Descartes' philosophy concerning the relationship between God and the eternal
truths has been an unresolved and problematic issue since he first declared it. For
Descartes, God's power is limitless and nothing can exist independently of Him. The
problem is that if that is true, things such as "God knows that he does not exist" are
possible because the truth of that proposition rests on God's power. In fact, the existence
of any eternal truth depends on GodâÂÂs power. Examples of such truths are: "the interior
angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles," "3+4=7," and "two contraries cannot
exist together." Descartes built his entire metaphysics around a certain conception of
God, a conception that includes His not being a deceiver. But if it turns out that God is as
limitless as Descartes thinks He is, Descartes' philosophy does not rest on as firm a
foundation as he believes. In fact, it is inconsistent: we know what we clearly and
distinctly perceive because God would not deceive us and his power is unlimited. But
since His power is absolutely unlimited, it might be the case that God is not a deceiver
and everything we know is true, but at the same time we have been misled by God and
there is an actual reality we are not, and will never be, privy to.
There have been a number of attempts to make Descartesâ view consistent. I
consider two of the most recent and promising lines of interpretation. The first, Universal
Possibilism, holds that GodâÂÂs power is utterly limitless and He can make any proposition true, including problematic ones such as âÂÂI think, but I am not.â This theory argues that
what we can and cannot conceive are merely epistemic limits rather than indicators of
truth. The second, Limited Possibilism, maintains that God has power over the
possibility of any proposition. Any proposition, under this view, is possibly possible; this
preserves the integrity of the connection between what we conceive as true and what is
actually true. The major drawback to this line of thought is that it puts an unintuitive
limit on God: He can make something possible, but he canâÂÂt then do the seemingly simple
task of making that thing true. I argue that a proper understanding of Descartes'
conception of the meanings of "possible," "impossible," "contingent,". "necessary" and
God's nature renders his position consistent. Descartes holds that God necessarily exists,
and his nature is immutable and the existence of anything else is contingent. If one
interprets Descartes' God to hold limitless power over contingent propositions, but not
over his nature or existence, Descartes' position is no longer inconsistent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4423 |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
| Creators | Harfoush, Cale Joseph |
| Contributors | Daniel, Stephen |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 388592 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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