Model Reading Essay #1Philosophy 524 Reading essays contain three parts: reconstruction, analysis, and comment. The reconstruction is devoted to a charitable description of an argument or position from one of the readings. You need to concentrate on laying out the argument or position in detail, bringing to the surface assumptions left implicit by the author. In the analysis, you must explain how the argument is intended to work, i.e., how it is supposed to convey one from the reasons offered to the conclusion; alternatively, a position-focused essay must contain an analysis section that describes the relationship between the salient elements that constitute the position. The comment section should include argument that you craft, either critical of the reconstructed argument or position or in further defense of it. You needn't aim to undermine the argument or position you've reconstructed; rather, you might seek to reinforce it by drawing out some of its implications. Below is a sample reading essay that I wrote for Philosophy 240: Belief and Reality. This reading essay concerns an argument in Meditation 1 of Rene Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. This can be accessed here: Descartes' Meditations . -o-o-o-o-o- In paragraph 7 of "Meditation I," Rene Descartes introduces the Deceiving God Argument (DGA). The argument is designed to demonstrate that even basic mathematical beliefs are not beyond doubt. It is conceivable, Descartes argues, that the omnipotent God of whom we have an idea is in fact a deceiver who permits me to believe that squares have four sides when they do not, and so it possible that this belief is mistaken. According to the skeptical methodology he employs in this Meditation, beliefs that are at all dubitable are treated as "obviously false" and deemed to be the cornerstone of his new epistemological edifice. After advancing this argument, Descartes immediately gives expression to an objection: isn't our idea of an omnipotent God also an idea of a benevolent God, and isn't benevolence incompatible with deception? If so, doesn't this suggest that He would not permit me to be deceived? Call this the Incompatibility Objection (IO). After introducing IO, Descartes argues that it fails. His argument is as follows: if God's goodness is incompatible with continual deception, then it should also be incompatible with occasional deception; however, we are occasionally deceived, and so occasional deception must not be incompatible with God's goodness; but then God's goodness must not be incompatible with continual deception and so the IO fails to undermine DGA. In this passage, Descartes attempts to discharge a common response to the Deceiving God Argument. Given that the idea of God involved is the idea of the Christian God, it is only natural to wonder if the benevolence that lies at the heart of this idea doesn't render DGA a non-starter. This response is a conceptual one that draws on the content of the idea of God to call into question the coherence of DGA. If Descartes is to use the idea of God for his argumentative purposes, he must not modify it in a way that incompatible with the essential features of the idea; however, by adding a penchant for deception, Descartes has done just that. Because deception and benevolence are incompatible, the modified idea of God at the heart of DGA is incoherent and so the argument itself is incoherent. This is a challenging objection, but Descartes contends that it cannot be sustained. Note that IO is grounded in the assumption that benevolence is incompatible with deception. It is this assumption that inclines the proponent of IO to reject Descartes' modification of the idea of God. However, Descartes notes that if this assumption were true, then it should be the case that we are never deceived; after all, if His benevolence is incompatible with our being deceived, what difference does it make whether this deception is continual or occasional? The duration or frequency of deception seems irrelevant here---benevolence is incompatible with deception because of its moral character, not its temporal character. Clearly, though, we are occasionally deceived---even the proponent of IO must admit this. If this is true, though, then it falsifies the assumption on which IO is based. This forces the proponent of IO to abandon the assumption, and with it goes IO. As compelling as this reply is, it's not clear that it works. In particular, it seems that the temporal difference between continual deception and occasional deception might be relevant here. One could argue that continual deception would reflect negatively on God, since it would require His complicity; after all, how could we be deceived at all times if it weren't the case that God designed the world to support this deception? Occasional deception, on the other hand, would not require God's complicity, since the limited character of our mental faculties would make possible such failings; given this, God could be benevolent and still permit occasional deception. Thus, only continual deception would be incompatible with God's benevolence, and so Descartes' reply to IO fails. (It is worth noting that even if this reply fails, Descartes could still accomplish his goal of undermining mathematical beliefs by getting at the omnipotent deceiver from a different starting point. The dialectic in this paragraph is driven by his employment of the idea of the Christian God, and it would not arise if we were to employ a different idea.)
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