Descartes's argument for the existence of God.

Rationality. It's all about rationality when it comes to Descartes's argument for the existence of God. His argument for god comes from his Meditations. His Meditations is where Descartes embarks on a path where he meditates each day for six days in which he doubts every single belief he's ever had then attends to build back up his knowledge on what he can know for certain. In doing so we get his famous quote “cogito ergo sum” which translates into “I think therefore I am". In this specific post, we will be focusing on his third and fourth meditation which focuses on his arguments for the existence of God.

Focusing on the third meditation he sets up his framework for ideas and the types of ideas we can have. Descartes's framework is what makes his argument strong, so when listening to his argument consider it via the framework before you go to refute and bring up your objections. I encourage you too always consider someone's argument the way they lay it out because then you will be able to appreciate it more and maybe even adopt the idea or argument. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this argument but it's not an awful one in no means. First, we need to set up the kind of ideas he believes we can have which include ideas of substance, of accident and of mode. The first kind of idea is one of substance which includes infinite substances which he says to be God which is an uncreated substance. And the second substance being finite substances like humans, animals etc. These substances are created because you can't exist on your own without your parents which means they created you and their parents created them and so on. Moving to the second kind of idea is one of accident, these kinds of ideas are a dependent feature of the said substances. Some examples of this are color, shape, and sound. We wouldn’t know what these ideas are without our substances existing since they rely on them. The final kind of idea would be one of mode this is an idea which is a dependent state of the substance. If you're looking for some examples of this idea, you're doing it now by reading this post you're perceiving this content. Some other examples are moving, resting and imagining. Any state you're experiencing because it's dependent on you as a finite substance or of God as an infinite substance.

Now we know according to Descartes what types of ideas we can have so now we move into where these ideas come from or their sources. Like the types of ideas, the sources are broken into three types innate, adventitious and those that are produced by you. The first source are innate ideas these are already inside you. The next source of ideas are adventitious these are caused specifically by something external from you. These ideas that are produced by you are willed into existence via an idea of an idea. It's important to note that although the adventitious ideas and the ones produced by you are very similar, they have a distinct difference being that the ideas produced by you must be willed into existence. The innate and adventitious ideas don’t get willed into existence.

The last part of his framework I'd like to set up is his hierarchy of reality. This hierarchy of reality is set up as follows, god at the top then angels, humans, animals, plants, minerals and finally dirt. It's crucial to know this hierarchy for the argument because as you go to the top of the hierarchy the amount of objective reality the thing has increases. We can also say this when in terms of kinds of ideas with the ideas of a substance having the most objective reality and the ones of mode having the least.  You may be wondering what I mean by objective reality but in Descartes's view it's simple it means the amount of representational content. God having the most and dirt having the least because the amount of content that can represent the two are quite different.

Since his framework is good to go it's time for the argument for God. As we know through his framework God has the most objective reality and since God is also the highest form of any kind of idea being that of an infinite substance this just supports his supreme objective reality. Descartes argues that since were third on the hierarchy and the second-highest kind of idea we can't be responsible for the idea of anything above us on either hierarchy only of ideas below us. Going back to the sources of ideas we see that since the idea of God isn't caused by something external from us and it isn't willed into existence by us it must be innate. And because the idea of an infinite substance is uncreated unlike the idea of a finite substance such as ourselves then this uncreated innate idea of god had to of already been inside us and this could mean that God put the idea of itself in us. To strengthen his argument Descartes makes a distinction between judgments and ideas saying that a judgment is a claim about an idea which can be true or false, but the idea doesn’t have this value. But since the idea of God is innate it must be real and we can make the judgment saying its true or false but he says it would be unwise to say it too be false since we can only link back the cause of the idea to God.

His final argument for the existence of God comes in his fourth and fifth meditation which is known as an ontological argument. Going up to this point for him to say he knows something he must know it clearly and distinctly. Like he knows he exists because he's a thinking thing which he knows clearly and distinctly. Now considering God he argues since this idea is innate, he knows it clearly and distinctly plus God's existence is part of God's essence then it must follow that God exists necessarily. To understand this argument better it's important to understand the difference between existence and essence. This essence is supposed to be what something is like somethings properties. The difference then for essence and existence is that you can know somethings essence before knowing the existence of something because you can know for example the properties or essence of a car without knowing what a car is or its existence. But in the idea of God, its essence is just to exist and since its properties are existence itself it must follow then that God exists. So, there we have it Descartes's argument for the existence of God.