Are there any good points to Descartes' Ontological Argument?

Descartes, famed for his proposition (if it is a proposition, but that's a seperate issue) "I think therefore I am," one day decided that he would "withhold his dissent" from any proposition unless he could percieve clearly and distinctly, using pure rationality, that it was either true or false. He then, however, offered an argument for the existence of God which goes something like this: I have an intrinsic idea of "God" as a perfect being. For something to be perfect, it must have all perfect properties. Existence is a perfect property. Therefore, God exists.

So ridiculous it makes me angry

I recently sat an AS in philosophy. It was all going great until I got to the last question: assess Descartes' ontological argument. I wrote a good few pages prefectly illustrating why it was, essentially, a load of bull before realising that I couldn't get above the lowest grade boundary without exploring both sides of the argument, at which point I panicked and wrote a load of drivel to take up space. There is nothing good about it! How can he clearly and distinctly percieve that that's true??? I had so much respect for him before I read his stuff but now his undefendable tripe has ruined my exam!
Voted for by hitchhiker42.
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- grant
  August 20, 2006
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  The organ that rationalises the irrational is the brain. No other phenomena of this irrational universe (animal brains, plants, all other groups of atoms) appears to do this. This is because the human brain thinks and because it thinks this brain evolves attitudes. One of these attitudes is that it thinks it is in control of its own phenomenal body which then logically (logic is another human brain function) likes to think it is in control of all other phenomenal bodies. This control logic, which exists only because the brain is in fear of its demise (reality of death)manifests as resistance to the reality that it is not in control so then attempts to exploit all these other phenomena to feel (emotionally) in control. E.g; the body its attached to (unhealthy food and dangerous sport including war, sexual gratification), other brain's bodies (objectification for sexual gratification) and the planet as a whole. Basically, the phenomenal universe is irrational and no amount of attempts to rationalise it will allow sense to be made of it. Only because the brain thinks does it think it is on top. Descartes, therefore, is right to suggest that rational thinking alone is only interested in concepts of true or false. If one takes the idea (as it is only an idea, the brain loves ideas) that there is no such thing as true or false, that the seeking of rationality to understand the universe is pointless (that is the same as seeking the ultimate truth which the rational brain cannot concieve because rationality requires, for a truth to exist, a falsehood to appose it) and to let go of resistance to the fact that us, as seperate phenomenal bodies with our brains, are not in control of destiny, then the perfection of all phenomenol activity and outcomes are percievable. The perception I am refering to is a perception, not of the human brain alone, but by the open mind. The open mind (as apposed to the closed, control freakish, splitminded brain) percieves from the standpoint that it is connected to all bodies. All universal bodies as one connected being is the ultimate relationship. The bodies as seperate can only learn this through relating to each other in the understanding that all others are in fact yourself. This outcome is a "god realisation" (for want of a better term, as "god" is such an objectified, loaded one). "i think therefore i am" is just the brain recognising itself but not much else. If anything makes sense one needs to understand that "sense" is generally in reference to the five phenomenal senses. The senses that are the domain of the phenomenal human brain. So i'm talking of a perception outside (and inside) of these five senses. Best term for this is "feeling" (not to be confused with the emotional variety). Feel free to use any of this in your studies. Everything you come across is relevent. People get hooked on institutional stamps of approval type resources for use within institutions of learning (ah, the phenomenal, institutional brain).
- grant
  August 20, 2006
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  Therefore, there is two sides within the argument above. # 1; That we aren't just our phenomenal brain and it's phenomenal thinking with it's rational thoughts in the attempt to understand phenomena. # 2; The phenomenal brain, distinct from who we really are, is the sum of it's thoughts only because it THINKS(as descartes seems to be indicating).
- hitchhiker42
  August 21, 2006
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  I'm not questioning Descartes' rationalism, just his apparent ability to carry this rationalism through. I was blown away when I first heard the cogito and I'm still astounded by it's sheer simplicity yet utter truth. I guess I'm just a little bitter and disillusioned because I think a lot of his propositions after the cogito became steadily more and more questionable. Surely the notion that God exists because I think of him as existing is absurd? This was all I was debating here, he's actually one of my favourite philosophers. On another note, interesting opinion, although I'm not sure I agree that the universe is entirely irrational just because no other organism appears to percieve it rationally. Surely if the human mind is a product of this universe and has the capacity to think rationally, there must be some underlying rationality in the universe? Humanity did not invent logic, they merely discovered it along the way. Thanks for the point that everything is relevant, I do need all the help I can get!
- grant
  August 21, 2006
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  I think the point you make that "there must be an underlying rationality" I would agree with. The point I make is that this "underlying" fact is not conceivable by the brain alone. The brain, due to it's feeling of this "alone"ness is neurotic. It is the alone brain (alone because it feels seperate to the point that it invents seperate gods) that goes around in endless circles. It's safe (therefore comfortable) orbit. No different than the phenomena known (or brain labelled) as a planet orbiting the phenomenal sun. It (the brain) needs to leave it's safe orbit to realise it's insecurity rather than continue circling. This circling gives a false security because circling (or orbiting) brings predictable outcomes. And oh how the brain becomes seduced by prophecy and predictions of the future (predictability). It don't much care for surprises. These are just insecure and neurotic brain activities to escape the now. In the "now" (that the brain is escaping from as it perceives the future based on PAST experience) is where pure rationality lies (this "pure rationality" can be understood as just another term like "god", "present moment", "now", "ultimate reality", "ultimate truth" and so on). When one experiences "now" it is not a "brain alone" experience. So no rationality as perceived by the brain alone will be understood. The "brain alone" will only create more beliefs, try to defend and protect current beliefs and generally only rely on belief period. It is a safe orbit (but, as we see with humanity, a very contracted and neurotic one). So, # 1 point. REALISE ONE'S INSECURITY (in "matrix" terms, "take the red pill").
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The key point to realize in Descartes is this:

"I come to realize an infinity of details... the truth of which makes itself so apparent and accords so well with my nature that when I discover them for the first time it does not seem to me as though I were learning anything new, but rather as though I were remembering what I had previously known - that is that I am perceiving things which were already in my mind, even though I had not yet focussed my attention upon them" (Fifth Meditation).

This is a demonstration of one of the most psychological works of the day. He reduces things down, not in terms of "rational" technical terms we've come to know and love, but in terms of those psychological symbols already familiar. I'm sure no teacher would give a student bad marks simply for proceeding along the same lines as his subject. The subject, or rather the object, is a mind that surtout requires that the inquiries of the mind are of the utmost importance (that is, the inquiries of a seventeenth century European). Truth for him is a structure of mental behaviors that allows mental behaviors the highest rank, the title as being the meter of reality. He, unlike us, believed that dreams were just as real as anything else. The nature of truth changes in a few centuries.

If William of Occam were to look at modern dream analysis he'd reiterate on the spot, "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Beings shouldn't be made more complicated in number beyond need)." Many of the physicists and the various scientists of today contend that "God" is just a name we apply to a handful of things which I'm quite sure Descartes would find needlessly complicated. This includes the big bang (Lemaitre), the recognition of the father figure (Freud), and in Descartes's case this would be logocentrism (Derrida). Descartes here recognizes not what we would call God, but rather what we would christen cognition. It is far easier to read such texts when you realize that terminology, the bread and butter of metaphysics, wasn't a source of originality, but continuation of old terms in this time.

Deconstructing the significance of each idea is the first step. To treat the question as though Descartes walks among us today is ridiculous as treating Stephen Hawking as though he walks among the Victorians. Don't treat Descartes's God as though he has all the baggage of the Old Testament or national political movements. Look at how Rene treats God, uses God, and uses his name with Occam's Razor in mind.

The beginnings of the Fifth Meditation treat the reaction of the psyche to what Kant would call "synthetic propositions." As was the seventeenth century style, he humanizes it with examples from geometry. He goes on to assert that "Truth is being." Here lies the least commensurable element - Rene did not conceive of thinking in as systematic a manner as we do, but as a gift from God. Truth here lies in that it is clear, accessible, repeatable, or at least as much as Euclidean geometry is.

"Thus, even if everything that I concluded in the preceding meditations were by chance not ture, the existence of God should pass in my mind as at least as certain as I have hitherto considered the laws of mathematics.... I am easily convinced that theexistence of God can be separated from his essence, and that thus I can conceive of God as not actually existing. Nevertheless, when I consider this with more attention, I find it manifest that we can no more sparate the existence of God from his essence than we can separate from the esence of a triangle the fact that..." (ibid.).

"And thus I recognize very clearly that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends solely on the knowledge of the true God, so that before I knew him I could not know any other thing perfectly" (Ibid.).

All that remains is to translate those things Descartes claimed to be necessary to "truth," "perfection," "knowledge" etc. An independent observer will notice the inherent circularity of these meditations, in which something is put forward is clearly true on the basis that it can be put forward clearly. Simply graft this onto some other idea that is inherently circular but established to be true, and the second argument is given. I, as Grant will certainly remind me with good reason and good reasoning, revert to analogies of aesthetics, linguistics, psychology, sociology, history, and on occasion poli-sci. Psychology usually does the trick.

Remember: a philosophy is just a system that leads to dead ends, but rather than turning around, celebrates the dead ends, baptizing them and paying them pilgrimage. It's just a system that is designed to answer one set of questions, though always at the expense of another set of questions.

Voted for by Auxiliar.

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GaryCGibson
August 21, 2006
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Descartes as an existential rationalist
Rene Descartes in working with first principles of mind was continuing a useful philosophical tradition that does not lead to a end. It is fair that is a end, yet for Christians is a transition, although for existential analysis it is a non-sequitur for the time being...the complete triumph of the other as Sartre would say. *** Descartes’ ability to juggle concepts in math and philosophy, and skepticism about a posteriori knowledge that is subject to reevaluation were fine examples of a search for an epistemological system that was of a more aetemporal nature. One must one if truth, if it has any sort of Platonic nature existing for-itself, can have be found in temporality or time, but instead must be of an eternal nature. It is possible I suppose that eternal change might also be considered to be truth if it is pre-determined...yet that discussion might be said to start with the pre-Socratic philosophers Parmenides and Heraclitus. *** Descartes contemplations of existence and the reliability of thought encounter many of the explorations that Sartre later elaborated very well. Some people today take too much of a purely verbal approach in the effort to deconstruct Descartes construction, and will express a tendency to associate Descartes’ ideas about God as overwhelming the context and purpose of his meditations. *** Descartes perhaps led into Husserl's phenomenalism(?) with his exceedingly fruitful self-analysis, though it is a mistake to believe that existential self-analysis inevitably or solely leads into any sort of psychological archetypes such as Freud or Jung wrote of. While there may be archetypes of the collective unconscious, they are no more necessary nt of intellectual content or ratiocination than mathematical thought. *** Descartes was cognizant that his thought was phenomenal, and though self-aware of it, a pre-existent 'other' exists that allows his though, being and universe of experience to exist. Cogito ergo sum is a useful way to recognize a self-expression of self-awareness differing people from computers or lions, for instance. *** Human reason constructing ideas about reality with synthetic a priori judgments adds to understanding of the universe such as in cosmology or quantum physics, yet every construction is limited by a noumenal, ontological 'reef of solipsism'... *** Descartes’ thoughts on first principles were a first rate intellectual exercise exploring the realm of subjective human existence and experience. Today one can be somewhat sure that the potential value of subjective intellectual consideration of several aspects of personal experience are delimited by the principle of Cantor's theorem whereby a set of all sets including itself isn't possible. The human mind's meditation's upon it's own epistemological parameters are limited by not only Cantor's premise regarding sets yet by the nature of space-time and potential as well...the future might always transcend present finities. [http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/Meditation6.html] Analytic philosophers of the 20th century transcending somewhat empiricist categories through expanded mediations (Strawson, Quine etc.) found more than simply psychological reflections within mind or the external sense data that could be processed without 'debasing' the value of knowledge. *** Part of the effort continuing from Descartes and predecessors was to determine what is real and what isn't, as well as what reality is and to discover what knowledge is valid or invalid. Humanity has subjective, and creative thought processes that add or synthesize from given knowledge. If one discovered large numbers 1,2 and 3 strewn about some landscape human beings have the ability comparatively (with concepts) to add them together to form the total of 6. Formal logic investigating language and other intellectual structures works in the realm of the synthetic a priori in many cases forming material that is entirely new for-itself. Evolution is a sort of external or non-subjective concomitant of that creative process. Change and transition n though are paralleled somewhat by meta-structures outside known human causation in the realm of 'otherness' or 'God' beyond the limits of human reason. The nature of human reason is such that it exists within the criterion given it by an Other...such is the Universe, universes or whatever. Some are satisfied with more proximal empirical, scientific explanations of physical causality, and others would reduce valid human knowledge rather wily nilly to sense data and psychology...with Ayer allowing ideas about sense data that are considered scientific to sort of slip through as valid knowledge. *** " 15. But there are many other beliefs which though seemingly the teaching of nature, are not in reality so, but which obtained a place in my mind through a habit of judging inconsiderately of things. It may thus easily happen that such judgments shall contain error: thus, for example, the opinion I have that all space in which there is nothing to affect [or make an impression on] my senses is void: that in a hot body there is something in every respect similar to the idea of heat in my mind; that in a white or green body there is the same whiteness or greenness which I perceive; that in a bitter or sweet body there is the same taste, and so in other instances; that the stars, towers, and all distant bodies, are of the same size and figure as they appear to our eyes, etc. But that I may avoid everything like indistinctness of conception, I must accurately define what I properly understand by being taught by nature. For nature is here taken in a narrower sense than when it signifies the sum of all the things which God has given me; seeing that in that meaning the notion comprehends much that belongs only to the mind [to which I am not here to be understood as referring when I use the term nature]; as, for example, the notion I have of the truth, that what is done cannot be undone, and all the other truths I discern by the natural light [ without the aid of the body]; and seeing that it comprehends likewise much besides that belongs only to body, and is not here any more contained under the name nature, as the quality of heaviness, and the like, of which I do not speak, the term being reserved exclusively to designate the things which God has given to me as a being composed of mind and body."-Descartes from meditation 6 *** Descartes meditations seem to be following a line stimulated by Plotinus perhaps and very existential in character. It is as if he were assuming that God (such as perhaps is paradigmatically portrayed by The One in the Enneads) has set him into the world of the Spirit and is considering its details from inside out. *** Descartes' brilliant mathematical work is matched with his brilliant philosophical, existential analysis. Berkley's 'Three Dialogues' expressed similar difficulties about epistemology and the nature of reality. *** The problem with subjective thought is that it is exactly and uniquely so. Yet not to think is to be an idiot or inanimate, although I must stipulate that McClintock the brilliant arctic naval sledger circa 1850 said that real sailors don't think (he didn't mean that derisively). Human beings think about reality, and about 'physics' structures expressed in language and so forth, and it is limited phenomenally to the criterion in which it is expressed. *** Human being's have intellects better than insects, and perceive reality differently of course, yet even with reasoning and experience add it is still all subject to interpretation in the context of human existence. It could be that other ways of interpreting the potential unified field and string theory exist for instance, in some sort of noumenal realm rather apart from normal space and time or human sense data interpretation...so much of the 'size' and time paradigms of the universe are anthropocentrically constituted. *** Descartes’ ontological argument is perhaps an inevitable postulate following his over-the-top approach to rationality that should reduce thought to logical tools with implicit limits. When reason and conscious thought may expire and aren't capable of creating the given external world/universe, God is the answer, or remainder, and God must be perfect comparatively. Actually Descartes’ ontological proof was quite a useful way to succinctly summarize the basic facts of life without getting caught up in temporal detail. ***-"Descartes often compares the ontological argument to a geometric demonstration, arguing that necessary existence cannot be excluded from idea of God anymore than the fact that its angles equal two right angles, for example, can be excluded from the idea of a triangle. The analogy underscores once again the argument's supreme simplicity. God's existence is purported to be as obvious and self-evident as the most basic mathematical truth. It also attempts to show how the "logic" of the demonstration is rooted in our ordinary reasoning practices."***From the Stanford philosophy.edu entry on Descartes *** http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ontological/