Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy 6

Abstract

The Third Meditation (continued): Of God, that He exists — Part II

The Third Meditation (continued): Of God, that He exists — Part II

In this lecture, I want to elaborate the notion of clear and distinct perception in order to show how the two elements of Descartes’ strategy for recovering his entitlement to the knowledge-claims he has suspended hang together. These two elements are his certain knowledge of himself as existing as a thinking thing—what I shall call, rather loosely, the cogito—and the proof of God’s existence, which Descartes says (on p.32) he needs to undertake precisely in order to be able to assert as a general rule that everything he perceives clearly and distinctly is true,1 hence something he is rationally entitled to believe. Once I have done this, I will turn to examine the attempt Descartes makes in the Third Meditation to prove the existence of God. I will finish this examination off in the next lecture (lecture 7).

§ 1: Descartes’ Notion of Clear and Distinct Perception

This is possibly the most obscure notion in Descartes’ Meditations. It is very unclear just what this notion is. And it is very unclear just what role it plays in Descartes’ reasoning. But I think we can make sense of it as follows: Consider these three cases of reasoning, which represent how Descartes proceeds across the First and Second Meditations:


Case One:

“It seems very clearly and distinctly to me that I am as thinking. That is, it seems to me that I am thinking the thought, “I am as thinking.” And for it even to seem to me that I am thinking anything at all is for me to exist (as something to which it seems that it is thinking something).

Furthermore, seeming to think is itself a form of thinking and the thought I seem now to be thinking claims that I am thinking. So I am thinking. (Given what this thought is, namely, the thought that I am thinking, the very fact that I seem to be thinking it makes it true.)

So I may rationally believe that I am, I exist, as thinking, irrespective of whatever deception I might be subject to with regard to other kinds of thought.”

In this one very special case, there is a transition from the thought “It seems very clearly and distinctly to me that p” to the Thought “p”, hence to entitlement to believe that p, which is unconditioned: no matter what is happening to Descartes, whether he is sleeping or being deceived by a supremely powerful, malicious mind, this transition is entitled, is legitimate.

Case Two:

“It seems very clearly and distinctly to me that there is a clock at the back of the Law Link lecture theatre. That is, it seems to me that I am perceiving there to be a clock at the back of the Law Link lecture theatre under optimal conditions: my eyes are functioning well, the lighting is good, etc.

It is built into the very concept of perceptual experience that if it seems to me that I am perceiving that p in optimal circumstances, such that nothing speaks against my having perceived veridically, then I may rationally believe that p. In other words, a general rule is built into the concept of perceptual experience according to which if it seems to me that I am perceiving that p under optimal conditions, such that I have no reason for thinking otherwise, then I may believe that p.

So does this mean that I may indeed rationally believe that there is a clock at the back of the Law Link lecture theatre? No. For how do I know that the experience I am having is a genuinely perceptual seeming to me? Might not this seeming-to-me-to-perceive be a dream experience, or an experience caused in me by an supremely powerful, malicious mind? If it should be either of these things, then it would not be something to which I could apply the principle which I have just acknowledged to be built into the concept of perceptual experience.

So until I have determined whether what I am now having is a genuinely perceptual seeming or a seeming caused merely by my being asleep or an supremely powerful, malicious mind, I may not yet rationally believe that there is a clock at the back of the Law Link lecture theatre. That is, I may not yet endorse, for this kind of proposition (empirical, i.e., perception-based ones), the general rule that if I perceive clearly and distinctly that p, then (I may rationally believe that) p.”

Case Three:

“It seems very clearly and distinctly to me that the square root of 7921 is 89. That is, it seems to me that I have applied the algorithm for determining square roots to the number 7921 under optimal conditions: I am not tired, I have practised using this algorithm sufficiently and have observed myself to get better at finding square roots, even for quite large numbers, etc. Moreover, I have checked my derivation and found no mistake.

It is built into the very concept of mathematical calculation that if it seems to me that I have calculated that p in optimal circumstances, such that nothing speaks against my having calculated correctly, then I may rationally believe that p. In other words, the general rule is built into the concept of mathematical calculation according to which if it seems to me that I have correctly calculated that p, such that I have no reason for thinking otherwise, then I may believe that p.

So does this mean I may indeed rationally believe that the square root of 7921 is 89? No. For how do I know that my application of the algorithm for determining square roots to the number 7921 is a correct one? Might not my seeming-to-calculate correctly be the result of mistakes I am caused to make either by sleep or an supremely powerful, malicious mind (genius malignus), mistakes which continually mask one another, hence remain hidden from me? If my use of the algorithm for determining square roots should be erroneous in this way, then it would not be something to which I could apply the principle which I have just acknowledged to be built into the concept of mathematical proof.

So until I have determined whether what I am now having is a correct mathematical calculating, as opposed to the mere manipulated appearance thereof caused by sleep or an supremely powerful, malicious mind, I may not yet rationally believe that there the square root of 7921 is 89. That is, I may not yet endorse, for this kind of proposition (mathematical ones), the general rule that if I perceive clearly and distinctly that p, then (I may rationally believe that) p.”

Notice that in these three cases, a certain move is always at issue, namely, from its seeming-to-me clearly and distinctly that p to my regarding myself as rationally entitled or justified to believe that p. What Descartes appears to be getting at when, in the Third Meditation, he asks whether he may assert as a general rule that everything he perceives very clearly and distinctly is true2 is the idea of such a general move, such a general rule or criterion for moving from asserting, “It seems clearly and distinctly to me, i.e., optimally, such that I can see no reason for doubt, that p” to believing, “p”. In general, the idea of clear and distinct perception is the general idea of its seeming clearly and distinctly, i.e., optimally, to me that p (such that, barring whacky thought-experiments of the kind Descartes is encouraging us to engage in, I have no reason to doubt that p, hence would ordinarily be entitled to believe that p). And there are three kinds of such clear and distinct seeming-to-me, namely, the very abstract kind which Descartes has when he ponders what, if any, things he can still claim to know with certainty once he has withheld assent from the diverse things the supremely powerful, malicious mind could deceive him about. Then there is clear and distinct seeming to me of the genuinely perceptual kind, in which one can speak literally of clear and distinct perceptual experience. And finally there is the mathematical kind, which is, of course, a rather attenuated and derivative sense in which one might speak of clear and distinct perception. As a matter of fact, we do speak in this derivative and attenuated way. Thus, we say, “I see now how this algorithm works”, or again, “I see now that the square root of 7921 is 89”, etc.

Crucially, according to Descartes only one of these is unconditionally valid, i.e., such that one can move from “It seems to me clearly and distinctly that p, such that I know or conceive of nothing which speaks against its being the case that p” to “I may rationally believe it to be the case that p” without hesitation or qualification, that is, without first having to address a prior issue. This is the case of his certain knowledge, namely, that he exists as thinking. In this one very special case, what seems to him to be the case just has to be the case. In this one case, then, Descartes knows with complete certainty and confidence that he rationally believe what seems very clearly and distinctly to him to be the case.

But the other two cases are not unconditionally valid. There is a prior issue to be resolved before one may assert of these cases the general rule that whatever seems clearly and distinctly to be the case may be rationally believed. This prior issue is whether what one has before one’s mind is precisely what one thinks it is, a seeming-to-one that p of such a kind that the rule of clear and distinct perception may be applied to it. In the latter two cases (empirical and mathematical knowledge-claiming) one needs first to address, or so Descartes argues, the issue of whether it is really such a seeming-clearly-and-distinctly-to-one-that p (in the relevant sense, empirical or mathematical), or whether it is merely the illusion of this3 engendered in one by sleep or an supremely powerful, malicious mind (or by a mad computer scientist, as in the brain-in-a-vat scenario). By contrast, the first kind of case is such that even if one should be subject to such deception, the move from “It seems clearly and distinctly, i.e., optimally, to me that p” to “I may rationally believe it to be the case that p” can still go through.

And so Descartes now asks what condition must be fulfilled if this prior issue is to be resolved, thereby permitting him to maintain that, generally, i.e., in all cases of seeming-to-him optimally (clearly and distinctly) that p, if he has such clear and distinct perception, he may regard himself as rationally entitled to believe that p. Descartes’ answer is that he must prove both that God exists and that God, although able to deceive him, would not in fact (because God is so benevolent). If there is such a benevolent God, then Descartes may rationally believe that the relations between him in his capacity as a thinking thing and whatever is out there beyond his mind are so arranged that he may take clear and distinct perception across the board, whether clear and distinct perception in the strict and literal sense (sense perception) or mathematical clear and distinct perception, as a reliable indicator of truth.

§ 2: The Traditional Objection of the Cartesian Circle

One great advantage of this way of reading Descartes is that it gets rid of a problem which many commentators have thought there to be in Descartes’ doctrine of clear and distinct ideas: it is indisputably the case that Descartes claims that he needs to prove the existence of God before he can assert as a general rule that everything he clearly and distinctively perceives is (something he is rationally entitled to believe as) true. Yet he also seems to use, as we shall soon see, the doctrine of clear and distinct ideas in order to prove the existence of God. It seems, then, that there is a circularity in Descartes’ reasoning: on the one hand, proof of the existence of God is needed in order that one may use the doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, on the other, this doctrine is used in the proof of God’s existence. This circularity has come to be called the Cartesian circle.4 But the way of reading Descartes suggested here avoids this circle because it involves differentiating between different classes of thought (cogitationes) or knowledge-claims and then pointing out that the existence of God is not presupposed in justifying the principle and rule of clear and distinct perception across the board, but in justifying the principle and rule of clear and distinct perception for specific classes of thought, in particular, those classes of thought for which global deception is, as Descartes believes, possible.

Thus, the first and very special case of Descartes’ knowledge that he is as thinking gives him the thesis that some kind of principle or rule of clear and distinct perception must apply to all thoughts, all cogitations. But due to the differences between the different kinds of proposition, in particular, the fact that the kinds of thought or knowledge-claim whose legitimacy Descartes is really interested in ascertaining, namely, empirical and mathematical knowledge claims, are obviously not self-certifying, the principle or rule cannot apply unconditionally, as it does in the case of his first and very special bit of certain knowledge. Descartes then sets out, across pp.31-32, from the paragraph beginning “However, I have in the past …” to the paragraph ending “… I cannot see how I can ever be certain of anything else,” to identify what the requisite condition is in the specific case of empirical and mathematical thoughts. This condition is, of course, the existence of God, which, as we now see Descartes clearly regards as presupposed only in the application of the principle or rule of clear and distinct perception to these kinds of thought. There is no Cartesian circle.

Yet there is a problem for this way of reading Descartes, a problem which forces one to concede that it is a reconstructive kind of interpretation. What we have been discussing here is how precisely to understand what Descartes is getting at when, in his recapitulation of the First and Second Meditations, he speaks of “a general rule that everything that I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.” (p.31) When we look carefully at the phrase just phrase just quoted, the problem immediately becomes evident: Descartes does not speak of a general rule that everything he perceives very clearly and distinctly to be true, he may rationally believe to be true, as I have assumed here. Rather, he speaks of a rule permitting him to move from his very clearly and distinctly perceiving something to be true to its being true (and not to his being rationally entitled to believe it to be true).

I must therefore argue that Descartes, notwithstanding what stands in his text, actually meant (or ought to have meant) what I am attributing to him. In other words, I must argue that when on p.31 Descartes speaks of a general rule it better corresponds to what he was really getting at but perhaps not seeing clearly, perhaps not formulating accurately, to regard him as saying, “It seems, therefore, that I could establish as a general rule that everything that I perceive very clearly and distinctly I may rationally believe to be true.”5 What consideration might justify me in maintaining this? Principally this: if Descartes is serious in his talk of a rule, i.e., something which governs acts of thinking, then he must understand his rule in the way I suggest. For as a rule governing acts of thinking, it can only be a rule specifying when he, Descartes may move from one act of thinking, viz., clearly and distinctly perceiving it to be true that p, to another act of thinking. But its being true that p is not an act of thinking but a fact about the world. In other words, Descartes’ rule, as formulated by Descartes himself, does not make literal sense; it is poorly formulated. At the very least, it must refer, not to various facts in the world, but only to acts performed by Descartes. Moreover, it must specify one of these acts not simply as one Descartes actually does perform but as one he is rationally entitled to perform, given that he has performed another.6

There is another reason why we must interpret Descartes in the way I have interpreted him here. If it were right to read Descartes as out to assert generally that everything he perceives very clearly and distinctly is true; and if to perceive anything clearly and distinctly is to have the best possible reasons for believing it: then we are de facto implying that Descartes thought it possible to eliminate, or rather, to deny, the fallibility of empirical knowledge-claims. But we know that this is absurd and we also know that Descartes would not be so stupid as not to see this absurdity.

§ 3: Descartes on the Existence of God

I turn now to look at Descartes’ attempt to prove the existence of God. When trying to make sense of Descartes’ argument for the existence of God, you need to bear in mind the following things:

Firstly, from the point of view of demonstrating that natural philosophy done in the style of Galileo and Copernicus is more congenial both to the Christian faith (because it entails that the mind has to be distinct from the body, hence has a nicely soul-like character about it which prevents one from construing it à la Aristotle as the form of the body) and to Christian theology (because it displays a dependence on this latter intellectual activity, in particular, proofs of God’s existence), Descartes’ primary job will be accomplished if he can show the mere need for such proofs. Naturally, it is incumbent upon Descartes to show how precisely this need might be satisfied. And so he says that in order to eliminate the possibility that he could be being deceived, he

should examine whether God exists and, if he exists, whether it is possible that he is a deceiver. As long as this is unknown, I cannot see how I can ever be certain of anything else. (p.32)

And, then, of course, he sets out to determine whether God exists and, if so, whether God would deceive him. Yet since the point is primarily to show the need for proofs of God and theological speculation about God’s nature, perhaps Descartes can afford to see his argument for God’s existence as a work in progress upon which others, in particular, the Christian theologians to whom he addresses the Meditations, can be critically engaged. Certainly, Descartes is addressing his argument to such people because he formulates in the jargon of late mediaeval Christian theology and philosophy.

This raises a second point which needs to be borne in mind: Descartes does not just have one proof of God. In the Fifth Meditation he returns to the question of God’s existence and provides another proof for it, this time, his own version of a very traditional way of showing that God exists. This very traditional way of showing that God exists is known as the ontological argument. I will examine this kind of argument when we reach the Fifth Meditation, so will not say anything further about it here. The only thing that needs to be noted is the fact that because this argument is so traditional, the very fact that Descartes resorts to it shows how concerned he is to be demonstrating how a Galilean rather than Aristotelian view of nature much more naturally creates space for the traditional kind of speculation about God.

§ 2 (a) How to understand the Scholastic Jargon of Formal and Intentional Reality

As already pointed out, the Third Meditation makes fairly heavy use of terminology from so-called Scholastic philosophy, i.e., the late Mediaeval, Christian theology and philosophy taught at all European universities primarily by clerics right up to and into the beginnings of modern science. (When Descartes and others of his time speak of the philosophy of the Schools, they are referring to this Scholastic philosophy.) In particular, Descartes makes use of the Scholastic distinction between realitas formalis7 and realitas objectiva, terms which one would most literally translate as formal reality and objective reality respectively. Unfortunately, what the mediaeval philosophers mean by “objective reality” is not what we mean by this term today and so Clarke avoids this most literal translation. Instead, he uses the term “intentional reality”; in general, whenever you see in your text the terms ‘intentional’ or ‘intentionally’, you should appreciate that more literal but therefore also more misleading translations would be ‘objective’ and ‘objectively’ respectively.8

What mediaeval philosophers mean by this term may put, very roughly, as follows: objective reality is the object of some idea. I have an idea of Barack Obama and an idea of Santa Claus. We may therefore say that the objects of these two ideas are, respectively, Barack Obama and Santa Claus. But Santa does not exist. So the mediaeval notion of objective reality is not at all the modern notion according to which to be objectively real is to exist independently of the mind. Rather, the mediaeval notion and terminology is to be understood as connoting what one might call the ‘meaningfulness’ or ‘contentfulness’ of an idea. If I believe that Barack Obama lives in the White House or that Santa lives at the North Pole, I have beliefs which are about Barack and Santa respectively. The one belief is about or refers to or, as is sometimes said, is directed at, Barack Obama, the other at Santa Claus.

As is shown by the case of my believing that Santa lives at the North Pole, beliefs can be about or refer to or be directed at certain things even those these things do not actually exist. One way of understanding this is to say that when we speak of my having a belief about Santa Claus, what we really mean is that I have a belief which is true if and only if there is someone called Santa and this person has the property or relation predicated of him in my belief, in this case, living at the North Pole. Note that a belief can have the property of being true if and only if such and such is the case even if such and such is not the case, say, because the individuals involved do not exist. Naturally, my belief that Barack Obama lives in the White House is about Barack Obama in the same general sense: it has the complex, biconditional property of being true if and only if there is someone called Barack Obama and this person lives in the White House. And in this case, since Barack Obama does live in the White House, my belief not only has this property, it has the property of actually being true whereas my belief about Santa does not have this latter property.

The property possessed by beliefs and other psychological state or events of being about something in the sense just indicated has been called, since the mid-19^th^ century, when the Austrian philosopher Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917) introduced the term, intentionality. Brentano in fact derived the term ‘intentionality’ from Mediaeval philosophy, with which, as an ex-Catholic priest, he was very familiar. Mediaeval philosophers called the meaningful character of a belief—its property of being about certain specific things—the belief’s intentio, and it is from this usage that the modern term ‘intentionality’, introduced by Brentano, derives. In Latin, intentio literally means purpose or striving, as is indicated by the fact that our English word ‘intention’ derives from it. But the mediaeval philosophers did not think that beliefs and other psychological states or events which can be said to be about certain things had any inherent purpose or striving built into them. They just meant the character of such states and events as being subject to biconditional properties of the kind indicated, i.e., being true if and only if Bush lives in the White House, being veridical if and only if there is a man lurking there in the garden, and so on.

You can see now why Clarke chooses to translate Descartes’ term realitas objectiva as intentional reality, or again, Descartes’ talk of something being ‘objectively’ in an idea as a matter of its being intentionally in the idea. What Descartes means by the objective or, to use Clarke’s translation, intentional reality of something is its character as being what a certain idea (belief, judgement, perceptual experience) in the mind is about. And what Descartes means by something’s being intentionally in an idea is simply that it is what the idea is about, in the sense indicated, which, to reiterate the point, does not entail that it actually exists.9

As for the notion of formal or actual reality, this is easier to understand: the formal or actual reality of a thing—its realitas formalis or actualis—is its reality with respect to its forms, i.e., the various properties, relations, kinds and features possessed by it. In short, it is the totality of the various properties, relations, kinds and features possessed by it. The formal reality of something which is F, G, H, … is therefore precisely the set {F, G, H, …}—whence it follows that two entities can possess the same formal or actual reality, i.e., the same totality of properties F, G, H, …. what the eminent reality of something is is rather more obscure. But see Clarke, note 10, p.204.

§ 2 (b) Descartes’ First Proof of the Existence of God

Because it turns out to play an important role in his proof, Descartes begins by clarifying (in the final two paragraphs of p.32) the notion of an idea, understood as some item in his mind which possesses, in some shape or form, the property of intentionality, of being about, or referring to, something. “(O)rder seems to require,” he says,

that I classify all my thoughts into certain kinds and that I find out in which kinds truth or falsehood properly found. Some thoughts are like the images of things, and the term ‘idea’ applies in a strict sense to them alone: for example, when I think of a person, a chimera, the sky, an angel or God. Other thoughts, however, also have additional forms; for example, when I will, fear, affirm, or deny, I always grasp something as the subject of my thoughts but I include in my thought something more than a resemblance of the thing in question. Some of these thoughts are called volitions or emotions, and others are called judgements. (p.32)

Firstly, Descartes distinguishes those mental or psychological items with intentionality which are simply about individual objects or classes of objects. In other words, he first distinguishes our ideas of individual things like God, Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama and even Santa Claus; and our concepts of things, i.e., our ideas of a person, of a chimera, of a sky, of an angel, etc. And then he contrasts this set of ideas with a further set which somehow implicate ideas in the first and, as Descartes claims, strict sense: when I will something, I will something specific, in particular, a certain state of affairs, e.g., that I travel to Germany next year. When I fear something, I also fear a certain state of affairs, for example, that climate change will cause the loss of many species. And finally, when I affirm or deny something, I also affirm or deny states of affairs, e.g., that Santa exists. Evidently, some of the ideas in this second sense are non-cognitive, i.e., volitional (will) or emotive (fear). But others are cognitive, i.e., affirmations and denials, which are species of judgement. But all ideas in this second (and looser) sense somehow implicate a capacity for ideas in the first sense. For these latter—acquaintance with individual objects and possession of concepts—are so to speak the components of ideas in the second sense: I can only affirm that Kevin Rudd is Prime Minister if I have an understanding or idea of who the individual Kevin Rudd is and if I understand the concept of being Prime Minister. Very roughly speaking, then, ideas in the first sense are the components or elements of ideas in the second sense.10

Descartes points now out that insofar as he continues to withhold assent from his ideas and judgements, he cannot be led into error: “(I)f I consider the ideas merely as certain modes of my thoughts and if I do not refer them to anything else, they can hardly provide me with any material for error.” (p.33) He then goes on, in the next paragraph, to make an absolutely central claim: Amongst his ideas, he says,

some seem to be innate, some acquired and seem to have been fabricated by me. The fact that I understand what a thing is, what truth is and what thought is, seems to result from my own nature alone. However, up to now I have thought that, when I hear a noise, see the sun, or feel the fire, these result from certain things which are external to me [i.e., are ideas acquired empirically from external things]. Finally, sirens, hippogriffs11 and the like are fabricated by me. Perhaps, however, I can think that they are adventitious, or all innate, or all fabricated, for I have not yet seen clearly what their true origin is. (p.33; indirect speech corrected)

Here we encounter the first mention of a doctrine famously associated with Descartes, namely, the doctrine of innate ideas. According to him, certain ideas, certain concepts, are so to speak hard-wired into us: they are not such that we could have learnt them through experience, rather they come with the territory of being such self-conscious, thinking subjects. This is not the crazy idea you might first think it is. It is indeed hard to imagine how certain concepts could have been learnt through experience. In what way, for example, did each of us acquire a concept of space and time? We certainly did not derive this concept by noticing gaps or intervals between objects here and objects there and then noticing that all these gaps or intervals display a common property, that, namely, of being parts or intervals in the one single space. This does not really make sense since we are identifying the gaps or intervals between objects by identifying the objects and we do this latter by locating them at different points or regions in the one space. (Something analogous applies, of course, in the case of time.) Furthermore, there is empirical evidence to show that we have a sense of space and in particular, spatial depth, right from the outset. Thus, babies will crawl to the edge of a table and stop when they see how far it is from the table top to the floor.

But because Descartes does not indicate here what ideas or concepts he regards as innate, I do not wish for the moment to examine this doctrine any further. For the main question Descartes wishes to ask here is concerns not innate ideas, whatever these may be, but those which Descartes believes to “originate from things which are external to me.” In particular, he wishes to ask, “what reason would persuade me to believe that those ideas are similar to the things in question.” (p.33) This is primarily to ask what reason he has for thinking that, although these ideas seem to him to express truths about whatever causes them in Descartes’ mind, he is really justified in claiming that they do express such truths.12

So how is he to resolve this issue? It is here (bottom of p.34), in pursuit of a resolution of this issue, that Descartes’ proof of God’s existence begins. “There is,” he claims,

another way to find out if, among things of which I have ideas, some exist outside me. Insofar as those ideas are simply certain modes of thinking, I do not see any inequality between them and they all seem to originate in me in the same way. But insofar as one idea represents one thing and another represents something else, it is clear that they are very different from each other. For undoubtedly those that represent substances to me are something more and, so to speak, contain more intentional reality [realitas objectiva] than those that represent only modes or non-essential features of substances. Again, the idea by which I understand a supreme God, who is eternal, infinitely all-knowing, omnipotent and the creator of everything that is outside himself, clearly contains more intentional reality than those ideas that represent finite substances. (pp.34-35)

Insofar as he thinks of the ideas in his mind simply as events occurring in his mind, they are all alike and they appear to originate in the same way, namely, as being caused by things beyond the mind. But each idea has its own distinctive content or meaning; it is an idea of this rather than that and what makes two different ideas different from one other is their being about different things. Now Descartes can have ideas either of what he calls substances; or ideas of what he calls modes, i.e., features of substances. In his 1644 work The Principles of Philosophy Descartes defines a substance to be any entity which requires no other entity for its existence.13 And he seems to mean by this something one can recognise as existing without therein recognising something else as existing. Thus, according to Descartes, one cannot recognise any individual property to exist except as the property of something which bears it. One cannot experience or think about the colour blue as instantiated or exemplified without experiencing or thinking of it as instantiated by such and such. In this sense, his idea of an individual property or mode has less intentional reality than his idea of what bears this individual property; to experience or think the first idea as instantiated is to experience or think the second idea as instantiated, i.e., to experience or think of something as bearing or instantiating this property. But the converse does not apply: one can think the idea of what bears a given individual property without thinking of the property as borne by it because one may not, after all, know that the entity in question has this property.

Now according to Descartes, just as the idea of a substance (a bearer of individual properties) has more intentional reality than the idea of an individual property, so, too, the idea of God has more intentional reality than the idea of an individual substance. The thought here is perhaps this: all individual substances, for example, all individual things, fall under various kinds, like dog, cat, hammer, etc. These kinds implicate various properties which at least typical or truly representative instances of the kind have. In particular, they implicate various ways in which typical or representative instances of the kind relate to other things, i.e., behave. Thus, dogs typically, although not always, have four legs, a tail, etc. And they typically do things like bark in certain ways, are gregarious and playful, live in packs, live for about fifteen years, etc., etc.—all the ways of interacting with other things which make up the life of a typical dog. So to experience or think of something as, say, a dog is to experience or think of it as typically occurring in a context of other things with which it stands in typically doggy interaction. And of course to think of this typical context is implicitly to think of other things, which fall under kinds of their own. Therefore, just as to experience or think of an individual property as instantiated was to think of some substance which bore this property, so, too, to recognise something as a dog is to recognise it as part of an all-encompassing whole within which the dog lives out its life. And since Descartes firmly believes that everything must have cause, this whole, too, must have a cause. So to experience or think any individual substance as existing is to think of it as a created entity belonging to the creation of “a supreme God, who is eternal, infinite, all-knowing, omnipotent and the creator of everything that is outside himself.” (p.35)

In other words, when he speaks of the idea of God as having more intentional reality than the idea of an individual substance like an individual dog or cat, Descartes seems to want to maintain that to experience or think of an individual substance as existing is to think of it as belonging to God’s creation, hence is implicitly to think of God as existing. The experience or thought of anything real at all brings with it an implicit experience or thought of God. But of course this does not mean that God and his creation actually exist. For of course how does Descartes know that he really is experiencing and knowing individual substances, and with them, God, to exist? With this, we come to Descartes’ proof proper of the existence of God, which I will discuss in the next lecture.


© Carleton B. Christensen, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014

  1. See p.31.

  2. See p.31.

  3. In other words, whether it is a seeming-to-one in the sense of being the mere illusion of being a seeming-optimally (clearly and distinctly)-to-one!

  4. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_circle.

  5. Descartes comes close to this kind of formulation in the Fifth Meditation, where he asserts, clearing intending to assert a general principle, “But whatever argument I eventually use to prove something, I am always brought back to this: the only things that clearly convince me are those that I perceive clearly and distinctly.” (p.55) There are two senses in which this is for Descartes a general principle: as a matter of fact, he is inclined by nature to become convinced that p, if he clearly and distinctly perceives that p. In other words, he is be nature inclined to judge or assert that p if it seems to him that p under optimal conditions, such that he has the best possible reasons for judging or asserting that p. But this principle concerning how he is disposed to judge or assert that p presupposes the normative principle that he may rationally form the conviction that p if he clearly and distinctly perceives that p. On the same page there occurs another formulation of this general principle which is clearly weighted, much more so than the one just given, towards a reading which expresses how Descartes is disposed to judge or assert: “… my nature is such that, as long as I perceive something very clearly and distinctly, I am unable not to believe that it is true.” (p.55, italics added) Note that in this formulation, too, the consequent is formulated not simply in terms of something’s being true, but in terms of its being believed to be true. That is, this formulation, too, has a consequent which speaks, as in my opinion and according to my interpretation it should, in terms of acts rather than contents of thought.

  6. The conditional proposition “If Jones is the owner of this fine sound system here, then he will play nothing but rubbishy pop music on it” is not a rule but merely a general claim describing what Jones will do as a matter of brute fact if he is indeed the owner of this fine sound system. In order to get a rule, one must speak of what Jones is entitled or permitted to do if he is the owner of the sound system, namely, only play rubbishy pop music on it.

  7. Often Descartes speaks of realitas formalis sive actualis, i.e, of formal or actual reality. Here, actual means the same as formal. Thus, in paragraph 14 Descartes speaks, first, of reality “which is actual or formal” (Heffernan p.128 bottom), then of “actual or formal reality” (Heffernan p.130). Here he also speaks of “objective reality.”

  8. Other translators try to get around this problem in different ways. Thus, Anscombe and Geach use the term ‘representational reality’ as a translation of Descartes’ realitas objectiva.

  9. It is worth noting that Brentano introduced, or rather refocussed attention on, the notion of intentionality because he was concerned to identify a, perhaps even the central task of psychology. In his time, psychology was just getting established as an independent scientific, hence experimental discipline and Brentano claimed that a main task for the new discipline was to give an account of what intentionality is. This is still a central issue in the various forms of psychology which deal with cognitive process, namely, cognitive science and the psychology of perception. Within the philosophy of mind there has been and continues to be much discussion and debate about the nature of intentionality. It is also worth noting that the notion of intentionality occupies centre stage in the thinking of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), founder of the tradition known as phenomenology. It is also important for the continental philosophers Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).

  10. In effect, ideas in the first sense are the referential and predicative components of ideas in the second sense, i.e., the propositions which are desired, willed or judged to be true.

  11. A hippogriff is the mythical creature which was supposed to result from mating a horse with a so-called griffin, a dragon-like creature with the head and claws of an eagle. The term is used figuratively to refer to an impossible thing. There is an old expression Jungentur jam grypes equis, which means “To cross griffons with horses,” indicating an impossible scenario.

  12. But it is not just to ask this. In addition to this, it is also to ask whether these ideas really do originate in things external to him at all for it is, he says, possible that he himself should be the origin of these ideas. Perhaps he has “some other faculty, of which I am not yet sufficiently aware and which is the origin of those ideas, in the same way as it always seemed to up to now that, when I was dreaming, ideas were formed in me without any assistance from external things.” (p.34) Note how Descartes assumes here that his ideas must have some cause, whether external or internal.

  13. Res quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum (Descartes 1644 (1983), § 51, p.23; AT viii^1^), at least in the abstractly nominal sense of substantiality rather than the commonly nominal sense of an individual substance.