Descartes Ontological Argument

Descartes was a foundationalist. His goal was to find certain indubitable ideas to use as a foundation to build his thoughts. His aim was to find a single or multiple certainties to build his thoughts off of. Descartes figures that if he can come up with a hyperbolic doubt and some idea can still survive through this ultimate doubt then this is the most certain scenario. This hyperbolic doubt becomes to believe is, “ not that there is a supremely good God who is the source of all truth, but that there is an evil demon supremely powerful and cunning, who works as hard as he can to deceive me” (Descartes 159). In Meditation III of his Meditations, Descartes aim to prove that this assumption is not true. By proving God, Descarte proves that
there is no evil deceiving demon. And addition, according to Professor Jacqueline Marina, proving god would , “allay our doubts that we are being systematically deceived”. As a result, Descarte derives two proofs to God’s existence.

Understanding Descartes’ Second Proof: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy formally refers to this proof as Descartes's Ontological Argument .
Descartes starts his second proof for God by looking at the properties of a triangle. By definition a triangle is something with three sides. This cannot be denied about a triangle since it is the definition. But there are certain properties that hold true for all triangle that will also alway hold true for triangles that are not derived from its definition. For example, sin of an angle will always be equal to the opposite side of the angle divided by the hypotenuse of the right triangle. This will be true for all right triangles and the property cannot be separated from the triangle itself. These properties that considered true ideas. True ideas are properties that cannot be separated from the object and do not come from the definition of the
object.
Similarly, Descartes beginning his second proof for God’s existence is by defining God as being an all perfect being.
If any other being is more perfect than they are by definition God. Thus the most perfect being will always be God. Most people would agree that the idea of a magical machine of endless food would be better than just imagining this machine. Due to this, Descartes then claims that something that exists is better than sometime that does not exist. In regards to this, existence in itself is a perfection. Since God by definition must hold all perfections by definition, it must also hold the perfection of existing. Thus God must exist. Descartes finds that God’s properties work very similarly to a triangle’s as he says, “it is clear that i can no more separate God’s existence from His essence that I can separate the essence of the triangle from its angles equaling two right angles…”(Descartes 173). Just like a triangle’s properties are inseparable from the triangle, God’s existence is a property that is inseparable from God. Thus God must
exist. Criticizing Descartes’s Proof: Although Descartes through proof process seemed logical in practice, my initial reaction to his proof was that he’s out of his mind. The ideas he was working with seemed solid but lacked an real evidence to prove of God. There isn’t a bridge between his thoughts about God and reality. When one observes a triangle, it is a physical object that can be touched and measured. In contrast, although it is completely valid for Descartes to stay that God is a being with all perfections and to have thoughts of God, that does not give evidence toward the being actually existing in the first place. A similar point was brought up by Johannes Caterus in the First Set of Objection to the Meditations:

“Even if it is granted that a supremely perfect being carries the implication of existence in virtue of its very title, it still does not follow that the existence in question is anything actual in the real world; all that follows is that the concept of existence is inseparably linked to the concept of a supreme being. So you cannot infer that the existence of God is anything actual unless you suppose that the supreme being actually exists; for then it will actually contain all perfections, including the perfection of real existence” (AT 7:99; CSM 2:72)

Basically saying that, if you can agree that there is a God, then he is a perfect being. But there is no way of proving that the initial assumption of there being a God in the first place. The second issue I had with his argument was assuming that existence being a perfection. A perfectness is a property that can be scale from the very worst to most flawless version of that property. I feel that existence is not something that can be scaled in that way. Something either can or cannot exists with no inbetween. One can have an apple in front of them and imagine the very same apple. The two apples would have the same color, shape, texture etc. But, by no means is the apple that exists any better than the apple in your mind.

Conclusion:
Although Rene Descartes proof to God was a brilliant mathematical way at looking into the properties of the universe, he has received a series of criticisms to his Meditations. Due to the issues within his premises, Descartes's argument in proving God cannot hold true.