In the First Meditation, Descartes sets the foundation for his magnum opus by deliberately going about tearing down the mental foundations that were put in place in his youth that he has continually built upon throughout his adulthood. He does this out of a self-perceived fallacy in his very beliefs, by the way in which he doubts his very thoughts and views.
He is mentally introduced to the concept that everything he knows to be true is false, and in turn ponders both the known and unknown in equal measure. In response to this, he goes about putting into written form the Meditations. Doubt is vital to his writing, in that is the great originator and inspiration for the writing itself. This doubt is aptly named the Method of Doubt, of which is split into three separate parts of equal importance. The three parts are connected, cascading into one another by merit of their content.
The first is the Sensory Illusions Doubt, the concept that the very world we see and perceive is not immune from fallacy. This idea is roughly solved by the knowledge that even though our perception may be flawed, it does not in turn mean there is not a world around us to be perceived. This begs the question of whether the world itself is even real in the Dreaming Doubt, in that the waking “real” world is inseparable from the world of dreams we encounter in our sleeping hours.
From this Descartes finds solace in the idea that despite whether the world around him is of reality or his own mental creation, he knows within himself that the mathematical and logical basis of knowledge he possesses from his experiences in life is true regardless of surroundings. However, from this we come to the doubt that is vital to this essay, and perhaps the most fascinating concept of the greater Method of Doubt: The Deceptive God Doubt.
Essentially, the concept of the existence of a Deceptive God throws into question everything we know and believe. Should an almighty creator we deceitful, then the very foundations upon which our greater universe is built could in turn be clouded and flawed. The mathematical concepts upon which the very laws of nature run are prone to error, and should this be the case we cannot put our faith in anything this world has to offer. By way of the concept of the Deceptive God, Descartes goes about breaking apart the greater questions of existence itself in the hope that some indubitable, undeniable facets could be put in stone.
In the Second Meditation, it is ascertained that though everything else we know is up for question, our own existence is undeniable. From this existence of self, it can be determined that the self can think, for the ability to think is the most important and undeniable attribute of our being.
To argue against these facets is a self-defeating act, for to argue against the ability to think is to think ourselves, an act of free will determined by our own human ability to choose. While the nature of the universe is debatable, and the way we view this potentially fundamentally flawed existence is open to error, the ability to view and ponder these greater mysteries is inarguable. In the view of Descartes, we are by all accounts a “thinking thing.”
From this, though all he knows to be fundamentally true is the idea that we exist and can in turn think, he argues that should our greater world exist, then that existence is composed of “bodies” or things that occupy space. While he has yet to argue that the world truly exists, he views it undeniable that should it, everything we know to exist around us are different forms of these bodies, different forms of matter that are extended things that only differentiate from one another in the way in which they take up mass.
The only way in which to determine the existence of the world around us is to put to rest the concept that put the very concept that put it into question to begin with, the idea of an imperfect, deceptive God. To prove that God exists and in turn is not a deceiver, Descartes must start from the fundamental root of what he knows to be true: our own existence. In his view, we each have countless thoughts and ideas that make up the mind, and endless kaleidoscope of paradoxical possibility with nearly no limit in its ambition.
From the ability to think, and in turn have though, central to his argument of the existence of a perfect God is the concept of an Idea of Absolute Perfection. To perceive perfection is to perceive something without flaw, to think of something greater than anything else existence. The idea of perfection is the thought of something unattainable by anything in the known universe, by way of the thought that the known universe is unable to be perfect.
By his view, for this idea to exist in his mind, it cannot exist without reason. Vital to his argument is The Principle of Sufficient Reason, the idea that nothing can exist without cause, or that something cannot come from nothing. This abstract concept is used in his thought process to ascertain that for him to have an idea do absolute perfection, this “greatest of all ideas” must have an origin or cause.
He comes up with four places by which this idea of perfection could originate, in that the idea could come from another idea, that the idea originated within oneself by his own creation, the idea was instilled within us from the institutions or greater world around us, or that the idea came from a Perfect God. Descartes argues that for the idea of perfection could not have come from another idea, for in his view “the perfect cannot come from the less perfect.” He states that as humans, we are prone to human error, for imperfection is the very nature of us as thinking things.
We exist, but the existence of flaw is what makes us exist not as perfect beings, but human. Due to our own imperfection, we are incapable of creating the concept of perfection. This in turn eliminates the possibility that the idea could originate from the education and the world around us, as the waking world is just as flawed as we are. We live in a morally grey, imperfect world full of imperfect beings and objects that give rise to the contrasting nature of existence itself.
So, in his mind, the only way in which the concept of perfection could exist is the existence of perfection, in his view the “Perfect God” that instilled within us flawed humans the idea of an undeniable perfection that is not jaded by that around it. From there, the concept of perfection is incompatible with deception, as deception is inherently an imperfect concept and action. In summary, a Perfect God does exist and is incapable of deception.
Immediately this concept lays to rest the Deceptive God Doubt, in that it wholly proves it wrong by virtue of its standpoint. In my view, the idea of the existence of a Perfect God cannot put to rest the two other pieces of the puzzle that is the greater Method of Doubt, for a good Gods existence does not prove the nonexistence of these other central questions by itself. The existence of a Perfect God only ascertains that we humans can fully rely on the mathematical and scientific concepts that make the foundation of our wider universe, in that a perfect creator would be unable to create the less perfect.
Existence itself in its base from is built upon a perfect foundation in what we define as humans as “math,” as math is inherently perfect by being offspring of a Perfect God. While we can rely on our central tenets of belief in ideas of number and shape, we cannot fully rely on anything else based upon only the existence of a perfect God. The waking world is still by Descartes argument indistinguishable from the dreaming world, and the way we view the world around is open or error. We are still imperfect beings, with no say as to whether the way we perceive and live life as we know it is fundamentally correct.
For one to believe Descartes’ argument for the existence of a Perfect God, one must believe in the Principle of Sufficient Reason. In the view of Descartes’, this fundamental principle is undeniable, in that “When we examine it, it appears so evident to the understanding that we cannot but believe it, even though this may be the first time in our life that we have thought of it.” For one to deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason is to upend Descartes’ central argument for not only a Perfect God, but every truth that can be ascertained from this existence.
By my stance as a college student freshly introduced to these fantastical concepts, I cannot conjure a strong argument against the principle as everything we have found has yet to deny it. It seems to indeed be a self-evident concept, but I have doubt in my mind of its truth. Perhaps existence can occur without reason, or perhaps it must have reason and the reason behind said existence is just difficult to quantify. By view that everything we have founded has cause, so everything in turn yet to be discovered must have cause. And yet to infer this is potentially flawed, as we as humans inherently do not know what is not known.
Perhaps there is a greater power in this universe that truly does exist without cause, created only by itself in response to itself, or perhaps this universe is finite in what lies undiscovered. We humans most likely will never ascertain these greater mysteries of existence itself, as we as imperfect beings will most likely only be a footnote on the great timeline of the greater universe. We only can certify the Principle of Sufficient Reason by way of induction, but induction itself is a flawed human view in that induction is only a way to perceive probability.
We are trying to weigh the probability of whether there exists a thing without cause, but in the end I believe we just can potentially never certify this principle. Induction is not a concept by which something should be law, and yet induction is all we have in this matter. The only way to certify or deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason is to know everything there is to know in all of existence, to have a wholly omniscient knowledge of both everything that has ever been or ever will be.
And yet we will never achieve this, as to be omniscient is a perfect concept, and we are imperfect beings, and in the words of Descartes’ himself “the perfect cannot come from the imperfect.” The Principle of Sufficient Reason is inherently a universal claim with a basis within only itself, and I do not believe it can be certified or denied.
By this argument, I do not believe Descartes’ argument for the existence of a perfect God can be confirmed nor denied, so we are left in the same situation in which we as humans were in before we were ever introduced to any form of knowledge, which is the question as to whether God exists. PSR is such an ambiguous concept that I do not believe it can be fully used in greater cosmological arguments to prove a point, but only as a point of reference in regards to what could possibly be.
We as humans will never know if there are things in our universe that are truly non-deterministic or just yet to have their cause determined. Was the beginning of our universe without cause? Was the introduction of the very concept of causation and Principle of Sufficient Reason in relation to cause without cause? All fascinating concepts to ponder, but virtually impossible to determine.
