Cartesian Metaphysics; A refutation of the cosmological & ontological argument of the existence of God
Often cited as the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes repudiated against his Aristotelian inheritance, grounding metaphysics in analytic geometry and mathematical reasoning, to offer alternative arguments to the existence of God. Descartes’ ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ argues two proofs of God’s existence: Meditation Three on ‘Concerning God’, and Meditation Five on ‘Concerning the Essence of Material Things, and Again Concerning God, That He Exists.’ I will argue through first an analysis of both meditations, and subsequently through the objections raised by Immanuel Kant, Pierre Gassendi and A. J. Ayer, Cartesian metaphysics is fraught with linguistic misapplications and tautologies.
Rejecting Aristotle and the primary reliability on sense perception, due to the often erroneous and deceptive nature of our experiences, Descartes begins the meditations by establishing a Tabula Rasa; discarding all previous beliefs not held with certainty that may potentially have arisen from prejudicial causes. Through such a suspension of judgement, or what the Ancient Greeks termed ataraxia, Descartes relies upon a priori reasoning to establish, allegedly beyond doubt, that he himself is nothing substantially more than “a thinking thing; a thing that thinks.”[1]
Having arrived at what Descartes believed to be an objective vantage point, “I am, I exist”[2], at the end of Meditation Two, he furthers the subject of metaphysical inquiry to investigate whether “there may be other things”[3] that exist and can be known with certainty of both the incorporeal and corporeal worlds. Presenting first a cosmological argument, the Third Meditation begins with an introduction of Descartes’ innate idea of God. Underpinned by the context of the New Sciences as well as the doctrine of cause-and-effect, Descartes posits that he himself cannot possibly be the source of such an idea[4], as his own finitude, or rather, the imperfection of such, which contains in itself less reality than any true perfection either formally or eminently, could not possibly have generated the concept of the infinite.[5]. Consequently, and considering that “something cannot come into being out of nothing”[6], Descartes argues that someone else, a more perfect and infinite being must have been the cause of such an idea. The conclusory leap Descartes then performs states that any cause of an idea[7] must have as much formal reality as the idea has objectively. Ergo, God exists.
Accordingly, since it remains indistinct at the end of Meditation Three how Descartes links the existent causality of an infinite being to the conception of a monotheistic God, I believe he digresses within Meditation Four to inquire where falsity resides so to establish a credibility to his self-assertions and innate ideas.[8] After concluding “that erything (sic) I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true”[9] Descartes continues his proof of God’s existence, yet this time from an ontological perspective, potentially foreshadowing objections to Meditation Three which did little to clarify how the formal reality of a perfect being follows from an imagined objective reality of such a being. With his cosmological argument hinging on the cogency of Meditation Five, Descartes necessitates the ascription of “all perfections to him[10]” incorporative of “eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and creator of all things.”[11] Again, relying upon a preconceived definition and the axiom of clear and distinct perceptions of God to serve as premise for further reasoning.
And so, the Ontological argument[12] asserts we are able to attain knowledge of the existence of God if we clearly and distinctly understand that nothing “beside from God alone… whose essence existence belongs.”[13] In a comparison to how the essence of a triangle, “namely, that its three angles are equal to two right angles”[14], is inseparable from a triangle itself, equating geometry and mathematics to foundational truths, so too is existence contained within the metaphysical essence of a supremely perfect being, one that does not lack anything, existence included. Yet such a proclamation was anything but ‘modern’, with Anselm of Canterbury centuries prior similarly forcing God into existence by engineering the conception of God to include the property of existence. Yet, is existence a property? And moreover, can it be a divine perfection?
Kant vehemently rejected the notion existence could be a predicate, noting we already regard everything we think of as existing, to aid in the copula of a judgement. It was Gassendi however who presaged this Kantian objection by replying to Descartes’ discourse, noting that “what does not exist has no perfections or imperfections.”[15] Whilst this seems quite commonsensical, Descartes would discredit such rebuttals on the distinction between contingent and necessary existence, with God a necessary, independent existent over and above the finite and dependent. Albeit an important metaphysical distinction, the conception of a being that has necessary existence, or aseity, suggests nothing of significance, as it is but a slightly modified grammatical arrangement of the term ‘God’. Whilst logical positivists such as A. J. Ayer would purport Cartesian metaphysics as entirely “meaningless”, rendering it a truth-inapt task[16], calling into question whether metaphysics can ever offer philosophical knowledge, I believe the more relevant statement by Ayer is the continuation of the Kantian criticism in the suggestion that Descartes is “guilty of following grammar beyond the boundaries of sense”[17]. The existential proposition God Exists, can only ever be true in virtue of the terminology used to express the statement; it is but a tautology. By relying on the term God in order to argue the existence of an omnipotent creator, Descartes falls into the trap of his own purported “confused and obscure manner”[18] of reasoning.
Furthermore, by aiming to venture beyond the phenomenal, Descartes becomes lost in a multitude of linguistic contradictions. After asserting in both the Third and Forth Meditations that falsity “is to be found only in judgements”[19], he then makes the crucial error of utilising the conjugation of the verb “judge” in the statement “I judge God to be infinite.”[20] As such, it could be argued that not only is Descartes ontological argument a methodological tautology, but the very conception of ‘God’ he utilises could be falsified. And moreover, the putative premise of both Meditation Three and Five to be fallacious.
In summary, Descartes’ deductive reasoning concerning the proof of God’s existence has been found to be burdened with linguistic contradictions and tautologies. And as such, his own clear and distinct conclusions have not successfully ventured beyond the realm of self-assertion. Yet whilst it is outside the scope of this paper, I believe that even in the reduction of both arguments to the logical structure, so to eliminate such surface grammar misapprehensions and incongruous statements, Descartes would still fall short of substantiating a persuasive proof of the existence of God.[21]
[1] R. Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy,” in Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources, eds. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009), 44.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 47.
[4] Idea: An Infinite Being
[5] Descartes himself apparently only comprehending the conception of ‘infinite’ through the negation of the finite.
[6] Ibid., 49.
[7] The idea: the infinite; the cause of the idea: an infinite being
[8] And, prevent counterarguments asserting Descartes perception of God may be due to Catholic indoctrination or collective fabrications
[9] Ibid., 57.
[10] I.e. God
[11] Ibid., 49.
[12] Yet, Descartes states such a meditation is self-evident formal proof more than an argument in itself
[13] Ibid., 60.
[14] Ibid., 58.
[15] R. Descartes and P. Gassendi, “Objections and Replies: On the Fifth Meditation” in Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, eds. J. Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 96.
[16] A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (Gollancz Publishing, 1946), 50.
[17] Ibid., 57.
[18] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 50.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., 52.
[21] See: Antoine Arnauld’s Objection noting the circularity of reasoning between Meditation Three and Five based on the doctrine of clear and distinct perception ( Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 69-82)