Meditation, Ontology, And Descartes: The Mind-Body Connection

René Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God is found in his Fifth Meditation. It is a deductive philosophical argument that attempts to prove the existence of God from the idea of a supremely perfect being. The argument is structured as follows:

Premise 1: We all have the innate idea of God as a supremely perfect being.

Premise 2: Necessary existence is a perfection. If something necessarily exists, it is impossible for it not to exist.

Premise 3: If God has all perfections, then God has the perfection of necessary existence.

Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

Descartes' argument hinges on the idea that existence is a perfection, and that a supremely perfect being must have all perfections, including necessary existence. This argument has been influential but also controversial, with critics pointing out its similarities to arguments for polytheism or atheism, and its reliance on the questionable assumption that existence is a predicate or property.

The Simplicity of the Argument

The ontological argument is one of the most fascinating and poorly understood aspects of Descartes' philosophy. It is fascinating because it attempts to prove God's existence from simple but powerful premises. The simplicity of the argument has, ironically, also produced several misreadings, partly due to Descartes' tendency to formulate it in different ways.

The main statement of the argument appears in the Fifth Meditation, following an earlier causal argument for God's existence in the Third Meditation. Descartes also repeats the ontological argument in other central texts, including the Principles of Philosophy, and defends it in the First, Second, and Fifth Replies against objections by leading intellectuals of his day.

Descartes' version of the argument differs from earlier versions, such as that proposed by St. Anselm in the 11th century. While Anselm's argument proceeds from the meaning of the word "God," Descartes' argument is grounded in two central tenets of his philosophy: the theory of innate ideas and the doctrine of clear and distinct perception. Descartes purports to rely not on an arbitrary definition of God but on an innate idea whose content is "given."

The simplicity of Descartes' argument is evident in his comparison of the ontological argument to a geometric demonstration. He argues that necessary existence cannot be excluded from the idea of God, just as the fact that its angles equal two right angles cannot be excluded from the idea of a triangle. This analogy underscores the argument's simplicity, suggesting that God's existence is as obvious and self-evident as basic mathematical truths.

Descartes also characterizes the ontological argument as a proof from the "essence" or "nature" of God, arguing that necessary existence is inherent in the essence of a supremely perfect being. He relies on the traditional medieval distinction between a thing's essence and its existence, which allows one to determine what something is independently of knowing whether it exists. This distinction is useful to Descartes because it enables him to specify God's essence without begging the question of his existence.

The hallmark of Descartes' version of the ontological argument is its simplicity. It reads more like the report of an intuition than a formal proof. Descartes underscores this simplicity by comparing it to how we ordinarily establish basic truths in arithmetic and geometry. We intuit such truths directly by inspecting our clear and distinct ideas. Similarly, we can attain knowledge of God's existence by apprehending that necessary existence is included in the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being.

Although Descartes maintains that God's existence is ultimately known through intuition, he also presents formal versions of the ontological argument to cater to his 17th-century audience, who were steeped in scholastic logic. These formal arguments, however, are brief and serve as heuristic devices to be jettisoned once one has attained the requisite intuition of a supremely perfect being.

Despite the simplicity of the ontological argument, it has been subject to various objections and criticisms. Some critics have argued that the argument makes an illicit leap from the mental world of concepts to the real world of things, while others have questioned the coherence of the concept of a "maximally great being." Nevertheless, Descartes' version of the argument, grounded in his philosophical system, proves to be resilient and continues to be a subject of debate and interpretation.

The Distinction between Essence and Existence

Aquinas, like many scholastic philosophers, believed that God is perfectly simple, and that created beings, by contrast, are composite. While earthly creatures are composites of matter and form, purely spiritual beings are immaterial. Thus, Aquinas located their composite character in the distinction between essence and existence.

The exact nature of the relationship between essence and existence in finite things was the subject of fierce debate among medieval philosophers, producing three main positions: the theory of real distinction, the theory of rational distinction, and an intermediate position.

Descartes, like Francisco Suárez, his most immediate scholastic predecessor, sides with the proponents of a rational distinction between essence and existence. According to this view, essence and existence are identical in reality and are only distinguished within our thought or reason.

Descartes extends the theory of rational distinction from created substances to God. In general, the essence and existence of a substance are merely rationally distinct, and hence identical in reality.

This view, however, seems to undermine Descartes' ontological argument. If essence and existence are identical in all things, how can we produce an ontological argument for God but not for finite substances?

The difference, Descartes argues, lies in the grade of existence. While the concept of an independent being entails that such a being exists, the concept of a finite thing only entails that it has dependent existence.

In other words, God is merely rationally distinct from His necessary existence, while every finite created thing is merely rationally distinct from its possible or contingent existence.

Thus, Descartes' ontological argument hinges on the distinction between possible or contingent existence and necessary existence.

Objections and Replies

The first objection to Descartes' ontological argument is that it is question-begging. This is the claim that the conclusion is already included in the premises. Arthur Schopenhauer compared the argument to a magic trick and dismissed it as a joke. However, this objection is not entirely valid. Descartes' first version of the argument is not really an argument but an expression of what he regards as a self-evident truth.

The second objection, raised by Immanuel Kant, is that existence is not a predicate. According to Kant, the ontological argument treats existence as a predicate by construing the statement "God exists" as "God has the property of being existent". But existence is not a predicate or a property. It is a concept corresponding to something in the world. Therefore, the ontological argument fails.

In response to this, it has been argued that existence can be thought of as a unique property. A modern advocate of this view is Alvin Plantinga, who forcefully argued that Kant's objection does not conflict with anything in Anselm's argument. For Anselm, existence is not a property that is contingently added to God.

Another objection is that Descartes' ontological argument is based on a confusion. Any argument for the existence of God based on the proposition that a God that exists in reality is greater than a God that exists only in the imagination is flawed. If you do not have a triangle, you have neither its three angles nor its three sides. Similarly, you don't have to accept that there is a God.

The Ontological Argument as a Proof from the Essence or Nature of God

The Ontological Argument is a deductive philosophical argument that attempts to prove the existence of God. It is considered one of the most intriguing arguments ever devised. The argument is a priori, meaning it attempts to prove the existence of God without considering the existence of the physical universe. Instead, it focuses solely on the idea of God.

The Ontological Argument was first proposed by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work, Proslogion. Anselm defined God as "a being than which no greater can be conceived" and argued that such a being must exist in reality, as well as in the mind. He suggested that if the greatest possible being only existed in the mind, then a greater being—one who exists in both mind and reality—must also be possible.

René Descartes, a 17th-century French philosopher, developed a similar argument to Anselm's. Descartes published several variations of his argument, all of which centre on the idea that God's existence can be immediately inferred from a "clear and distinct" idea of a supremely perfect being.

Descartes' ontological argument can be summarised as follows:

• If there is a God, it is a perfect being.
• A perfect being possesses all possible perfections.
• Existence is a perfection.
• Therefore, God necessarily possesses the quality of existence.

Descartes' argument is considered a proof from the essence or nature of God. He compares it to a geometric demonstration, arguing that necessary existence cannot be separated from the essence of a supremely perfect being without contradiction.

However, Descartes' ontological argument has been subject to various objections and criticisms. One objection relates to the question of whether God's essence implies his existence. Critics argue that existence is not a predicate or a perfection and, therefore, including it in the definition of God does not prove God's existence.

Another criticism is that Descartes' argument relies on the theological assumption that God is a perfect being, which may not be universally accepted.

The Ontological Argument as a Geometric Demonstration

In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes compares the ontological argument to a geometric demonstration, arguing that necessary existence cannot be excluded from the idea of God. In other words, the existence of God is as obvious and self-evident as the most basic mathematical truth.

Descartes' ontological argument is based on two central tenets of his philosophy: the theory of innate ideas and the doctrine of clear and distinct perception. He purports not to rely on an arbitrary definition of God but, instead, on an innate idea whose content is "given".

Descartes' argument is as follows:

> Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.

> I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence is contained in the idea of God.

> Therefore, God exists.

Here, the first premise is designed to instruct the meditator on how to apply Descartes' alternative method of "demonstration" via clear and distinct perception or intuition.

Descartes compares this to the way we ordinarily establish very basic truths in arithmetic and geometry, such as that the number two is even or that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles. We intuit such truths directly by inspecting our clear and distinct ideas of the number two and of a triangle.

Descartes' argument is that we are able to attain knowledge of God's existence simply by apprehending that necessary existence is included in the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being.

Descartes' contemporaries would have been surprised by this claim. While reviewing an earlier version of the ontological argument, Aquinas had rejected the claim that God's existence is self-evident, at least with respect to humans. Aquinas argued that what is self-evident cannot be denied without contradiction, but God's existence can be denied.

Descartes responds to this criticism by interpreting Aquinas to be claiming that God's existence is not self-evident to everyone, which Descartes agrees with. He does not hold that God's existence is immediately self-evident, or self-evident to everyone, but that it can become self-evident to some careful and industrious meditators.

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