Why Descartes Cannot Absolve God of Human Error

September 2025

I write about Descartes and his Meditations (specifically the fourth; unfortunately does not cover or even reference cogito, ergo sum—maybe for another day). On divine architects, foreseeable failure, the will’s overreach, and the impossibility of a moral God. Written for first-year philosophy class.

DESCARTES’ ARGUMENT IN PREMISE CONCLUSION FORM:

Descartes uses the above argument to prove that the existence of human error is consistent with God’s perfection. However, if God was a supremely perfect being who is not a deceiver, he would be morally compelled to provide some cognitive framework that was either incapable of error, or equipped with “fail-safes” to protect it. Since God is responsible for the creation of the mind, any error arising from its limitations is a result of a defect in the design rather than a misuse of the creature’s will.

I will first argue that a mismatch between an infinite will and a finite intellect is not simply a neutral feature, but a design flaw. If God was truly perfect and omniscient, he would be able to anticipate that this mismatch would lead to consistent error; therefore, the responsibility of this error lies with the creator, and not the creation. I will then formally restate my argument in premise-conclusion form, and review key points made. Afterwards, I will refute two of Descartes’ anticipated rebuttals: that error is a privation, and was not necessarily bestowed upon us alongside our other faculties, and that error could be requisite for a more perfect universe. Finally, I will conclude that one cannot maintain both the supreme perfection of God, and the misuse of will defense. Either God is not the perfect architect that Descartes claims, or error is a positive defect that God has failed to rectify.

Descartes begins the Fourth Meditation by reaffirming God’s perfection, established in the previous chapter. A supremely perfect being could not be a deceiver, since in every case of trickery or deception, there exists imperfection (Meditations 43). Even just the will to deceive is evidence of some form of malice or weakness, and therefore cannot apply to the supremely perfect and good image of God we assume. Yet, Descartes points out that humans clearly still fall into error, even when using the faculties that God has given them. How can the two coexist without implicating God?

Descartes begins his task by distinguishing between two faculties: the intellect and the will. The intellect is the faculty of understanding, presenting ideas to the mind. However, it by itself does not affirm or deny their truth. The most important quality Descartes points out concerning the intellect is that it is notably finite; there are many things we do not understand clearly and distinctly, and many more things that we do not understand at all. This finitude is, rather than a defect, simply a quality of being a creature, not God. The faculty of will, by contrast, is infinite. Although Descartes specifically writes that “God’s will is incomparably greater than mine”, he argues that in the most essential and strictest sense, the will simply consists of our ability to do or not do something (Meditations 46). It encapsulates the capacity to affirm or deny, to pursue or avoid, and simply applies these abilities to whatever object or action the intellect puts forth.

In this sense, there is nothing inherently lacking in the human will. Because of this, Descartes also claims that the will is “both extremely ample and also perfect of its kind” (Meditations 46). Error arises, according to him, not from either faculty alone, but from their interaction. When the will restricts itself to affirming only what the intellect perceives clearly and distinctly, error is impossible. However, when the scope of the will expands larger than the understanding of the situation at hand, human error occurs. As such, he concludes that the source of human error must be resultant from the scope of the will being larger than the scope of the intellect—in other words, error occurs when one impresses a judgement onto a situation of which they have an incomplete understanding (Meditations 46). This account allows Descartes to claim that God is not responsible for error. He may have created both faculties, but error only occurs when humans fail to use them properly. As such, error is therefore a moral failing of the creature, not a flaw in the creator.

While this explanation is admittedly elegant, it relies on the crucial assumption that the mismatch between an unlimited will and a finite intellect is not itself problematic. In Descartes' view, each faculty is perfect in its own domain, and the fact that they can be misused together does not reflect poorly on God. If a system is designed in such a way that its normal operation repeatedly and predictably leads to failure, then the fault lies in the design, not merely in the behavior of the system’s user. In the case of the human mind, the will is naturally inclined to judge, affirm, and deny. However, the intellect often presents incomplete or unclear information. Given this structure, it’s entirely predictable that humans will make judgements in cases where their understanding is insufficient. This is not a rare or accidental flaw, but a systematic feature of human cognition.

God is omniscient; he would have known that creating a finite intellect alongside a will with a broader scope would lead to consistent error. God is perfect; he would have had the power to design human cognition differently (perhaps by narrowing the scope of the will, expanding the intellect, or providing safeguards that prevent judgement in cases of insufficient understanding). The fact that none of these measures are present suggests a defect in the design itself. Descartes attempts to shift this responsibility onto the human agent by emphasizing one’s freedom to choose. Still, freedom alone does not absolve a designer of responsibility if harmful outcomes are foreseeable. If the structure of the faculties bestowed are inherently causes of error, then responsibility cannot rest solely with the creature who is acting in accordance with that structure.

The above criticism can be summarized in the following premise-conclusion argument:

Now, I will move on to discussing counter-points to this argument, and refute them systematically. First, Descartes’ primary method to safeguard divine perfection is the privation theory of error. In this view, error is not a feature that God creates or implements, but is a lack of absence or something that a finite being ought to have. He contends that when one falls into error, one does not experience a flaw in God’s handiwork, but simply hits the boundaries of her own finite understanding (Meditations 45). However, even if Descartes is given the benefit of the doubt, and we understand error as a privation, this does not absolve God of responsibility. If a supremely perfect God designs a cognitive framework where an infinite will is paired with a finite intellect, He has engineered a system that creates beings whose mental structures reliably result in significant absences, often causing widespread harm. Then, this appeal to privation does not eliminate the problem, but merely redescribes it.

Beyond the logical mechanics of privation, the scale and consequence of human error matters. Descartes frequently uses trivial examples of error and misjudgement, such as mathematical mistakes or sensory principles, to support his line of reasoning. However, human history is marked more by catastrophic moral failures than it is small trips in everyday life. Genocide, slavery, gender-based violence, and systemic suffering as a whole dominate mankind’s past, and its present. If error was a simple misuse of freedom, then God would have equipped His creation with an infinite capacity for choice without a similarly proportional capacity for understanding and intellect. Even assuming these outcomes are solely due to the limits of human cognition and comprehension, a God who would allow such operations to continue forth unchecked could not ever be described as supremely perfect in goodness. Again, to allow Descartes some leniency, we can say that God is not the direct cause of these errors. Yet, watching idly as they unfold undermines the claim that divine perfection is compatible with the reality of error. At this scale, appealing to privation appears more so a linguistic attempt to distance God from the devastating outcomes of His own design.

Another common defense is the claim that error might be necessary for the universe to function as a “perfect” whole. In this view, a world without the possibility of error would be less perfect overall than a world that includes it. Frankly, this makes no sense1I got points docked for saying this. Apparently I was being "too aggressive." Right., and faces two major problems. First, it assumes without argument that freedom requires a design that is this prone to failure. Descartes has not made it obvious as to why freedom could not coexist with better alignment between the faculties of intellect and will, or with some form of internal safeguard that reduces the likelihood of catastrophic mistakes. It is entirely conceivable, for example, that God might create a being with an infinite will that is naturally “locked” until the intellect achieves some clear and distinct understanding. Or, simply a being with a finite will that is properly proportioned to its finite understanding. This argument ignores a middle ground of safe freedom, where our faculties could be aligned without a compromise of our autonomy.

Second, this defense creates a terrible loop in Descartes’ logic. He argues that humans are too limited to understand why a perfect God would allow error, and that one must trust that there is some “greater good” we cannot comprehend (Meditations 48). However, Descartes’ entire proof that God exists and is not a deceiver is reliant on the idea that our intellect is actually powerful enough to understand God’s nature. If humans are too limited to understand God’s reasons for allowing error, then they are equally limited in their ability to assert that God is perfect. If any amount of error or suffering can be justified by “God’s plan”, then claims about God’s goodness also lose their substantive meaning. One cannot meaningfully praise what one admits cannot be evaluated. As a natural result, this greater-good defense undermines the very theological claims it is meant to protect.

Ultimately, the existence of error cannot be reconciled with this idea of a supremely perfect God, especially not through the mere “misuse of freedom” defense. If a creator designs a cognitive system in which an infinite will is paired with a finite intellect, the resulting failure is a foreseeable consequence, and not a neutral byproduct of human autonomy. As we have discussed, the appeal to privation fails to account for the devastating scale of human suffering. Further, the claim that this error is all for the “greater good” is a circular trap that undermines the reliability of human reason entirely, something that makes up the very basis of Descartes’ Meditations as a whole. Therefore, the presence of systemic error stands as a fundamental indictment of Descartes’ claim. One must either accept that the human mind is a flawed instrument, or conclude that the supremely perfect God Descartes relies upon is a logical impossibility.

  1. I got points docked for saying this. Apparently I was being "too aggressive." Right.↩

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