Descartes is still not completely satisfied with the explanation that I summarized in the previous post for why man errs. Here is the crux:
"There is, moreover, no doubt that God could have given me a nature such that I was never mistaken; again, there is no doubt that he always wills what is best. Is it then better that I should make mistakes than that I should not do so?"
Descartes is asking why, if God could have made man infallible, he did not. He concludes that whatever God has done must be what is best, since God is perfect. But how are we to make sense of this? Isn't our finitude what causes us to make mistakes? Descartes examines the will which God has given us, which is the faculty by which we make decisions and act upon those decisions. Our will, it seems, is infinite. That is not to say that we are all powerful, i.e. that we can will anything we please, but rather that we can choose to take an attitude towards anything that is presented to us. We have the freedom to affirm, to deny, to pursue and to avoid anything that is presented to us, and we are not determined to do so by anything external to ourselves.
So this is Descartes' incomplete explanation from the previous post supplemented to become more complete: "So what then is the source of my mistakes? It must be simply this: the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect."
By this Descartes means that our will is infinite but our understanding is finite. We have the power to make decisions about things which we do not understand. It is when we extend our will past our faculty of understanding and reason that we make mistakes. If we would limit ourselves to only making decisions about things which we clearly and distinctly understand, and act accordingly with reason, then we would never go wrong.
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4 comments:
So, mistakes occur from making a decision on matters that you don't have all the information on, revolutionary :). I didn't get why the will is infinite because I can only decide what I think of something based off of what I know; so, does that not make my will encompassed by my understanding?
Maute- you are confusing the word 'know' here. To understand the best decision to make in a given situation is one thing (an example of the scope of our intellect), to be presented with a situation in which we don't know what the best decision is is another.(an example of a situation in which we are presented with a decision that exceeds our power of understanding.) There are situations that everyone faces every day in which they don't know the pro's and con's of every possible choice and every possible consequence of every possible action. In situations when you are not completely certain which choice is best but you act anyway, your will(that is, your power to decide and act) is exceeding your understanding.
True, and in fact I would think there are no situations in which you knowledge of ALL potential issues, advantages, and consequences is possible. This would introduce that every every decision based on will would be incorrect as you never have the understanding to make a correct decision.
Well, what can be judged as a correct decision in the first place? We do not have such a conception of actual correctness to make that statement in the first place. We only/always act in the way we think is best, no one can act in a manor they know is wrong. Does a heroin user really think taking the drug is wrong/bad? When one accumulates more knowledge one can then realize that what they did was actually wrong.
I don't see a reason why the will and understanding are separated. Nor do i see a reason why we should have individual free wills.
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