Descartes’s proof of God by means of the concept of ‘objective reality’ 92
Here I am forced to linger a little, lest I become exhausted. For my mind is seething like the turbulent straits of Euripus.* I accept, I deny, I approve, I refute again, I do not wish to disagree with him, I cannot agree. For I ask what cause does an idea require? Or tell me what an idea is. It is the thing itself that is thought, insofar as it exists objectively in the intellect.* But what does it mean, to ‘exist objectively in the intellect’? As I was taught, it means determining the act of the intellect in the manner of an object.* But this is purely an extrinsic denomination,* and no part of the thing.* For just as for me to be seen is nothing other than an act of vision’s being directed at me, so for a thing’s to be thought, or to exist objectively in the intellect means that it determines and arrests the mind’s thought in itself. This can happen without any movement and change in the thing, indeed even if the thing does not exist. Why therefore should I seek a cause for something that does not exist in actuality, which is a bare denomination, a nothing?
And yet, this great mind asserts, the fact that this idea contains one objective reality rather than another—this must certainly be due to some cause (p. 30). But it has no cause at all. For objective reality is a pure denomination, it has no existence in actuality. A cause, however, exerts a
real and actual influence; but what does not exist in actuality cannot
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receive anything, and therefore it cannot even receive an actual causal influence, let alone require it. Therefore, I have ideas, but I do not have a cause for my ideas, let alone one greater than myself and infinite.
‘But if you will not concede a cause for ideas, at least give some reason why this idea contains this objective reality rather than that one.’ Very willingly: for I am not in the habit of acting meanly with my friends, but I deal with them as generously as possible. I say in general, as applicable to all ideas, what M. Descartes says of the triangle: Even if perhaps such a figure does not exist, and has never existed, anywhere at all outside my thought, it nonetheless has a certain determinate nature, or essence, or form, that is immutable and eternal (p. 46). For a truth is eternal that does not require a cause, e.g. that a boat is a boat, and not something else; that Davus is Davus and not Oedipus. But if you insist on demanding a reason, it is the imperfection of our understanding, which is not infinite. For since it cannot encompass the universal good, which exists all at the same time and once and for all, in a single act of understanding, it divides it all up into parts. And thus what it cannot realize as a whole, it conceives bit by bit, or, as they say, inadequately.
But the great man goes on to say: However imperfect the kind of being by which a thing exists objectively in the understanding in the form of an idea, it is certainly not nothing, and therefore cannot come from nothing (p. 30). There is an ambiguity here. For if ‘nothing’ means the same as not existing in actuality, this ‘kind of being’ is certainly nothing, because it does not exist in actuality, and therefore it comes from
nothing, that is, it comes from no cause. But if ‘nothing’ means ‘something
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imagined’, what is commonly called an ‘ens rationis’,* that is not nothing, but something real that is distinctly conceived. And yet because it is simply conceived and does not exist in actuality, it can indeed be conceived, but cannot possibly be caused.
Caterus goes on to suggest that when Descartes argues that he could not exist, unless God existed, he is putting forward the same argument, based on efficient causality, as Aquinas’s ‘second way’ of proving the existence of God, an argument ultimately derived from Aristotle.
He then criticizes Descartes’s argument that if he existed of himself, he would have given himself all the perfections of which he has the idea in himself, and would therefore in effect be God (p. 34). This depends on the ambiguous phrase ‘to exist of oneself’, which can mean ‘to exist of oneself as if in virtue of a cause’ or simply ‘not to exist on account of anything else’. But it is impossible for something to be the cause of itself: and speaking of a thing’s ‘giving itself all perfections’ makes it sound as if an entity could, prior to its existence, foresee what it could be, so as to choose in advance what it is going to be. But if something exists of itself in the sense of ‘not existing on account of anything else’, then it might still have limitations intrinsic to its nature: so that existing of oneself in this sense is no proof of having an infinite nature.
Caterus accepts that everything we clearly and distinctly know is true, and that error is due to judgement and will, but he doubts that we can claim any clear and distinct knowledge of the infinite being, any more than we can clearly picture a chiliogon. He cites St Thomas in support.
Caterus points out that St Thomas had already quoted an argument (derived from St Anselm) identical to Descartes’s, and goes on to cite St Thomas’s reply to this argument: ‘Granted that everyone understands that the word “God” means what has been said, i.e. a being than which nothing greater can be thought, it does not therefore follow that everyone understands that what is signified by the name exists in reality, but only that it exists in the apprehension of the intellect. Nor can it be argued that it exists in reality, unless it is conceded that there exists in reality something than which nothing greater can be thought: but this is not conceded by those who hold that God does not exist’ (Summa theologiæ, Ia, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2). Caterus endorses this objection.
Of the essence of the soul, and of its distinction with the body, I shall say little. For I admit that this great mind has so exhausted me that I can barely do anything more. The distinction between mind and body, if it exists, seems to be being proved from the fact that they can be conceived distinctly and separately. Here I would refer this most learned man to Duns Scotus.* Scotus says that in order for something to be conceived distinctly and separately from something else, what he calls a formal and objective distinction is sufficient. He posits this as a halfway house between real distinction and abstract distinction. This is the kind of distinction he says exists between the divine justice and the divine mercy: for they have, he says, prior to any operation by the intellect, distinct essences [rationes formales], inasmuch as one is not the other; yet it does not follow that the justice can be conceived separately from the mercy, or hence that they can exist separately.
FIRST REPLIES 101
…I wrote The idea is the thing itself that is thought about, in so far as
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it exists objectively in the intellect.* These words the theologian represents himself as understanding* in a completely different sense from that in which I meant them, so that he may give me a fuller opportunity to explain the matter. He says that existing objectively in the intellect means determining the act of the intellect in the manner of an object. But this is purely an extrinsic denomination, and adds nothing to the thing itself. Here I should point out that he is considering the thing itself as existing outside the intellect, from which point of view its objective existence in the intellect is indeed an extrinsic denomination. But I was talking of the idea that does not exist at any time outside the intellect, from which point of view ‘objective existence’ means nothing other than ‘existing in the intellect, in the way that objects normally exist within it’. So, supposing someone asks, for example, how it affects the sun that it exists objectively in my intellect, we can very well answer that it is not at all affected, except that an extrinsic denomination is applied to it, that is, it does indeed determine the operation of the intellect in the manner of an object. But if the question is ‘What is the idea of the sun?’ and the answer is given that it is the thing itself that is being thought of, in so far as it exists objectively in the intellect, no one will think that the idea is the sun itself, in so far as this extrinsic denomination is being applied to it. Nor does ‘to exist objectively in the intellect’ here mean ‘to determine the operation of the intellect, in the manner of an object’. What it means is ‘to exist in the intellect, in the way that its objects normally exist within it’: so that the idea of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect, not indeed formally (as the sun exists in the sky), but
objectively, that is, in the way that objects normally exist within the intellect;
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and this mode of being is far more imperfect than that in which things exist outside the understanding, but, as I have previously written, this does not mean it is nothing.
And when the most learned theologian says that there is an ambiguity in these words, he seems to have been wishing to draw my attention to the misunderstanding I remarked on just now, in case I had missed it. For he says, first of all, that the thing thus existing in the intellect by means of an idea does not exist in actuality, that is, it is not something existing outside the intellect. Which is true. Then he goes on to say that it is not something imagined, or an ‘ens rationis’, but something real that is distinctly conceived: in these words he concedes everything I have affirmed. However, he goes on to add that because it is simply conceived and does not exist in actuality (that is, because it is only an idea, and not a thing existing outside the intellect) it can indeed be conceived, but cannot possibly be caused, that is to say, it does not need a cause for its existing outside the intellect. This I admit, but it certainly needs a cause in order for it to be conceived, and this alone is what we are talking about. For instance, if someone has in their intellect the idea of some machine devised with extraordinary complexity,* we are certainly quite justified in asking what is the cause of this idea. Nor shall we be satisfied if someone says that the idea does not exist outside the intellect, and therefore cannot be caused, but only conceived, because the point at issue here is precisely this: what is the cause of its being conceived? And we shall not be satisfied either by someone’s saying that the intellect itself is the cause of it, that is, inasmuch as the idea is an operation of the intellect. For that is not the point at issue: what we are asking about is the cause of the objective complexity that exists in the idea.
For the fact that this idea of the machine contains one kind of objective
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complexity rather than another must derive from some cause. And objective complexity stands in the same relation to this idea as objective reality to the idea of God. Now we could find different causes for this complexity: for perhaps the cause is a real machine of this kind that the person has already seen, and on which the idea was patterned; or the person possesses in his understanding a profound knowledge of mechanics, or perhaps great subtlety of intelligence, by the help of which he was able to discover the idea even without prior knowledge. And we should note that all the complexity that exists purely objectively in this idea, must necessarily exist in its cause, whatever that may be, whether formally or eminently. And the same applies to the objective reality contained in the idea of God. For in what can this exist in this way, except in a God that really exists? But my perspicacious reader has seen all this very clearly, and therefore admits that we can ask why this idea contains more objective reality than that one. His first answer to this question is this: I say in general, as applicable to all ideas, what M. Descartes says of the triangle: Even if perhaps such a figure does not exist, and has never existed, anywhere at all outside my thought, it nonetheless has a certain determinate nature, or essence, or form, that is immutable and eternal. And this, he says, does not require a cause. But he has seen clearly enough that this will not quite do. For even if the nature of a triangle is immutable and eternal, this does not make it any less legitimate to ask why we have an idea of it in us. Therefore he adds: But if you insist on demanding a reason, it is the imperfection of our understanding. By this answer it seems he meant to show* purely that those who wish to disagree with
me on this point cannot give any plausible answer. For it is certainly
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no more probable that the cause of our having an idea of God in us is the imperfection of our intellect, than that ignorance of the mechanical art is the cause of our imagining some machine of extremely complex ingeniousness rather than another and more imperfect machine. The contrary is patently true: if someone has the idea of a machine in which every conceivable kind of workmanship is displayed, this is a very good reason for thinking that this idea derives from some cause in which every conceivable kind of workmanship actually exists, even though it exists in the idea in purely objective fashion. And by the same token, since we have in ourselves the idea of God, in which all conceivable perfection is contained, it follows beyond question that this idea depends on some cause in which all this perfection also exists, namely in God himself, who actually exists. For surely no greater difficulty would appear in one case than in the other if, just as not everyone is skilled in mechanics, and therefore not everyone can have ideas of machines of very complex workmanship, similarly not everyone has the same faculty of conceiving the idea of God; but because it is imprinted in the same way on all of our minds, and we are never aware of it as coming to us from somewhere other than ourselves, we suppose it belongs to the nature of our intellect. And this in itself is not wrong, but we overlook something else of great importance, on which the whole force and clarity of the argument depends, namely that this faculty of having the idea of God within ourselves could not exist in our intellect, if this intellect were only a finite
being, as indeed it is, and did not have God to cause it. Therefore
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I pursued the investigation by asking whether I could exist, if God did not exist, not so much to put forward a different argument from the preceding one, as to explain one and the same argument more fully.
Descartes goes on to explain how his causal argument differs from that of St Thomas. He does not base his argument on causal relations between sensible things, both because he thinks that God’s existence is much more evident than that of any sensible things, and because he sees that his inability to conceive an infinite succession of causes unfolding from all eternity, without a first cause, does not necessarily prove that there is in fact a first cause, only that his finite intellect cannot embrace infinity. Therefore, he concentrates on the fact of his existence in the present, of which he is in any case most certain, thus eliminating the aspect of temporal succession.
Moreover, I did not investigate what is the cause of myself, in so far
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as I consist of mind and body, but only in so far as I am a thinking thing. I think this is far from insignificant: for in this way I was far better able to rid myself of prejudice, to concentrate on the natural light, to question myself, and to assert for certain that there can be nothing in me of which I am in no way aware* [conscius]. […]
Besides, I did not ask only what is the cause of myself, in so far as I am a thinking thing, but especially and above all, in so far as I am aware within myself, among other thoughts, of the idea of a supremely perfect being. For on this one thing the whole force of my demonstration depends: first, because this idea contains what God is, at least, to the extent that he can be understood by me; and, according to the rules of true logic, before we ask of anything whether it
exists we must first understand what it is;* secondly, because it is this
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very idea that gives me an opportunity to investigate whether I exist of myself or by another and to acknowledge my own deficiencies; and finally, it is this idea that teaches me that not only there is some cause of my existence, but besides that in that cause all perfections are contained, and therefore that it is God.*
[108–12] Descartes’s analysis of the sense in which a being may be said to be cause of itself is taken up again in the Fourth Replies, with reference back to the present discussion: hence it is omitted here.
Descartes holds that although we cannot comprehend the infinite, we can understand it, in the sense that if we clearly and distinctly understand that a thing is such that no limits can be found within it, we clearly understand that it is infinite. He distinguishes infinity, the absence of all limits, which pertains only to God, from indefiniteness, the absence of limits from a certain point of view: thus space, extending without limit, is indefinite, but not infinite, because its absence of limits applies only to its limited range of attributes. We must distinguish between infinity as a concept and an infinite thing. We grasp the concept only negatively, that is, as the absence of limits: but we understand the thing positively, although not adequately: that is, we do not understand everything in it that is understandable. We cannot fully comprehend God, but we can have a clear and distinct knowledge of his perfections.
Descartes argues that he agrees with St Thomas that the knowledge of God is not so plain as to make proof unnecessary. He accepts St Thomas’s refutation of St Anselm’s proof of God (that, if ‘God’ means a being than which no greater can be thought, and if it is greater to exist in reality than only in the intellect, then God must exist in reality). But he contends that his own argument is quite different: it runs as follows:
Whatever we clearly and distinctly understand to belong to the true
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and immutable nature, or essence, or form, of some thing, can be
truly asserted of that thing; but after we have carefully examined
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what God is, we clearly and distinctly understand that it belongs to his true and immutable nature to exist; therefore we can truly assert of God, that he exists. Here the conclusion at least is clearly valid. But nor can we deny the major premise, because it has been granted already that all we clearly and distinctly understand is true. This leaves only the minor, and here I admit that there is a significant difficulty. First, we are so accustomed in the case of all other things to distinguish existence from essence that we do not sufficiently realize how existence belongs to the essence of God as distinct from other things; secondly, because we fail to distinguish between what belongs to the true and immutable essence of some thing and what is merely attributed to it by a fiction of our intellect, and therefore, even if we are quite aware that existence belongs to God’s essence, we fail to conclude that God exists, because we do not know whether his essence is immutable and true or merely a fiction created by ourselves.
But, to remove the first part of this difficulty, we have to distinguish between possible and necessary existence,* and to note that possible existence is contained in the concept or idea of all things that are clearly and distinctly understood, but that necessary existence is contained only in the idea of God. For I have no doubt that those who pay careful attention to the difference between the idea of God
and all other ideas will perceive that, even if we never understand
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other things except as if they existed, it does not follow that they do exist, only that they can exist. This is because we do not understand it to be necessary that actual existence should be conjoined with their other properties. But from the fact that we understand actual existence necessarily and always to be conjoined with the rest of God’s attributes, it follows beyond doubt that God exists.
Next, to remove the second part of this difficulty, we need to realize that those ideas that contain not true and immutable natures, but only fictitious natures put together by the intellect, can be broken down by this same intellect not only by abstraction, but by a clear and distinct operation—so much so, that whatever cannot be thus broken down by the intellect must certainly not have been put together by it. For example, when I think of a winged horse or a lion actually existing, or a triangle inscribed in a square, I readily understand that I can on the contrary think of a horse without wings, or a non-existent lion, or a triangle without a square, and so forth: I understand, therefore, that such things do not possess true and immutable natures. But if I think of a triangle or a square (I shall say nothing here of the lion or the horse, because their natures are not entirely known to us), then, certainly, whatever I grasp as being contained in the idea of the triangle (for instance, that the sum of its three angles equals two right angles) I shall affirm of the triangle, and with truth; and whatever I find in the idea of the square, I shall affirm of the square. For even if I can understand a triangle, in abstraction from the fact that the sum of its three angles equals two right angles, I cannot deny
this of it, by means of a clear and distinct operation, that is, I cannot
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do so if I properly understand what I am saying. […]
If I consider existence as being contained in the idea of a supremely perfect body, because it is a greater perfection to exist both in reality and in the intellect than in the intellect alone, I cannot therefore conclude that this supremely perfect body exists, only that it can exist; for I clearly realize that this idea was put together by my own intellect combining all bodily perfections; and that existence does not result from the other bodily perfections, because we can equally well say that they exist or that they do not. And indeed, because, examining the idea of body, I can perceive within it no power of producing or conserving itself, I rightly conclude that necessary existence (which alone is in question here) does not belong to the nature of a body, however perfect, any more than it belongs to the nature of a mountain that it does not have a valley, or to the idea of a triangle that the sum of its angles is greater than two right angles. But now, if we enquire, not of a body, but of a thing, whatever it may be, that
has all perfections that can simultaneously coexist, whether existence
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should be counted among these, we shall at first sight be uncertain: because, since our mind, which is finite, is unused to considering these perfections except in isolation, it perhaps does not immediately realize how necessarily they are interrelated. However, if we carefully examine whether existence belongs to a supremely powerful being, and, if so, what type of existence, we shall clearly and distinctly perceive, first of all, that possible existence at least belongs to it, as it does to all other things of which there is a distinct idea in ourselves, and even those put together by a fiction of our intellect. Then, because we cannot think that its existence is possible, without immediately recognizing, when we consider its immense power,* that it can exist in virtue of that, we shall therefore conclude that it does exist in reality, and has existed from all eternity. For it is very obvious to the natural light that what can exist by its own power has always existed. And thus we shall understand that necessary existence is contained in the idea of the supremely powerful being, not in virtue of any fiction of the intellect, but because it belongs to the true and immutable nature of such a being to exist. And we shall also readily perceive that this supremely powerful being cannot not possess in itself all the other perfections contained in the idea of God, so that, without any fiction of the intellect being involved, and in virtue of their own nature, they are simultaneously combined together, and exist in God.
All this is clearly obvious to anyone who will consider it attentively.
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Nor does it differ from what I had written previously, except in the form in which I have explained it, which I have deliberately modified in order to cater for the diversity of people’s minds. Nor shall I deny here that this argument is such that those who do not bear in mind everything that contributes to the proof of it, will readily take it for a sophism. Therefore at the outset I was quite doubtful whether to use it, for fear of giving occasion to those who failed to grasp it to disagree with other proofs. But because there are only two ways of proving the existence of God,* one, that is, by arguing from his effects, and the other by considering his very essence or nature, I explained the first of these, to the best of my ability, but I thought I should not fail to include the other at a later stage.
As for the formal distinction, which our most learned theologian finds in Scotus, I shall say here briefly that it does not differ from the modal distinction,* and applies only to incomplete entities, which I have carefully distinguished from complete ones. For the formal distinction to apply, it is sufficient that one thing can be conceived as distinct and separate from the other by an act of abstraction on the part of the intellect, but not as distinct and separate in the sense that we understand each of them individually as a being by itself and distinct from every other being: for that to be the case, there has to be a real distinction between them. Thus, for example, between the motion and the shape of one and the same body, there is a formal distinction, and I can perfectly well understand the motion without the shape, and the shape without the motion, and both of them in abstraction from the body: but I cannot, however, completely understand motion apart from the thing in which it takes place, nor shape
without a thing in which the shape exists; nor, finally, can I imagine
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that motion exists in a thing that can exist without shape, or that shape exists in a thing incapable of motion. And in the same way, I cannot understand justice apart from one who is just, or mercy apart from one who is merciful; nor can we imagine that one and the same person, who is just, cannot be merciful. But I have a complete understanding of what body is, by thinking of it purely as having extension, shape, motion, and so forth, and by denying that it has any of the properties that belong to the nature of mind. And on the other hand, I understand the mind to be a complete thing, which doubts, understands, wills, and so forth, although I deny that there is anything in it that is contained in the idea of body. And this could not possibly be the case, if there were not a real distinction between the mind and the body.