Friday, October 10, 2014
A God Chasing His Tail?
Antoine Arnauld (among others) famously accuses Descartes of arguing in a circle: the principle of clear and distinct ideas requires a non-deceiving God to validate it, but the proof of a non-deceiving God requires the principle of clear and distinct ideas. Is Arnauld correct? If not, why not? If not, at what cost?
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Descartes starts off by defeating skepticism in saying that he exists and is a thinking thing. Just by knowing these two simple things, skepticism is now a thing of the past. Descartes then uses the “general rule” as a basis for future arguments. Essentially, it says that everything I clearly and distinctly perceive is true. This general rule is valid insofar as God exists, and there is no great deceiver. All of this is reliant on God’s existence due to the fact that he plays an important role in the Cartesian process. God's role in the Cartesian process is to help us to move from the instances of knowledge to an acceptation of the general rule. The issue that Antoine Arnauld brings up is Descartes argument of God’s existence. It is said that anything we clearly and distinctly perceive is true because God exists and God exists because we clearly and distinctly perceive him. It is apparent that his argument is circling upon itself. If I were to say that I always tell the truth, then make a statement, it must be true, correct? This is the same, problematic, circular argument.
ReplyDeleteAfter reviewing the argument, we can conclude that Arnauld is correct in saying that Descartes is arguing himself into the set off all points, equidistant from a single point, more commonly known as a circle. Without the knowledge of God’s existence, none of his knowledge could be certain. I see Descartes biggest flaw in his reliance on God. We cannot prove God’s existence, and therefore should not allow everything to rely on such disputed idea.
Arnauld argues that Descartes states that to prove that he clearly and distinctly perceives he needs an omnipotent being and that to prove there is an omnipotent being he needs to be able to clearly and distinctly perceive. Arnauld says that this argument is a circular statement. Arnauld is not correct. Descartes states that he will always clearly and distinctly perceive things such as 1+1=2. Because of that he knows that there is an omnipotent being. Descartes does not say that you need this omnipotent being to be capable of clearly and distinctly perceive things; he says that you need this being to be able to accurately remember what you clearly and distinctly perceived. An example of that would be that last night I could solve a math problem perfectly, because I clearly and distinctly perceive it, but the next day in class when it is discussed I may not be able to solve it correctly because I may not be able to perceive it correctly in my memory. What Descartes is doing here is breaking the circle. You do not need God to clearly and distinctly perceive which is what Arnauld is arguing causes the circle.
ReplyDeleteThe cost of Descartes counter statement is now he has to find a new way to prove that he always clearly and distinctly perceives. It also shows how Descartes use of Foundationalism was a failure, meaning that Foundationalism is useless until someone else can attempt to use it and succeed.
I believe that Arnauld (and others) is completely correct. Descartes’ argument is not valid because the premises rely on each other to be true; it doesn’t follow a logical order or have the stopping point necessary to show it to be true. The very thing that he tried to avoid became the flaw in his argument, which makes it very hard for others to be able to say that his argument can be taken seriously. An argument that can go in both directions is not an argument. Therefore, Descartes neither proves that “everything I [he] clearly and distinctly perceives is true” nor the existence of God. There very well could be a great deceiver/evil genius, so Descartes is not even able to disprove that theory that we earlier thought he did.
ReplyDeleteIn his replies to the objections that God exists, Descartes does not justify his proof of God; he merely continues on saying that God exists as if there is nothing wrong with his assertion. These are not adequate defenses of his views, and do nothing to make the objections against them any less definitive. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a connection between God and the truths of arithmetic that he posits. The objection states that “an atheist is clearly and distinctly aware that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles”. This means that an atheist, someone who doesn’t get their knowledge or beliefs from God, can clearly and distinctly perceive something that is true, which Descartes says is impossible. Descartes argues back in his reply that an atheist would have doubt over this claim, which also is not necessarily true.
This is probably the most egregious problem with all of Meditations on First Philosophy. The proof God’s existence becomes crucial, and Descartes doesn’t have adequate premises or the right order of premises to do this successfully. Unfortunately, this leads to many of his other arguments falling apart. It turns out that he did not fully disprove skepticism as a theory, and the fact that he tries to prove God’s existence again shows the flaws and difficulties with creating an ontological argument.