Descartes

While Rene Descartes' method of finding truth was innovative and scientific, his proofs for the existence of God were ultimately very weak. In the Discourse on Method, Descartes outlines his scientific method at length. He succeeds in his desire to find true and innate ideas. However, the arguments posited for the existence of God by Descartes in the Meditations are not entirely convincing. It seems strange that if the ideas on which he makes his conclusions were correct, that the actual conclusions would be faulty. It was fallacy in his logic, not his method. In this paper, I plan to demonstrate that some of the logic used by Descartes was flawed; namely, he makes hasty assumptions from his facts and does not always follow his own rules.

Descartes intended to reach new and unknown truths with his method. Syllogistic logic, in his opinion, only demonstrated that which we already know. Descartes wanted to start a new method from scratch, one that questioned everything he knew before. He wanted to reduce complex ideas to simple ones through analysis, and then re-build the ideas through a sort of synthesis. He would intuit to clear and distinct ideas which left no room for doubt. These clear and distinct ideas are the building blocks in his philosophy. From these facts, he could deduce unknown and true knowledge. The third part of the method is enumeration, so that one makes sure nothing has been omitted. Descartes uses this very mathematical system because he admires the certainty of mathematics. He believes we can achieve certainty under his system through the fundamental operations of the mind, intuition and deduction. This will help us correctly use the powers of the mind to come to new knowledge and truth. This method can be applied to everything. We only need one scientific method because all sciences are really one science. In all sciences, we find self-evident truths, just like mathematicians find laws. The mind discovers these innate ideas, which were implanted in the mind by nature or God, when some experience triggers the potentiality of the idea in the mind. If we only reason from these ideas, says Descartes, we can only come to true conclusions and logic will never fail us.

In order to come to these ideas, we must free ourselves of all prior prejudices; Descartes says we must doubt everything, including our very own existence and the existence of everything around us. The point of hyperbolic, or exaggerated, doubt is not to doubt every single thought or belief one holds, but to doubt the very foundation on which these beliefs lie. Just as the method says, we break down our thoughts, reducing complex belief systems into the simplest parts. We must doubt all previous philosophy that we know as well as the information that comes to us through the senses. Once we've come to the first clear and distinct idea, we can start to reconstruct our knowledge slowly and methodically, so that nothing false ever enters the equation.

The first clear and distinct idea of Descartes, found in Meditation II, is the famous Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. A similar argument first shows up in St. Augustine's Critique of Skepticism from City of God, in which Augustine explains that even if I am deceived, I must exist in order to be deceived, and thus I can't be deceived into thinking I exist. This makes it a true, clear, distinct, and innate idea, one which cannot be further broken down. The cogito of Descartes at first appears to be a syllogism with the conclusion I exist following from the premise I am a thinking thing and the hidden premise Thinking things exist. In Descartes' Reply to the Second Set of Objections, he says it's not a deductive syllogism at all because the premise Thinking things exist would have to have been known previously; this would contradict his method of hyperbolic doubt. The cogito is not deduced; it is recognized by an act of mental intuition. It's an active notion; when I think, I am. If I'm not thinking, I can't be certain that I am in existence at that moment.

Now confident in his own existence, Descartes embarks upon the task of proving that other things in the material world exist. Ostensibly, it seems that our knowledge of things outside ourselves is mostly dependent on sensory information, but Descartes says this is not the case. Like the knowledge of our existence, knowledge of the existence of things in the material world is highly dependent on mental intuition. Descartes illustrates this point by discussing a wax candle. When the wax is a candle, it is hard and has a certain shape, as well as a unique color and odor. After the candle is melted down to a glob of wax, it loses these attributes. Still, we know it is the wax candle, and that even though our senses now perceive it differently, we understand that this is the same thing it was before it melted. The senses alone cannot prove to us that the candle and the melted wax are the same substance, proving that there is something more to our cognition. It is by intuition of the mind that we can fully perceive what the wax is. This is important because sensory information can deceive is, but our mind, provided we follow the method of clear and distinct ideas, cannot.

Early on, Descartes ponders the idea of an "evil genius," not God, who could be deceiving us. As far as the cogito goes, the evil genius argument is irrelevant; just as Augustine said, even if I am being deceived, I still know for sure that I exist. What's important, then, is to prove that we cannot be deceived into thinking the material world exists. Descartes must prove that God exists and that He is not a deceiver and wouldn't let us be deceived by the evil genius. In Meditation III, Descartes argues that God exists by explaining that a cause of an idea must have as much reality as the idea itself; we are finite beings who have the idea of an infinite being, and since we can't get the idea of an infinite being from our own finite selves, the infinite being, which we call God, must really exist. God is not a deceiver because Descartes defines God as infinite perfection, and deception would be an imperfection. This is a weak argument because Descartes hasn't thoroughly proven either part of it, which is contradictory to his own method. Descartes doesn't prove that God is infinite perfection by deducing from clearly intuited distinct ideas; it seems to be more of an assumption that he makes based on his knowledge of theology. The same is true about calling deception an imperfection; this is obvious to us, but it has not been proven through deduction from clear and distinct truths. Some deception really does occur in the world; people are deceived by others, or deceived in their own minds by hallucinations. Descartes doesn't explain how that could be if a non-deceptive God really does exist as he