Introduction
In contemporary philosophical discussion the term ‘sceptical theist’ refers to the theist who, recognizing that the cognitive capacities of God far outstrip our own, concludes that humans cannot expect to understand why God acts (or refrains from acting) as he does.Footnote 1 Although the sceptical theist's epistemic modesty may be attractive in its own right, one of the chief virtues of this view is that it yields a clear strategy for undermining powerful and influential forms of the problem of evil. For example, according to a prominent version of the evidential problem of evil, since there are evils for which we can see no morally sufficient reason (MSR), it is likely that there really are evils for which there is no MSR. Given that such gratuitous evils are inconsistent with God's perfection, it follows that the theistic God's existence is unlikely. The sceptical theist's strategy for responding to this argument is to raise doubt about the inference from our inability to see an MSR for some evil, to the conclusion that there is (probably) no MSR. The sceptical theist holds that we simply are not in the kind of epistemic position to draw this conclusion.
The sceptical theist's strategy is, in many respects, an intuitive one, and it would not be surprising to find that sceptical theism is as old as the problem of evil itself, although I will not investigate this possibility here. Rather I will focus on Descartes's use of this strategy in the Meditations on First Philosophy. That Descartes employs this strategy, and to what end, has gone largely unrecognized, and I start by showing how this strategy figures into his overall answer to the problem of evil in Meditation Four. The sceptical theist's strategy, however, is often thought to have unacceptable epistemic costs. The problem is that the sceptical theist's scepticism is thought to undercut her own claims to knowledge. In recent literature William Rowe, for example, has suggested that the Christian theist who adopts this response to the problem of evil cannot claim to know that there is life after death, since there may be some good ‘which precludes God's granting eternal life to the faithful’.Footnote 2 That is, for all the sceptical theist knows (given her scepticism) God has some MSR for not granting life after death. This is a particular instance of what I will call the Undercutting Objection, and this kind of objection would seem to be especially problematic for Descartes given his project in the Meditations: if Descartes isn't in an epistemic position to conclude that there is gratuitous evil, it would seem that he isn't in a position to be sure that God does not have some MSR for creating him with unreliable clear and distinct perceptions. In general, replying to the Undercutting Objection calls on the sceptical theist to establish that her knowledge lies outside the scope of her scepticism. By looking at Descartes's response to related objections from Mersenne and Hobbes, I close by showing how Descartes establishes the reliability of his clear and distinct perceptions without appealing to knowledge of God's reasons for acting, and how, as a consequence Descartes's sceptical theism sidesteps this particular application of the Undercutting Objection.
Sceptical theism in the Meditations
Descartes opens Meditation Three by affirming the so-called truth-rule: that ‘whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true’ (CSM I, 24; AT VII, 35).Footnote 3 He recognizes, however, that it is at least in principle possible that this rule is false, since he may have been created with an epistemically unreliable nature. In order to remove this ‘slight’ and ‘metaphysical’ reason for doubting the truth-rule, Descartes sees his task in the meditation as the consideration of whether God exists, and if so, whether He is a deceiver. By the end of the meditation Descartes has proved to his satisfaction that he is the creation of a perfect being, and given that it is impossible for a perfect being to deceive, God cannot have created him with an epistemically unreliable nature; the truth-rule is thereby validated.
There is more work to be done on behalf of the truth-rule, however. Descartes explains in the Synopsis that ‘it is not possible to prove this [the truth-rule] before the Fourth Meditation’ (CSM II, 9; AT VII, 13). The problem is that the justification for the truth-rule – that Descartes is the creation of a perfect being – would seem to justify overall epistemic perfection. Descartes writes:
There would be no further doubt on this issue were it not that what I have just said appears to imply that I am incapable of ever going wrong. For if everything that is in me comes from God, and he did not endow me with a faculty for making mistakes, it appears that I can never go wrong. (CSM II, 38; AT VII, 54)
But of course, this is false – Descartes admits that he is ‘prone to countless errors’. It would seem, then, that Descartes has proved too much. The same premises which validate the truth-rule seem to entail a falsehood, and this throws God's existence, and consequently the truth-rule, back into question. Thus, in order to ground the truth-rule Descartes needs to establish that the epistemic imperfections he finds in himself are consistent with God's existence.
Discussions of Meditation Four often claim that Descartes responds to this problem by formulating a version of the traditional free-will theodicy. While this is certainly correct, it is only a partial account of Descartes's response. Descartes formulates the free-will theodicy to account for one epistemic imperfection in particular – that he actually makes mistakes. Indeed, Descartes sometimes writes as if this is the only epistemic imperfection of consequence. Nevertheless, Descartes is subject to a number of other such imperfections, each of which is – on its face – inconsistent with God's existence and perfection. In Meditation Four Descartes explicitly observes that it is an imperfection both that he has a capacity for error in the first place (e.g. CSM II, 38; AT VII, 54) and that his intellect is as limited as it is (e.g. CSM II, 39; AT VII, 56). In addition, Descartes worries not only that he is subject to a variety of epistemic imperfections, but also that the extent of his overall imperfection is gratuitous. As a consequence, Descartes's task in Meditation Four is not merely to account for the fact that he makes mistakes, but to account for the existence and extent of the epistemic imperfections he finds within himself.
Descartes begins his response by appealing to a philosophically and theologically traditional model of creation according to which God creates different kinds of beings by granting different degrees of reality or perfection. Each kind of created being, as created, falls short of God's infinite perfection in one way or another. According to the tradition such defects in kind, or negations, are not evil. Suarez, for example, explains that ‘a thing is not evil in that it does not have a more excellent perfection if it ought not have it; otherwise every creature would be evil in that it does not have the perfection of the Creator’.Footnote 4 A stone, for example, lacks the perfection of sight. This absence is not an evil, however, since this limitation or defect is a consequence of being a member of its kind. In general, limitation, in one way or another, is the price of creation, and consequently such natural defects are not evil. Descartes summarizes:
I realize that I am, as it were, something intermediate between God and nothingness, or between supreme being and non-being: my nature is such that in so far as I was created by the supreme being, there is nothing in me to enable me to go wrong or lead me astray; but in so far as I participate in nothingness or non-being, that is, in so far as I am not myself the supreme being and am lacking in countless respects, it is no wonder I make mistakes. I understand, then, that error as such is not something real which depends on God, but merely a defect. Hence my going wrong does not require me to have a faculty specially bestowed on me by God; it simply happens as a result of the fact that the faculty of true judgement which I have from God is in my case not infinite.Footnote 5 (CSM II, 38; AT VII, 54)
Descartes thus opens his response to the problem of evil by claiming that his epistemic imperfections are negations or defects in kind, and as a result are not inconsistent with God's existence and perfection.Footnote 6 Indeed, elsewhere Descartes explicitly accounts for his capacity for error and for the limitation of his intellect in just this way. In reply to Gassendi, he writes: ‘our being liable to error is … simply (especially with respect to God) the negation of greater perfection among created things’ (CSM II, 258; AT VII, 376). Of the intellect he writes later in Meditation Four: ‘it is in the nature of a finite intellect to lack understanding of many things, and it is the nature of a created intellect to be finite’ (CSM II, 42; AT VII, 60).
While it might appear that the problem has been solved, Descartes admits in the next paragraph that this defence ‘is not entirely satisfactory’ (CSM II, 38; AT VII, 55). His suggestion is that although this defence is effective with respect to some of his epistemic imperfections, there are some for which it cannot account. Descartes points to two recalcitrant imperfections in particular. First, according to Descartes the fact that he makes mistakes (as opposed to, say, his capacity for mistakes) cannot be a negation. He writes: ‘error is not a pure negation, but rather a privation or lack of some knowledge which somehow should be in me’ (ibid.). A privative absence (or privation) differs from a negation in being an absence of something to which the subject is by nature disposed. As Descartes writes in the French edition of the Meditations, a privation is the absence of something ‘to which its nature entitles it’ (CSM II, 39; AT IX, 45). For example, sight is naturally appropriate to dogs, but not stones; thus, the absence of sight in a dog is a privation, while its absence in a stone is merely a negation or defect in kind. In general, a being that suffers from a privative absence is one that falls short of what its nature intends for it, and as a result is an imperfect instance of its nature or kind.Footnote 7 Accordingly, in claiming that error is a privation, Descartes is claiming that human persons are by nature apt or disposed to avoid error. When a human person makes a mistake they fall short of that to which their nature entitles them. Given that this imperfection is not a negation, it follows that Descartes will have to find an alternative way to account for the fact that he makes mistakes.
Second, even if creatures’ imperfections in kind are consistent with God's existence, it does not thereby follow that God's existence is consistent with the amount or degree of imperfection in creation. For all Descartes knows at this point in the Meditations, he is God's only creation; and Descartes is confident that this creation is less perfect than it might have been. God, he says, ‘could have given me a nature such that I was never mistaken’ (CSM II, 38; AT VII, 55). Descartes explains (later in the meditation) that God could have done so with only minor changes to his nature. Without taking away his freedom, and without granting him infinite knowledge, God could have prevented him from making errors of judgement either by giving him an intellect capable of clearly and distinctly perceiving everything he might need to know (but nothing more), or by impressing it into his memory never to affirm or deny that which he does not perceive clearly and distinctly (CSM II, 42; AT VII, 61). On this basis, Descartes concludes that ‘Had God made me this way, then I can easily understand that, considered as a totality, I would have been more perfect than I am now’ (ibid.). It would seem that Descartes does not literally mean that he could have been more perfect, since presumably Descartes is essentially a human person, and so could not have a different nature. Rather, Descartes is apparently claiming that God could have created a relevantly similar, but more perfect, meditator. Creation, then, looks to be unnecessarily or gratuitously imperfect – something a perfect being could not tolerate.
Descartes takes up both of these complications, but the bulk of Meditation Four is devoted to developing an explanation for the fact that he actually makes mistakes. This is Descartes's well-known, and oft-discussed, free-will theodicy. For the purposes of this article I will put this aside, and take up instead Descartes's strategy for accounting for the apparent fact that creation is gratuitously imperfect, for this is where we can find Descartes's sceptical theism.Footnote 8
Descartes's strategy is to deny the legitimacy of the inference from the fact that he might have been more perfect to the conclusion that he is gratuitously as such. He writes: ‘I cannot therefore deny that there may in some way be more perfection in the universe as a whole because some of its parts are not immune from error … than there would be if all the parts are exactly alike’ (CSM II, 42–43; AT VII, 61). The fact that he might have been more perfect doesn't license the conclusion that he is gratuitously imperfect, since it may be that, for example, the universe as a whole is better off as a result.Footnote 9 Early in the meditation Descartes outlines this strategy. He writes:
[T]here is no call to doubt his existence if I happen to find that there are other instances where I do not grasp why or how certain things were made by him. For since I now know that my nature is very weak and limited, whereas the nature of God is immense, incomprehensible and infinite … there is considerable rashness in thinking myself capable of investigating the [impenetrable] purposes of God.Footnote 10 (CSM II, 38–39; AT VII, 55)
As a finite being, Descartes cannot expect to understand all of God's reasons for acting. It follows that he cannot conclude that creation's degree of imperfection is inconsistent with God's perfection, according to Descartes, because he is not in an epistemic position to do so.Footnote 11
From this we can see that Descartes offers a hybrid response to the problem of evil in Meditation Four. Descartes uses different approaches to account for the various epistemic imperfections he finds within himself. He accounts for his basic capacity for error and for the fact that his intellect is finite by claiming that these are negations or defects in kind. That he is subject to such imperfections is the price of creation. This approach, however, will not account for the fact that he actually makes mistakes, since this imperfection is not an imperfection in kind. Nevertheless, this imperfection is consistent with God's existence because it arises as the result of a misuse of his own free will. Even so, creation – in the form of the meditator – seems gratuitously imperfect. God could have created a being like the meditator in having a finite intellect and free will who would not be similarly subject to error. In response, Descartes appeals to the sceptical theist's strategy, and argues that we are not in an epistemic position to conclude that the extent of our imperfection is gratuitous.
The Undercutting Objection to sceptical theism
According to the Undercutting Objection the sceptical theist's admission of ignorance unleashes a pernicious scepticism that undercuts her own claims to knowledge. The general structure of this kind of objection can be represented as follows. Let p stand for a proposition of some import which the sceptical theist affirms. The Undercutting Objection charges that the sceptical theist is committed to (what I will call) an Undercutting Conditional (UC) which connects her scepticism about God's purposes to scepticism about p. Thus, the Undercutting Objection sets up a trilemma for the sceptical theist: either (i) give up her sceptical theism, (ii) deny the UC, or (iii) admit to scepticism about p.
There are many ways one might fill in this argument schema, and it not difficult to see how the objection might have particular force when formulated with regard to Descartes's project in the Meditations. Recall that Descartes's goal in Meditation Three is to vouchsafe the truth-rule by removing even ‘slight’ and ‘metaphysical’ reasons for doubting it. However, by appealing to the ‘impenetrable purposes of God’ in Meditation Four Descartes has, apparently, introduced new grounds for doubting the truth-rule by committing himself to a UC. After all, given his admittedly humble epistemic position, how can he be sure that God has no end the achievement of which requires his nature to be epistemically unreliable? To use Descartes's example, how do we know that the unreliability of his clear and distinct perceptions wouldn't allow for ‘more perfection in the universe as a whole’? In short, the objection is that Descartes is committed to the following UC:
(DUC): If Descartes's epistemic limitations prevent him from concluding that his degree of imperfection is gratuitous, then they also prevent him from concluding that his clear and distinct perceptions are reliable (and that the truth-rule is correct).
Faced with this challenge Descartes will surely want to challenge DUC (either to give up his sceptical theism or to admit scepticism about the truth-rule would undermine the whole project of the Meditations). In order to deny DUC, given the structure of the Meditations, Descartes needs to be able to establish that God's perfection guarantees the truth-rule without appealing to God's purposes to do so. However, it is not obvious that Descartes has the necessary resources. Lex Newman, for example, writes in his thorough and illuminating study of Meditation Four: ‘Never contested, in the Meditations, is the assumption that there would be no MSR for a world with creatures who systematically err’ (my italics).Footnote 12 Despite this, I think Descartes does have grounds for denying DUC, although we will have to look beyond the Meditations to find them.
Descartes and the Undercutting Conditional
The concern that God might have an MSR for deceiving the meditator (with respect to clear and distinct perceptions or otherwise) did not go unappreciated by Descartes's contemporaries, and indeed this issue was raised by both Mersenne and Hobbes in the Objections appended to the Meditations.Footnote 13 Hobbes writes:
The standard view is that doctors are not at fault if they deceive their patients for their health's sake, and that fathers are not at fault if they deceive their children for their own good. For the crime of deception consists not in the falsity of what is said but in the harm done by the deceiver. M. Descartes should thus consider the proposition ‘God can in no case deceive us’ and see whether it is universally true. (CSM II, 136; AT VII, 195)
In this same vein Mersenne asks:
Cannot God treat men as a doctor treats the sick, or a father his children? In both these cases there is frequent deception though it is always employed beneficially and with wisdom. (CSM II, 90; AT VII, 126)
We would not be surprised, perhaps, if Descartes were to respond by taking the hard-line stance that deception is always wrong, and that God can have no MSR for it. After all, it would not be out of place for Descartes (given his Augustinian sympathies) to appeal to the theological tradition according to which all lies are sins.Footnote 14 Surprisingly, however, Descartes responds by capitulating. He writes in response to Hobbes:
My conclusion does not require that we can in no case be deceived … All that I require is that we are not deceived in cases where our going wrong would suggest an intention to deceive on the part of God. (CSM II, 136; AT VII, 195)
To Mersenne he offers a similar but somewhat more informative reply:
[M]y remarks in the Meditations were concerned not with the verbal expression of lies, but only with malice in the formal sense, the internal malice which is involved in deception … I would not want to criticize those who allow that through the mouths of the prophets God can produce verbal untruths which, like the lies of doctors who deceive their patients in order to cure them, are free of any malicious intent to deceive. (CSM II, 102; AT VII, 143)
According to Descartes, Mersenne and Hobbes are right; there are cases of morally acceptable deception. When, in the Meditations, Descartes says that it is impossible for God to deceive, we should not understand him as maintaining that God cannot deceive simpliciter. Rather, he should be understood as claiming only that God cannot deceive maliciously – that is, without an MSR for doing so.Footnote 15 To this point, then, Descartes's response has been to clarify his understanding of deception. Of course, this clarification does not go towards solving the general problem; in fact, it only makes the objection all that more pressing.
Although Descartes begins his response to both Hobbes and Mersenne in the same fashion, he ultimately gives two different replies. Let us start with his response to Hobbes. After noting that ‘All that I require is that we are not deceived in cases where our going wrong would suggest an intention to deceive on the part of God’ Descartes concludes his response to the objection by adding ‘for it is self-contradictory that God should have such an intention’. Descartes apparently takes this observation to be sufficient for blocking the obvious charge that God might have some MSR for creating us with unreliable clear and distinct perceptions. This claim, however, will be sufficient only given the assumption that God's having created us as such would be a case of intentional (or malicious) deception. The problem, of course, is that Descartes is not entitled to make this assumption. To claim that such deception would be malicious is to say that there could be no MSR for it, but given that Descartes claims to be ignorant of God's purposes, this is precisely what Descartes cannot say.Footnote 16
Fortunately Descartes replies in more than one way, and to Mersenne he offers a much more lengthy response. Here Descartes's response is not that God's having created us with unreliable clear and distinct perceptions would be malicious or unjustified, but rather that it is impossible for God to create us as such. Descartes argues in what I will call The Argument for the Impossibility of Deception as follows:
Since God is the supreme being, he must also be supremely good and true, and it would therefore be a contradiction that anything should be created by him which positively tends towards falsehood. Now everything real which is in us must have been bestowed on us by God (this was proved when his existence was proved); moreover, we have a real faculty for recognizing the truth and distinguishing it from falsehood, as is clear merely from the fact that we have within us ideas of truth and falsehood. Hence this faculty must tend towards the truth, at least when we use it correctly (that is, by assenting only to what we clearly and distinctly perceive, for no other correct method of employing this faculty can be imagined). (CSM II, 103; AT VII, 144)Footnote 17
There is a lot going on in this argument, but for ease of discussion I will standardize the basic argument as follows:
(1) It is impossible for God to create something which positively tends towards falsehood.
(2) Our faculty for recognizing truth and distinguishing it from falsehood has been created by God.
(3) So, it is impossible for our faculty for recognizing truth and distinguishing it from falsehood to tend positively towards falsehood.
The task at hand is to determine whether this argument succeeds in making the case that God cannot systematically deceive us, without appealing to God's purposes in the process of doing so. Descartes's grounds for accepting premise (2) are not difficult to isolate. In general, he reasons that since we have ideas of both truth and falsity, it follows that we must be able to distinguish the two, and insofar as we are created by God, we are created with this capacity. Descartes's reasoning for premise (1) is a bit more opaque, and indeed Newman calls this claim an ‘intuition’ for Descartes.Footnote 18 Nevertheless, Descartes has grounds for thinking (1) is true as two clarifications about the contents of premise (1) will establish.
First, premise (1) claims that there is something a perfect being cannot create; consequently, Descartes's account of causation is relevant to this premise. Indeed, one causal principle in particular is crucial for Descartes's project in the Mediations as a whole. In Meditation Three (and elsewhere) Descartes relies on what scholars have dubbed Descartes's ‘Causal Likeness Principle’.Footnote 19 Descartes expresses this principle (which he says is known by the natural light) in a variety of ways, but perhaps most clearly when he says: ‘whatever reality or perfection there is in a thing is present either formally or eminently in its first and adequate cause’ (CSM II, 116; AT VII, 165). This principle expresses a necessary condition of causation: a cause must be like its effect. Put otherwise, no effect has perfections not also present in that effect's cause. For Descartes, perfections can be present, or contained in, a cause in two senses: formally or eminently. A cause contains its effect formally when it resembles its effect. Thus, fire can cause the effect of heat, because it formally contains heat – that is, it is itself hot. In contrast, a cause that contains its effect eminently does not resemble its effect, but rather contains a property the ‘greatness’ of which allows it to ‘fill the role’ of a formally contained property.Footnote 20 For example, although God himself is not corporeal, he contains corporeality eminently insofar as He has a property (or set of properties) of sufficient greatness to produce matter. In sum, given the Causal Likeness Principle it follows that if God creates x, then God is like x – either insofar as God resembles x or insofar as God has a property which is a sufficiently great counterpart of x.
Second, in claiming that it is impossible for God to create something which positively tends towards falsehood we need to recognize that the qualification ‘positively’ is doing some important work. Recall that, for Descartes, God creates by granting degrees of reality or perfection. Such creations are real positive beings, and so Descartes's claim in premise (1) is that it is impossible for God to create something that tends towards falsehood where this ‘something’ is understood as a real positive being or perfection.
Given these two clarifications we can now understand Descartes's grounds for thinking that a perfect being cannot create something positive which tends towards falsehood. If God could create something which tended toward falsehood where this is understood as a perfection, then (given the Causal Likeness Principle) he would have to contain this ‘perfection’ formally or eminently. But this is impossible: God is ‘supremely good and true’, and neither tends towards falsehood himself, nor contains any property that can fill the role of tending towards falsehood. Unlike Descartes's response to Hobbes, his response to Mersenne is not circular: our grounds for guaranteeing the truth-rule lie in our knowledge of God's perfection and of the Causal Likeness Principle – not in our knowledge of God's purposes. Put otherwise, we can be sure that God cannot have an MSR for creating us with unreliable clear and distinct ideas, not because we know that there is no good which would justify it, but because it is impossible for God to create such a situation.Footnote 21
Conclusion
I have argued that in Meditation Four Descartes employs a hybrid response to the problem of evil. As part of his overall response Descartes adopts the sceptical theist strategy to cope with the apparently unnecessary degree of imperfection he finds within himself. Not only does this fill a largely unrecognized gap in our understanding of Descartes's argument in Meditation Four, but it also reminds us that the sceptical theist's strategy is nothing new. Furthermore, I have shown how Descartes's project in the Meditations would seem to be particularly susceptible to the Undercutting Objection. Ultimately, however, Descartes sidesteps this objection because he is able to establish the reliability of his clear and distinct ideas without appealing to any knowledge of God's ends or purposes; Descartes can consistently claim to be ignorant about the latter without thereby being ignorant about the former. In closing, I want to be clear about the scope of this final conclusion. First, in concluding that Descartes sidesteps the objection, I am claiming only that his systematic commitments allow him to deny the DUC; I am not endorsing those commitments. Second, I have argued that Descartes sidesteps one formulation of the Undercutting Objection in particular (albeit a particularly pernicious formulation given Descartes's project). The Undercutting Objection is a general objection kind, and there may well be other Undercutting Conditionals which Descartes cannot avoid. Nevertheless, that Descartes can avoid this formulation of the problem is notable, and serves, I think, as a valuable illustration of how the sceptical theist can respond to the Undercutting Objection more generally.
