Argument against the Argument for God through Ideas Descartes’ argument for the existence of God through ideas is very strong because it is based upon the self-evident claim that something cannot be made from nothing. The problem with the proof does not lie within this claim, but within its claim regarding the origin of the ideas of perfection and infinity. To demonstrate this, I will first reconstruct Descartes’ argument for the existence of God through ideas. Next, I will briefly clarify Descartes’ concept of reality. Then, I will explain how our ideas of perfection and infinity do not prove the existence of God because they could easily have arisen adventitiously. Yet, even if I grant that these ideas are innate, this fact does not prove that the Judeo-Christian God exists. Finally, I will consider possible objections from Descartes. Descartes begins by explaining how he will use the word “idea” throughout his argument. Basically, everything that Descartes is aware of in his mind he calls an idea. He distinguishes between three types of ideas. First, there are ideas which are simply mental images – the equivalent of our modern understanding of “idea.” Next, there are the ideas known as volition and emotion that contain more than a mental image. Lastly, there are judgements. Mental images, volition, and emotions are only descriptions of mental phenomena that are in the mind; they cannot be false. Only judgements can be false. After differentiating ideas into three classes, Descartes distinguishes the three means by which an idea may originate. Adventitious ideas are those which are attained through the senses. Invented ideas occur when the mind reorganizes the adventitious ideas. Any idea which is neither adventitious nor invented is innate since adventitious and invented ideas exhaust the means by which an idea may be attained through experience. Innate ideas are thus a priori. With these definitions in mind, Descartes makes the non-contentious statement that the reality present within an effect must be of a lesser amount than that which is present within the cause. Or, simply put, something cannot be created from nothing. Demonstratively, Descartes uses the corporeal examples of stones and fire, and then generalizes the principle to also include the idea of fire. For surely ideas must also follow the principle that something cannot be created from nothing. Here Descartes takes note of the logical consequence of the preceding statements regarding the law of sufficient reason: if the cause of an idea does not reside within me, it must reside outside of me, since a cause must exist. At this point, Descartes decides to test the origin of some of his ideas. If ideas of corporeal things are adventitious, then the origin of these ideas is easily understood as the external world. Yet Descartes has not at this point proven the existence of the external world; this is no problem because he “sees nothing in them (corporeal things) which is so great as to make it seem impossible that it (idea of corporeal thing) originated in myself.” (14) Descartes sees that he has more reality than corporeal things, so he could obviously have created his ideas of them. His creation of corporeal ideas could have simply arisen from a generalization of his own substance-ness to other objects. The idea of an angel could be an invented idea based upon our ideas of corporeal things and God. Here a problem arises: where did we get our idea of God? Descartes has an idea of that God is “infinite, <eternal, immutable> independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else.” (15) It seems very improbable to Descartes that this idea of God came from within him because of its immense reality, or that it came to him adventitiously because he has never directly seen God in nature. So, he concludes that the idea must have come from God and therefore God exists. Foreseeing objections, Descartes states that our idea of an infinite God could not result from a simple negation of our idea of finiteness because the idea of the infinite has more reality than the idea of the finite. Also, how would humans know the defects of their finiteness if we did not beforehand know the infinite? Further more, our idea of God is so clear and distinct that it could not possibly be false. Lastly, a human’s potential for perfection – as seen by his daily increasing perfection (i.e. intelligence) – could not be the origin of his idea of the infinite because his perfection will always be just increasing, never actually infinite.      Basically, humans have an idea of God. All ideas have only three routes to enter the mind. If our idea of God didn’t come to us through adventition or invention, then by disjunctive syllogism, our idea of God is innate. This innate idea could only come from a cause with more reality than the idea itself since something cannot be created from nothing. The only entity with more reality than the idea of God, is God. Therefore God created our idea of God and God necessarily exists. Before I voice my objections of Descartes’ proof, I need to speak a bit about Descartes’ idea of reality. “There must be as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause.” (14) Basically, everything within the effect is within the cause; something cannot be created from nothing. Descartes describes objects as having formal reality while ideas have objective reality. The basic concept is the same in both cases of reality. To make a rock, we need every element which exists within rock. To make the idea of a unicorn, we need the idea of a horse and the idea of a horn. Two parts have been combined to form one thing with two constituents. Nothing new has been created. The idea of an infinite unicorn can’t be created just from the idea of a horse and the idea of a horn because this new idea has three constituent parts while the cause would only have two. But, the idea of a horse can be created from the idea of a unicorn because the effect has only one constituent part while the cause has two. In the latter case, a simple effect was produced from a complex cause while in the former case, a complex effect was produced from a simple cause, which of course violates the law of sufficient reason. This elementary distinction between the simple and the complex should be kept in mind while reading on. If Descartes had searched more thoroughly, he would have found that humans could have attained their ideas of perfection and infinity through their senses. For perfection, take the example of a square. While many a near-square exist in nature, it could easily be argued that no perfect squares exist. Yet humans have an idea of a perfect square. So, imagine now a square shaped rock and a perfect square. Descartes assumes that our idea of a perfect square – because perfection is such a desirable, almost divine,  quality – has more reality or representational content than the square shaped rock. Actually, the square shaped rock has more reality; it is more complex. The square shaped rock is full of dents and distorted colors – it has many constituent parts. Memory is a simple test which proves one idea to have more reality than another. For, ideas with more reality have more representational content because they contain more parts and are more complex and are thus harder to remember and represent in the mind’s eye. It would be much more difficult to draw the square shaped rock from memory than the perfect square. In fact, the drawing of the square shaped rock would probably look more like the perfect square than the rock itself. Our idea of the perfect square could be a mere simplification of a square shaped rock. After looking at a square shaped rock and trying to picture it in one’s mind, much of its reality is stripped away for the sake of economical storage. Eventually, the idea would be stripped to its most simple shape and be a perfect square in our mind. This transformation is no problem because the effect has less reality than the cause; it is less complex. If the rock example is unconvincing, the claim that any object falling from the sky makes a perfectly straight line should be uncontentious. Either way, the idea of perfection is attained from the senses and could be generalized to other things (i.e. God and His attributes). Now take the idea of infinity. This idea is a difficult concept in Descartes’ writing because he lived in a time period that thought of the universe as finite; he has a different idea of infinite than I have (this discrepancy alone is trouble for Descartes because if an idea is innate, shouldn’t everyone have it?). For example, I couldn’t understand how a finite substance like wax could be understood to take on an infinite number of shapes. It seemed to me that there would come a time when the finite wax would go through every possible shape – given it’s limited size. Only if another bit of wax were then added could it continue making new shapes. That’s when I ran across Descartes actual definition of infinite: “not capable of further increase.” (16) While I had pictured the infinite as an ever-increasing number string, Descartes had been using the word infinite with a meaning more like “encompassing all things finite,” or “all-finite.” The wax is thus infinite because every possible shape of the wax is accounted for. If this is an accurate description of Descartes’ idea of the infinite – and I don’t see how it cannot be, given his definition (its accuracy also seems to be evinced by that fact that this conception of infinity seems easier to understand than the modern conception, and the fact that Descartes says he “cannot grasp the infinite,” (16) only understand it) – then it would be quite easy for humans to attain this idea through sense perception. It is in the nature of our minds to classify and organize the continual stream of sense perception we receive from the environment. We classify things as red, large, dangerous, and so forth. Soon, someone will see a beast that is both large and dangerous and consequently realize that classes overlap. Objects that cover two classes have more reality than those that cover one class. The causes of this new complex idea are the environment and our categorizing mind. With the coexisting belief that classes can be added to each other, people soon add more and more, and eventually add every known class together in a set called “infinite.” Or, a simpler argument for the adventitiousness of the infinity idea would be to say that just as Descartes generalizes his substance-ness to other things, he could get his idea of infinity from his boundless, indivisible mind and generalize this to other things. Thus, Descartes’ idea of infinite is not innate; it comes from the senses, or introspection (of his mind, not his idea of God). So, the two ideas with seemingly an unhumanly amount of reality can easily be understood as originating, not innate. Also, there is the Lockean response that was alluded to earlier. Namely, how can ideas such as perfection and infinity be innate if not everyone has them? For example, why don’t idiots and children entertain these ideas? An even stronger example that uses mature adults of full mental capacity was put forth to Descartes in an objection letter: “the fact that the natives of Canada, the Hurons and other primitive peoples, have no awareness of any idea of this sort seems to establish that the idea does come from previously held notions.” (82) Also, it is only Western religions that have Descartes’ idea of God, making his ideas seem Euro-centric – not a good thing for one attempting to attain absolute knowledge.    Even if we did grant Descartes that the ideas of perfection and infinite are innate, it does not prove that God exists. For, if God is infinitely intelligent and infinitely powerful, there is no reason not to believe that humans could have gotten one of these ideas and generalized it to other things (i.e., say humans have an innate idea of God as infinitely intelligent. Consequently, they now have their idea of the infinite and extend its scope to include all sorts of godly attributes.) Thus, Descartes argument would prove the existence of some entity with one supernatural characteristic, but not the Judeo-Christian God. Regarding both the preceding argument and the one concerning adventitious ideas of perfection, Descartes has a specific reply. Considering the claim that only one attribute of God could be attained and generalized to the rest, he says “the unity, the simplicity, or the inseparability of all the attributes of God is one of the most important of the perfections which I understand him to have.” (17) However, this answer only regresses to another level where the exact same criticism may be voiced. If unity is considered a perfection just like infinite intelligence and infinite power are, there is no reason to suppose that the idea of one of these perfections could not be generalized to the others. Descartes objection actually hurts him more than it helps because it is much less difficult to comprehend unity as an adventitious idea than perfection or infinity. An idea of unity arises from the simple union of any two things we see. As Descartes says, this unity is a perfection. Therefore, adding our ideas of perfection and intelligence and power will lead us to our idea of God. Basically, Descartes sees the usefulness of using vagueness with his idea of God and contradicts himself when he describes the idea of God as both infinitely intricate and simple. Not even God can break the rule of non-contradiction. Regarding my argument for an adventitious idea of infinite, I don’t think there is anything Descartes can say because of his very clear definition of infinity. As for the Lockean objection which was presented to Descartes, he responded by completely ignoring the objection in his reply. (83) Maybe he just forgot about it, or perhaps he saw that it was devastating to his case? After all, as Locke says, even if these primitive people do get an idea of perfection or infinity with an imposed education, it would be more reasonable to claim that is the education and its interaction with the mind that created the idea, not that the idea was there all along waiting to be discovered.   Descartes should be given respect for his bold and rationalistic attempt to prove the existence of God; it is a very difficult proof. Yet, I think he was a little overzealous and as a result, either knowingly or unknowingly, exploited the vagueness of abstract terms and even blatantly contradicts himself in defending his strongly held belief. Not that there is anything wrong with that; I deem any defense acceptable (just not correct) for Descartes and his profoundly meaningful belief that contemplation of the “divine majesty… enables us to know the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life.” (18) Cummins, Robert, and David Owen. History of Modern Philosophy. Canada: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999. Objections and Replies Handout.