Key terms and concepts

It is perfectly possible to start an exploration of Meditation One by reading the text. Although some of the ideas turn out to be a little more complicated than they first appear it is an easy enough read. The same is not true for Meditation Three. Descartes is using concepts that are entirely alien to 21st century thinking. For that reason it is necessary to begin by explaining the concepts and then see how they appear in the text.

For what it's worth, I don't think the Trademark Argument is too difficult for Higher candidates. It has been in the course for a while, it is in the A-level course and there are school-level texts available. However, this is now a text-based unit and candidates are expected to have an in-depth knowledge of the text. Given its complexity, asking Higher candidates to have an in-depth knowledge of the whole of Meditation Three is a very big ask. The documentation does now say, 'The following text extracts from Descartes are prescribed. The course specification lists aspects of the text which candidates must study in detail.' Based on this instruction very little of the second half of Meditation Three needs to be looked at but it would be good to have that confirmed. Much better would be if the prescribed text of Meditation Three could be cut down to just those bits that do need to be looked at in detail. It isn't helpful to have a prescribed text parts of which don't need to be looked at or a text that needs to be looked at in-depth in some vaguely specified parts and in less depth in other parts.

It is understandable that teachers can be ambivalent about Wikipedia and recommending a page can lead to problems when the page later gets updated. Here I have used a permanent link to a particular revision of the page. For those struggling to find information about the Trademark Argument this is a very helpful page. It gives the necessary background about degrees of reality and formal and objective reality. It also gives some helpful criticisms of the Trademark Argument.

There are two other common criticisms that are worth commenting on.

1. A spark setting off a forest fire is said to contradict the causal adequacy principle. This criticism lacks initial plausibility. Descartes will have been very familiar with embers being used to start a fire and it is very difficult to understand how Descartes or any of his interlocutors in the Objections would have missed such an obvious criticism. It is also difficult to understand why it would have taken 350 years before such a criticism was spotted. As the Wikipedia page notes, degrees of reality are not related to size. An elephant does not have more reality than a goldfish. Under Descartes' scheme they would both have the degree of reality associated with finite substances. There is nothing in Descartes' scheme to suggest a spark would not be able to start a forest fire.
2. The sponginess of a sponge cake emerging from the ingredients. This criticism is much more interesting coming as it does from John Cottingham one of the foremost scholars on Descartes. For that reason alone I am sure it will continue to be accepted. It is, however, something of a puzzle for under Descartes’ scheme the sponginess is presumably a property or a mode (which would have the lowest level of reality) and there is nothing within the scheme to say that a finite substance (which has a higher level of reality) cannot in some way be responsible for the existence of a mode which is dependent on that substance. Furthermore, this is again something with which Descartes would have been entirely familiar. Descartes had even thought deeply about such things. In Meditation Two his wax example depends upon the complete transformation of the physical properties of the wax. It is important to note that Cottingham does not offer this example as an immediate criticism of Descartes. Rather it is in response to a modified version of the causal adequacy principle suggested by Gassendi. So, the sponginess is offered as a counter-example to a causal adequacy principle based on material causation. [One might say that a chain gets its strength from the strength of its component links but the cake does not get its sponginess from the sponginess of its component ingredients.] However, Descartes version of what came to be called the causal adequacy principle is concerned with the 'efficient and total' cause. It is not that the sponginess is a counterexample which shows Descartes' scheme to be obviously wrong, it is more that explaining the sponginess leads to more problems further down the line. Descartes says:

"A stone, for example, which previously did not exist, cannot begin to exist unless it is produced by something which contains, either formally or eminently everything to be found in the stone⁹; similarly, heat cannot be produced in an object which was not previously hot, except by something of at least the same order <degree or kind> of perfection as heat, and so on."

[⁹‘... i.e. it will contain in itself the same things as are in the stone or other more excellent things’ (added in French version). In scholastic terminology, to possess a property ‘formally’ is to possess it literally, in accordance with its definition; to possess it ‘eminently’ is to possess it in some higher form.]

Descartes needs the notion of that which is caused to be produced by something which contains everything about it possibly eminently rather than formally because he needs to explain how a non-physical God can produce the physical universe. The physical aspect of the universe exists eminently within God. With regard to the sponge cake it would seem that Descartes is committed to saying the sponginess exists eminently within the ingredients or, pushing back further, in whatever was responsible for the ingredients. This leads to two difficulties:

1. 1. 1. As Cottingham says, it makes the causal adequacy principle trivially true. It ends up as if you are saying that when something exists eminently in that which produced it you are effectively saying that what produced it is such that it is capable of producing it. True, but trivial.
      2. When it comes to ideas, and particularly the idea of God, Descartes wants to say: 'although one idea may perhaps originate from another, there cannot be an infinite regress here; eventually one must reach a primary idea, the cause of which will be like an archetype which contains formally <and in fact> all the reality <or perfection> which is present only objectively <or representatively> in the idea.' He later says, 'It is true that I have the idea of substance in me in virtue of the fact that I am a substance; 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'.  The sponginess doesn't have to be produced by something that really is spongy but the idea of God must be produced by something that really is God. This seems inconsistent.

In response to the second point I can imagine Descartes saying that the two situations are not comparable for in the case of sponginess, when looking for the efficient and total cause, you can push back beyond the ingredients to something that does contain the sponginess eminently but in the case of God you cannot push back any further so it does have to be the reality of God that is the source of your idea.

Needless to say, this level of analysis goes way beyond what I would be expecting of a Higher candidate. With regard to the two criticisms the first seems to miss the point and is best avoided. The second is either likely to be presented in a way that is attacking a position that wasn't Descartes' or will be too subtle for any but the best candidates to get right.