Abstract
I think it is beyond doubt that we are never mistaken except when we make judgments about things which we do not know well. Thus the main source of our mistakes comes only from the fact that we extend with temerity our power of judging beyond the limits of our knowledge, for if we restricted it carefully within its limits we would never run the risk of being mistaken. That is why I am surprised that Mr Gassendi could have denied that the will extends itself beyond the understanding, for he knew that by the ‘will’ we mean the power we have to determine ourselves, however we do so, either in judging or otherwise, and that by ‘understanding’ we mean the faculty simply for knowing and perceiving an object without any affirmation or negation.242 For we experience every day that we extend this faculty (the will) beyond the limits of the other (the understanding) each time we make a judgment about something that we do not know.
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References
Gassendi, Opera Omnia,vol. 2: Ethica,Bk. Ill, ch. 1, p. 824A.
The 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th rules suggested by La Forge correspond to the four rules of Descartes’ Discourse on Method,AT VI, 18–19; CSM I, 120. The first rule is that proposed by Descartes in the Second Meditation, AT VII, 24; CSM II, 16.
Cf. Second Replies to Objections, AT VII, 147; CSM II, 105; Fifth Replies to Objections, AT VII, 352; CSM II, 244.
Cf. Second Replies to Objections, AT IX-I, 205–6: CSM, II, 271.
Cf. Descartes to Elizabeth, 21 May 1643: AT III, 665; CSMK III, 218.
La Forge assumes, as was usually thought in the seventeenth century, that A. Amauld was the sole author of the Port-Royal Logic, published in Paris in 1662. In fact, l’Art de Penser was written by Arnauld and Pierre Nicole. See Logic or the Art of Thinking, ed. and trans. by J. V. Buroker (Cambridge University Press, 1996 ).
Descartes to Elizabeth, 15 September, 1645: AT IV, 291–3; CSMK III, 265–6 (Lettres I, 27–32 ).
The sixth and seventh rules are derived from Descartes’ Passions arts. 144–5; AT XI, 436–7; CSM I, 379–80.
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De La Forge, L. (1997). The Principal Source of our Mistakes, and the Means of Avoiding Them. In: Treatise on the Human Mind (1664). International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol 153. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3590-2_27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3590-2_27
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