by Hannah Mead

Created on: February 16, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

In this piece I shall attempt to show that Descartes' arguments were completely ineffective, but that some of them do nevertheless provide philosophical interest. To achieve this I shall clearly outline the following arguments; the cosmological argument, the trademark argument and the ontological argument. I shall also provide counter argument and examples which refute these ideas; the Cartesian circle problem, the scholastic "causal adequacy principle", the problems with the ontological argument and finally the human fallibility argument.

Descartes' cosmological argument hinges on his desire for a rationalistic view of the world. This is typical for a man who believed completely in reason as the basis for all things. The argument claims that everything has a cause, and that cause has a cause. This carries on all the way back to what one must assume to be the first cause, at the beginning of time. There must rationally be a catalyst to all this creation the first cause, and Descartes believed God to be that first cause, as Descartes believed God created the universe and everything within it.

What then are the problems with this argument? My primary problem is with the notion of cause itself. If God did indeed create (or cause) the universe then what caused God? If everything is caused then surely God is not exempt from this? Descartes actually argues God is exempt he is a "special case", apparently God does not need a cause; he merely "is". This static state of existence provides subsequent problems the least of which is the weakness of argument. Descartes expects his reader to placidly accept God's existence without contemplating how that existence came into being.

Descartes lays out a further argument which I shall refer to henceforth as the "clear and distinct" argument. Essentially it states that I have a clear idea of God in my mind, and something must have caused me to have that idea in my mind. A cause must have as much reality as its effects, and ideas such as this cannot come from nowhere. Descartes suggests that God implants our clear and distinct idea of himself into our minds and therefore God must exist.

There are obvious parallels between this argument and the causation theory expressed in the cosmological argument. Both rely on God to be the central and fundamental cause. I feel that on first assessment this argument provides a more credible reasoning for God's existence I would suggest that it is impossible to imagine the impossible (for the purposes

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