Descartes: Error And The Will

Front 1

God is not a deceiver (take cosmological proof as given)

Back 1

- will to deceive may show power, but also sign of malice, hence imperfection
- God, in his perfection, would not deceive me

Front 2

God's perfection/deception: objection 1 (greater plans)

Back 2

- to say God would never deceive me is to judge what is Godly based on particular instance
- but this is not possible: we don't know his greater plan, greater perfection could result from variety (imperfection in one aspect of the universe could lead to greater perf. elsewhere)

Front 3

God's perfection/deception: objection 2 (particular instances)

Back 3

- the greater plan argument comes when D is attempts to justify G's choice not to give us an intellect matching our will
- problem: if we can't judge God's perfection based on particular instances, this means he could deceive us in particular instances w/o being imperfect

Front 4

God cannot be the cause of our errors (Principles, 8A,16)

Back 4

- D must give an account of how we err
- ability to err as negation (// inability to fly): the perfect crafstman has no obligation to put all his perfections into his craft
- error is a privation ≠ negation (lack of something I could have

Front 5

D's solution to greater plans objection

Back 5

- G is not a deceiver. He has endowed us with a faculty of judgment that would not lead us to error when used properly
- In this way, D hopes to account for specific instances when we err

Front 6

Modes of perception/modes of willing

Back 6

- 8A, 17: 32. we possess only two modes of thinking: the perception of the intellect and the operation of the will.'
- modes of perception (through the intellect): sensory perc. imagination, pure understanding
- modes of willing: desire/aversion, assertion/denial, doubt (indifference)

Front 7

The intellect

Back 7

(7,56): 'enables me to perceive, w/o affirming or denying, the ideas which are subjects for possible judgments'
// Hume and reason: inertia

Front 8

The will

Back 8

- (7,57): 'there is nothing else in me which is so perfect and so great that the possibility of a further increase in its perfection or greatness i beyond my understanding.'

Front 9

D: the interaction between mind and intellect

Back 9

roughly:
- the intellect presents information as correct
- the will can assent or not to this

Front 10

The scope of the intellect and error (will>error)

Back 10

8A,18: scope of the intellect is only limited, to the few objects it can c+d perceive
'the scope is wider than that of the intellect and this is the cause of error'

Front 11

Error

Back 11

- If my will makes a judgment based on perceptions which are out of the scope of the intellect, this will yield error (judgment based on non c+d perceptions)

Front 12

Blaming God 1: erring

Back 12

God cannot be blamed for:
- cases in which we err (we are misusing our faculty of judgment)

Front 13

Blaming God 2: the disparity in scope between intellect/will: the will

Back 13

- the will is indivisible, so against laws of nature that anything be taken away from it
- but does G not have the power to do anything, even divide a thing from itself?

Front 14

Blaming God 3: the disparity in scope between intellect/will: the intellect

Back 14

- the scope of the intellect: we cannot know why nature of God is so much bigger than mine that I simply can't know (// dismisses search for 'final causes' in physics as useless: vain to say that we can know all purposes of God
- we only see part of G's plan
- but if this is so, how can we be sure that he, in his perfection, doesn't deceive us in particular instances?

Front 15

How do we avoid error?

Back 15

- if G is not a deceiver, we will never err if we give assent only to what we c+d perceive (if we limit the scope of our will to that of our intellect)
- we should use our free will and suspend judgment whenever we don't have c+d perception: use a specific mode of willing (doubt) ≠ assent/denial

Front 16

Free will

Back 16

- will is free: self evident (8A): during method from doubt, will was capable of abstaining/assenting to whatever was doubtable
- D needs a free will: this attributes errors in judgment to us and not to G

Front 17

'Strongly inclined

Back 17

- 8A,21: when we c+d perceive, our will will be 'strongly inclined to assent to it'
- D needs this to ensure that we will not err when c+d perceiving (proving that G has given us a faculty of judgment works)

Front 18

Hatfield: Compatibilism

Back 18

- freedom of the will is compatible with determinism (the will is free from constraints external to it, and is determined by its nature
- the nature of the will is to assent to c+d perception: we are naturally determined to affirm the truth

Front 19

Hatfield: Incompatibilism

Back 19

- to be free, our will must be free to 'choose to go either way' in any instance: a situation cannot arise in which the will could not have chosen otherwise
- the will is (has the freedom of being) indifferent: it is never inclined to go a certain way

Front 20

Descartes and In/Compatibilism

Back 20

- D asserts both:
1) needs C to ensure that the faculty of judgment bestowed upon us by G is sound and works
2) needs I to account for instances of error so that they do not follow from what G has pre-determined

Front 21

Descartes' solution

Back 21

1): weak version of C ('strongly inclined')
2): when we don't c+d perceive, there is no pull on the will. in these cases, the will is free indifferently (assent, dissent, doubt)
- It's b/c the will is indifferent in these cases that error is our fault ≠ G's

Front 22

Descartes' In/Compatibilist view of the freedom of the will

Back 22

the will is determined in that it assents to perceptions when they are c+d (c+d perceptions have a pull on the will). In cases when they aren't, the nature of the will plays no role in determining it - it is free indifferently

Front 23

Note on the scope of nature/intellect: the limitations of the will

Back 23

- the will is perfect, the intellect is not, yet the will is bound to the limitations of the intellect, and must assent to it when c+d perceiving: the will is bound in its nature by something less perfect