Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Descartes’ Classification of Mental Phenomena 21
the one in the Meditations, for the former could easily lead one to suppose that Descartes
had changed his views. The passage reads: “All the modes of thinking that we observed in
ourselves may be related to two general modes, the one of which consists in perception, or
in the operation of the understanding, and the other in volition, or the operation of the will.
Thus sense-perception, imagining, and conceiving things that are purely intelligible, are
just different modes of perceiving; but desiring, holding in aversion, affirming, denying,
doubting, all these are the different modes of willing.Ӡ
This passage, which could easily be taken to conflict with what Descartes says in the third
Meditation, may tempt one to suppose that he has abandoned his threefold classification,
thus giving up Scylla for Charybdis. Has he avoided the older mistake of confusing
judgement and idea only now to confuse judgement and will? A closer examination will
show that this is not the proper interpretation and that Descartes has made no such mistake.
Let us note the following points. (1) There is not the slightest indication that Descartes
was ever aware of abandoning the views he had expressed in the third Meditation. (2)
Moreover, in 1647—three years after the publication of the Meditations and shortly before
the conception of Notae in Programma—Descartes published his revised translation
of the Meditations, and he made no change whatever in the crucial passage in the third
Meditation.* (3) In the Principles (Part I, Principle 42), just after the passage we have
cited, he says that all our errors depend upon the will, but instead of saying that our errors
are themselves acts of will, he says that there is no one who would err voluntatily (“there is
no one who expressly desires to err”). And there is an even more decisive indication of the
fact that he views our judgements not as inner acts of will comparable to our desires and
aversions, but as only the effects of the acts of will. For he immediately adds: “There is a
great deal of difference between willing to be deceived and willing to give one’s assent to
opinions in which error is sometimes found.” He says of will, not that it affirms or assents,
in the way in which it desires, but rather that it wills assent. Just as he says, not that it is
itself true, but that it desires the truth (“it is the very desire for knowing the truth which
causes…judgement on things”).†
There can be no doubt about Descartes’ real view; in the respects concerned it did not
undergo any change at all. But we do have to explain the fact that he did alter the way in
which he expressed his views. I think the solution is clearly this. Although he recognized
that will and judgement are two fundamentally different types of mental phenomenon,
he also saw that they have one feature in common which distinguishes them both from
ideas. In the passage from the third Meditation, he notes that both will and judgement add
† Ordines modi cogitandi, quos in nobis experimur, ad duos generales referri possunt: quorum
unus est perceptio sive operatio intellectus; alius vero volitio sive operatio voluntatis. Nam
sentire, imaginari et pure intelligere, sunt tantum diversi modi percipiendi; ut et cupere, aversari,
affirmare, negare, dubitare sunt diversi modi volendi. [Trans. Haldane and Ross, Vol. I, p. 232.]
* Entre mes pensées quelques-unes sont comme les images des choses, et c’est a celles-là seules
que convient proprement le nom d’idée;… D’autres, outre cela, ont quelques autres formes;…et
de ce genre de pensées, les unes sont appelées volontés ou affections, et les autres jugements.
† Nemo est qui velit falli…. Sed longe aliud est velle falli, quam velle assentiri iis, in quibus
contingit errorem reperiri…. Veritatis assequendae cupiditas…efficit, ut…judicium ferant.
[Trans. Haldane and Ross, Vol. I, pp. 235–6.]