From the Trademark Argument Descartes moves on from knowledge of his idea of God in his mind, to the cause of that idea outside of his mind. This cause must be God, and so God must exist. The essential structure of the argument is as follows; the cause of anything must at least be as perfect as its effect. My ideas must be caused by something. I am imperfect being. I have the idea of God which is that of a perfect being. I cannot be the cause of my idea of God. Only a perfect being (i.e. God) can be the cause of my idea of God. Hence, God must exist. Descartes believed this principle to be self evident, for example when a window shatters; you know that it won’t have been shattered by something weak like a grain of sand or a fly. It would have to be something much bigger, or something thrown with enough force, e.g. a brick. Descartes gives his own example of the production of a stone. Whatever was that caused a stone to come into existence, must itself had all the properties, or more, that the stone has in itself. He argues that his ideas of humans, animals or angels could be made up by himself out of his ideas of material things and his idea of God, even if these things didn’t exist. The concept here is that, so long as he has an idea of physical things, he can make up men and animals in his imagination, just as we make up the idea of a unicorn for example.
However, the causal principle faces a few problems. If the idea of the causal principle is that a cause must be adequate to its effect, then it fails to answer to concepts such as the butterfly effect. This is the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world might ultimately cause a hurricane in another part of the world. Therefore the cause is not adequate to the effect, and disproves the casual principle. Hence, it essentially disproves Descartes trademark argument, because the idea of God doesn’t necessarily have to come from an equally supreme being.
Philosopher David Hume stated that we cannot determine the cause of anything simply by examining the effect. By saying this, Hume is effectively arguing against Descartes’ causal principle. Hume says that just by seeing the window breaking, he can’t infer what must have caused it to break. In the example of the shattering window, it was stated that we know that something large, with enough force, must have been caused the window to shatter, but how can we know this? Hume claims that we can’t know this through a priori reasoning, but rather through recollection of a past experience of glass shattering. We have learned from experience, which sort of objects can cause the window to shatter. If we came across a shattering window for the first time, we wouldn’t know what caused it to occur. In the same way, Hume goes on to add, we can only know how water freezes by observing the effect of cold weather on water. If this wasn’t observed, then there is no way of knowing a priori just by looking at a puddle of water and thinking what might happen if the temperature drops. Therefore, in Hume’s view the only way we can know what the cause of something is, is by observing it in concurrence with its effect.
Hence, if Hume’s view is that you can only tell the cause of something by observing it in conjunction with its effect, then it goes against the claim that Idea of God is innate. This is because according to Hume we wouldn’t be able to know the cause of God by simple consideration. But rather, you would actually have to observe God coming into existence.
Another problem with the claim that the idea of God is innate is the idea of God being incoherent. The reason that we don’t have a proper idea of God in the first place is because the idea itself is contradictory. Descartes’ account of his idea of God is that God is an all powerful being. However, there have been many contradictions to God’s omnipotence; e.g. can God set himself a task that he cannot perform and if he cannot then there is a task that the omnipotent God is unable to do. Either way, it disproves God’s omnipotence. This paradox in the very notion of omnipotence suggests that Descartes’ idea of God is unclear, and therefore the cause of an unclear idea of God, then doesn’t need to be caused by God himself. It is far more likely that it was caused by Descartes himself.
This shows that the claim that the idea of God is innate cannot be true if God is supposed to be an all perfect, immortal being. This is because there are so many contradictions about different characteristics of God and it shows that the idea of God is unclear. Hence, the idea of God can’t be in our minds because God caused it, otherwise the idea will be totally clear to every person, yet, this is not the case.
However, the claim that the idea of God is innate does have some strength as well. Descartes says that we can only get the concepts of infinity from something that is sufficiently equal, namely God. Although you can argue that many attributes of God are just augmented from human qualities. The idea of something like an infinite substance cannot have originated from a human, who is only a finite substance. The only cause with sufficient reality to produce the idea of an infinite being would have to be an actual infinite being. Thus we get the idea of God as an infinite being, innately.
In conclusion, although Descartes had a fairly strong argument with the trademark argument, there were a few problems with it. If God was the cause of the concept of God in our minds, or the ‘trademark’, then surely each and every person would have the same ‘trademark’. Yet, everyone has a different concept of God, or different ‘trademarks’. Furthermore, Descartes causal principle, which states that the cause of something must be as great as or superior to the effect, also faces some problems. One of the main problems to Descartes causal principle is that there are in fact effects that can be much greater than the cause, for example, a single match causing a whole bonfire. Philosophers like Hume have shown that you cannot work out the cause of something, by simply examining the effect. This is true because, for example, if you have never seen a window break before, then we can’t know through a priori reasoning alone that we need a large object with enough force. We can only know through experience. In the same way, we need to experience God coming into existence to actually know that he is the cause of our idea of God.