Descartes Criteria For Making Mistakes

I will argue that Descartes, using his own criteria for making and avoiding mistakes, cannot be making a mistake when he proves the existence of God in meditation three in his Meditations on First Philosophy. I will develop my argument in two parts. First, I will present Descartes’s argument for how mistakes are made and avoided. Second, I will present Descartes’s first proof for the existence of God in the third meditation, and in the process present the steps clearly and distinctly, exactly as Descartes understands them. Thus, Descartes cannot be making a mistake when he proves the existence of God.
Descartes argument for making mistakes in his third meditation in Meditation on First Philosophy is that human beings can make errors, even though God gave them perfect faculties. These mistakes are caused by our own will or free choice, which has a much broader scope …show more content…
Descartes believes that, “[he] has no cause for complaint on the grounds that God has not given me a greater power of understanding or a greater light of nature than he has, for it is the essence of a finite intellect, not to understand many things, and is of the essence of a created intellect to be finite” (Cress 40). Here Descartes is saying that while our will and free choice is infinite, our intellect is finite. Human beings are not able to comprehend all that we are able to do, and as a result, we will pass judgement on things that he does not fully understand. Our will has a tendency to surpass our intellect which causes us to make errors. Descartes believes that, “if I hold off from making a judgement when I do not perceive what is true with sufficient clarity and distinctness, it is clear that I am acting properly and am not committing an error” (Cress 40). Here he is saying that if he refrains from