Descartes and The Proof for The Existence of God

However, it would seem saying the mind conceptualizes the idea of perfection in order to make sense of it begs the question: where did the idea come from? If perfection does not exist outside the mind, how did the mind stumble upon it? It seems that it was already in the mind before the mind found it there – innate. It is likely that all the innate ideas, or ideas preexisting in the mind are there for a purpose. That is, they are there to make sense of things. So if perfection is indeed an innate idea, and innate ideas are necessary to explain things to the mind, it must be false that there is nothing outside the mind that exhibits perfection. It is one thing for the mind to come across something outside itself that it does not understand and explain it in ideas already categorized in the mind. It is quite a different thing altogether for the mind to come across an idea that already exists in itself and affix it with merely being something “made sense of” by the mind for lack of an understanding. If that is truly the case – if perfection is innate, and innate ideas help us understand things the mind comes across – it is nonsensical to single out this one idea if we rely on all other innate ideas to lead us to truth. In short, perfection is in our heads for some reason. Not knowing that reason is not a sufficient argument for claiming that there is no reason. Being unsure of something and knowing that something cannot be true are not interchangeable.

Yet all we know of the idea of perfection are its “negatives.” That is, rather than understanding perfection directly, we understand perfection through a series of other concepts that are excluded by perfection such as limitation, degree, improvement, defect, etc. So we know not what perfection actually contains, but only what it does not contain.  To be able to make any kind of judgment about the idea of perfection seems defeated before it starts. In order to make a claim about an idea, the mind must know what it is dealing with. First of all, there is no guarantee that perfection exists as an idea in the mind. For if what the mind knows as “perfection” is actually just a connection of negative ideas, then, strictly speaking, perfection does not exist. Second of all, even if there really is an idea in the mind called “perfection,” the mind obviously knows next to nothing about it (if you suppose knowing what perfection lacks counts as knowledge of perfection – if not, then nothing about it is known), and thus still is not in a position to make a claim about it. That the idea of perfection is innate and somehow useful is essentially an erroneous claim when the mind considers the knowledge it has of perfection. If not erroneous, then this claim is certainly grounded on nothing, since there does not even exist anything positively in the mind that can be called perfection without considering what the idea lacks.

Thus the argument seems to come to an impasse. The mind will never be able to successfully make any kind of reference or critique of the idea of perfection so long as it has such a feeble understanding (or lack thereof) of it. Yet at the same time it is unlikely that the mind will ever be able to truly understand perfection in its entirety. So although both lines of argument presented here are sound, they are not necessarily valid. And until the mind is presented with an example of perfection outside itself, it will be difficult to tie perfection to anything that actually exists.