Descartes’ Proofs of God’s Existence: Innate Ideas & Causality
Item 2: Demonstration of the Existence of God
In philosophy before Descartes, the existence of God could be demonstrated based on certain “facts of the world.” For Descartes, it must come from your consciousness. Images are for Descartes, whose way of thinking is through immediate perception, becoming conscious of that thought. They are characterized by forms of thought; ideas determine thought to become thought of this and nothing else, to be automatically picked up, and by having a representative value. Previous philosophy was a means by which we think things; thought things did not accrue enough. Descartes classified ideas according to their origin. Images can be of three types:
- Adventitious ideas: Seem to come from external experience of the realities that are within me.
- Factitious ideas: Are those constituted from other ideas.
- Innate ideas: Are those that come from my own nature.
There is an idea whose objective reality is far beyond the formal reality contained in me: the idea of God. Descartes emphasizes infinity and concludes that it is impossible for me to be the cause of that idea. I am a thinking substance; however, this cannot be applied in the case of an infinite substance, and being myself finite, the idea of infinite substance I have received from an infinite substance. Therefore, God exists. This test appears in the Discourse on Method and can be summarized in the following way: I am not perfect because I doubt. I think of something more perfect than myself; thoughts or ideas of external things will not be more perfect than I can be caused by me or anything. The idea of being perfect cannot proceed from nothing, nor of myself, because something cannot come from nowhere as perfect or less perfect. The idea of a perfect being must have been put in my nature by one more perfect than I, and having all the perfections of which I have no idea: God. This test is based on the principle of causality. We show the existence of God as the cause of an innate idea in me, the idea of infinite and perfect.
Descartes’ Second Proof: God as the Cause of My Existence
Descartes develops another proof that shows God as the cause of my existence. This argument can be summarized in two parts:
- I am not perfect, and I have the idea of a being more perfect.
- I am not the only person there, as if I were independent and only the perfections that exist in my procedure myself, I would also have had all that I need.
This is also a causal argument: proof of the existence of God as the cause of the existence of the self. Recognizing the existence of God, Descartes can destroy the radical reason for doubt, the trickster god or the evil genius. The problem now is how to explain the error, which can be avoided by exercising the will within the limits of understanding, from gambling on what I perceive clearly and distinctly. God supports the application of the criterion of certainty, thus becoming the guarantor of truth in the Cartesian system. He establishes the truth of mathematical propositions that are perceived as clearly and distinctly.
The Ontological Argument for God’s Existence
However, Descartes sets out another argument to prove the existence of God, called the ontological argument. This argument points out:
- The certainty of geometrical demonstrations is based on their evidence, which is clearly and distinctly conceived.
- There is nothing in geometrical demonstrations that assures me of the existence of its object, but I see very clearly that in the life of that object, some specific properties are included.
- In the idea of a perfect being, I see as much or more evidence, clearly and distinctly understood existence as in the ideas of a geometric object.
So it is at least as certain that God exists as any geometric demonstration. The ontological argument appears for the first time in the work of Saint Anselm. Two centuries later, the ontological argument resurfaces in Saint Bonaventure, against those who dare to deny the existence of God, saying its improbability. Descartes needs to prove God as collateral.