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Meditation III: God and the Trademark Arguments
The Role of God
God plays a vital role in Descartes’ whole philosophy. As concerns science, we can
derive the laws of nature from knowing about him. As concerns epistemology, we can be
sure that we are not constantly deceived and hence have knowledge. As concerns
metaphysics, we can conclude that mind and body are distinct.
Trademark Argument I
In Meditation III, Descartes embarks on an elaborate argument – which is in fact two
closely connected – arguments to establish the existence of God. They are called the
“Trademark Arguments” because they both seek to prove the existence of God from the
fact that I have an idea of him. Descartes relies on the fact that he is finite and God is
infinite and that the idea of God must have been produced by God and not his
imagination and that his idea of God is something he is born with: “as it were, the mark of
the craftsman stamped on his work.”
First of all, Descartes establishes a vital principle. Meditation II allows him to conclude
that he is certain he is a thinking thing. This he has proved by wondering whether the
demon could fool him. Any attempt fails. Reflecting on this first piece of knowledge, he
asks himself, generally, what is required for certainty. He writes that “in this first piece of
knowledge one encounters nothing more than a clear and distinct perception of that
which I know.” Descartes goes on to say that “it seems to me that I may already establish
as a general rile that all the things we conceive of most clearly and distinctly, are all true.”
Descartes asks himself if God could be a deceiver. How can he suppose there is a God?
Descartes is a religious man and he says there are but “rather slight or, so to speak,
metaphysical doubts” that one could raise. Nevertheless, he will prove that God exists.
He then adds that without knowledge of the two truths that God exists and that God is not
a deceiver, he cannot be certain of anything. We shall return to this in a moment.
Where to begin? Descartes is sure only that he is a thinking thing, that is a thing that has
thoughts or ideas. So he starts examining them. He distinguishes: (i) sensations (e.g.
seeming to see an empty beer glass; (ii) affections (wanting a glass of beer) and (iii)
judgements (believing that there is beer in the fridge). He then distinguishes three
sources from which ideas may come: (a) as things he was born with (innate); (b) from
outside of him (adventitious); (c) from his own mind (invented). It seems that many of his
ideas come from outside, since whereas he is in control of his imagination, he is a
passive recipient of ideas through the senses and hence, not being under his control,
must come from outside his mind. Yet he concludes that they could still be innate or
indeed produced from some faculty of his mind hidden to him.
Descartes next establishes a strange metaphysical principle that, following Cottingham,
I’ll call the Causal Adequacy Principle (CAP):
CAP: There must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in
the effect of that cause.
The idea is reasonably simple. Suppose, as Descartes does, that we have a stone. Now
how did this stone come about? It can’t have come from nothing. Something must have
produced it. That something, moreover, must have had at least as much reality as the
stone it produced. Now what do we mean by a degree of reality? This is not easy to see.
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The root thought is that if A depends on B for its existence, then B must have as much or
more reality than A. This is most naturally interpreted in terms of complexity. A simple
thing can’t produce a thing more complex than itself. In the case of the stone, whatever
produced it must belong to the same order of complexity: Descartes says “a stone cannot
be produced except by something which contains…everything to be found in the stone.”1
Another favoured term is “perfection”. The more perfections something has, the more
perfect it is and the higher the degree of reality it has. One could certainly see the
ordering of perfection as the ordering of complexity but it is not obviously forced upon
one. A complex machine will have greater “complexity” in terms of parts and their
designed arrangement than God, who lacks complex structure but is clearly more perfect
because he is more powerful, omnipotent and so on.
What does he mean by efficient and total cause? Descartes here is using a piece of
Scholastic metaphysics that has its roots in Aristotle. Aristotle distinguished four types of
“cause”. We should not think of them as causes in the sense of “active producers”, in the
way a thrown brick is the active producer of a broken window when thrown. We should
think of them rather as explanations of how something is a certain way. Here are the four
types of cause:
MATERIAL:
EFFICIENT:
FINAL:
FORMAL:
What something is made of.
What made the something.
What the purpose of the something is.
What makes the something the something it is.
Here’s an example: the analysis of a tin-opener.
MATERIAL:
EFFICIENT:
FINAL:
FORMAL:
Metal
Bernard, the tin-opener maker.
To open tins
Having a handle-turning-a-sharp-rotating-wheel design.
The total cause is the sum of all these things. The importance of saying the efficient and
total cause comes out through considering an objection Mersenne made [MMR II::CSM
II:88]. He writes: “you say, however, that an effect cannot possess any degree of reality
or perfection that was not previously present in the cause. But we see that flies and other
animals, and also plants, are produced from sun and rain and earth, which lack life.”
Descartes replies that since this is indeed so, “the sun, the rain and the earth are not
adequate [efficient] causes”. [MMR II::CSM II:96]. They might be the efficient and material
causes but something else would be the formal or final cause.
In short, the CAP says that simplicity can’t beget complexity. Next, Descartes applies the
CAP to ideas. Suppose I have an idea of a stone I have on my desk as a paperweight.
That idea must come from somewhere. That idea is of something. Think of it as a picture.
Now the object in the picture – the object represented – is accorded some degree of
reality of a type Descartes, following tradition, calls objective reality. The stone itself has
some degree of reality of a type Descartes, following tradition, calls formal reality.
Hobbes wonders doubtfully, “Does reality admit of more and less”. [MMR III Objection 9::CSM II:130]. In his
reply [MMR III Reply to Objection 9::CSM II:130] Descartes has the dependency of a different ontological
nature: a real quality cannot exist without a substance and nor too a mode but since there can be modes of
qualities and the mode can’t exist without the quality, modes may depend on qualities. So, in terms of order of
reality, substances has the highest degree, then real qualities (and incomplete substances) and then modes.
Furthermore, a finite substance depends on an infinite one (for its continued existence/creation) and so
infinite substances are more real than finite ones. Descartes concludes, no less brusquely that Hobbes
complains, “All this is completely self-evident.”
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He then says that, “in order for a given idea to contain one degree of objective reality
rather than another, it must without doubt have it from some cause, in which there is at
least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality.” In other words, just as
nothing can make a tin-opener that is simpler than a tin-opener, nothing can have the
idea of a tin-opener that is simpler than a tin-opener, because the degree of reality in the
tin-opener-as-conceived (objective reality) must be no less great than the degree of
reality (formal reality) in its cause, namely the thinker.2
Now for an extra complication. Descartes says that where we have an effect, be it a tinopener or an idea of tin-opener, the reality it has, be it formal or objective, cannot be
produced, “unless it is produced by something which contains, either formally or
eminently” everything to be found in the tin-opener or stone. Take our tin-opener. It really
does have a handle. The handle exists formally and therefore has some formal degree of
reality. Take Bernard, who dreamt up the idea of a tin-opener. Bernard then made the tinopener using a special machine. The machine and the tin-opener are on the same level
of complexity, so to speak. The machine has the same degree of formal reality as the
machine. Bernard has more formal reality than the machine and the tin-opener as he is a
human being, not a thing. Where a cause has more reality than its effect, we say that the
cause has the reality of the effect eminently. Bernard has greater formal reality than the
tin-opener and therefore contains the reality of the tin-opener eminently.
Suppose we have a thought of a tin-opener. Does this mean that there must be a tinopener it represents? No. When Bernard first thought of the tin-opener, it existed only in
his mind. His idea was caused by other ideas. So perhaps there is nothing more than
ideas of things and no things themselves. Descartes puts this forward and then says that
this production of ideas by ideas cannot go on ad infinitum. At the beginning, there must
be something with formal or eminent reality to generate an idea of something.
Next, Descartes argues that all the ideas he has are of things no more real than he is and
so he could be their source. As a thinking substance, his thoughts are modes of that
substance and hence less real because dependent on him. As for what his ideas
represent, in particular corporeal things, Descartes argues that he could not be the formal
cause of these ideas. A stone has a certain extension whereas his mind, a thinking
substance has none. So Descartes contains the objective reality of these corporeal things
eminently. He, or his mind, is still top of the reality tree.
Descartes then turns to the one exception: his idea of God. God is infinite whereas he is
finite. He knows he is finite only through knowing he is not infinite. This is an important
point. It is not as if we learn infinitude by starting with finitude and extending it indefinitely.
We learn about finitude as a failure to be infinite. Descartes says, “for how could I
understand that I doubted or desired – that is, lacked something – and that I was [hence]
not wholly perfect, unless there were in me some idea of a more perfect being which
enabled me to recognise my own defects by comparison?”
In [PP I:17::CSM I:198-9] Descartes writes: “The greater the objective perfection in any of ideas, the greater
its cause must be. When we reflect further on the ideas that we have within us, we see that some of them, in
so far as they are merely modes of thinking, do not differ much from one another; but in so far as one idea
represents one thing and another represents another, they differ widely; and the greater the amount of
objective perfection they contain within themselves, the more perfect their cause must be. For example, if
someone has within himself the idea of a highly intricate machine, it would be fair to ask what was the cause
of this possession of the idea: did he somewhere see such a machine made by someone else; or did he
make such a close study of mechanics, or is his own ingenuity so great, that he was able to think it up on his
own. although he never saw it anywhere? All the intricacy which is contained in the idea merely objectively –
as in a picture – must be contained in its cause whatever kind of cause it turns out to be; and it must be
contained not merely objectively or representatively, but in actual reality, either formally or eminently, at least
in the case of the first and principal cause.” Descartes uses the example of the designer of a machine in
[MMR I::CSM II:75]
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Descartes then wonders if he has a clear and distinct idea of God at all. Consider my idea
of being cold. It is real. But is coldness real? Or is it merely a lack of warmth? In not
corresponding to anything, it is what Descartes calls “materially false”. Descartes rules
this out of hand: “although perhaps one may imagine that such a being [God] does not
exist, it cannot be supposed that the idea of such a thing represents something unreal, as
I said with regard to the idea of cold.” He admits that “I do not grasp the infinite…for it is
in the nature of the infinite not to be grasped by a finite being like myself.” He says that “it
is enough to understand the infinite and to judge that all the attributes which I clearly
perceive and know to imply some perfection – and perhaps countless others of which I
am ignorant – are present in God either formally or eminently.”
He next wonders whether he could be the source of this idea. Although I am not actually
– currently – aware of all the perfections of God, and so thinking that I can’t be God,
perhaps they are in me potentially. He writes: “for I am now experiencing a gradual
increase in my knowledge, and I see nothing to prevent its increasing more and more to
infinity…and why I should not be able to use this increased knowledge to acquire all the
other perfections of God.”
This is shot down quickly. God has all his perfections actually not potentially. Descartes is
aware that he would have to add something to his knowledge and, moreover, that “even if
my knowledge always increases more and more, I recognise that it will never actually be
infinite since it will never reach the point where it is not capable of further increase.”
We can now say the following. Descartes has an idea of God. He cannot be the source of
this idea as he is finite and hence has less formal reality than the objective reality the idea
of God has: this would constitute a violation of the CAP. So God must be the cause of
this idea. So God exists.
Descartes’ Proofs of God’s Existence: Trademark Argument II
Descartes’ shorter argument begins with the following thought: “if one concentrates
carefully, all [the above argument] is quite evident by the natural light. But when I relax
my concentration, and my mental vision is blinded by the images of things perceived by
the senses, it is not so easy for me to remember why the idea of a being more perfect
that myself must necessarily proceed from some being which is in reality more perfect. I
should therefore like to go further and inquire whether I myself, who have this idea, could
exist if no such being existed.”
Descartes wants to ask whether he could exist with the idea of God if God didn’t exist.
Let’s suppose so. Then where would I derive my existence from? Either I’m the source or
it’s been passed onto me, perhaps by my parents or other people. Let’s take these in
turn.
If I brought myself into existence, then I’d surely have the power to give myself whatever
perfections I’d want. Since I don’t have all the perfections I could want, I can’t have
brought myself into existence.
Can I suppose I’ve always been in existence? No. For nothing exists from one moment to
the next without being made to endure. Endurance, indeed, is really re-creation at each
moment. I find in myself no power to create myself anew each moment. If I had, I’d surely
know about it.3
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Modern metaphysicians draw a distinction between endurance and perdurance. An entity endures if it is
present at each moment of its life. An entity perdures if a temporal part of it is present at each part of its life. It
is natural to say that material objects endure. The very same chair on which I am sitting that existed an hour
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Might it be my parents or other finite entities who brought me into existence? No. By the
CAP, there must be as much reality in my cause as in me. As I have the idea of God, the
being with the highest degree of reality, whatever created me must have that degree of
reality in order to generate something capable of having the idea. So even if we say my
parents did bring me into existence – which is clearly true – they could do nothing more
than pass on an idea of which they are not the creators. In other words, invoking my
parents merely pushes the question back: how did they come into existence? Eventually,
there must be something with maximum reality.
Finally, could I be the product of many partial causes? No. “The unity, the simplicity or the
inseparability of all the attributes of God is one of the most important perfections which I
understand him to have.”
Since I, who have the idea of God, could not cause my own existence nor ultimately be
caused by finite ancestors, it must be an infinite being which has brought me into
existence.
Although the arguments are separated, Descartes did not see them as wholly separate.
In [MMR I::CSM I:77] he writes: “my purpose…was not to produce a different proof from
the preceding one, but rather to take the same proof and provide a more thorough
explanation of it.”
ago exists now. It is natural to say that events or processes perdure. A party is something which has temporal
parts or stages. We wouldn’t say the whole party was present at each moment of its life.
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