c CUNYB/Clarke December, :
Metaphysics in a Hornet’s Nest (–) that they have a ‘sleep-inducing faculty’. They undoubtedly have such a
faculty, but it explains nothing if one simply redescribes what needs to be
explained in apparently technical, scholastic language.
The conclusion that the soul and body are distinct was therefore, for
Descartes, a temporary or conditional position. He may have borrowed
from ancient sceptics by asserting this conclusion while leaving open the
possibility that the opposite was true. The evidence available implied that
the activity of thinking could not be explained by reference to pieces of
matter in motion. As an activity, it had to be predicated of something or
other, and since it could not belong to a material substance, it had to belong
to an ‘immaterial’ substance. However, that left open the possibility that,
atsome future date, new evidence would become available. If that were
to happen, it would require a change of opinion. The interim conclusion,
then, was that, based on evidence available in, the activity of thinking
must depend on some kind of immaterial substance.
Descartes’ treatment of the other question, about God’s existence,
was less successful. He included two proofs of God’s existence in the
Meditations,anovel argument in the Third Meditation, and a reworking
of a famous argument from Saint Anselm in the Fifth Meditation.In
the course of writing theMeditations,hereceived a copy of Jean-Baptiste
Morin’s bookThat God Exists.However, as usual, he found nothing help-
ful there, especially since Morin supported his proof of God’s existence
by claiming to refute the Earth’s movement.Descartes’ first argument
is generally seen as a failure, since it relies on a crucial premise that is both
difficult to understand and even more difficult to accept.The second
argument, usually called the ontological argument, claims that God’s exis-
tence is included in the very concept of God, since the idea of a nonexisting
God would be a contradiction in terms. However, even if that premise were
accepted, it would show only that we could not have a coherent idea of
anonexisting God. It would remain to be proved that, because we con-
ceive of necessary existence as an essential feature of God, there exists a
necessarily existing God who corresponds to our idea.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that theMeditationsfell far short
of their author’s expectations. All six sets of objections rejected Descartes’
claim that thinking could not possibly result from some complex physical
process of which we are not aware. Even his more sympathetic readers,
such as Arnauld and Mersenne, persisted in saying that he had failed to
prove that conclusion. In the case of Mersenne, he put the point somewhat