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of God s existence, imperfect, and this imperfection evidently
includes the liability to error. But this answer, though correct so far
as it goes, does not explain enough. For one thing, it fails to locate
precisely the particular imperfection that is the source of error, and
it is only by doing this that Descartes can hope to make allowance
for it. Since he is committed to a method for the discovery of the
truth and the elimination of error, he must hope that there is some-
thing that he can do to circumvent his imperfection, or at least to
know where it cannot be circumvented. In the second place, the fact
that he is imperfect in a way that can lead to error itself needs
explanation. For if he has been created as a rational mind by a
benevolent God, why should he be imperfect in this way? Evi-
dently God could have created him so as not to fall into error at all.
As Descartes puts it, error is not a pure negation [the French trans-
lation adds: that is to say, it is not a simple defect or want of some
perfection that ought not to be mine], but it is . . . a lack of some
knowledge which in some way ought to be in me (IV Med.: VII
150 error and the will
54 5, IX 1 43 4, HR1 173). In scholastic terms, Descartes regards
error as a privation, as, for instance, blindness is: it is only of crea-
tures that ought to be able to see that we naturally say, if they
cannot see, that they are blind.
Descartes s view that error is a privation seems to contain an
ambiguity. In one sense, what he says is certainly true. There is an
important difference between being mistaken about a certain mat-
ter, and being completely ignorant of it. For a person to have made a
mistake, he must have been concerned with the matter in the first
place it is only if a matter has come up for him that a man is in a
position to make a mistake. His being completely ignorant of a
matter, however, means (in the pure case) that the matter does not
come up for him at all, and hence (again, in the pure case) that he is
not in a position even to make a mistake about it.
Granted this distinction, we can see a modest sense in which a
man s having made a mistake introduces such notions as failure
and privation, whereas blank ignorance by itself does not. The mere
notion of one s being mistaken already implies an area of concern
relative to which the mistake is something to be regretted,
explained, rectified and so forth; the mere notion of a man s being
ignorant (in the radical sense being discussed) does not. (We may
recall an earlier observation (p. 31) that the Pure Enquirer is com-
mitted to truth, not to omniscience.) In this sense, we can see a
simple truth in Descartes s claim that error is not just a negation
but a privation.
There is another sense of this claim, however, in which it is far
more problematical. This is the sense in which it means that the
general liability to make mistakes or fall into error is a privation,
where this implies that this general liability is a falling away from a
more perfect condition that might have been looked for. Even
granted that Descartes thinks that he has proved that he is created
by an omnipotent and benevolent God, why should this create any
presumption that he should be free from the liability to error? This
is a significant Cartesian presupposition that what one would
expect the human mind to be is a rational instrument effortlessly
embodying the truth, and that it is failure to live up to this
specification that demands explanation.
error and the will 151
Descartes gives a good deal of attention to trying to give an
explanation at this point, and since one cannot understand his
eventual recovery of the physical world nor his vindication of
knowledge except in terms of his theory of error, we must follow
the order of exposition that he himself gives in the Meditations,
and consider this question next. In fact this is not a mere interrup-
tion or incidental clearing-up in the advance of knowledge from the
Doubt. The theory of error is itself an important part of what he
wanted to know when he set out on his enquiry. The Method
demands more than some pieces of knowledge it requires also an
account of where knowledge is to be found, and how error is to be
avoided, if it can be.
Descartes s question was: why should I, created and sustained by
a God who is no deceiver, ever be mistaken? This comes in effect to
two questions, one about himself, and one about God. Why should I
sometimes be mistaken? And why has God created me as a being
who can sometimes be mistaken i.e. why has he not made me
perfect? The second of these questions Descartes will not try to
answer: God s purposes are inscrutable, and it would be both
impious and pointless for his finite mind to try to fathom them. In
general, he goes on to say, it is improper to look for final causes
that is to say, explanations in terms of purposes in philosophy or
science: it always involves the impiety of trying to discover more
than God has revealed (IV Med.: VII 55, HR1 173). At this point
Descartes is looking forward, and with some ingenuity (and also,
perhaps, some disingenuity) is using the claims of piety against the
ecclesiastics who opposed the mechanistic outlook of the new sci-
ence, and who stood for a traditional conception of physics as
involving the study of final causes in nature. Indeed, Descartes s
ingenuity goes beyond this device of controversy, for while he
does abandon in this way the second question, about God, he also
produces an explanation of error which implies (as we shall see)
that in one important respect, at least, the question does not even
arise.
The first question, about himself, he will try to answer, and to do
this, he turns yet again to consider the powers of his own mind.
Although there are many different sorts of operation of the mind,
152 error and the will
they fall into two important classes: those that are operations of
the understanding, and those that are operations of the will. This
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