Descartes Second Meditation Analysis

Descartes begins his Third Meditation knowing very little. By the end of the previous meditation, he has established that he exists as a thinking thing that thinks in many different ways. Armed with such little certainty, Descartes begins a seemingly impossible task- to prove the existence of God, armed with only these facts and rational thinking. He concludes his proof with the verdict that God is in fact the only thing that could cause his own idea of his creator. Descartes’ proof rests in part on his premise that “there must be at least as much formal reality in the cause of an idea as there is objective reality in the idea itself.” This restriction on causality and ideas, while consistent with Descartes’ work in other meditations and accepted
He begins with the premise that he has an idea of an infinite and perfect God. Next, he lays out his second premise as described in the previous paragraph, that the cause of an idea must have as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality. Thus, from his first two premises, since his idea of God has infinite objective reality, its cause must have comparable formal reality. Descartes discounts himself as the source of this idea, due to his own finite nature. Thus, he concludes, an infinite and perfect being (i.e. God herself) exists as God can be the sole cause of Descartes’ idea. This proof presented by Descartes could certainly be deemed valid, as conclusion must be true if each premise is also true. However, determining whether this argument is sound requires a closer examination of the accuracy of his premises, particularly the second premise’s statement about formal and objective
Descartes begins by applying this causality to stones and heat, things we perceive in the world, then to ideas. Since I have reason to doubt the certainty of the premise in the natural world, it seems illogical to apply the same principle to ideas. The idea that causes must contain all of the features of an effect strikes me as troublesome. Looking at the theories of evolutionary biology, which I accept to be true, one can find many examples of “more perfect” beings arising from “less perfect” causes. Beginning with life in the form of microbes and bacteria, chance mutations combined with environmental effects to produce more complex organisms over time, eventually developing consciousness and the characteristics we recognize as human. In this respect, more complex, “perfect” organisms arose from the evolution of “less perfect” life forms. This counterexample, combined with Descartes’ failure to fully and explicitly support this premise, are sufficient to make me doubt the idea that the formal reality of a cause of an idea has to be at least, if not more than, as much as the objective reality of the