How does descartes define god

Indeed, the idea of a supremely perfect being just is the idea of a being having all perfections. To attempt to exclude any or all perfections from the idea of a supremely being, Descartes observes, involves one in a contradiction and is akin to conceiving a mountain without a valley or, better, an up-slope without a down-slope. Having formed this perception, one need only intuit that necessary existence is itself a perfection. It will then be clear that necessary existence is one of the attributes included in the idea of a supremely perfect being.

While such considerations might suffice to induce the requisite clear and distinct perception in the meditator, Descartes is aiming a deeper point, namely that there is a conceptual link between necessary existence and each of the other divine perfections. It is important to recall that in the Third Meditation, in the midst of the causal argument for the existence of God, the meditator already discovered many of these perfections — omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, eternality, simplicity, etc.

To illustrate this point Descartes appeals to divine omnipotence. He thinks that we cannot conceive an omnipotent being except as existing. Since such a being does not depend on anything else for its existence, he has neither a beginning nor an end, but is eternal. Returning to the discussion in the First Replies, one can see how omnipotence is linked conceptually to necessary existence in this traditional sense.

An omnipotent or all-powerful being does not depend ontologically on anything for if it did then it would not be omnipotent. It exists by its own power:.

Some readers have thought that Descartes offers yet a third version of the ontological argument in this passage Wilson, , —76 , but whether or not that was his intention is unimportant, since his primary aim, as indicated in the last line, is to enable his meditator to intuit that necessary existence is included in the idea of God. Since there is a conceptual link between the divine attributes, a clear and distinct perception of one provides a cognitive route to any of the others.

The formal versions of the argument are merely heuristic devices, to be jettisoned once one has attained the requisite intuition of a supremely perfect being.

Descartes stresses this point explicitly in the Fifth Meditation, immediately after presenting the two versions of the argument considered above:. Here Descartes develops his earlier analogy between the so-called ontological argument and a geometric demonstration. But other meditators, whose minds are confused and mired in sensory images, must work much harder, and might even require a proof to attain the requisite clear and distinct perception.

Some commentators have thought that Descartes is committed to a species of Platonic realism. According to this view, some objects that fall short of actual existence nevertheless subsist as abstract, logical entities outside the mind and beyond the physical world Kenny, ; Wilson, Another commentator places Cartesian essences in God Schmaltz , while two recent revisionist interpretations Chappell, ; Nolan, read Descartes as a conceptualist who takes essences to be ideas in human minds.

In claiming that necessary existence cannot be excluded from the essence of God, Descartes is drawing on the traditional medieval distinction between essence and existence.

According to this distinction, one can say what something is i. So, for example, one can define what a horse is — enumerating all of its essential properties — before knowing whether there are any horses in the world. The only exception to this distinction was thought to be God himself, whose essence just is to exist. It is easy to see how this traditional distinction could be exploited by a defender of the ontological argument. Existence is included in the essence of a supremely perfect being, but not in the essence of any finite thing.

Thus it follows solely from the essence of the former that such a being actually exists. At times, Descartes appears to support this interpretation of the ontological argument.

Understanding this view requires a more careful investigation of the distinction between essence and existence as it appears in medieval sources.

The distinction between essence and existence can be traced back as far as Boethius in the fifth century. It was later developed by Islamic thinkers such as Avicenna. But the issue did not become a major philosophical problem until it was taken up by Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Like many scholastic philosophers, Aquinas believed that God is perfectly simple and that created beings, in contrast, have a composite character that accounts for their finitude and imperfection.

Earthly creatures are composites of matter and form the doctrine of hylomorphism , but since purely spiritual beings are immaterial, Aquinas located their composite character in the distinction between essence and existence.

The primary interest of his theory for our purposes, however, is that it led to a lively debate among his successors both as to how to interpret the master and about the true nature of the relation between essence and existence in created things. This debate produced three main positions:. Proponents of the first view conceived the distinction between essence and existence as obtaining between two separate things.

The theory of real distinction was also considered objectionable for philosophical reasons. On the theory of real distinction, this view leads to an infinite regress. If an essence becomes actual only in virtue of something else — viz. Wippel, , f. In response to these difficulties some scholastic philosophers developed a position at the polar extreme from the theory of real distinction. As the term suggests, this theory held that essence and existence of a creature are identical in reality and distinguished only within our thought by means of reason.

Needless to say, proponents of this theory were forced to distinguish purely spiritual entities from God on grounds other than real composition. Giving up the doctrine of real composition seemed too much for another group of thinkers who were also critical of the theory of real distinction.

Articulating this theory in an important passage in the Principles of Philosophy , Descartes claims that there is merely a distinction of reason between a substance and any one of its attributes or between any two attributes of a single substance , AT 8A; CSM Since thought and extension constitute the essence of mind and body, respectively, a mind is merely rationally distinct from its thinking and a body is merely rationally distinct from its extension , AT 8A; CSM But Descartes insists that a rational distinction also obtains between any two attributes of a substance.

Since existence qualifies as an attribute in this technical sense, the essence and existence of a substance are also distinct merely by reason , AT 8A; CSM Descartes reaffirms this conclusion in a letter intended to elucidate his account of the relation between essence and existence:.

Indications are given here as to how a rational distinction is produced in our thought. Descartes explains that we regard a single thing in different abstract ways. Case in point, we can regard a thing as existing, or we can abstract from its existence and attend to its other aspects.

In so doing, we have distinguished the existence of a substance from its essence within our thought. Like scholastic proponents of the theory of rational distinction, however, Descartes is keen to emphasize that this distinction is purely conceptual. In reality they are identical. He extends the theory of rational distinction from created substances to God.

In general, the essence and the existence of a substance are merely rationally distinct, and hence identical in reality. One of the most important objections to the argument is that if it were valid, one could proliferate such arguments for all sorts of things, including beings whose existence is merely contingent.

By supposing that there is merely a rational distinction between essence and existence abroad in all things, Descartes seems to confirm this objection. In general, a substance is to be identified with its existence, whether it is God or a finite created thing.

The problem with this objection, in this instance, is that it assumes that Descartes locates the difference between God and creatures in the relation each of these things bears to its existence. This is not the case. In a few important passages, Descartes affirms that existence is contained in the clear and distinct idea of every single thing, but he also insists that there are different grades of existence:.

In light of this passage and others like it, we can refine the theory of rational distinction. What one should say, strictly speaking, is that God is merely rationally distinct from his necessary existence, while every finite created thing is merely rationally distinct from its possible or contingent existence.

The distinction between possible or contingent existence on the one hand, and necessary existence on the other, allows Descartes to account for the theological difference between God and his creatures.

Now, when Descartes says that a substance be it finite or infinite is merely rationally distinct from its existence, he always means an actually existing substance. So how are we to understand the claim that a finite substance is merely rationally distinct from its possible existence?

The causal argument hinged on the a priori assumption that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. However, unlike the contradiction of affirming the concept of God i. If Descartes were to have only presented the causal proof for the existence of God, the internal coherence of this epistemology could be severely damaged or compromised if this relationship between cause and effects were to breakdown - especially since God plays the most important role in Descartes epistemic theory.

By introducing the second proof for the existence of God, Descartes can avoid any possible self-contradiction in his earlier causal argument.

There is another assumption explicit in the ontological proof - namely that existence is a positive property. There are many noted philosophers subsequent to Descartes, specifically David Hume and Immanuel Kant, who have challenged the notion that our conception of a perfect being must necessarily possess the property of existence. Although there are many problematic notions and strong objections to certain lines of argumentation and conclusions in the Meditations , Descartes believes that he has succeeded in this part of his project namely providing incontrovertible proof for the existence of God.

It was essential for Descartes to attempt to establish that we could be certain about the existence of God because without it, Descartes believes that we will never have the ability to possess certain knowledge.

If we are to succeed in our project of attaining fundamental and certain knowledge, it will depend on the existence of a benevolent God who allows us to access this knowledge. Descartes would like to argue that God is so important to our acquisition of knowledge that even the certainty of geometrical demonstrations will depend upon the knowledge of God. It is our sense experience and propensity to error that stands in the way of the attainment of certain knowledge.

But once I perceived that there is a God, and also understood at the same time that everything else depends on him, and that he is not a deceiver, I then concluded that everything that I clearly and distinctly perceive is necessarily true.

Hence even if I no longer attend to the reasons leading me to judge this to be true, so long as I merely recall that I did clearly and distinctly observe it, no counter-argument can be brought forward that might force me to doubt it.

On the contrary, I have certain knowledge of it. It is powerful because the role certainty and truth plays in our lives, and in turn the acquisition of knowledge, is tremendously important. I would submit that when we strive for the attainment of knowledge, we must hold the belief even if it is in the back of our minds that when we inquire about a subject or proposition, we aim at truth.

We would not inquire into particular questions or hypotheses if we did not think that we could reach a true and accurate conclusion. God is the only existing thing with infinite formal reality. Substances all have finite formal reality. Finally, modes have modal formal reality. An idea, insofar as it is considered as an occurent piece of thought, has modal formal reality since any particular thought, as we will see later, is just a mode of mind.

Ideas, however, also have another kind of reality, unique to them. When considered in their relation to the objects they represent, ideas can be said to have objective reality.

There are three grades of objective reality, precisely mirroring the three grades of formal reality. The amount of objective reality contained in an idea is determined solely on the basis of the amount of formal reality contained in the object represented by the idea. Descartes begins the argument by making the controversial claim that we all have an idea of God as an infinite being. He believes that we cannot fail to have this idea because he thinks it is innate. Similarly, his parents, who are also imperfect beings, could not be the cause of his existence since they could not have created the idea of perfection within him.

That leaves only a perfect being, God, that would have had to exist to create and be constantly recreating him. Essentially, Descartes' proofs rely on the belief that by existing, and being born an imperfect being but with a soul or spirit , one must, therefore, accept that something of more formal reality than ourselves must have created us. Basically, because we exist and are able to think ideas, something must have created us.

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