Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Role of God
Descartes attemtps to prove God's existence in Meditation III in order to rule out the possibility of an evil genius and to ensure that everything he clearly and distinctly perceives to be true is in fact true. Without discussing the merits of the argument (which we only summarized in class), discuss the role of the existence of God in Descartes' project. Assuming he can prove God's existence, can God guarantee the truth of clear and distinct ideas? Can God guarantee sense perception? Is it wise that God plays such a prominent role in his porject?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In proving God’s existence and the fact that he isn’t a deceiving evil genius, Descartes adds proof to his idea that I exist. Without an all knowing, infinitely perfect, and omnipotent God present in Descartes’ argument it is much easier to find fault with his premises. Even Descartes admits this, saying “the whole force of the argument rests on the fact that I recognize that it would be impossible for me to exist… unless God did in fact exist” (35). However, the key word to note in this definition is “perfect” in which follows the idea of “good.” Without God’s existence or the existence of a perfect being it is indeed possible that there is a supreme being who is an evil genius and that I am deceived by the idea of my own existence.
ReplyDeleteHowever, assuming that Descartes’s proof is the idea of God is sufficient enough to prove his existence it does not mean that sense perceptions can be trusted or that God can guarantee truth in ideas. Descartes counteracts the logical issue with the idea of humans being formed in the image of God (then why aren’t humans perfect?) with the argument that humans are somewhere between God who is perfection and nothingness, or the absence of perfection. Therefore, although I have the innate capacity to be almost perfect, I also have the capacity to almost completely lack perfection. It follows that as a human and not knowing how perfect my judgment is I cannot trust my senses or ideas of truth.
I do believe that God has an important and convincing voice in Descartes theory of cognitive existence, but I don’t think that such a prominence is exactly wise. Although Descartes is obviously a theist, not everyone else in the world shares his view on the idea of the existence of God. Those who believe that there is more substantial information pointing to the absence of an omnipotent and infinitely perfect being can therefore out rightly nix Descates’s God and in doing so throw out a major point in Descartes argument that I (and you reading this) exist.
Descartes's initial proof that a god exists is flawed - however, even assuming that God exists, his arguments that follow from it are invalid.
ReplyDeleteDescartes says that since we have in us a faculty of judgement that comes from God, and God is perfect, so that faculty will work properly. The issue with this argument is, he is making assumptions that cannot be proven. He says in the text "Next I experience that there is in me a certain faculty of judgement, which, like everything else in me, I undoubtedly received from God." He is assuming that he and everything that is him was created directly by God, without giving any explanation as to why. Just because he proves the existence of a god, it does not mean that that he comes from that god. For all he knows, he could have been created by some Satan-like figure - or perhaps, only this "faculty of judgement" was. In these cases, this Satan figure could deceive him into thinking that what is in him came from God. So essentially, even if he proves that there is a god that is not a deceiver, it does not mean that there is no "great deceiver" in existence. And if such a deceiver exists, all that he knows could still be false.
As for sense perception, the same thing applies. He does not prove that we or our senses come from such a god, and therefore we could be beings that come from God but our senses could be demonic in nature, deceiving us into thinking that a non-existent world is around us.
It is not wise of him to rely so heavily on God. He does not justify anything he says regarding god, nor does he effectively prove that there is a god. He assumes too many things regarding God, and because of these assumptions the arguments that follow are for the most part invalid. This is slightly ironic, since Descartes's whole idea is to base everything he thinks on foundational beliefs - but he makes assumptions nonetheless.
I agree with Josh in that Descartes original proof of God existing is flawed.
ReplyDeleteBecause we have a faculty of judgement that comes from God, the faculty must always be right because God is perfect. The problem with this is he is making an assumption, and in class i also found that we were making an assumption in one of our arguments so it was hard for be to believe that the conclusion we came up with was true. The argument that we had in class started off with an assumption,
1. Lets assume God is an evil genius, we have no reason to say otherwise.
2. God intentionaly deceives us
3. He makes us believe that false things are true
4. Everything in the external world is a hoax created by God
5. None of my beliefs are reliable
6. Thus the knowledge we have about the world is false.
I dont know. The argument sounds like a valid one, but can it be valid with an assumed premise?
I think he makes too many assumptions regarding God and his existance making his arguments incalid