God's existence in Descartes' fifth Meditation

How do I know that God exists? More particularly, how do I know that he is not a figment of my imagination? I find within myself the idea of the most perfect being, of which I understand that existence is part of his nature. Although I can distinguish between existence and essence, I cannot separate existence from God anymore than I can separate triangularity from a triangle, or a mountain from a valley. I cannot think of God without existence just as I cannot conceive of a mountain without a valley.

         There is an important logical difference between the conception of a mountain with a valley and the conception of God together with existence. The fact that a mountain cannot be thought without a valley, does not imply that mountains must exist; it only implies that if a mountain exists, there must be a valley as well.

In the terms of mathematical logic, we could perhaps analyze it, not as an existentially quantified sentence, but as a universally quantified one, Necessarily, for all x and all y, if x is a mountain, and y is a Valley, then there is a relation between x and y. But it need not be the case that a mountain exists. There is nothing contradictory about a flat earth. That is why one uses a universal instead of an existential quantifier. Shouldn’t we say the same thing about God? If I think that God, if He exists, also exists, that doesn’t imply that He exists.

         That argument clearly isn’t cogent. As it stands it is a tautology and therefore proves nothing. All it says, one is tempted to say, is that there is an x and x is God. It shows that we cannot conceive of an existing God without conceiving of His existence. Could we conceive of God at all without existence? Descartes holds that we cannot.

         Of course, using mathematical logic here is ahistorical. Though Russell read Descartes, Descartes did not read Russell. On a common reading ‘exists’ in Descartes argument functions as a predicate. It is precisely this use that Kant indicted in his purported refutation of what he, perhaps infelicitously, called the Ontological Argument. Existence according to Kant is not a predicate. As we have seen in the paragraph on the objections to St Anselm’s proof however, sometimes one does need to use ‘exist’ as a predicate, or in any case, to say that such and such a thing does exist. However that may be, using an existential quantifier to express the thought that the concept of God involves the concept of existence goes awry. If we merely say that there is an x such that x is God; the existence of God does not follow from an explicitation of the concept, rather God is said to exist. A judgement about God’s existence is put forward here. It therefore misrepresents Descartes’ argument to put it in terms of mathematical logic. It is better therefore to leave mathematical logic to the side here and to continue thinking about Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God in the terms in which he discusses them.

I cannot think of God, Descartes holds, without His existence. Therefore God cannot be separated from existence, so He must exist. God cannot be separated from existence because He is the most perfect being. Since existence is the highest perfection, it is impossible to conceive of God without existence. A non-existing God is logically impossible to conceive of, whereas one could conceive perfectly well of both, say, a horse with wings, and one without.

         The objection to this line of reasoning lies to hand. What if the posited proposition, ‘God possesses all perfections’ is not itself necessary? Descartes retorts that if I think of God I necessarily attribute all perfections to Him in the same way as thinking of a triangle implies thinking of a figure with straight sides and three angles.

         Moreover I cannot conceive of anything else whose existence is part of its essence.

         The big question looming largely is why the professed certainty Descartes ascribes to his concept of God should be any reason for taking the propositions that follow from this concept to be true. Descartes’ proof in the fifth Meditation turns on his concept of truth. It is when we know what Descartes holds truth to be that we are able to understand why it is that he purports to be able to show that God exists by purely a priori argument.

         In the third Meditation Descartes states that he considers an idea to be true if he sees it clearly and distinctly. The definitions of these crucial notions can be found in Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, section 45. For an idea to be clear is for it to be present and accessible to the attentive mind. An idea is distinct if it is clear and sufficiently acutely separated from other perceptions to contain just that which is clear. So if an idea is true, it is present to my mind, I see it for what it is and I can tell it apart with great precision from other ideas. If we return to the third Meditation we see that ideas themselves strictly speaking aren’t true or false. Ideas are true or false only if they pertain to other things than themselves. If I have the idea of a flying horse that idea is not false; it would only be false if I judged that there was such a thing. Truth and falsehood in a strict sense are properties only of judgements. My idea of God is true or false only if I judge that He exists or doesn’t exist.

         The judgement that God exists must be true, Descartes holds, since it is clear and distinct. It cannot be the case that I clearly and distinctly perceive an idea which is not by virtue of its being so perceived, true.

         Descartes’ exposition of his idea of truth is closely involved with his first proof of God’s existence in the third Meditation. It is this proof that I turn to next. Then I shall discuss if the proofs cohere and how they reflect on the proofs of St. Anselm and St. Augustine.

Update

Sorry for being away for such a long time. I have been blogging on social and cultural issues a lot on a Dutch blog called De Jaap www.dejaap.nl

I'll be posting on philosophical and cultural issues here again intermittently.

Het bestaan van God en de kennis van proposities

Er is veel te doen over een redelijk recent artikel van Emanuel Rutten waarin hij een argument voor het bestaan van God voorlegt. Ruttens artikel trekt terecht veel aandacht. In de discussie over godsbewijzen gebeurt zelden iets dat echt nieuw is maar Rutten heeft met zijn stuk werkelijk een nieuw soort argument op de kaart gezet. Dat wil niet zeggen dat zijn argument onproblematisch is. Dit essay begint met enkele problematiseringen aan de hand van dat artikel van in deel 1. In deel 2 zal ik kort een mogelijke andere invulling van geloof en verbeelding suggereren.

1.

In een zeer ingenieus artikel http://www.gjerutten.nl/AModalEpistemicArgumentForTheExistenceOfGod_Erutten.pdf  argumenteert Emanuel Rutten op de volgende wijze voor het bestaan van God

Alle proposities (beweringen, gedachten) die noodzakelijk onkenbaar zijn, zijn noodzakelijk onwaar

‘God bestaat niet’ is noodzakelijk onkenbaar

Dus: ‘God bestaat niet’ is noodzakelijk onwaar.

Derhalve God bestaat dus noodzakelijk.

Het opvallende aan de presentatie van Rutten is dat hij niet erg consequent lijkt in zijn principes. Hij maakt gebruik van een Cartesiaans kennisprincipe maar hij zegt er niet aan gebonden te zijn. Hij formuleert zijn argument in termen van modale logica, maar hij wil zich niet sterk maken voor het denken in mogelijke werelden. De lezer denkt licht dat Ruttens stuk al beschreven is door J.L. Austin “there’s the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back”. In tegenstelling tot zijn presentatie lijkt de redenering van Rutten echter spijkerhard. Het argument wordt zeker met grote voortvarendheid gepresenteerd. Ofschoon Rutten echter opgewekt de canon van de analytische metafysica van Amerikaans kaliber in stelling brengt, is het ondermeer die canon die zijn argument twijfelachtig maakt.

De eerste premisse lijkt plausibel, want wat voor zin heeft het om van de waarheid van iets te spreken als dat iets op geen enkele manier in te zien is?

Toch roept deze premisse ook vragen op. Nemen de precieze formulering ervan in het Engels

 If it is metaphysically impossible to know p, then p is necessarily false

Maar hoe weten we eigenlijk of deze premisse zelf waar is? Is deze propositie zelf wel kenbaar? Het is geen empirische waarheid: het lijkt er niet op dat we proposities op kenbaarheid en waarheid moeten gaan controleren om te zien of Rutten gelijk heeft. Als het echter een analytische waarheid is, dan moet hij waar zijn op grond van de inhoud van de begrippen kenbaarheid en waarheid. Rutten definieert die begrippen echter niet. In zijn eerste voetnoot stelt hij dat

 Some given proposition p is metaphysically unknowable, or, in short, unknowable, if and only if there is no logically possible world W and no subject S such that S knows p in W. That is to say, a proposition is unknowable just in case there is no possible world in which that proposition is known.

Het probleem met deze stelling is dat hij circulair is als het om het begrip ‘know’ gaat. Een propositie is onkenbaar als het niet mogelijk is om hem te kennen. Zeker. Maar wat is kennen? Rutten geeft het volgende antwoord “to know P is to be certain that P is true” (p.2). Kenbaarheid is dus een kwestie van de evidentie van een waarheid. Nu is een bewering waar als deze de werkelijkheid weergeeft zoals ze is. ‘P’ is waar dan en slechts dan als P. Dat betekent dat er een feit of stand van zaken moet zijn zodanig dat er onmogelijk op hun waarheidswaarde controleerbare proposities zijn. En zo gaan we in een cirkel voort. Blijkt dus dat de eerste premisse van Rutten nietszeggend is. Het is niet duidelijk wat er nu eigenlijk wordt gezegd. Ruttens eerste premisse heeft de schijn van onkenbaarheid tegen.

De tweede premisse is ook problematisch. Is het werkelijk het geval dat de onkenbaarheid van ‘God bestaat niet’ noodzakelijk is -- dat er geen mogelijke wereld is waarin we de waarheidswaarde van ‘God bestaat niet’  kennen? Dat lijkt me niet. Er is zeker een mogelijke wereld waarin God niet bestaat, menigeen heeft dat zich al voorgesteld. ‘God bestaat niet’ is immers geen inconsistente propositie (tenzij we uitgaan van een Cartesiaans godsbegrip, maar we gaan er hier van uit dat Rutten op dit punt geen Cartesiaan is). Wanneer de logica van de mogelijke werelden dus aan voorstelbaarheid gebonden is, is de propositie ‘God bestaat niet’ allerminst onkenbaar. Logisch gezien komt mijn bezwaar neer op een lezing van het modale werkwoord ‘kunnen’. Iets dat kan, is niet zomaar iets dat voorstelbaar is. Mogelijkheid is menselijkerwijs gebonden aan meer dan het niet overtreden van het beginsel van de niet-tegenspraak. Het idee dat eenhoorns bestaan is weliswaar niet logisch contradictoir, maar de mogelijke wereld waarin er eenhoorns zijn is een tamelijk vage wereld – want wat betekent mogelijk nog wanneer het om logische mogelijkheid in deze zin gaat? Als we zeggen dat een bepaalde gebeurtenis mogelijk is, dan bedoelen we dat het een nader te bepalen waarschijnlijkheid heeft dat deze plaatsvindt: een waarschijnlijkheid die bovendien niet verwaarloosbaar is (anders zeggen we dat de bedoelde gebeurtenis nagenoeg onmogelijk is).

Merk op dat onze bezwaren tegen Ruttens argument niet noodzakelijk betekenen dat andersoortige argumenten voor het bestaan van God onmogelijk zijn, maar we kunnen niet op basis van een dergelijk argument over kennis tot het bestaan van God besluiten. Kennis van mogelijke werelden wijst namelijk misschien wel op logische mogelijkheden, maar het is niet evident dat een mogelijke wereld iets relevants zegt over onze wereld. Een propositie of een theorie drukt pas pas kennis van de werkelijkheid (waar volgens Rutten God thuishoort)  dan en slechts dan als het over de feitelijke wereld gaat.

Daar komt bij dat het kentheoretisch principe van Rutten op het betekenisloze af vaag is en daarmee zichzelf lijkt tegen te spreken. Derhalve is de eerste premisse van Rutten in zijn eigen termen onkenbaar en daarmee onwaar. Hetgeen betekent dat Ruttens argument ongeldig is.

2.

Het is volgens mij vruchtbaarder erover te denken wat God voor je betekent. Hoe is de zin van het bestaan verbonden met de aanwezigheid van het transcendente? Voor mij is God aanwezig als ik ontroerd word door een mis van Mozart of een vioolpartita van Bach of door zonlicht in het water. Zulke gevoelens zijn niet van de orde van de argumenterende rede, maar zoals Blaise Pascal al schreef, het hart heeft zijn redenen waar de rede niets van weet. Het spreekt niet ten nadele van het geloof als het zonder argumenten zou zijn (of het dat is, is een andere vraag). Argumenten zijn van minder belang. Net als bijvoorbeeld bij het bestaan van de ziel of het bestaan van muziek naast de trillingen van de lucht waar muziek fysisch gesproken uit bestaat is het bestaan van God veelmeer een betekenisfenomeen van de ervaring. Nu zijn betekenisfenomenen heel goed en precies conceptualiseerbaar, althans tot op zekere hoogte. We kunnen heel veel zeggen over de betekenis van een gedicht en zelfs over ons geloof in God. De schilderijen van Chagall en Rothko, of de liturgie, of de woorden die in de synagoge gesproken worden zij allemaal tot op zekere hoogte begripsmatige uitdrukkingen van geloof. Maar de betekenis van het geloof is altijd meer dan begrip. Geloof, alle betekenis überhaupt, vindt vooral plaats in de lacune die het begripsmatige open laat. Bij betekenis, bijvoorbeeld bij schoonheid, schiet begrip altijd tekort. Er is altijd al iets wat we niet begrijpen, wat we niet in woorden kunnen vatten ofschoon het ons ontroert. Het ontroerende is dat wat ons doet verroeren, dat wil zeggen dat er in onze verbeelding iets verschuift, van plaats verandert, dat de lacune van het begrip tracht in te nemen. Maar de lacune is blijvend en permanent. Geloven in God vindt in die lacune plaats.

De lacune wordt geïnstalleerd door de taal en het begrip zelf. De taal werkt metonymisch, ze benoemt altijd maar een stukje van het geheel. Als we iets verbeelden, er de mogelijkheid van schetsen, dan blijft er iets over waar de begrippen weliswaar naar verwijzen, maar dat ze niet geheel be-grijpen. Laten we de metafoor eens terugvoeren naar haar oorsprong om haar weer te doen spreken: het object is steeds groter dan de hand die het grijpt; er is altijd een stukje van dat niet door de vingers, de palm, de muis van de hand bedekt wordt. Juist zo is het met God. Maar het geloof is dat wat de hand weet dat er is zonder het vast te kunnen pakken.

Het gaat er om het bestaan van deze lacune tot spreken te brengen en om te zeggen wat de lacune evoceert. Zulk spreken zal nooit volledig zijn, maar het is dan ook het besef van de onvolledigheid en van haar noodzakelijkheid waarin betekenis en geloof mogelijk worden omdat ze ruimte laten voor een nieuw spreken en een nieuw verbeelden. Alsof we blind zijn en een tastsculptuur voelen die maar een nieuwe sculptuur is omdat we er elke dag een nieuwe gewaarwording aan kunnen opdoen.

Bernard Williams on Morality Part 1

Williams starts his first chapter of Morality - An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge, 1972) by interrogating the figure of the amoralist. The amoralist asks Why is there anything that I should do? He shows his indifference to moral considerations. This comes out in his asking whether there is anything that he should do. ‘Should’ like ‘ought’ and ‘must’ expresses a special kind of reason for doing something.

         The amoralist isn’t insensitive to every kind of reason. He is not a nihilist, at least not in every sense of the word. There are things the amoralist cares about, pleasure perhaps or power. What he does not care about, and what is essential to morality, is the interests of other people. The amoralist would not reject an action on the ground that it was unfair or that it disregarded the pain or discomfort of others or even caused these to occur. Williams adds to these a more formal consideration, namely that the amoralist does not stand back and say that it is all right for others to act like he does. He does not universalize, for universalization is a particular aspect of morality. ‘All right’ has a moral sense here. What the amoralist doesn’t do is say that it is permitted for others to act as he does; he can perhaps take others’ acting like him in his stride, or dislike it, or fight it, but he cannot resent it. For to resent an act is to take a moral stance towards it.

         The amoralist may of course feign moral outrage “and so discourage some of the more squeamish in his environment from hostile action” (p.19). The possibility, indeed the great likelihood of the amoralist’s dissembling show that he is likely a parasite on the moral system. He can only behave as badly as he does, because most people don’t. The amoralist is what the theory of games calls a free rider: he rides the tram for free and can continue to do so since most other people do pay for their ticket. The amoralist, of course, will not be impressed by charges of behaving in a way that is parasitic. The appeal to consequences of (an imagined) universalization is itself a moral appeal, that the amoralist perfectly consistently does not set store by.

         Just as the amoralist cannot say that others have no right to hold his behaviour against him, he cannot make any appeal to justifications, at least not those of a moral kind. Nor can he appeal to notions such as courage, or even to being particularly splendid. The use of such notions invite moral questions. Moreover they share a presupposition that other would behave like the amoralist if they just had the courage or the guts to do so. This presupposition is familiar from the debate between Glaucon and Adeimantus on the one hand and Socrates on the other in Book II of Plato’s Republic. Suppose, they say, that one had a device that would allow one to get away with anything. Wouldn’t one take the opportunity? Isn’t acting with impunity all it takes to dispense with morality? Plato of course says it isn’t. It is essential to a man’s being properly human that he act morally.

         Though Williams refers to the impunity device, i.e. Gyges’ ring in the Republic, he does not here adopt Plato’s answer, though Williams’s answer is at least at this stage compatible with Plato’s. Morality, Williams states, is internalized. “[T]e more basic moral rules and conceptions are strongly internalized in upbringing, at a level from which they do not merely evaporate with the departure of policemen or censorious neighbours. This is part of what it is for them to be moral rules, as opposed to merely legal requirements or matters of social convention.” (p.21). It is part and parcel of being a moral subject that one wants to act morally.

         The amoralist cannot take a moral stance towards people’s behaviour. He will care about himself, but if he cares only about himself, the amoralist is no more than a psychopath and he can neither be argued into morality, nor does his existence pose any serious challenge to morality. There simply would not be any question of justification there with this figure. If there is any point to justifying morality, it must be because there is a serious alternative to it that it can justified against. Does the amoralist offer such an alternative? He does have a possible attraction as a glamorous gangster might.  Is there anyone the amoralist or gangster does care about?

         He may care for his child, his mother or his girlfriend. No general considerations weigh with him, but the idea of doing something for someone because that person, rather than the amoralist himself, needs it is one the amoralist is able to have. The amoralist will only do something for someone if he feels so inclined, but the idea of doing something for somebody isn’t alien to this gangster figure. He is capable of thinking in terms of others’ interests. Therefore “there is no bottomless gulf between this state and the basic dispositions of morality” (p.25) For the gangster to universalize his considerations in principle requires only an extension of his imagination and his understanding. The moral plane is not inaccessible to him but he needs  to extend his sympathies.

         If we can get the amoralist we started with to so extend his sympathies, we have at least the beginnings of morality. “[I]f we grant a man with even a minimal concern for others, then we do not have to ascribe to him any fundamentally new kind of thought or experience to include him in the world of morality, but only what is recognizably an extension of what he already has.” (p.26) Moreover, Williams says, although it does not follow from what has so far been said that having sympathetic concern for others is the only way into morality, but it is true that it is.

         If one can come to care for others, morality is possible. That is the point of considering the figure of the amoralist. The amoralist in a strict sense of the word would be a psychopath, and as a consequence his only significance would be that he appals us precisely because he does not care for others. As soon as the figure of the amoralist is conceived of as including concerns for others, he is no longer a genuine amoralist, just someone with a limited morality.

         Williams moves from the amoralist to the subjectivist. The subjectivist has a morality of his own, but he insists that it is just his morality: others have different moralities and there is no question of justifying one morality as against another. Whereas the amoralist purportedly poses a challenge to morality by questioning its sway over him, the subjectivist contends that morality does not have the universal aspect it is often made out to have. Nor is a morality a question of truth or justification. Whereas the figure of the amoralist is easily dismissed on the grounds of its utter psychological implausibility, the subjectivist is a figure that many people easily identify their position on moral matters with. Or at least they think they do.

Een vrouw

Er is een vrouw met de storm in haar armen

Haar dijen een hemel vol bliksem

Zij is evenzoveel stille uren

Zoveel wijze meren waarin de vissen van haar liefde zwemmen

Zij is het water en het licht in het water

Het drinken van de vogels, het zingen van de merel

Zij is het land waar ik woon.

Lentegedicht

Februari

De zon schijnt, het is februari;

nog zoeken Shetlandpony’s de luwte van een haag

de reiger echter staat met de hals gestrekt de weide af te speuren

niet langer de ineengedoken stoïcijn.

de paarden, die ik elkaar toch al zo vaak zie kussen, staan te wachten

nog dragen zij een paardedeken, maar het hoofd is al vers gras en het zeker wankelen van veulens .

Hier jubelt al het blauw van de hemel

De hagel een armzalige vlaag

De zon een veelbelovend overdag.

Publish? Only once every five years

Publish? Only once every five years!

Academic publications are seldom read. Anecdote has it that a young man who had just got his doctorate stuck a € 50 bill on page 100 of his dissertation, with a note attached saying that the studious reader who had got this far deserved the award, and deposited this work in the university library. After a year’s time he borrowed the volume from the library – only to find the € 50 bill was still there. Most dissertations are read only by the dissertation committee; most academic publications are read by no more than four people. Yet the pressure to publish is now greater than ever before. Even undergraduates are encouraged to send their stuff to special journals and it is simply impossible to obtain a permanent post without a ridiculously impressive list of publications – quantitatively impressive that is. Whence fraudulent publications of academics trying to save their jobs, whence the dismal state of academic life in general.

         How has this state of affairs come about and what, if anything, could be done about it?

         The Dutch poet and classicist Ilja Leonard Pfeijfer in the newspaper NRC/Next evoked the swan-song of the academia he experienced when he was a doctoral student and a junior lecturer: one could do research into whatever took one’s fancy and one could lecture on whatever one wanted to lecture about. This academia of what in Dutch is called academische vrijheid – academic freedom – has disappeared. In its stead there is now a ratrace of academics scurrying and tripping, crushing each other in the throng of little men trying to reach their ‘targets’. The university has to all intents and purposes become a knowledge factory. For there is so little difference between a factory and a university that managers who used work at soup factories now run universities along the same lines.

         Anyone who looks around at a university will find this out in five minutes’ time, provided they have not imbibed any mind-narrowing business school theories. The university of today, being a business, is looked upon as a system that has students and academics as its input into two subsystems that have a respective output of BAs and Mas and publications. The quality of the publication has its measure in the rating of the journal in which it is published; if you go to the right sort of conferences, chat with the right colleagues and abide by the fashionable opinions in the fashionable research programmes – a sort of fashion collections in academia – you will publish in top journals, therefore you are taken to be an excellent academic.

         The point of this is not to suggest that all excellent academics are yes-men (some of them are not), but rather that ‘excellence’ or ‘quality’ essentially have nothing whatsoever to do with the level of research or teaching, since ‘excellence’ and ‘quality’ are merely accounting notions. One is excellent if and only if one has so many publications in journals with precisely this and this rating. There is no question of what it is that one is saying.

         It is an illusion to think that the business culture of the yes-men could be changed by anything less than a revolution, since most of the organizations mediating between government and the universities as well as many academics themselves will think they have too much to lose in the demolition of the current system. And yet there is one very concrete point that might assist in bringing back the university Pfeijfer talked about. What we must have is a publication quota, a limit on the number of publications an academic is allowed.

         We publish too much and we publish too much of the same thing. We repeat ourselves over and over, but since nobody reads our work nobody cares. However, science does not progress through repetition, it progresses through creativity. Creativity requires insight and insight requires time. And it is time which we don’t have because of the pressure to publish, due to which we will keep repeating what we have said in our dissertations, or what we will say in our dissertations yet to be written up.

         The problem is more pronounced in the humanities than it is in the natural sciences, because in the natural sciences gained insights are cumulative in a way that research in the humanities is not, especially where experimental research is concerned. In the humanities there are no experiments or proofs. The arts, theology and philosophy demand a steady development of insight. Every philosopher for example must go through the history of philosophy for himself to so much as start having insights of his own. I can only know whether Aristotle has said anything of value for my investigation into perception when I have read Aristotle, which is something else entirely than reading the latest publication on the topic, which says that Aristotle is ‘a thing of the past’.

         As George Steiner once said “The young man tells us that Keats is a very complicated poet. I had gathered as much.” The need to mature in a humanistic discipline implies that it is simply silly to ask of someone before or just after their doctorate to produce a stream of publications containing genuine insight. It also implies that even academics who have had time to develop need time to think through a topic that’s new to them. The only one, after all, who can judge where he is, as far as his topic is concerned, is the academic himself.

         The ideal, then, would be perfect academic freedom. Given the addiction to numbers that plagues current academia however, a measurable criterion may not be a bad idea. It will at least keep the auditing wolf from the doors of learning. That is why it would be a good idea if academics were allowed to publish only once every five years – were allowed to(, not have to)! They would have to think hard whether they really want to put this book out into the world, since they won’t have another chance to publish anything else for the coming five years. A publication quota may not be good news to the makers of league-tables and other accountants, but it would be a blessing to the academic world. There would finally be time to think, read and write – books of course, not articles. And to read the work of your colleagues. Which will probably make fairly nice reading then.

Part of this piece has recently been quoted in the education column of Mark Bauerlein of Emory University in the USA. See http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/face-time-learning-styles-stem-avoidance-faculty-productivity/43642