Unanswered Questions of Metaphysics Explained By God

A follow-up to Unanswered Questions of Metaphysics Remain Unanswerable:

In Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes writes:

So serious are the doubts [of our reality] … that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them … I will suppose then that everything I see is spurious … my memory tells me lies [i.e. reconstructive memory] … I have no senses … nothing suggests itself … Thinking? At least I have discovered it – thought; this alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist – that is certain … I know for certain both that I exist and at the same time that all images could be mere dreams … Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed.

Descartes elaborates further:

If I look out of the window and see men crossing the square … I normally say that I see the men themselves … Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automations? I judge that they are men. And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgement which is in my mind.

Considering the example of atoms again, we normally say that atoms exist for a fact. However, we do not observe noumena, but rather phenomena, such as the way light refracts, how substances interact chemically, or how objects appear at the microscopic level. We then judge that atoms exist. Atomic theory, then, is constructed by the mind based on the information available to us. Just as with Descartes’ discussion on men, the existence of atoms is not as obvious as it seems; it is grasped by the mind through judgement.

Descartes argues that all ideas must have a cause. For example, we have the idea of atoms because of how we interpret physical phenomena. So how could we have the ideas of perfection or infinity when we are imperfect, finite beings? The only possible explanation is that such ideas proceeded from something which is truly perfect and infinite.

It is true that I have the idea of substance [i.e. atoms] in me in virtue of the fact that I am a substance [i.e. made of atoms]; but this would not account for my having the idea of an infinite substance, when I am finite, unless this idea proceeded from some substance which really was infinite ... For how could I understand that I doubted or desired - that is, lacked something - and that I was not wholly perfect, unless there were in me some idea of a more perfect being which enabled me to recognize my own defects by comparison? … And indeed it is no surprise that God, in creating me, should have placed this idea in me to be, as it were, the mark of the craftsman stamped on his work ... So from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists … It does not matter that I do not grasp the infinite, or that there are countless additional attributes of God which I cannot in any way grasp, and perhaps cannot even reach in my thought; for it is in the nature of the infinite not to be grasped by a finite being like myself ... This is enough to make the idea that I have of God the truest and most clear and distinct of all my ideas.

Integrating this into our previous discussion, Descartes argues:

Whenever my preconceived belief in the supreme power of God comes to mind, I cannot but admit that it would be easy for him, if he so desired, to bring it about that I go wrong even in those matters which I think I see utterly clearly with my mind's eye ... it is clear to me that the ideas in me are like images [i.e. phenomena] which can easily fall short of the perfection of the things from which they are taken [i.e. noumena], but which cannot contain anything greater or more perfect ... I notice that the things which I perceive clearly and distinctly in them are very few in number ... so there remains only the idea of God ... by the word "God" I understand a substance that is infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else that exists.

Descartes’ work shows us that while our grasp of reality is incomplete, the mind is capable of recognizing its own limitations and, in doing so, points toward the existence of something greater. He not only questions the certainty of the physical world but also leaves us with a deeper appreciation for the mysteries of existence that lie beyond the reach of human judgement.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

— Romans 1:20 (NIV)

This awareness—that we judge, perceive, and reach toward truth not through our senses but through a rational faculty stamped with the idea of the infinite—finds resonance in Romans 1:20. Though Descartes questions the certainty of the physical world, he affirms that even in our epistemic limits, the mind discerns marks of its Maker. It is precisely in recognizing what we cannot know with clarity that we are drawn toward what transcends us—toward the source of all clarity, all being, and all truth.