Descartes has several meditations on what things in knows and how he does so. He has a feeling of doubt towards his foundational beliefs on what he thinks he knows and the truth about them. He says that through his experience he has come to know that the core source of knowledge is the senses. He however mistrusts his sense because he it has been a source of deception to him before, for example things have a different look when far away than when close. His conclusion is that existence can be attributed to senses. Descartes says that truth cannot be entrusted entirely to senses. This is because through the senses people can misunderstand the truth and their relationships to the world. Senses only give answers to finite existence yet some truths are infinite existence. The existence of God for example is an infinite truth and Descartes believes in it. He believes in God who exists through his meditations. He believes infinite is more real than finite.
The existence of God has been a hard fact to conceive for many philosophers. Descartes however still believed in God because he though he was perfect and no one would have cased Him to exist. To him existence is included in perfection and must exist. His relationship with god was through his meditation especially the third meditation when he doubted the existence of God. In his mind he perceived God to be perfect because he had caused the existence of other things. Human beings are seen as imperfect and therefore can not perceive perfection. By this Descartes meant that the idea of being perfect must have originated from a perfect being who is God. Perfection would not exist if the perfect being was dead. For example in Buddhism, perfection is seen in loss. Descartes believes that everything must exist through the will of God.
Proof of Gods existence
In the second meditation Descartes proves that he exists and that he could think and his essence was to be changeable, flexible and extended. Through a Doubt and Analysis method he came up with some certainty. He examined the truths that he had observed and concluded that they were distinct and clear. Descartes sees God as a perfect being. He believes that his generation of ideas is not his own but with the help of another being which is greater and causes the idea. His argument is that the cause of ideas must be real just like the effect of that idea. For example, the existence of the earth and the sky is real and certain so the idea of its existence must have been real too. Thus God must exist to make perfect ideas. In mathematics, Descartes could not doubt that 2+3=5. This is because he considered himself to have been given a nature by God so that such things could deceive him.
Descartes assumed that existence meant one was good which led to perfection. This meant that if something has a greater amount of being then it was better. An infinite being thus is more perfect and real than a finite one. The principle of Plenitude suggests that God, who has a good will, creates good beings. So anything that can be created is left to God. This leaves a chain of beings from God to angels to man and down to the animals and the lowest being. There are no gaps left in the chain which means that if there were any, then God would not have created some good which He ought to have created; being a good God he would not do this though. This chain led Descartes to think that some species in existence had formal reality when compared to others. Descartes made a distinction between mind and body which he called dualism. This idea left two links as compared to the chain of being. His chain distinguishes between finite and infinite. Souls, which are finite, are higher on the chain than bodies while accidents and modes are below the body. This proved the existence of God for Descartes. He thinks that the possibility of an idea having formal reality does not necessarily mean that what it represents has the same level of reality. He continues to argue that an infinite regress is impossible where one idea originates from another. In the end there is one idea that has all the perfection or reality. For example, when an image of an object is taken in natural light it is not possible for it to be more perfect than the source.
Descartes has an idea about God and his existence and this idea has a lot of objective reality such that he could not have come up with the idea without the help of a higher being. This made him prove that he was not alone in the world but a greater being existed too (God). Objective reality is the kind whose characteristic of ideas represent a fact that some reality exists in virtue. He believes that the more perfect being judges the less perfect. His judgements of imperfection on himself he proves through God and believes that his understanding for the infinite is due to his understanding of the finite first. This gradual building of ideas makes him imperfect but the cause of ideas which is God remains perfect.
Descartes ideas on God
Descartes believes that ideas are modes of representing objects in the mind. There are innate, adventitious, and factitious ideas. He categorized these depending on the differences in their existence. Innate ideas can be accounted for as he says. For example his thinking, existence and the origin of the ideas he perceives. The objects perceived by these ideas can be traced back to the nature which is a fact. He believes that some ideas originate from external things or independently through pre-philosophical experience. They are notice even when one doesn’t want to. For example if one sits next to fire or something producing heat, they feel it whether or not they want to. This explains that the there is something else that gives this idea. The existence of god is an innate idea. Innateness as portrayed by Descartes is the capacity or tendency that aligns of not always being before us. For example since the mind can sense adventitious ideas of colors, pains and sounds since there are certain motions in the brain but nothing of the ideas is transferred to the mind then these ideas must be innate. The possibility of these ideas has its origin in an innate capacity found in the mind.
Descartes is interested in the ideas that are not derived from within him. He believes there are such ideas because for one ideas are a representation of things like nature and the fact that some ideas appear to him independent of his thinking. The idea of heat is discarded as being weak. Nature being a teacher means that there is some impulse that makes him believe the idea but no truth has been revealed, it could therefore be force. Ideas that come to his mind without his wanting are termed as dreams which are not enough considerations for him to conclude that they are produced by external forces. Even though they happen to originate externally, they are not a representation of the causal objects. For example the idea of the sun; one idea is derived from astronomy and the other from senses. The senses idea portrays the sun as a small being while the astronomical reasoning indicates that the sun is bigger than the earth. Both ideas are false. He believes that there are things that exist away from him but are capable of transmitting ideas to his senses.
Descartes concluded that God necessarily exists. Ideas are not any more different in terms of truth. They modes of thought and have more formal reality. The notions of reality are however arguable. If one believed in these notions then the explanation to one fact appeals to another and so on unless one reached a point of no explanation which would mean that nothing had been explained. Readers do not understand why some reality is termed as objective or why reality is in grades. Descartes claim of the existence of God is demonstrably false. This is because people do not have a distinct and clear innate idea of God being infinite and of great perfection. This idea is present only to people who are brought up in cultures that believe in the existence of a supreme and perfect being.
Works Cited
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Crumplin, Mary-Ann. "Descartes: God As the Idea of Infinity." International Journal of Systematic Theology (2008): 3-21.
Hatfield, Gary. "Reason, nature and God in Descartes." Science in Context (1989): 175-201.
VanRuler, Johannes. The Crisis of causality: Voetius and Descartes on God. London: Brill Academic Publishers, 1995.
Wilson, M. Descartes. London: Routledge, 1976.
