So the last-epicycle parodic argument doesn't go through. On the other hand, almost-
Gods make harder the epistemic problem modal arguments face: it's hard to see how to
back belief that possibly God exists over belief that possibly Zod exists. And with the
modal arguments there in the background, one wonders how well one can argue for (1a).
For (it seems) any reason to accept (1a) would have also to be a reason to favor God over
Zod. But in fact, the dialectical situation is this. To take a modal argument as reason to
believe in God, one must have reason to believe that God rather than Zod is possible. For
modal arguments from perfection will work as well for Zod as for God. But to take the
Pros. 2 argument as a reason, one need only have reason to believe that God is possible,
rather than more reason to believe this than to believe that Zod is.
Considering parodies for the modal argument shows that the existence of God (or Zod)
would have modal consequences. If God exists, then given Brouwer, it is not so much as
possible that Zod does: it's necessarily false that Zod exists. So the existence of God
would have consequences for modal truths not involving the concept of God: God would
have a modal footprint. And Anselm in fact held that what necessary truths there are
depends on God (Cur Deus Homo II, 17).
end p.96
Descartes
The Fifth of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy ([1641] 1993) offers the last
fully original argument from perfection. It begins from a general attempt to show that
some conceptual truths are not just conceptual truths, but rather reveal facts about natures
independent of the mind:
I find within meideas of certain things that, even if perhaps they do not exist anywhere
outside me, still cannot be said to be nothing. And althoughI think them at will,
nevertheless they are not something I have fabricated; rather they have their own true and
immutable natures. For example, when I imagine a triangle, even if perhaps no such
figure exists outside my thought anywhere in the world and never has, the triangle still
has a certain determinate nature, essence or form which is unchangeable and eternal,
which I did not fabricate, and which does not depend on my mind. This is evident from
the fact that various properties can be demonstrated regarding this triangle (which)
Iclearly acknowledge, whether I want to or not. For this reason they were not fabricated
by meAll these properties are patently trueand thus they are something and not nothing.
(42–43)
Descartes then suggests that the nature of God is akin to the nature of a triangle in being
something mind-independent which the mind grasps:
The idea of God, that isof a supremely perfect being, is one I discover to be no less within
me than the idea of any figurethat it belongs to God's nature that he always existsI
understand no less clearly and distinctly thanwhen I demonstrate in regard to some
figurethat somethingbelongs to the nature of that figureThusthe existence of God ought to
have for me at least thecertainty that truths of mathematics (have). (43–44)
This promises a quasi-mathematical demonstration. Descartes' attempt to keep the
promise runs this way: