René Descartes’ “Meditations on First Philosophy” attempts from the outset to search and explain whether humans can have knowledge, and if so, how do we gain knowledge. In “Meditation One” Descartes plays the role of sceptic and denies that the senses are reliable sources of knowledge, which allows him to deny that he has any knowledge. He concludes later in the “Meditations” that human knowledge does not stem from our senses, but instead that our intellect is responsible. In essence, Descartes is trying to make an epistemological claim that pushes back against the popular beliefs of his time that our knowledge is derived from our senses. By “Meditation Four,” Descartes has fully elucidated his argument that the intellect is responsible for knowledge, but is left with the challenge of how we make errors in judgement. More specifically, under the belief that the senses are responsible for knowledge, our ways of erring include the senses not functioning properly, being deceived or being obscured. Since Descartes argues that the senses are not responsible for knowledge, he must introduce a new understanding of how humans make errors.
Descartes attempts to present a new understanding of how we gain knowledge, asserting that knowledge of “corporeal things . . . are formed by thought, and which the senses themselves examine.” Descartes’ radical move is to argue that our knowledge of the physical world stems from our mental abilities, that is, our intellect evaluates what we are perceiving, and then renders a judgement about what it is. Thus for Descartes, gaining knowledge is not a seamless process from perceiving or sensing to a new belief, but instead requires an additional step of understanding. Descartes wants to show that simply seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, or smelling something gives us no knowledge about that thing. It is the human mind, and our capacity to understand that allows us to gain knowledge. Descartes introduces the wax analogy as a means of showing why those that argue that our knowledge is derived solely from our senses are mistaken. Descartes melts a piece of wax and notes that all its physical attributes have changed; it looks, smells, tastes, sounds and feels different. The analogy succeeds in showing why Descartes believes that the senses alone are not sufficient to have knowledge of the physical world because if our understanding worked in such a way that our senses alone were a reliable source of knowledge, we would have been led to believe that the piece of wax and the melted wax were two distinct things. He argues that without properties, the wax is simply an “extended, flexible, and mutable” thing that can be changed infinitely. He argues our imagination is incapable of imagining these infinite changes, which leaves him to state that the only way we are able to know that the piece of wax and the melted wax are both wax is through our minds. Thus, Descartes concludes, it is our intellect that allows us to know that both the piece of wax and the melted wax are two forms of the same thing.
Having elucidated his beliefs in regards to how humans gain knowledge, Descartes uses “Meditation Four” to show how the human mind can move into error. He, in essence, is trying to show both how humans make mistakes in gaining knowledge, and how that being so is compatible with his belief that God is perfect Descartes begins the fourth meditation by asserting that “the will to deceive undoubtedly attests to maliciousness or weakness,” and thus God cannot be a deceiver because it is inconsistent with his status as a perfect being. Descartes, in dispelling the notion of God as a deceiver, wants to show that we can, in fact, gain knowledge, which he challenges in “Meditation One” when he questions whether God is a deceiver or if our senses are reliable. Descartes continues his meditation by examining the faculty of judgement, writing that God “has not given men the sort of faculty with which I could ever make a mistake, when I use it properly”. Descartes is arguing that our faculty of judgement, because it came from God, cannot itself be flawed. Consequently, human error must be a result of humans misusing the faculty of judgement, because the implication of a perfect faculty of judgement would be infallible knowledge, which is obviously false. Thus, having ruled out God deceiving us and the faculty of judgement as the source of human error, Descartes is left to explain how it is that humans misuse the faculty of judgement which leads them into error.
Descartes presents his belief on how humans move into error by misusing the faculty of judgement by asserting that “these errors depend on the simultaneous concurrence of two causes: the faculty of knowing and the faculty of choosing . . . in other words, simultaneously on the intellect and the will.” Descartes argues that our faculties of intellect and free will are responsible for our errors because our ability to will something surpasses our ability to know something, and thus we can will something that we do not know. That is to say, the intellect is simply the faculty in which we ponder a question or choice before us with the knowledge we already possess. For example, an idea that is perceived by the intellect and deemed sufficiently true is then affirmed by the will. Descartes believes that there exists nothing more perfect within human beings than their faculty of free will. He goes as far as to say that taken alone, the free will of God is not superior to the free will of humans. It is important to understand that what Descartes means by free will is simply the ability to affirm or deny, to act or not to act, and thus it is evident what Descartes means by a perfect will. We have the ability to believe or do whatever we want, however that does not make anything we believe true nor does it make everything we do good. Simply, Descartes is trying to show the wide range of things that our will allows us to form judgements about.
Thus, for Descartes, our knowledge stems from the ability of our intellect to perceive things and subsequently our free will rendering a judgement on these perceptions. That is to say, our free will renders a decision based on what the intellect perceives, and either affirms, denies or withholds judgement in cases where we do not possess enough knowledge. Descartes argues that it is through this process that humans err, either by affirming instead of denying, by denying instead of affirming, or lastly by rendering any judgement, whether it turns out to be true or false, without certainty. Descartes defines certainty as “everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true.” Thus, any idea that we understand clearly and distinctly and moves us to will it, should be affirmed. He believes our ability to make errors is because our will is unlimited, whereas our intellect is limited. That is to say, we are able to affirm or deny anything we want, but by contrast, we cannot perceive or know whatever we want, and thus can affirm an idea that we do not have enough clarity or certainty about. Thus, making a mistake is simply the overextension of the will into areas in which the intellect does not possess enough knowledge to render an accurate decision.
A question that arises from Descartes’ theory is how God’s perfection remains intact given that he has bestowed upon us a process for obtaining knowledge that will not always lead us to the truth. The real challenge is how this can be, given that earlier in “Meditation Four” Descartes argues that God cannot be a deceiver for it would be a sign of weakness and imperfection in a being that is all-powerful and perfect. Thus Descartes’ theory must account for the seeming inconsistency in the fact that a perfect, infinite being has created imperfect beings. To this end, Descartes introduces his idea of nothingness, asserting that he has “been so constituted as a kind of middle ground between God and nothingness, or between the supreme being and non-being.” Descartes is trying to argue that although he was created by God, he does not necessarily have to be perfect like God. More specifically, he is trying to put forward the notion that when we act in a manner that is inconsistent with the way God intended we are engaging in nothingness, that is, engaging in the opposite of God, imperfection. But even for Descartes this argument does not seem entirely convincing and thus he further addresses this challenge by saying it would be futile to speculate on God’s motives, yet does so anyway by asserting that it may be possible that the world is more perfect with us created the way we are. He writes that “whenever we ask whether the works of God are perfect, we should keep in view not simply some one creature in isolation from the rest, but the universe as a whole.” Thus, Descartes seems content to say that so long as we imperfect beings are part of the perfect creation of God, her perfection remains intact.
Although this may be true, the same could be said for God deceiving us, that is, is not equally plausible that God deceives us for the greater good? Although Descartes believes that deception is a sign of weakness, deception in the name of a perfect creation does not seem much worse than creating beings that can engage in imperfection. That is, beings with a will as perfect and infinite as God, but without the intellect to match. Altogether, Descartes presents an interesting, and at times contentious theory that raises interesting questions, especially in relation to how we arrive at the truth, what conditions are required for knowledge and how we make mistakes.
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