Descartes on the Will and the Power to do Otherwise

Responsibility in Descartes’s Theory of Judgment

“…control of the will. 69 according to my account, Descartes does not fit neatly 70 into a position on the issue because his theory of judgment is motivated not by it, but by two other considerations: that assent is a mental action, and assent is a free operation of the mind. Descartes's conceptions of mental action and freedom interact with the issue of control, but do not reduce to it.…”

Descartes and the Possibility of Enlightened Freedom

“…Alanen 2002and Wee 2006; for a less sanguine take, see Lennon 2013Lennon , 2015. Doing so would require, among other things, saying more about the nature of the possibility involved, as well as what exactly the relevant circumstances C involve, and neither of these is an easy task.…”

Descartes on Human Freedom

“…Matthews; Ragland, “Theodicy”). Others suggest, because of the significance of the mental faculties in Descartes' solution, that Thomas Aquinas's (1225–1274) faculty model of the mind heavily influenced Descartes (Alanen, Concept of Mind and “Power to Do Otherwise”; Carriero) and that Descartes' conception of human freedom is illuminated by investigating the similarities and differences between Thomas's two distinct faculties of will ( voluntas ) and free decision ( liberum arbitrium ) and Descartes' single faculty of “will or freedom of choice” ( voluntas , sive arbitrii libertas )…”

“…Some suggest that the salient backdrop of Descartes' remarks on freedom is the debate between intellectualism and voluntarism – that is, whether the intellect or the will has primary importance in human agency (Wee, “Libertarian Freedom”). Both Thomas Aquinas's opponent Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308) and the Spanish Jesuit Franscisco Suárez (1548–1617) fall into the voluntarist tradition, and they are both proposed as helpful points of comparison because Descartes' position, it is argued, significantly resembles theirs (Alanen, Concept of Mind and “Power to Do Otherwise”; and Schmaltz, respectively). Alternatively, Molinism (named after the Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535–1600)), the controversy it generated about how to reconcile human freedom with God's grace and providence, and the Molinist conception of freedom have been proposed as the relevant backdrop of Descartes' discussion of freedom (Lennon, “Memorandum”; Schmaltz; Sleigh, Chappell, and Della Rocca).…”

“…The locus classicus , I suggested, contains ambiguities and obscurities, and Descartes' divergences from proposed traditions makes language imported from them an imperfect fit. Commentators have used many different terms to characterize Descartes' views of freedom: “the enlightened freedom ( la liberté eclairée )” (Alquié 286); “liberty (or freedom) of spontaneity;” “the power to determine oneself” (Hatfield 195); “the positive freedom ( la liberté positive )” (Alquié 289–90); “liberty (or freedom) of indifference”; “two‐way power,” (Alanen Concept of Mind , 228 and 237; Alanen, “Power to Do Otherwise” 280; Beyssade 193; Ragland, “Fourth Meditation” and “Principle of Alternative Possibilities”); “bidirectional power” (Carriero 256); “our positive power to do or not to do something” (Naaman‐Zauderer 103); and “alternatives” (Campbell 179).…”