Descartes’ First Trademark Argument Essay

Descartes argues that our topic of deity is unlettered, meaning it is something inside us from birth, something that has always been there and will always be there. He believed that everybody has an root word of matinee idol being a supremely meliorate being, and comes to the conclusion in his affirmation, that god himself do this estimate there, he even said that our composition of God is like the mark of the craftsman stamped on his work us being the work, the mark being our knowledge of God himself.For Descartes, the fact that everybody has this nescient creative thinker of a supremely perfect God is in itself, trial impression of his existence and the fact that this is an a priori job, makes this argument appealing for all rationalists, as it relies on knowledge, and non guts experience which Descartes never trusted. The foundation for Descartes argument is the causal lavish principle, this is the thinker that something (for voice, A cannot exist un slight it is produced or typesetters cased by something else that drive aways formally or eminently everything that is found in A.Formal truth refers to the basic properties that a thing possesses. However, this al mavin would cause difficultys for Descartes argument, because God apparently does not possess all of the properties, of all of the objects on earth, take for example a stone, its properties are hard, round, rough. God is not these things. The way Descartes gets round this is by saying that something say again, a stone, can be caused by something that contains the properties eminently. To contain something eminently, means for the cause to not necessarily project the same properties as the effect, but to keep back a greater property.So God may not possess the qualities of a stone (say hardness) however he possesses a quality greater then this. In other words, the causal adequacy effects means the cause of something can be no slight then the effect. Descartes then takes thi s principle, and believes he can apply it to inclinations, in accompaniment the idea of God as a maximally/supremely perfect being, the cause of this idea, must so must contain formally or eminently maximum perfection, so thence the cause of the idea of God must itself be maximally perfect.Descartes then uses deductive reasoning to find where the idea came from, he first asked, could he be the source of the idea? However concludes that he cant be, because he himself is not supremely perfect, and therefore he cant be the cause of a supremely perfect being. He then considers if the idea of a supremely perfect being could have come through his senses, however he decides this isnt possible, as he knows he has never seen (heard, smelt, tasted) a supremely perfect being.He then asks if he could have imagined a supremely perfect being, again he concludes he couldnt have, because his idea of God is too clear and distinct to have come from his imagination. He therefore deducts that the cause of the idea of a supremely perfect being, is really an animate supremely perfect being who placed this idea in his encephalon so therefore, God exists.There are however, a total of blames to this argument, firstly, umteen philosophers have raised interrogatives as to whether the causal adequacy principle is actually true to real life, as there are a number of examples in everyday situations where the cause at least appears to be little then the effect, for example, a match ca development a roaring bonfire, or a whisper causing an avalanche. Further examples include chaos opening the idea that a flutter of a butterflys flee can cause an earthquake.If indeed causal adequacy principle isnt true, Descartes whole argument is flawed, as if the cause can be less great then the effect, then Descartes indeed could have created him himself. The second criticism is David Humes argument, that you cannot know a cause a priori, but alone by experience. He says you cannot determ ine the cause of something, simply by using reasoning, for example, if a window is broken, you know it must have been something big enough to produce enough force to break it by our past experiences, not by using a priori reasoning.He concludes that you have to have to have observed the cause and the effect to truly know what happened, and therefore the cause must be in existence. The third criticism questions whether we can actually have an idea of a supremely perfect being, Thomas doubting Thomas doubts our imaginings of God, because he is too great, and that it is impossible for us to understand some of his qualities, curiously the idea of God being infinite, as it is beyond out grounds to understand what such qualities actually mean, and therefore we dont have a genuine idea of God.The forth criticism of Descartes argument is that the idea of God is incoherent, there are attributes which appear to be just unmingled contradictory, for example God is both immanent and transcend ent. There is also doubt raised over Gods supposed omnipotence, can he make a rock so heavy that he cant turn back it? It seems either way his omnipotence will be compromised. There is also the problem of evil, if God is all good, omniscient and omnipotent, then why does he ply suffering in the world?It would therefore seem that the idea of God is unclear, and if so it is likely the cause isnt that great, and so would make sense that the cause could in fact have been Descartes himself. Another criticism is that the idea of God is not universal, as many other religions do not have an idea of one all powerful God, and therefore the idea of God cannot be innate, as if it was, it would be inside all of us.Also, it is put that the idea of omnipotence cannot be divine, as it can be traced back to having diachronic routes as tribes fought over who had the greatest God, they would start with our God is powerful until one tribes got to our God is maximally powerful and therefore cannot b e beaten by the other tribe. Descartes would argue that the fact other religions dont screw one maximally perfect God does not mean the innate idea is not in us, it just means they have chose to disregard it, or havent been made aware of it.He compares it to maths, in the way that we may not have used its truths and laws (i. e. that a triangles indoor angles add up to 180) however they are still truths none the less. The perish criticism is the empiricists account for the idea of God, that we have experienced attributes such as power, knowledge and goodness in people around them and simply drawn-out them to the idea of God, therefore the cause is less great then the effect, and the idea is not innate.One thing it has in its favor, is that it is an a priori argument, and therefore uses reasoning, something rationalist would find very appealing, it means that if the premise can be accepted that it can give 100% certainty. Overall, I feel Descartes argument has too many valid crit icisms for it to be considered as a favored argument, and its foundation- casual adequacy principle, is itself flawed, leaving the whole argument to fail.