(1) Both the intellect and the will are free powers. On this view, the full phenomenon of what we call 'free will' involves not merely freedom of choice in the will but also a kind of freedom in the intellect (sometimes called freedom of decision). The intellect, when dealing with matters less than perfectly certain can decide to suppose, or presume, or hypothesize, or guess, or select, or some such, entirely as part of its own operation, and in a way that is distinct from any choice of the will. (This is not necessarily to say that every case in which the intellect seems involved with alternative possibilities is purely on the part of the intellect; depending on the specifics of the position, there may be cases in which the will can direct the intellect as well.) An example of a major philosopher who accepts a position like this is Thomas Aquinas.
However, this is by far the minority view. The majority view is:
(2) The intellect is a natural power and the will a free power. While the will may freely choose from among alternatives, the intellect is entirely natural and determinate; any case in which the intellect seems to be doing something involving alternative possibilities is in reality a case in which the will is directing the intellect. The Cartesians are a major modern example of (2); this position in fact plays a significant role in Cartesian theories of error. As Descartes develops the idea in Meditation V, we only ever go wrong because the will misuses its freedom to jump to a conclusion that is not clearly and distinctly perceived.
Malebranche gives a slightly different, and much more explicitly developed, version of the Cartesian position in The Search after Truth (Book One, Chapter Two). As Malebranche develops the idea there, for something to be genuinely evident (i.e., obvious), the intellect has to have examined the matter fully, and in particular has to have considered all relevant relations. This is pretty much the entire function of the intellect -- it perceives, either incompletely or completely, either clearly and distinctly or not. When the intellect has done so, there's nothing left for the will to do -- it can't will for the intellect to consider a new relation, because there isn't any, so it has to repose with what the intellect has done.
On Malebranche's account, this repose is what we are talking about when we talk about judgment and inference as if they were involuntary things. The will is in fact what does them, it's just that it has reached the end of what it can do, so it rests. In matters in which the intellect has not done a complete examination, however, so that parts of the subject are unexamined or still obscure, the will can choose to have the intellect look at something new, or it can stop. This covers cases in which our judgments and inferences seem to be voluntary.
As Malebranche notes, this account means that there is no fundamental distinction between what is called intellectual assent and what is called the consent of will; intellectual assent just is volitional consent. When we are dealing with good, most people can easily recognize that consent to good is a voluntary act of will, but they struggle when it comes to consent to truth:
But we do not likewise perceive that we make use of our freedom in consenting to truth, especially when it appears altogether evident to us; and this makes us believe that consent to truth is not voluntary. As if it were necessary that our actiosn be indifferent to be voluntary, and as if the blessed did not love God quite voluntarily, without being diverted by anything whatever, just as we consent to this evident proposition, that twice two is four, without being diverted from believing it by anything indicating otherwise. (LO 9)
The real distinction between the two doesn't have to do with the act but the object; the true consists in the relations we perceive between things, whereas the good consists in the relation things have with us. The will merely consents to their being relations between things we perceive, but it consents both to the relation of a thing to us and also to our impulse to it, and it is the double consent in the case of goodness that makes it more obvious to people that the will is involved.
Error, of course, is when we either consent to a relation that the intellect has not actually perceived or consent to a love or impulse that is imperfect. However, Malebranche's conception of this is somewhat different from Descartes's, because he takes us to have an experience of "inward reproaches" (LO 10), shocks or blows as he calles them elsewhere, of reason, and he relies on this more than on the bare case of clear and distinct perception. Thus the rules for avoiding error are, paraphrasing slightly:
1. Never give complete consent to something as true unless it is so evident that we cannot refuse our consent without experiencing internal pain and "inward reproaches" of reason.
2. Never completely love something if we can refuse to love it without remorse of conscience.
It's important, however, in the case of the first rule that it's not the bare experience of internal pain when we try not to consent, but the experience of it on the basis of the evidentness of the thing, which is tied, again, to the intellect having thoroughly examined the matter. This way of thinking means that the thorough examination rule from Descartes's rules of method plays a much more obvious role than it sometimes does in other Cartesians, including Descartes himself. Malebranche holds that we should sometimes consent to probabilities, albeit specifically in a way that recognizes them as such, as parts, so to speak, of an inquiry not yet finished. It also means that we can in principle always tell whether we are in error or not simply by self-examination.
In any case, the work here is all done by the will, which directs everything. The intellect is a passive power, and Malebranche thinks that treating it as if it were an active one like the will is a serious mistake that creates methodological problems. There are other varieties of the second family noted above, however, that regard the intellect as active -- they would in fact distinguish assent and consent, they just think that the assent of the intellect is natural. Thus we get the division:
| The intellect itself is a free power | The intellect itself is not a free power | |
|---|---|---|
| The intellect is an active power | (1), e.g., Thomas Aquinas: the intellect and the will each have their own distinctive free acts | (2a), e.g., John Duns Scotus: the intellect has its own distinctive acts, but all free acts are of the will |
| The intellect is a passive power | (completely empty, as far as I know) | (2b), e.g., Nicolas Malebranche: the intellect merely receives representations of relations, and all acts, free or not, are of the will |
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Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, Lennon & Olscamp, eds., Cambridge UP (New York: 1997).
