Descartes'Meditations

Descartes's fifth Meditation argument for God's existence relies on an untenable notion that existence is a perfection and that it can be predicated of God. I shall first explain what Descartes's argument for God's existence is, and then present his argument in propositional form. I will then attempt to support the argument that existence is neither a perfection nor a predicate of God.
In our thoughts we apprehend ideas of things. These ideas may reside entirely within our thoughts or they may exist independent of our considerations of them (Descartes 143). Descartes argues that the idea of God is that He is infinite substance "[eternal, immutable], independent, all-knowing, all-powerful" to which nothing more perfect can be imagined (Descartes 149; 151). Descartes defines the more perfect as "that which contains in itself more reality" (Descartes 146), so that there are gradations of perfection beginning with the subjective phantasms, such as a chimera, and culminating with the most perfect being in God Himself. Thus, because our idea of God is one of absolute perfection, and existence contains more reality than nonexistent thoughts alone, God exists. Descartes's argument can be represented logically as:

(1) In our thoughts we experience an idea of the most perfect being.
(2) Existence in reality is more perfect than existence in our thoughts alone.
Therefore, (3) the most perfect being exists in reality.

Descartes wishes to argue that existence is a perfection and hence it belongs to those characteristics of the divine nature. However, a thing cannot possess a characteristic unless it first exists. In his reply to Descartes's argument, Gassendi complains that "that which does not exist has neither perfection nor imperfection, and that which exists has various perfections" (Plantinga 46). Existence, therefore, should more properly be thought of as a prerequisite for perfection and not a perfection in and of itself. Descartes disagrees however, and in his reply to Gassendi he argues that existence is necessarily predicated of God because existence is a part of the true essence of any perfect being (Plantinga 49). For Descartes, it is not possible for us to possess the idea of a most perfect being if this being lacks the most important characteristic of existence. If God did not exist then He would not be the most perfect being, but we clearly have the idea of the most perfect being so therefore He must exist. The problem with this notion, however, is that Descartes begs the question by building into premise (2) the concept of a perfect being which has yet to be demonstrated. In order to demonstrate God's existence, Descartes should not assume, or presuppose, that which he is attempting to conclude. But by predicating the existence of God in (2) he has already concluded that which is later restated in the conclusion. In effect, the follower of Descartes's argument is tricked, for if he or she agrees with the foundational premises for the sake of the argument (that existence is predicated of a most perfect being), then there is no choice left but to conclude that God exists.
Further, predicating the existence of a most-perfect being based upon the attributes that this being is believed to possess fails to provide existence to that being. We could add many more characteristics to Descartes's list of divine attributes (Good or Just for instance), but these attributes do not predicate actual existence, rather, they describe what such a being should be like. Kant argues that existence cannot be predicated of a thing at all, and that no matter how many "predicates we may think a thing [has]. we do not make the least addition to the thing when we further declare that this thing is" (Kant 504-5). Descartes's suggestion that "God is x" relies on the grammatical construction of the copula is while remaining unclear about the logical use of the is of existence. It is true that the object of the is of predication must necessarily exist in order to form a coherent sentence. Sentences such as "God is eternal" predicate eternity of God; grammatically the subject of the verb must necessarily exist. But it is not at all clear that the is of existence can be understood the same way. When we say "God is," logically we are really saying "for all x, if x is a God, then x exists" (Barnes 51). In this understanding of exists, the divine attributes that are predicated of God (including the attribute of existence that Descartes wishes to predicate of God) can only describe what God should be like provided He actually exists. Therefore, when Descartes predicates existence of God he is uttering a grammatically coherent sentence, but a very confusing logical proposition. To say "God exists" is to say "for all x, if x is a God, then x is existent" which is another way of saying "if God exists then He exists." Rather than predicate actual existence to God, this logical proposition merely restates the problem.
I have argued that existence should not properly be seen as a perfection, rather, existence is a prerequisite of any being who is then capable of being either perfect or imperfect. Further, Descartes's argument builds into his premises the conclusion that he is trying to demonstrate, namely that a most-perfect being must exist in order to be a most-perfect being. Last, predicating the existence of God as a divine attribute seems to be unhelpful in addressing His actual existence. Descartes needs to arrive at God's existence through empirical means that do not rely on a restatement of the problem in the form "if x then x" as a solution to God's actual existence.

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Leibniz's Influence

Leibniz's originality of mind left its mark on each of the many areas in which he was active. His detailed memoranda, covering the more than 40 years of his political career, constitute in themselves a major source for the history of this period. His contributions in the field of mathematics had forceful impact on the work of his contemporaries and immediate successors. His innovative ideas in political theory and philosophy, on the other hand, were not congenial to the thought of his times; in the 19th and 20th centuries, however, many of his theories have given rise to important developments in these and related fields, ranging from Freudian psychology to Einsteinian physics, and he is now recognized as one of the most fertile and profound intellects of the age of the Enlightenment.

Further Reading

Generous selections from Leibniz's writings are in Leibniz: Selections, translated by Philip P. Wiener (1951), and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, translated with an introduction by Leroy E. Loemker (2 vols., 1969). There is no full-scale modern biography in English. John T. Merz, Leibniz, a 19th-century German biography, is available in an English translation (1948). For a general estimate of Leibniz and his work, Ruth L. Saw, Leibniz (1954), is useful, and Cornelius A. van Peursen, Leibniz (trans. 1969), is a perceptive short study. Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900; 2d ed. 1951), is a comprehensive interpretation. Still worth consulting is Herbert W. Carr, Leibniz (1929). For a more complete discussion of Leibniz in relation to his times than the histories of science and mathematics afford, Rudolf Meyer, Leibniz and the 17th Century Revolution (trans. 1952), is recommended.

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Antecedents of Mathematical Logic

A striking aspect of Leibniz's thought was the recurring notion of a universal symbolic language. In 1666 he published an article entitled Dissertatio de arte combinatoria, with subtitle "General Method in Which All Truths of the Reason Are Reduced to a Kind of Calculation." This early work establishes the theme of the gigantic project which was Leibniz's lifelong goal. The project involved bringing together all knowledge in a single compendium, with each division of the arts and sciences reduced to its primary propositions and related to other subjects in such a way that any portion or desired fact could be extracted at will, and from which the whole body of human knowledge could be reconstructed. It would provide a tool for learning without a teacher and would point up areas in which further investigation was needed.

The most remarkable feature of the plan was the lingua characteristica, a system of symbols representing logical ideas which would constitute a universal language of reasoning and would facilitate thought in the same way that mathematical symbols facilitate calculation. In the Chinese ideogram, which represents a concept rather than a sound, Leibniz saw a possible model for his "alphabet of thoughts."

Although he was unable to bring to fruition either his grand design for an encyclopedia of knowledge or the symbolic language into which it was to be translated, Leibniz's ideas were embodied in the mathematical logic developed by George Boole and Giuseppe Peano in the 19th century and by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell in the 20th, and these ideas foreshadowed modern cybernetics and computer theory.

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Contribution to Philosophy

Leibniz voluminous notebooks indicate that during the years at Hanover Leibniz's thought was increasingly dominated by the development of a comprehensive cosmic philosophy. He composed no complete exposition of his philosophical theories, but to any of his correspondents who inquired about them he freely expounded phases of his "new system," and on three important occasions he took issue with exponents of differing views in extended polemical essays which brought out the essentials of his own philosophy.

In his Théodicé, written in reply to an attack upon his views in Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique (1699), Leibniz defines God as "infinite possibility" and the world (actuality) as "compossibility" in that it contains the greatest number of stimultaneous possibilities; it is therefore the best of all possible worlds. In defining "substance," he proceeds from the traditional postulate that all predicates are contained in their subjects, to the designation as substances of all words which can be used only as subjects.

In a criticism of John Locke's Essay on Human Understanding (1690) Leibniz refuted Locke's major premise that the senses are the source of all understanding by adding "except the understanding itself," distinguishing three levels of understanding: the self-conscious, the conscious, and the unconscious or subconscious. And in an essay known as the "Monadology," he more specifically defines the ultimate elements of the universe as individual precipient centers of possibility or force, which he calls "monads." Each unit perceives the universe from its own point of view and interprets what it perceives according to its own level of understanding, but there is no interaction or intercommunication among the units and therefore no operation of cause and effect.

In the famous exchange of letters (1715-1716) with Samuel Clarke, Leibniz describes space and time as merely systems of relationship or order, calling Newton's treatment of them as absolute entities a reversion to medieval notions.

Such ideas as these, characteristic of Leibniz's application of logic to the problems of metaphysics, found little response among the philosophers of his time, who were more receptive to the patterns of Locke's empiricism. But when Leibniz's Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain was finally published in 1765, Locke's influence was receding, and Leibniz's work became a major factor in the formation of the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

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Biography

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. Known as a statesman to the general public of his own times and as a mathematician to his scholarly contemporaries, he was subsequently thought of primarily as a philosopher.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz was born in Leipzig on June 23, 1646. His father, who was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Leipzig, died in the boy's sixth year. As a result, his early education was somewhat haphazard, but through his own industry he was ready for the university at the age of 15. He pursued the course in law in preparation for a political career and also studied theology, mathematics, and the new natural philosophy of the Enlightenment, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1663.
After 3 years of further study at Leipzig, Leibniz transferred to the University of Altdorf, where he received his doctorate in law in 1667. He declined the offer of a professorship there and accepted instead a position in the service of the elector of Mainz.

Early Travels
At this time Louis XIV's aggressive activities were a serious threat to the German states, and in a pamphlet published in 1670 Leibniz proposed a defensive coalition of the northern European Protestant countries. At the same time, to give the German principalities, recently weakened by the Thirty Years War, a respite for economic recovery, he conceived a plan whereby Louis might gain Holland's valuable possessions in Asia by way of a "holy war" against non-Christian Egypt. Leibniz was invited to Paris to present his plan; although it was not adopted, his 4-year stay in the French capital, with visits to London in 1673 and 1676, was crucial for his intellectual development.
Before coming to Paris, Leibniz had devised a calculating machine based on the principles of an earlier one invented by Blaise Pascal but capable of performing much more complicated mathematical operations. His demonstrations of this machine before the Académie Royale des Sciences and the Royal Society of London aroused much interest and led to fruitful relations with members of these groups and to his election to membership in the Royal Society shortly after his first London visit.
Especially important as a stimulus to Leibniz's interest in mathematics was his contact in Paris with the Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens, which resulted in Leibniz's developing both the integral and the differential calculus during the years of his residence there.

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Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Spinoza's arguments in the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" are almost throughout connected either by way of agreement or opposition with those of Maimonides on the same topics. One of the main objects of the book is to show the contradictory nature of statements in the Scriptures, and Spinoza speaks with contempt of the efforts of the Rabbis to reconcile them. He is no doubt here referring to the most important work of his teacher Manasseh b. Israel the "Conciliador." In his chapter on prophecy Spinoza differs from Maimonides in regarding the work of a prophet as being due almost entirely to imagination, which can not, like reason, give rise to truth. Spinoza does an injustice in stating that Maimonides regards angels as existing only in dreams, which was partly due to a misreading in the edition of Maimonides used by him; this again is one of the test questions leading to his excommunication. The criterion of a true revelation selected by Spinoza—the vividness of the prophetic vision—is that used by Crescas ("Or Adonai," II. iv. 3), and both thinkers used the same example, that of Hananiah. Spinoza's view of the selection of the Israelites, that they exceeded other nations neither in learning nor in piety, but in political and social salvation, places him in opposition to both Maimonides and Crescas. He here attributes the preservation of the Jews to their rites ("Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," iii. 53), but sees no reason why they should not once again become an independent nation (ib. iii. 55). In his discussion of ceremonies Spinoza declares that they are no longer binding on Jews or others, and were put into force only through the influence of the Rabbis and other ecclesiastical authorities. In opposing belief in miracles, as he does in the sixth chapter of the "Tractatus," Spinoza has in mind the examples and arguments of both Maimonides and Gersonides; in the remaining part Spinoza outlines what was later known as the "higher criticism," and anticipates in a somewhat remarkable manner some of the results of the school of Kuenen and Wellhausen, declaring, for example, that the Law was introduced, if not written, by Ezra. Many of the examples of inconsistency in the Pentateuch here cited were those familiar to Spinoza from Abraham ibn Ezra (see pentateuch). Spinoza throughout argued against the connection of creed with citizenship, claiming liberty of thought, and to that extent pleading the cause of his own people; but in reality the book is an expansion in Latin of his former apologia written in Spanish for withdrawing from Jewish communion, and is opposed to ecclesiasticism of all Kinds. Hence the violence of the opposition which it found in the age of ecclesiasticism.

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His Philosophy

It has been both asserted and denied that the thoughts developed in Spinoza's short life of forty-four years, and put forth anonymously after his death with such remarkable influence on the history of European speculation for at least the last one hundred and fifty years, were derived in large measure from his Jewish training and reading. The question is a very difficult one to decide, owing to the close-linked chain of Spinoza's thought, which he designedly made in his "Ethics" a continuous course of reasoning, each proposition being dependent upon the preceding, exactly after the manner of Euclid. In order to determine the extent of his Jewish indebtedness it is necessary, therefore, to attempt some slight sketch of his whole system. Apart from this object it deserves such exposition as the most influential body of doctrine ever produced by a Jew since Philo.
The key to Spinoza's philosophic system is to be found in his method of investigation as indicated in the fragmentary "De Intellectus Emendatione." Finding that none of the ordinary objects of man's desire—wealth, power, and the like—affords permanent satisfaction, Spinoza came to the conclusion that only the attainment of truth gives that increase of power and accompanying joy which can be described as true happiness or sal vation. Turning to the search for truth, he found the powers of the mind to be of a treble nature, each particular function yielding knowledge of various degrees of adequacy: (1) imagination, yielding only confused and inadequate ideas; (2) reason, giving the essences of things, and (3) intuition, disclosing the fundamental principles uniting those essences into a system and connecting individual things with those principles. The logical foundation of his whole system lies in the denial of the validity of all relative propositions, leaving the Absolute as the sole reality of the universe. On this see B. Russell, "Principles of Mathematics" (p. 448, Cambridge, 1903), which work is so far a justification of Spinoza's method in that it proves the possibility of deducing all the principles of pure mathematics and physics from a certain number of indefinables and indemonstrables. All turns with Spinoza, as with Descartes and the scholastics, on getting true and adequate knowledge of the essences of things. All the essences, when presented to the mind, carry with them a conviction of their own truth, and, as they can not contradict one another, they form a system of truths deduced from one principle as their primary cause. Such a principle can only be God, from whose qualities all the essences of things must flow as a matter of necessity, or, in other words, be "caused," since Spinoza does not distinguish between logical dependence anddynamic causation. In this way his logic passes over into his metaphysics, and in attempting to determine the cause of things, from the contemplation of which he is to obtain salvation, Spinoza has to determine the essences of things and their relation to the Highest Reality.

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Spinoza's Ethics

Spinoza's Ethics is a remarkable work in two regards:

First, it is written in an unusual style - patterned after Euclid's Geometry with Definitions, Axioms, and Propositions. The definitions are stipulated definitions of key terms used in the work. These definitions do not purport to explain ordinary uses of the words, only to specify how they are being used in the present text.

III. By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.

IV. By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.

The axioms are statements about the key terms and are given as self-evident.

I. Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.

II. That which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived through itself.

The propositions are statements that follow from the definitions, axioms and other propositions.

PROP. II. Two substances whose attributes are different have nothing in common.

Proof.--Also evident from Def. iii. For each must exist in itself, and be conceived through itself; in other words, the conception of one does not imply the conception of the other.

The result is a text that provides all of its own evidence. Every statement in the book has a clearly identified set of arguments (proofs) given for it. Sometimes when you read a technical or old text, the very language can be a challenge to overcome. With Spinoza, the main technical terms are explicitly defined. The challenge of Ethics is to follow the lines of thought directly and grasp how each point is constructed from the foundations laid in the definitions and axioms.

The second remarkable aspect of Ethics is the striking conclusions Spinoza derives in it. Most of the work revolves around his conception of God.

VI. By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite--that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.

See Def.III above for the term "substance" and Def.IV for the term "attribute." Put all these together, and you have a concise picture of Spinoza's concept of God. This is significant because by his system of proofs, Spinoza derives the following conclusions (among others):

There can only be one substance in existence. That substance is God and everything that exists is part of that substance. God is nature.

God has infinite attributes, of which only two, thought and spatial extension can be known by us. The universe that we apprehend is but a limited portion of the whole.

This leads from an investigation of the structure of reality to practical propositions about how we should think about life and how we may best live it.

· Human beings are in a state of bondage, so long as they act solely from emotions.

· Freedom can be attained by understanding out own emotional processes and rationally conforming to the conditions of human existence - an acceptance of the world as it is.

On the one hand, Spinoza's reasoning builds a case against popular religion (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam) as a mere reflection of human imagination. On the other hand, Spinoza's philosophy is constructive of an alternate spiritual view. The picture of God/Nature as a whole system of which we individual humans are parts, is an attractive idea for many.

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Biography

Benedict De Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. He lived to the age of 42. Spinoza's father was a successful merchant, which enabled him to give Spinoza the best education.

In the Jewish community, it was assumed that Spinoza would become a leader of the community, and that he would possibly become a rabbi. As Spinoza showed brilliance in his learning skills, he became dissatisfied with the conventional and orthodox methods of teachings.

Around the age of 16, Spinoza became aware of the advanced thoughts and ideas of Descartes, Bacon, and other scholars who he studied fervently. Of course, the ideas and thoughts of these scholars were outside the beliefs and teachings of the Jewish community.

At the age of 21, Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community because he could no longer follow or accept the Jewish customs and rigid beliefs. After studying Descartes and others, he began to develop his own philosophy. Spinoza began to see the possibilities for man as a being with a mind that has clear and distinct ideas. Spinoza believed that freedom comes from the understanding and the love of God, and that this love would free us from all emotions, which are passions that can lead to our ruin.

What has challenged the so called educators, even to this day, is that Spinoza proved that everything revolves around two of God's attributes, " THOUGHT AND EXTENSION," which are only two of an infinite number of attributes that express God's essence. The attribute of extension follows all the laws that govern and flow from HIS nature. Subsequently, Spinoza proves that there is no such thing as free will, and that everything that exists and happens can be explained by understanding the laws and the causes of things.

Spinoza lived his philosophy, and whoever had the honor to meet Spinoza came away with the understanding that he lived his life with a love of God and a love of human nature, and that he was a man who lived by the highest principles.

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The Modern philosophy

Modern philosophy is philosophy done in Europe and North America between the 17th and early 20th centuries. It is not a specific doctrine or school, (and so should not be confused with Modernism) although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.
The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of modern philosophy. How much if any of the Renaissance it should include is a matter for dispute; likewise modernity may or may not have ended in the twentieth century and been replaced by post-modernity. How one decides these questions will determine the scope of one's use of "modern philosophy". The convention, however, is to refer to philosophy of the Renaissance prior to Rene Descartes as "Early Modern Philosophy" (leaving open whether that puts it just inside or just outside the boundary) and to refer to twentieth-century philosophy, or sometimes just philosophy since Wittgenstein, as "Contemporary Philosophy" (again, leaving open whether or not it is still modern). This article will focus on the history of philosophy beginning from Descartes through the early twentieth century ending in Ludwig Wittgenstein.

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