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Background
Background
Descartes now believes himself to have demonstrated the existence of his own mind, but this has not shown him that even his own body exists, nevermind anything else in the ‘external world’.
His strategy here is to overcome the problem of the evil demon by demonstrating that God exists. He believes that he can do this by drawing on his intuitions - ideas that he believes are innate.
The ‘Trademark’ argument
The ‘Trademark’ argument
‘the mere fact that I exist and have within me an idea of a most perfect being, that is, God, provides a very clear proof that God indeed exists.’ …‘It is no surprise that God, in creating me, should have placed this idea in me to be, as it were, the mark of the craftsman stamped on his work.’
–Meditation IIIAn interpretation of Descartes’ Trademark argument for the existence of God
An interpretation of Descartes’ Trademark argument for the existence of God
My ideas must be caused by something.
I am an imperfect being.
I have the idea of God, which is that of a perfect being.
The cause of anything must be at least as perfect as its effect.
∴ I cannot be the cause of my idea of God.
∴ Only a perfect being can be the cause of my idea of God.
∴ God must exist.
What we’ve called premise 4 here might seem a slightly bizarre idea to us. Here is what Descartes writes himself:
Descartes on degrees of reality
Descartes on degrees of reality
Undoubtedly, the ideas which represent substances to me amount to something more and, so to speak, contain within themselves more objective reality than the ideas which merely represent modes or accidents. Again, the idea that gives me my understanding of a supreme God…certainly has in it more objective reality than the ideas that represent finite substances. Now it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause. For where, I ask, could the effect get its reality from, if not from the cause? And how could the cause give it to the effect unless it possessed it? It follows from this both that something cannot arise from nothing, and also that what is more perfect—that is, contains in itself more reality—cannot arise from what is less perfect.
–Meditation IIIHe’s taken the idea of degrees of reality from Scholastic Metaphysics. We actually met this idea when we were looking at Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God. Here is what Aquinas said about it:
The fourth proof arises from the degrees that are found in things. For there is found a greater and a less degree of goodness, truth, nobility, and the like. But more or less are terms spoken of various things as they approach in diverse ways toward something that is the greatest, just as in the case of hotter (more hot) that approaches nearer the greatest heat. There exists therefore something that is the truest, best, and most noble, and in consequence, the greatest being. For what are the greatest truths are the greatest beings, as is said in the Metaphysics Bk. II. 2. What moreover is the greatest in its way, in another way is the cause of all things of its own kind (or genus); thus fire, which is the greatest heat, is the cause of all heat, as is said in the same book (cf. Plato and Aristotle). Therefore there exists something that is the cause of the existence of all things and of the goodness and of every perfection whatsoever—and this we call God.
–Aquinas, five ways, Summa TheologicaRoughly speaking, we can interpret this idea in the following way:
To understand any quality, we must have something to compare it to (e.g. a metre ruler) - otherwise we’ve no idea whether our judgement is correct.
That object of comparison is understood as a proportion of the maximum amount of that quality.
It cannot be understood as a proportion of the minimum (which is always 0).
∴ When we are discussing ‘Goodness’, there must also be a maximum.
That maximum we call ‘God’.
Discussion
Discussion
Descartes’ claims that his argument is built solely using intuition and deduction - ideas, the opposite of which is inconceivable. Do you think he has managed that? (We will discuss this objection when we look at Hume’s Fork.)
Tasks
Tasks
Explain Descartes’ trademark argument.
Explain one objection to his argument.
Do you find his argument convincing? Explain your answer.
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