Descartes' fourth meditation on God and human error

Descartes' Fourth Meditation, he begins with the assumption that God exists, is infallible, and is not a deceiver. While those assumptions may be subject to debate, for the purposes of the analyzing his argument, they will be taken as the truth. From those truths, Descartes takes several steps to arrive at the conclusion that human error is not the result of a failure of either the will or of intellect, but due to the fact that the will's scope is so much greater than the scope of the intellect, that the two are essentially incompatible. However, while this conclusion may seem satisfactory, when one examines the various steps in Descartes' argument, it becomes clear that he does not always use sound reasoning to come to that conclusion.

The first mini-conclusion that Descartes reaches in his argument is to conclude that, because man has been created in God's image, mankind's judgment, if used correctly, is infallible. Even within the bounds of the idea of an all-knowing, omnipotent, all-loving God, the idea that a man created in God's image must be infallible seems unlikely. After all, even if man has been created in God's image, a man clearly lacks some of the attributes of God. Mankind is mortal, which differs from God's image. Even the differences in intellect, appearance, and physical attributes between men suggest that while mankind, as a whole, may have been created in God's image, there is obviously room for variation in a number of different attributes. Descartes fails to address those differences. Certainly, God's perfection means that He is perfectly wise, perfectly beautiful, and perfectly loving. The fact that humans naturally vary from him in those characteristics suggests that they might also naturally vary from him in infallibility.

Descartes next goes on to conclude that, despite being created in the image of an infallible God, human beings are fallible. However, Descartes notes that humans have a lack of absolute knowledge. That leads ones to question whether humans are actually fallible? Do human beings make mistakes in judgment and reasoning, or, given the information that they can obtain, are those mistakes actually examples of infallible logic and reasoning, but faulty knowledge. If human beings are coming to the correct conclusions given the knowledge that they have, does a mistake in judgment really indicate fallibility in logical reasoning? Therefore, the next assumption that Descartes makes, which is that humans must not be using their judgment correctly, seems unsupported by the evidence. After all, if one makes the best possible, most logical conclusion that one can make based upon the evidence one has in one's possession, that is not evidence that judgment has been used incorrectly, but could simply be evidence that one has received incorrect information.

Whether or not one buys into the Descartes' descriptions of human fallibility or that humans are not using their judgment correctly, one is forced to agree with his conclusion that humans do make errors. Some of these errors are mistakes that come from a simple lack of knowledge. The idea that the sun revolved around the earth was certainly a simple, logical conclusion for the 24-hour day cycle, which only proved illogical when mankind gained greater insight into the nature of the universe. However, whether it was logical or illogical, the fact is that the conclusion was in error. Therefore, like Descartes, one must wonder what that source of error is.

Descartes believes that judgment involves a combination of intellect and will. Descartes uses intellect to reflect two separate but related concepts: knowledge and intellectual capability. He suggests that intellect is limited. There does not seem to be a point in arguing against either of these premises. Even the smartest of human beings is not all-knowing, and anything less than a state of all-knowing means that knowledge is limited. Furthermore, even if a human being had the intellectual capability to be able to understand and comprehend all of the things in the universe, this ability would necessarily be limited by the fact that the person could not possibly possess all of the knowledge in the universe. Some of these limitations may come as a side-effect of the fact that humans are mortal. Regardless of the source of the limitations, there is not reasonable way to argue with the idea that man's intellect is limited.

Descartes then moves on to discuss will. Descartes believes that human will is unlimited. In fact, to Descartes it is in the fact that human will is unlimited that man comes the closest to approaching God. Descartes does not appear to provide adequate support for these statements. While free will is a highly touted principle, the reality is that many people are constrained in the exercise of free will by a number of factors. Thousands of different variables, from how a person is raised to the legal consequences of particular actions, interact with the individual to help him or her come to conclusions about different decisions. Therefore, to suggest that will is infinite almost ignores the fact that human beings interact with other human beings in social systems and that these social systems provide significant restraints upon behavior.