Topics Philosophers

Question If Descartes believed that God would not deceive him and God can defy logical impossibilities, then wouldn't it follow that God could be deceiving him nonetheless since God can be both evil and Good? I hope I'm getting Descartes' position right.

Accepted:
December 14, 2007

Comments

It does indeed seem that Descartes believed that God was not constrained by the laws of logic. However, what he did nevertheless believe was that human thought was thus constrained. In an absolute sense, maybe a so-called logical impossibility was in fact possible: but the important point is that such a possibility was not something that we could conceive. And let's remember what Descartes was actually trying to achieve. He stated his goal in the opening paragraph of the First Meditation: to attain some knowledge that was "stable and likely to last". Notice that he did not say that it should be true, and still less that it should be 'absolutely' true. What he wanted was a system of beliefs such that he could be confident that no possible evidence could ever come to light that would shake him out of them. But if, as he believed, human understanding could not even grasp what it would mean for a logical impossibility to be true, then a fortiori we could never encounter any grounds for suspecting that such a logical impossibility actually was true. We could immunize ourselves from the very possibility of rational doubt, and that was enough to satisfy Descartes. As he wrote in the Second Replies (p. 103 in the Cottingham, Stoothoff & Murdoch edition):

"First of all, as soon as we think that we correctly perceive something, we are spontaneously convinced that it is true. Now if this conviction is so firm that it is impossible for us ever to have any reason for doubting what we are convinced of, then there are no further questions for us to ask: we have everything that we could reasonably want. What is it to us that someone might make out that the perception whose truth we are so firmly convinced of may appear false to God or an angel, so that it is, absolutely speaking, false? Why should this alleged 'absolute falsity' bother us, since we neither believe in it nor have even the smallest suspicion of it? For the supposition which we are making here is of a conviction so firm that it is quite incapable of being destroyed; and such a conviction is clearly the same as perfect certainty."

Question If Descartes believed that God would not deceive him and God can defy logical impossibilities, then wouldn't it follow that God could be deceiving him nonetheless since God can be both evil and Good? I hope I'm getting Descartes' position right. Accepted:December 14, 2007

Question If Descartes believed that God would not deceive him and God can defy logical impossibilities, then wouldn't it follow that God could be deceiving him nonetheless since God can be both evil and Good? I hope I'm getting Descartes' position right.

Accepted:
December 14, 2007