Sunday, March 9, 2008
Meditations 4- Human Error
In part 4 of Meditations, D discusses the source of human error. He says that error depends on both intellect and the will. He says that intellect cannot be the source of error since it only allows us to perceive ideas, not make judgements on them. He says that the only property we have that is infinite and perfect is our will, everything else like our intellect, imagination, memory, etc is flawed. Since our will is perfect, it also cannot be the source of error. He decides that error occurs because the will is infinite and intellect is not, meaning that we judge things because of our will, but we do not fully understand the things we judge. I think this is one of D's better arguments, but I still do not agree with it. D seems to just aim at defending God's existence with every argument. I do understand his point about our intellect is true, it is limited and we can never know everything there is to know, but there is no way to prove that our will is infinite.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think that what Descrates means with the distinction between the will and the intellect is that for anything presented to it, the intellect may or may not be able to understand/comprehend it. I think that it is quite agreeable that the intellect is limited. When Descartes says that the will is infinite, he means that for anything presented to us (whether it be a situation, an opinion, an argument, or an object) we can choose to affirm (that is, to accept the truth of) or deny (the truth of) it, to pursue it or avoid it. I don't think that we require a proof to show that we have the capability of affirming, denying, pursuing, or avoiding anything.
I think Descartes has a good point here though i am not totally sure like yourself that intellect is not perfect and our will is perfect and this mix brings about errors. He really just states this without any real argument about why the will is perfect.
Post a Comment