Sunday, October 14, 2012
A God Chasing His Tail?
Antoine Arnauld (among others) famously accuses Descartes of arguing in a circle: the principle of clear and distinct ideas requires a non-deceiving God to validate it, but the proof of a non-deceiving God requires the principle of clear and distinct ideas. Is Arnauld correct? If not, why not? If not, at what cost?
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Antione Arnauld is completely correct in his judgments of Descartes circular reasoning. It's very obvious to me that Descartes knows hes stuck when his replies to many of the objections were simply that he had already explained himself and made a distinction. Descartes does provide a slightly more advanced argument as to why god exists, however it only brings Descartes right back into the Cartesian Circle. He instead decides to focus on the idea of God as a supremely perfect being, which he can perceive as clearly as arithmetic. Since God is supremely perfect, he has a perfect sense of existence and therefore God exists. In my opinion, there are many flaws with this argument, including the jump from a perfect sense of existence to existence, the fact that his idea of god is of a supremely perfect being, and finality the fact that he is so sure about his idea of God. Descartes provides a counterexample to his own reply in Chapter 3 when he examines the evil genius theory. He explains that he really has no way of knowing whether even the most basic ideas such as arithmetic and geometry are true. Couldn't two plus two really equal five, and everyone has just been tricked into such a fundamental belief that it equals four?
ReplyDeleteAnother monumental flaw which I would like to examine is the idea of God as a supremely perfect being. Of course Descartes is a Christian, but is it not presumptuous as a philosopher to just accept religion without proving it by the same means which one proves all other knowledge? Just as there are many beliefs about the nature of reality and knowledge, there are many different religions. Many of which have multiple Gods and Gods which are not inherently perfect. Descartes could have easily been born a Hindu, does that mean that now there are multiple supremely perfect beings, and that all of these beings exist? I really feel that Descartes is reaching towards the bottom of the barrel with this one, he is between a rock and a hard place. If he cannot prove the existence of God, there could be an evil genius tricking us about even our most basic conceptions. If he proves the existence of God, everything we perceive is real and that cannot be true either based on his very first examinations.
Overall Descartes has led me to skepticism, and I believe that this is not a failure in any sense of the word. To me, having no real knowledge is not the end of the world. It actually leaves much more room for investigation, imagination and creativity. I believe that accepting that you have no knowledge doesn't mean that you cannot act upon your beliefs. Morality is ingrained in all of us, even if we don't "know" exactly what rules by which it is governed, most of us are still able to make moral decisions.
Arnauld is absolutely correct in accusing Descartes of creating a circular argument. This problem, known as the Cartesian Circle, has the capability of causing all of Descartes fundamental beliefs to crumble. Descartes uses God to validate what he clearly and distinctly perceives to be true; however, he also uses what he believes to be true in order to prove the existence of such a God. He makes the claim that because God is a perfect being he must be the source of truth, while deception is created by one’s senses. However, Descartes argument falls short before it even reaches this assertion. If just one of Descartes’s beliefs could be proved false, then all of his principles would in turn be proved wrong as well due to the circularity of his argument. As a result, Descartes would be left to conclude that he unquestionably knows nothing, seeing as how none of his beliefs could be salvaged from the destroyed circle. With the complete demise of his beliefs, foundationalism when used with the Cartesian Circle, fails as well. This seemingly leaves Descartes with skepticism and the inability to accept what had previously accepted as true. In conclusion, a circular argument creates a dilemma for Descartes if one of his foundational beliefs can be proved false because he must then approach all previously held beliefs as wrong as well.
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ReplyDeleteLike Will and Catherine, I would agree that Arnauld is correct in identifying the latent circular reasoning of Descartes argument. Descartes’ conclusion that a non-deceiving god exists requires the principle of clear and distinct perception, and the conclusion that the principle of clear and distinct perception exists requires a non-deceiving god is without a doubt circular, and the argument cannot progress.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to raise an issue with Descartes’ argument that even if we could clearly and distinctly perceive, that a supremely perfect god exists. I don’t think it is logically sound to be able to jump from the premise of the idea of a god being perfect to a god existing (provided the principle of clear and distinct perception exists).
Descartes relies on the logic that, if something is supremely perfect then it must be perfect in the area of existence, therefore if we clearly and distinctly this idea, a supremely perfect being exists. I think the logically fallacy is introduced to this argument when Descartes assumes that if I have an idea of something perfect in the sense of existence, then it must exist. What is stopping someone like me from attaching the attribute of being perfect in the sense of existing to a magnificent pink unicorn with laser-beam eyes in my mind? Is this so different from declaring that we have an idea of a supremely perfect being in our minds? I argue that the idea of something being perfect in the sense of existence in our minds does not require that the entity actually exists.
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ReplyDeleteAs you can see, Antoine Arnauld has some avid supporters in this class! I also must add my name to the list of supporters of his claim that Descartes is trapped in a circular argument, or a Cartesian Circle. He claims that clear and distinct perception requires a non-deceiving God, and the argument to justify a non-deceiving God is clear and distinct perception. He fails to realize that if God were a deceiver, he could, in theory, deceive us into believing he was supremely perfect. He does, in fact, address the possibility that God might be an evil genius or deceiver late in the book, however he answers it in a similar fashion, affirming that God is supremely perfect. As in many of Descartes arguments, he fails to understand the strength of of the counterargument of God as a deceiver.There are obvious flaws in this argument, and without this argument of a non-deceiving God, many of Descartes other arguments in the book fall to pieces.
ReplyDeleteAntoine Arnauld is clearly not alone in his accusation, which has its own famous name: the Cartesian Circle. Descartes depends on God's existence to prove that we clearly and distinctly perceive, and oppositely, that clearly and distinctly perceiving depends on God's existence. Descartes argues Arnauld's objection by saying that is was not the distinct ideas that depend on God's existence in the present, but memory. He seems to change his mind about what constitutes as undubitable, bringing past and present into an argument where it didn't exist.
ReplyDelete"...when I said that we can know nothing for certain until we are aware that God exists, I expressly declared that I was speaking only of knowledge of those conclusions which can be recalled when we are no longer attending to the arguments by means of which we deduced them." (AT VII 140)
In my opinion, Descartes does not argue Arnauld's objection fully enough, so the Cartesian Circle still stands.
Descartes provides another argument for God's existence as well: the ontological argument.
Premise 1: I have a clear and distinct idea of God as a supremely perfect being
Premise 2: If something is perfect, it must exist
Premise 3: God is supremely perfect
Conclusion: God exists
In this argument, there is a logical gap between Premise 1 and 3. Premise 2 is simply false--something perfect actually has less chance of existing than something imperfect, I think. Furthermore, the idea of perfection is subjective. Logically, then, something existing could depend on the person who is "clearly and distinctly" perceiving it to be perfect or not. Also, as Max and Will have already pointed out, having a distinct idea of something does not mean that it exists in that same state. Clearly and distinctly perceiving something is pretty vague terminology that depends on the individual's idea of what he clearly and distinctly perceives. I think this logic is its own Cartesian Circle, in a way. If someone clearly and distinctly perceives something, then it is true, and if something is true, then it will be clearly and distinctly perceived.
Ultimately, I think that Descartes fails to produce convincing arguments for God's existence because he gets caught up in his own assumptions and ends up unable to escape the Cartesian Circle. Though he goes on to argue about God's existence as an evil genius or a benevolent God, but these arguments are more or less irrelevant because he has not proved God's existence at all and therefore bases the rest of his knowledge on the assumption that God exists. Because he cannot prove the existence of God and cannot find a way to justify his beliefs without God's existence, Descartes' foundational project fails.