Questions for the Third Meditation

2025-1 Descartes

Midterm Study Guide

 

7. State the premises and conclusion of the Third Meditation argument from objective reality. Make sure to define objective reality and formal reality.

 

In the Third Meditation Descartes puts forward a causal axiom that he is supposing is completely evident and obvious, at least when we are paying attention to it. When he describes the axiom, he sometimes puts it like this: the objective reality of an idea has a cause that has an amount of formal reality that matches the objective reality of the idea. But readers at the time complained that the axiom (so described) is not very clear at all. Later, in response to an objector, Descartes says that the axiom is just the principle that something cannot come from nothing. Perhaps he put it the way that he did in the Third Meditation because a lot of his readers would have been familiar with similar language; maybe he thought that using that language would help to reach his audience. But Descartes clearly misjudged in this case.

Descartes insists that something cannot come from nothing and in particular that the objective reality of an idea does not just poof into existence from nothing. It has a cause. The objective reality of an idea is basically the content of the idea.

Formal reality is different. We might draw a (Cartesian) x-y graph that captures the difference between objective reality and formal reality and that shows that an idea with an infinite amount of objective reality is an entity with an infinite amount of being.

We have ideas with a finite amount of objective reality, but our mind might be the cause of any finite amount of objective reality, and so Descartes looks for a more substantive idea that could not have a finite mind for its cause. After considering his ideas of finite things, “there remains only the idea of God.” He is supposing that everyone has an idea of God – even the atheist and the agnostic. In one passage he notes that if a person does not have an idea of God, the person cannot even have faith that God exists, and so they had better admit that they have the idea. But if they do have it, Descartes is arguing, then it follows that God exists.

 

 

8. Descartes argues that for any X, the idea of an infinite X is an idea of all X, and a finite X is just a region or part of the infinite X. Explain Descartes's thinking using the example of X=body. If Descartes is right, in what sense is "I am, I exist" sufficiently robust to yield that God exists?

Descartes articulates the view that the idea of infinitude is prior to the idea of finitude. [Why is this view so important if the argument for the existence of God is to work?] We looked at some passages outside of the Meditations in which Descartes elaborates on the view. He writes that what it is to think of a finite entity is to have an idea of an infinite entity and then to focus our attention on a finite region of the content of that idea. But if so, he is committed to saying that a finite thing is always just a region of an all-encompassing infinite thing.

We then looked at two texts in which Descartes appears to assert the view that indeed there is only one entity that exists – God – and that everything “else” is just a region of God. Here a tricky interpretive issue arises. Perhaps Descartes indeed subscribes to that view, but he does not play it up in his published writings. Perhaps he accepts the view and is afraid to get into trouble with the Church authorities. Or perhaps he recognizes that he is committed to the view, but he worries that it can’t be right, and he does not know quite what to say about it.

Descartes concludes that an infinite amount of objective reality requires an infinitely powerful cause. He concludes that there exists an infinitely powerful being, and he takes an extra step to argue that an infinitely powerful being would have omniscience and all of the other divine attributes as well.

 

9. Discuss an objection to Descartes' argument from objective reality. How might he best respond to the argument?

 

10. Consider the thesis that there exists only one substance and that all creatures are a part of it. What are the potentially heretical implications of that thesis?

We then looked at two texts in which Descartes appears to assert the view that indeed there is only one entity that exists – God – and that everything “else” is just a region of God. Here a tricky interpretive issue arises. Perhaps Descartes indeed subscribes to that view, but he does not play it up in his published writings. Perhaps he accepts the view and is afraid to get into trouble with the Church authorities. Or perhaps he recognizes that he is committed to the view, but he worries that it can’t be right, and he does not know quite what to say about it.

But the view would be extremely heretical. There are religious traditions in which corporeality is attributed to God. The worry in the case of Descartes is that he would appear to be losing any distinction between God and creatures.

 

11. In the First Meditation, Descartes argues that it is possible for our minds to be deceived about results that seem utterly evident to us. Use the Meditations on Geometry thought experiment to explain how Descartes appeals to the Third Meditation argument from objective reality to dismiss the skeptical argumentation of the First Meditation.

How does First Meditation radical doubt about the reliability of our minds ever go away? In the Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonne, Descartes says that in the Meditations he will be offering arguments for the existence of God that are so evident that it is impossible not to accept them. Perhaps that is an overstatement, but we can see what he has in mind in terms of how and why he will reject the First Meditation radical skeptical arguments. If we were to read a Meditations on Geometry, we might think some clumsy stuff on day 1, like that it is possible that triangles have 190 degrees or that it is possible that the Pythagorean Theorem is false, but then upon reflection (on day 5 or so) we would recognize that it is obvious that triangles have 180 degrees and that the Pythagorean Theorem is a necessary truth, and we would look back at our First Meditation reasoning as preliminary and confused. We would look at the First Meditation argumentation as tentative thinking that happens to help us to converge on much clearer thinking in M2 and M3.

 

12. On one interpretation of the Meditations, Descartes engages in circular reasoning when he argues in the Third Meditation that God exists and did not create us with defective minds. Explain the Cartesian Circle.

An alternative approach is to interpret Descartes as engaging in circular reasoning in the Meditations. He asserts in the First Meditation that it is TRUE that it is possible that our minds are defective, and he means it. Then at the start of the Third Meditation he forgets all of that, and he just assumes that it is true that his mind works well. Then he puts forward the argument for the existence of God, concludes that God is good and would not create him with a defective mind, and then argues that the First Meditation possibility claims are false. But that would be to assume the very thing that he is trying to prove. Many commentators have argued that there is a “Cartesian Circle,” but outside of the Meditations Descartes makes pretty clear that he is proceeding along the lines of the Meditations on Geometry interpretation.

We might argue however that even if there is no Cartesian Circle, there is still something that is lacking in the Third Meditation argument for the existence of God. That is, we might say that it is not as clear or compelling as Descartes insists – and (to reference the analogy again) that it is not as clear as the claim that triangles have 180 degrees or that the Pythagorean Theorem is a necessary truth. We might worry for example that there is a deep implausibility in thinking that we are able to represent infinity. (Cite Hyeongyun.) We will consider some other possible worries on Monday. That would not mean that Descartes has engaged in circular reasoning, but just that his Third Meditation argument is not as perspicuous as he says it is.

Commentators did not take long to raise the objection that Descartes appeared to be arguing in a circle in his attempt to prove the existence of God. We might worry especially about the Fifth Meditation argument, given that it makes reference to the clarity, distinctness, and truth of perceptions about God and other entities, and given that it comes after the Third and Fourth Meditation material that entails that clear and distinct perceptions are true. The heart of the objection is that we cannot know that God exists until we know that we are not deceived about matters that are most evident to us, but that we cannot know that we are not deceived about matters that are most evident to us until we know that God exists. Descartes is not oblivious to the force of the objection; he knows what it is for an argument to be circular: It is of course quite true that we must believe in the existence of God because it is a doctrine of Holy Scripture, and conversely, that we must believe Holy Scripture because it comes from God . . . . But this argu ment cannot be put to unbelievers because they would judge it to be circular. (“Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonne,” AT 7:2)

However, his response to the objection is quick and dismissive. In effect, he just ignores the prospect of hyperbolic doubt and says that “we are sure that God exists because we attend to the arguments which prove this” ( Fourth Replies , AT 7:246). That God exists and is not a deceiver is certainly not a premise in any argument for the existence of God. It cannot be, or else we could never demonstrate that God exists, as Descartes himself appreciates: If we did not know that all truth has its origin in God, then however clear our ideas were, we would not know that they were true, or that we were not mistaken—I mean, of course, when we were not paying atten tion to them, and when we merely remembered that we had clearly and distinctly perceived them. For on other occasions, when we do pay at tention to the truths themselves, even though we may not know that God exists, we cannot be in any doubt about them. Otherwise, we could not prove that God exists. ( Conversation with Burman , AT 5:178)

 

13. Descartes holds that the content of an idea is internal to the idea. An alternative view is that the content of an idea is, for the most part, external to the idea and that the referent of an idea is determined by its cause. What are the advantages of the latter view? What is its main drawback?

It is important to note just how much the Third Meditation argument for the existence of God depends on the view that there exists objective reality and that objective reality is something that is internal to an idea. In the Third Meditation the only argumentative resources that Descartes has at his disposal are (1) the claim that everything has a sufficient cause for being exactly as it is and (2) his thinking and the content of his ideas. So Descartes cannot appeal to anything other than (1) and (2) to argue that God exists. He posits that he has an idea of God that has an infinite amount of content in it, and he argues that if that idea exists, then God exists.

Note that Descartes might be being imprecise if he is appealing to the traditional understanding of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. That principle is often understood as the claim that for anything that exists, there is a sufficient explanation for its being exactly as it is, and that explanation is not necessarily causal. But Descartes is appealing to the more narrow claim that for anything that exists, there is a sufficient cause of its being exactly as it is.

A contemporary objection against Descartes’ view of ideas (from philosophers like Hilary Putnam) is that often the content of an idea is not internal to the idea. If that view is right, then we might indeed have an idea of God, but the idea would not have an amount of objective reality that requires an infinitely powerful being as its cause. Putnam motivates his view (that mental content is not entirely in the head) by providing a thought experiment in which we can compare a Twin Earth to actual Earth. Both planets are the exactly the same except for the fact that Twin Earth has XYZ instead of H2O. When a person on Earth thinks of water, the person has internal to their mind an idea of a blue liquid that quenches thirst and is swimmable, etc. When a person on Twin Earth thinks of water, the person has internal to their mind an idea of a blue liquid that quenches thirst and is swimmable, etc. But the person on Earth is thinking of H2O and the person on Twin Earth is thinking of XYZ. (Or at least that is the intuition of Putnam and many others.) The person is thinking XYZ because XYZ is the cause of the internal content that the person notices in their idea.

If idea can be of X without all of the information about X reflected in the internal content of the idea, then Descartes’ argument for the existence of God is in trouble. He might be right that we have an idea of God, but the infinite content of that idea might not be internal to the idea. Perhaps the idea is of God in part because of some internal content that we notice but also because God is the cause of that internal content.

We might ask of other ideas that we have – how much content is in those ideas? Does our idea of Greenland really have in it information that maps onto Greenland, or is it an idea of Greenland just because it has some internal content about Greenland but also traces back (in some way) to Greenland as its cause. Descartes will say that we probably do not have an idea of Greenland and that we probably do not have many of the ideas that we report ourselves to have. He holds that what it is for an idea to be of X is for it to have internal objective reality that matches what X is like if X actually exists. He does not think that all ideas match with existing things – for example we have ideas of unicorns and such – but he insists that an idea of a unicorn has internal objective reality that matches what a unicorn would be like if it did exist. He also does not suppose that we can always introspect all of the content in an idea; but that content is there if we in fact have the idea.

A worry for an externalist view of content is that there are cases in which we appear to have ideas of external objects that are hallucinated – which is to say, objects that are not there – and so the content of such an idea cannot actually be fixed by the external object itself. (Cite Casey.) There is a whole literature on this and the debate is just a total mess.

14. What is backsliding? Discuss two instances of backsliding that Descartes features in the Meditations.

Note that one term that we will be using as we go is ‘backsliding’. Descartes holds that in some cases we have a long-standing belief that has become entrenched. If we encounter a view that is new to us, and we are presented with an argument that shows that the view is correct, we will accept the view for the moment. That is to say – as long as we are paying attention to the view or to the proof that it is correct, we will affirm it. But if the view conflicts with one of our longstanding beliefs, we will likely backslide and affirm the long-standing belief instead. Descartes anticipates cases of this sort in the Meditations – for example at pp. 15 and 20, also pp. 32-33

But it is not enough merely to have noticed this; I must make an effort to remember it. My habitual opinions keep coming back, and, despite my wishes, they capture my belief, which is as it were bound over to them as a result of long occupation and the law of custom. I shall never get out of the habit of confidently assenting to these opinions, so long as I suppose them to be what in fact they are, namely highly probable opinions — opinions which, despite the fact that they are in a sense doubtful, as has just been shown, it is still much more reasonable to believe than to deny. In view of this, I think it will be a good plan to turn my will in com pletely the opposite direction and deceive myself, by pretending for a time that these former opinions are utterly false and imaginary. I shall do this until the weight of preconceived opinion is counter-balanced and the distorting influence of habit no longer prevents my judgement from perceiving things correctly. In the meantime, I know that no danger or error will result from my plan, and that I cannot possibly go too far in my distrustful attitude. This is because the task now in hand does not involve action but merely the acquisition of knowledge.


I will suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having hands or 23 eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things. I shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my power,2 that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any false hoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree. But this is an arduous undertaking, and a kind of laziness brings me back to normal life. I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom while asleep; as he begins to suspect that he is asleep, he dreads being woken up, and goes along with the pleasant illusion as long as he can. In the same way, I happily slide back into my old opinions and dread being shaken out of them, for fear that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labour when I wake, and that I shall have to toil not in the light, but amid the inextricable darkness of the problems I have now raised. [15]

 

From all this I am beginning to have a rather better understanding of what I am. But it still appears — and I cannot stop thinking this — that the corporeal things of which images are formed in my thought, and which the senses investigate, are known with much more distinctness than this puzzling 'I' which cannot be pictured in the imagination. And yet it is surely surprising that I should have a more distinct grasp of things which I realize are doubtful, unknown and foreign to me, than I have of that which is true and known — my own self. But I see what it is: my mind enjoys wandering off and will not yet submit to being restrained within 3o the bounds of truth. Very well then; just this once let us give it a completely free rein, so that after a while, when it is time to tighten the reins, it may more readily submit to being curbed. [20]

 

If one concentrates carefully, all this is quite evident by the natural light. But when I relax my concentration, and my mental vision is blinded by the images of things perceived by the senses, it is not so easy for me to remember why the idea of a being more perfect than myself must necessarily proceed from some being which is in reality more perfect. I should therefore like to go further and inquire whether I myself, who have this idea, could exist if no such being existed. [32-33]