Subjects:
While all six of Rene Descartes’ ‘Meditations’ contain ideas and concepts that are hard to digest by the average reader at the best of times, perhaps the most difficult-to-swallow is his third meditation on his proof for the existence of God. The first meditation is subtitled ‘What can be called into doubt’, in which he explains his form of scepticism which can doubt the existence of anything presented by the senses which seems to exist outside of the mind itself. In this meditation Descartes begins by mentioning that he had as a child accepted many things as true which later transpired to be false, and suggests that knowledge he now takes for granted could equally be false. He goes on to suppose that a supremely powerful demon could be deceiving him, and that perhaps it would be safer to doubt everything he has taken for granted concerning the world around him, if indeed there is one, and start from scratch. The second meditation, subtitled ‘The nature of the human mind, and how it is better known than the body’, begins with this ‘clean slate’ of scepticism towards anything external to the mind, and concludes that the on
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He continues by considering the origin of the ideas present in his mind- whether they are innate, the product of his imagination or really originating from an external world. This is a significant point in the meditation because here Descartes gives a reason for his wanting to prove the existence of God, namely that he cannot possibly continue considering anything else until this issue is decided upon. Here, at least, Descartes has managed to defend his proof from possible criticism from one avenue. Taking his knowledge that he exists as a thinking thing, that matter (if it exists) is changeable and extended, and that clear, distinct ideas exist in his mind, he now begins his proof for the existence of God. ’ [pp93-4]
The remainder of the meditation focuses on possible objections to the proof so far, and on re-iterating the fact that by now Descartes is clearly and distinctly convinced that God exists as a supreme and infinite being. He responds by saying that God contains nothing potential and that the gradual increase in his (Descartes’) knowledge is ‘the surest sign of imperfection’. ’ [Cottingham p87]
So in order for a truth to be beyond doubt it must form a clear and distinct idea in the mind. By this stage Descartes has found reason to doubt everything previously known in the first meditation. The concepts of objective and formal reality are trickier to grasp- a footnote in the Cottingham translation of Descartes’ meditations describes the distinction between them:
‘…if an idea A represents some object X which is F, then F-ness will be contained ‘formally’ in X but ‘objectively’ in A’ [p90]
Descartes sees it as a clear, distinct truth that an accident contains the least objective reality, there is more reality in a mode and more still in a substance. ly thing of whose existence he can be certain is his own mind.
Since he wishes to remain true to his system of beginning with notions that occur foremost in his mind and passing gradually to those which occur later on, Descartes starts by classifying thoughts that occur to him into distinct, different kinds.
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