meditation. The primary objective is to scrutinize the justification of the meditation for the existence of the basic idea and to how it may fit naturally. The secondary purpose is to show a significant way of correcting the misconceptions in the meditations. As the reader meditates, he may have misconceptions about the nature of God, mind, and body. However, in the next stages of an incisive analysis he corrects these mistakes (Pessin, 2008).
The question here is; what is the idea of God, cause of its being, any other idea? And for this matter, what can an idea be? The term is introduced in the third meditation to attract the attention to a certain feature of thinking substance’s thought. “Some of my thoughts are as it were images of things, and it is only these cases that the term ‘idea’ is strictly appropriate” (Descartes, 1999). It indicates that the thoughts called ideas have features. Descartes explains the common mistake in thought. He says that the assumption that what people take naturally as objects of ideas are there a way of thinking (MacDonald, 2012). He also adds that such an error is compounded by assuming that the objects exist outside thought in a manner of the idea. The error can be isolated because the meditator has a notion that except this thought nothing else exists. In referring to “as it were the images of a thing,” we can accomplish the elimination of the error in thought. The idea in this case is featured as an objective being and is differentiated from formal being. Formal being is used by Descartes to mean ordinary being of existing things. For instance, meditator’s thought. It means that too early one judges that the objective being of an idea resembles some kind of formal being apart from “outside” that being.
The meditator’s idea of God is assumed to signify an actual infinite quantity of reality by merely having God as its objective being. In his third set of replies, Descartes says: “I have also made it quite clear how reality admits for more or less. A substance is more of a thing than a mode” The meditator is so far aware of himself as a substance with several thoughts. So he is a finite thing. Therefore, Descartes identifies three different levels of reality (Descartes, 2007). These include modes, the finite substance, and infinite substance. Everything up to this point is the introduction of terminologies to refer to elements of thought. Descartes asserts that the meditator idea’s objective is God. Here he wants to justify the existence of infinite formal reality by the virtue objective reality. His is assumption is that anyone who meditates will plainly think of the supreme God. However, he has to verify the meditator has the correct idea of God. Descartes does not create an environment for an argument to raise the initial idea of God from an attentive meditator. The desired idea of God has to present actual infinite reality. Actual infinity can never be augmented in any way because it is perfect and complete. The meditator so far he has doubt that means his knowledge is imperfect (Cunning, 2010).
Descartes opted to use the term “indefinite” for such incomplete infinity. A critical point comes in contemplating that if something may be augmented endlessly, then such augmentation can never be completed. Therefore, this understanding implies that we understand that which the process can never attain. And that the unattainable end is actual perfect infinity. The point we see here is that our idea of absolute infinite is not distinct and contradict positive earlier idea of perfect infinity (Pessin, 2008). Using numbers can provide a clear analogy to this situation. Any particular natural number no matter how large it is has other number following it. Thus, natural numbers are not endless augmentable. In this view, Descartes would allude that this is an example of probable infinity. But precisely this can never be an actual infinity since it does not matter how large it might be, any sequence of natural numbers is “incomplete” and may always be augmented. It can be argued that in understanding that natural numbers have no limit; the idea of cardinality of these figures is brought about (Prado, 1992).
Descartes thinks in our knowledge we can draw we can draw a non-analogical distinction in the case of natural numbers. Applying the case of numbers to knowledge, the idea of actual infinitive knowledge emerges, in other words, omniscience. The some can be done for other attributes of God such as omnipresent. If our focus is entirely on the finite being, we in the same manner arrive at the idea of reality (Descartes, 2010). According to Descartes, the notion of priority is different from any other and prior to all others. Priority in this essence is not temporal. The idea of God precedes Cogito in the correct order of philosophizing. In this sense, the meditator finds out the idea of anything finite bound or limits the notion of finite. This bit of consideration substitutes the empiricist view that mainly refers the notion of infinite as a limitation of finite ideas. Now the first substantive step of Descartes argument can be reconstructed (Menn, 2002).
Descartes writes: “now it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause (Descartes, 1999).” He motivates this by indicating that the incremental might have come from nothing if the effect had more reality than its total cause. Well nothing lacks properties that mean it has no causal powers. Thus, nothing can cause of anything. The famous Latino slogan ex-nihilo, nihilo fit suggest in an incidental manner that the causal principle is a version of philosophical dogma, Sufficient reason law. Things come from something, so there is a source of everything. The causal principle can be applied to the idea of God. In this regard, must question the cause of objective reality as presented by the idea. The question arises; so what account for the objective reality of God?
Descartes tackles this issue is his third meditation. “But in order for a given idea to contain such and such objective reality, it must surely derive it from some cause which contains at least as much formal reality as there is objective reality in the idea” (AT, 41). It expresses the infamous theory of objective reality to formal-reality theory. The infamy stems from its meaning seeming to go far beyond any reasonably innocent causal principle. We can consider how the theory of objective reality to formal-reality may apply to the idea of the mode. This idea is not thought of nothing; it has a modal height of objective reality. From OR-FR, it is clear that must have a cause with the formal reality of a mode (Descartes, 1999). The reason being that is the lowest reserved reality anything could have. Therefore, it is possible to prove that the objective reality mode idea is caused by something. In fact, something that has some formal reality of a form not including the full use OR-FR theory. The idea must have come from some cause and not from anything nor is it nothing. If we consider the next idea of a thing with a second substantial finite level of objective reality, then our case in this view seems harder (Pessin, 2008).
The reason being we require some implausible robust objective reality to formal-reality theory. However, we cannot rule out clearly at this point the cause of the second-level objective reality for something with just the third level of mode of formal reality. However, it is critical that even on the assumption that the mode does cause an idea of a thing; we may still conclude the existence of a substance. The principle of relative innocent causal can be applied to the mode we are assuming to cause the idea of a substance. For its being, the mode must depend on some substance, as that is what will constitute a mode. It must be clear that the second case does not require Causal Principle to establish second-level formal reality. Therefore, the idea of finite substance we are considering is meditators and he previously got it through thinking (Schmaltz, 2008). Descartes expounds by using the Latin res that means a thing. The meditator knows that, as a thinking being, he has enough formal reality that acts as the source of finite objective reality in any of his ideas. Hence, the critical point is how we treat the idea of God with its actual infinite objective reality (Brandhorst, 2009). Could the meditator act as the formal cause of the top most level of objective reality? Descartes uses the distinction between that which is subject to augmentation and potentially infinite, and that which is comprehensive and actual infinite (Hamilton, 2003).
In conclusion, it is quite clear that the meditator has arrived at the idea of God that is distinct, clear, and that contains entirely nothing that is potential. Also, he gets understand in no way he can construct the idea of an actual infinite thing from finite ways. The meditator realizes clearly and distinctively that the idea of actual infinity during the investigation of the process of compounding augmenting ideas with finite objective reality. It emerges that he cannot be the cause of his concept of infinite object reality and that the cause is initially infinite reality.
References
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Descartes, R., & Pascal, B. (1999). Meditations on first philosophy. Beijing: Zhongguo she hui ke xue chu ban she.
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Laidlaw, R. E., & Young, C. R. (1937). Engineering law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
MacDonald, P.S. (2012). PHL218 Unit Information and Learning Guide. Perth, Western Australia. Murdoch University. P. 31.
Menn, S. P. (2002). Descartes and Augustine. Cambridge [etc.: Cambridge University Press.
Pessin, A. (2008). “Descartes’s Theory of Ideas”. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
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