Rene Descartes 1596-1650 Rene Descartes 1596-1650

Third Meditation: Only Ideas Called“Judgments can be true or false.A. In the Third Meditation, Descartes argues that only those ideas called “judgments” can be true or false. Why?1. it is only in making a judgment that the resemblance, conformity or correspondence of the idea to thingsthemselves is affirmed or denied. Thus, if one affirms that an idea corresponds to a thing itself when it reallydoes not, then an error has occurred.B. In Fourth Meditation judgment is described as a faculty of the mind resulting from the interaction of the faculties ofintellect and will.1. Descartes observes that the intellect is finite in that humans do not know everything, and so their understandingof things is limited. But the will or faculty of choice is seemingly infinite in that it can be applied to just aboutanything whatsoever.2. The finitude of the intellect along with this seeming infinitude of the will is the source of human error. For errorsarise when the will exceeds the understanding such that something laying beyond the limits of theunderstanding is voluntarily affirmed or denied.Said differently, people make mistakes when they choose to pass judgment on things they do not fullyunderstand. So the will should be restrained within the bounds of what the mind understands in order to avoiderror.102