Broderick Lemke

Phil 120
22 October 2015
Descartes Meditation Number Five and His Proof of God

Descartes states that there are many ideas that exist at least inside our mind, even if not

outside of it. For example, he lists the concept of a triangle and says that its true and immutable

nature reveals that it will always have three sides, and its angles will equal one hundred and

eighty degrees. Descartes believes these laws that follow objects, even if they exist only in the

mind, prove that he is not fabricating the idea of the obejcts. He goes on to state that he could not

learn about concepts through his sensory organs; that he would know a triangle because he saw

many triangularly shaped objects. He says that he can think of countless other figures which he

claims cannot enter him through his senses. Through this logic he says that the idea of Gods

nature (a being that is supremely perfect) is something he has discovered in him the same way

that one would discover a number. He states that although this is just part of Gods essence, in

order to be supremely perfect he would necessarily have the quality of existence, otherwise he

would not be perfect. He compares it to imagining a mountain without a valley, that the two are

dependent upon each other.

One problem with this viewpoint is that it relies upon other assumptions and ideas that he

already accepts. He assumes that there is not the evil demon that he was considering in the first

meditation. A demon which deceives us into thinking that we understand concepts, when in

actuality we do not. There could be an actual world where a being that brought us into existence

was not perfect, but is superior to us in the fact that it could make us believe that there was no

way for us to have in a creator that was not perfect. Earlier in his meditations Descartes brings up

the concept of an infinite regress, which prevents us from thinking we did not came from some
superior being, but there could be an evil demon that forces us to think this when in reality there

is an infinite regress that we do not have the ability to understand, or that there could be an being

at the beginning of the regress that was not perfect, but also was not created. If there were an evil

demon controlling all of our thoughts and deceiving us, then there could be a reality in which

there is an idea of an all perfect being that could not exist, just as a mountain could exist without

a valley. Even further we could assume that there is no true form of perfect, rather it was an idea

that the demon placed in our minds to deceive us.

A second problem with his argument is that he assumes that we are not able to come to

know concepts through our senses. I agree that based on senses alone we would have trouble

understanding abstract concepts, but by including mental logic we could come to certain

assumptions through our senses. Descartes fails to list examples of concepts that we cannot see,

but I will assume he means concepts such as the number two, infinity, and length. Assuming that

these concepts are the ones he is considering (I have to make such assumptions because he offers

no examples), I would argue that we can learn them through the senses and our logic. By seeing

many groups of rocks, humans could realize that different numbers of rocks exist. Furthermore

they could see that sometimes objects are by themselves while other times there are several

objects. They could continue this logic to say that some groups of objects have more than others,

and could realize that there is a set of numbers that grows, and could come to the idea of two

rocks by realizing it is more than one rock and less than three rocks. The rocks would not

actually be the number two, but we could infer that the number two exists based on our sensory

input and logic. We do not understand the concept of two more than we are able to deduce from

logic and sensory information, and even when we use numbers we are using symbols to denote

that there is two of an object. Therefore this information could be something we create in our
mind rather than it being an actual principle that does exist, especially if the senses are all false

images as if we were insane or dreaming.

Although it would be harder to come to the idea of infinity, we could realize that as we

group more and more objects together that eventually there could be a collection of objects so

numerous that we could not count it, and from there we could image it growing exponentially.

Using our logic we could deduce that this number would continue to grow forever without

stopping. Although we do not have a complete concept of infinity through this method, it is equal

to our understanding of the concept that we do have. Even if this information did just exist as

Descartes is arguing, we do not have a solid measurable way to understand infinity beyond the

mathematic operations we have arrived at through our senses and logic. If this were the case we

would be able to conceive or visualize what an infinite space would look like.

Descartes says that God as a supremely perfect being is an idea that we could not have

come to unless it existed in the real (not just the sensible) world. However, could we not assume

that we came to the logical and sensory understanding of perfection and applied to a being? For

example we could take our idea of infinity (a mental idea) and combine it with rocks (something

physical), but that does not mean that there are infinite rocks. In the same logic Descartes takes

the idea of perfection (a mental idea) and combines it with a being (something physical) and uses

this claim to proves it exists. This idea should fall under his category of imagined ideas along

with other concepts we come to through combining concepts and physical traits that we make up

but does not necessarily exist.