Descartes’ Ontological Argument

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show that descartes' ontological argument is really a causal argument for the existence of god. instead of arguing from the idea of necessary existence to the existence of god descartes argues from the alleged fact that god puts himself in us--we intuit him--to the fact that he must exist as the cause of this phenomenon. unfortunately, however, it seems that such a position is not consistent with descartes' over-all representationalism according to which we have only the idea of god in us.