flower has more reality than an idea of a flower but this needs to be unpacked. ‘Reality’ cannot be equated with ‘existence’ for, apart from the fact that ‘degrees of existence’ is hardly less problematic than ‘degrees of reality’, as Wilson comments, “reality must not be confused with existence: otherwise the existence of God would be overtly assumed in the premises of the argument.” Even if the argument is judged on its own terms and we grant that there can be degrees of formal reality and degrees of objective reality there are still significant problems. Crucial to the argument as it is normally reconstructed is that the degree of objective reality is determined by the degree of formal reality that the thing being thought about would have if it existed. Descartes offers no reason why this should be so. Wilson says, “Descartes has simply made an arbitrary stipulation here.” There seems to be no good reason why we couldn't maintain different degrees of objective reality but insist that the idea of an infinite substance still has less reality than the amount of reality conferred by the formal reality of a finite substance. Descartes may be inconsistent on this point for in the Replies he says of objective existence, “this mode of being is of course much less perfect than that possessed by things which exist outside the intellect; but, as I did explain, it is not therefore simply nothing.” Despite what Descartes appears to say in the Meditations it may be necessary for the objective reality to be less than the formal reality of the thing represented. Williams points out, “God, as the argument insists, has more reality or perfection than anything else whatever. Hence if Descartes’s idea of God is not itself God (which would of course be absurd), it cannot, however regarded, possess as much reality as God, and hence cannot demand as much reality in its cause as God possesses. So the argument seems to fall short of positing God as cause of the idea.” He goes on to say that Descartes must, therefore be relying on something more than the general principle that there must be as much formal reality in the cause of an idea as there is objective reality in the idea itself. Instead, he suggests, Descartes is relying on special features of the idea of God: “the infinity and perfection of God, represented