Descartes on the Fourth Meditation [4]

5. At the start of the Fourth Meditation Descartes makes the assumption that a perfect being would not create being that err. But he is not entitled to that assumption. Why not? Why then might he be making it?

By using the argument from objective reality, Descartes reaches the conclusion that God exists and that God is omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, immutable, and in a nutshell – supremely perfect. To be sure, a supremely perfect being would not create other supremely perfect beings – there cannot be two beings that are omnipotent, for example – but it would create beings that are as perfect as possible. A supremely perfect being would not make beings that are flawed, but we are flawed.

We are flawed, and hence there is not a supremely perfect entity that is the creator of all things, and so God does not exist. Or at least that is what Descartes is expecting that a reader will conclude from the first-person point-of-view at the start of the Fourth Meditation. 

In the Fourth Meditation Descartes will need to argue that that thought is misguided. To do that, he will need to appeal the concept of supreme perfection, the concepts of affirmation and will, the concept of freedom, and the concept of intellect. He has not yet examined these concepts in the Meditations, which is to say that they are unexamined.

In addition, he is writing to a variety of minds, and so some might have different conceptions of freedom, etc. Descartes will give a response to the objection that a supremely perfect entity would not create beings that err, and in giving that response he will have to make use of argumentative resources that have not yet been vetted.

Later on – outside of the Meditations – he will more fully analyze the concepts of freedom, perfection, will and intellect, and his resolution of the problem of error will be more rigorous. In the Fourth Meditation he will say things that are accurate but incomplete – for example that freedom is an ability to affirm and not affirm, or that it is affirmation in the absence of external influence; and that to entertain an idea is not always to affirm it. In the light of the analytic method that he is implementing, he is not yet able to tell the whole story, and what he does say had better reflect the epistemic position of his audience.

First Descartes concludes that deception is undoubtedly evidence of malice or weakness – and so is bad – and hence that a supremely perfect entity would not create beings that err. But in the final analysis (and outside of the Meditations) Descartes subscribes to the view that there is no independent standard of goodness that dictates the behavior of God. In the Fourth Meditation he is not entitled to the view that it is an independent fact that it would be bad for God to create us in a way that leads us to err. He does not establish the view at the start of the Fourth Meditation, and in the final analysis he takes it to be false.

1. A perfect being would not create being that err
2. God is a perfect being
3. God would not create being that err.
4. We, as creatures, are being that err.
5. Therefore, God does not exist.

Deception is evidence of weakness and bad-it is an indicator of imperfection. However, there is no independent standard of goodness that dictates the behavior of God. Therefore, we cannot say God does anything wrong even if he creates being that err. For the standard of goodness and badness depends entirely on God. If this analysis is true, then Descartes is not entitled to the view that it is an independent fact that it would be bad for God to create us in a way that leads us to err.

In the end Descartes holds that there is no standard of goodness that exists independent of God, but that whatever God is and does is good. So he can say that there is such a thing as perfection – namely, whatever God is and does. God is immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, and so immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, and eternality constitute perfection, and whatever God wills in the light of that perfection is good also.

Descartes is accordingly in a funny position in the Fourth Meditation. He can say that a supremely perfect being would be expected to act perfectly and to create things that are as perfect as possible. But what he has in mind when he thinks that thought is different from what his reader would have in mind. For example, Descartes would have in mind that (because perfection includes omniscience) a perfect being would make creatures that have ideas that map onto reality – but just a finite number of such ideas. His reader would have in mind that because error is bad, a supremely perfect being would not make creatures that err. So Descartes is not necessarily making false claims in the Fourth Meditation. In many cases he is advancing claims that he takes to be true and that he will derive later – but claims that are sufficiently open to interpretation that they would likely be affirmed by a variety of minds.

Several attempts to explain why we are created as being that err

① Finite Minds

Now we return to the Fourth Meditation itself. Descartes first notes that if God creates things, they will be somewhere between God and nothingness on the scale of being. They will be more than nothingness – insofar as they have some reality – but they will not be supremely perfect because there cannot be more than one supremely perfect being. So perhaps that is why we err – we have to be something less than supremely perfect, and beings that are less than supremely perfect would sometimes err.

“But this is still not entirely satisfactory” (38). Creatures would have to be somewhere between supreme perfection and nothingness, but there is no reason why creatures would thereby have to err. We might have been made such that we are finite – and so we know only a finite number of things – but the ideas that we do have map onto reality exactly, and we never think or affirm anything that is not true.

② Divine incomprehensibility

How does it make sense that a supremely perfect being would have made creatures that err? One thought is that perhaps we are flawed and that a supremely perfect being made us to be flawed, and we just don’t understand why a supremely perfect being would do that. God of course understands, but we are finite. This is basically an appeal to divine incomprehensibility. The result that God exists is utterly evident – if the argumentation of the Third Meditation is correct – and so we understand that God exists and is supremely perfect. But there are things that we do not understand – like how a supremely perfect being would create beings that err. So like anything else that we do not understand, we just chalk that up to our finitude.

But hopefully there is more that we can say to make sense of how a supremely perfect being could create beings that err. An appeal to divine incomprehensibility is in a way an act of desperation. There might be a whole lot of objections to Descartes’ philosophical system, and he would not want to reply in every case: yes the objections are devastating, but somehow God sees how it all makes sense. Pretty soon we might conclude instead that if the objections are devastating we ought just to reject Descartes’s system, including his view that there is a supremely perfect being.

③ Entire picture

So another thought is that perhaps we are mistaken in thinking that we are flawed. We sure seem to be flawed, but sometimes a thing can seem to be flawed when it is considered in isolation, and in the larger scheme of things it is not flawed. An example might be a corner of a painting that is kind of messy, but the whole painting itself is the Mona Lisa. 

 

6. In the Fourth Meditation Descartes says that finite minds have two faculties-will and intellect. What are these? He says that neither is broken or defective on its own, but that error occurs when both of the faculties operate together. How might a libertarian free will defense help Descartes to account for error in a universe that is created by a perfect God? How might error fit into the universe even if there is no libertarian free will?

④ Our faculties

Descartes offers one final route to the conclusion that it is consistent with the supreme perfection of God to create beings that err. He says that we do not err just by entertaining ideas – for example of a horse with a horn – but error always involves an affirmation (for example that there exist unicorns).

(1) So one of our cognitive faculties is our intellect – which just considers or entertains ideas.

(2) Another is our will – which makes affirmations of ideas.

As we would expect, our intellect is not supremely perfect. It does not have ideas of all things, which is in part to say that it is not infinite. It just has the ideas that it does. If it had more ideas, it would be further away from nothingness on the scale of being – and further in the direction of supreme perfection – but it would still be finite no matter where God draws the line.

Nor is our will supremely perfect, but it is pretty impressive. It seems even further in the direction of supreme perfection than our intellect. Both of these faculties are pretty great.

However, it turns out that when both faculties exist in the same creature, error occurs: we sometimes have a confused idea, and our will affirms it, but there is nothing defective about each of the faculties on its own. God created us with two faculties that are pretty great on their own (but that could have been better). Perhaps there are beings that are more perfect than us and that have better versions of will and intellect; we don’t know. [But Descartes will say outside of the Meditations that an omnipotent being would have created an infinity of creatures and that we are not at the top of the hierarchy.] Our two faculties result in error even though each is pretty great on its own. There is a reason why God would have combined the two faculties in us, even if we do not know it.

Perhaps we have libertarian freedom – and freedom is a two-way power to affirm or deny. If that kind of freedom is closer to the supreme perfection of God, then it makes sense that we would have it, but with a will that is able to affirm or deny in any situation, we will sometimes affirm things that are false.

Or perhaps freedom is not a libertarian two-way power, but is just independence from external constraints. If so, we sometimes err as a result of affirming ideas that the intellect has but that do not correspond to reality.

 

7. Outside of the Meditations, what does Descartes take perfection to be if he holds that God wills all of reality immutably and for eternity? Can Descartes make a distinction between good and bad at all? 

Note that if Descartes does hold in the end that perfection is just what God is – immutable, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent – there is a sense in which he has a response to the historical Euthyphro Problem. Goodness is not independent from God, but just is God. Still, it will be hard to see how Descartes can derive any kind of serious morality from divine perfection. If the exemplar of goodness is omniscience, omnipotence, immutability, and eternality, then to be moral for a human being is to strive toward increased knowledge, power, immutability, and eternality. Should we help our suffering neighbor? Or, should we just try to understand the person’s situation, and develop the power to be stoic in response to their pain? 

Note finally that outside of the Meditations there are passages in which Descartes is clear that God wills everything immutably for eternity and that whatever God wills is good – including struggle and disease and death. If that is right, then error is perfectly fine also, and the Fourth Meditation discussion was just tentative.

 

8. Outside of the Meditations, what does Descartes take the freedom of finite minds to be if he holds that God wills all of reality immutably and for eternity? Can Descartes allow that decisions and other mental state are uncaused?

But there is also a passage outside of the Meditations in which Descartes seems to say that human beings have libertarian freedom. If so, then his solution to the problem of error is that libertarian freedom is a good feature to have and that it is the reason why we err. Perhaps Descartes is getting nervous about holding that everything that happens is good, and so he posits libertarian freedom to account for error and other presumptively bad things. But another conclusion is that Descartes is not just sure what to say about good and bad. He is on record as saying that philosophy is extremely difficult and that we can only hold abstract concepts before our mind for a few moments, and so perhaps he hits a brick wall in some instances and is not sure what to say. We might empathize with him in that case and see him as exploring a given philosophical option and then getting nervous, and then exploring a different option and also getting nervous, and then leaving it at that.

we will return to Descartes’ worry that if God is infinite then God swallows up all of reality – and hence creatures are not distinct from God, but are part of God. That has got to be right, part of Descartes is thinking – but also it can’t be right. If the mind of God swallows up all mentality, then our minds are regions of God’s mind, and because our minds are united to bodies, the infinite mind of God is united to a body – and to an infinite body. So God is an infinite mind with an infinite body, and our minds (and bodies) are just regions of God. Our affirmations are never false, but are just incomplete subsets of the ideas in the mind of God. Descartes does not want to say that, but it’s hard to see how he can avoid it. For week nine we will focus on Descartes view on the relation between mind and body, and his view of thinking as always conscious and highly reflective.