"...for it is in the nature of a created intellect to lack understanding of many things, and it is in the nature of a created intellect to be finite." (AT60)
In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes compares the perfection of the intellect with the perfection of the will (or freedom of choice). He determines that the intellect is finite (as stated above) and that there are natures of which God is the author that the intellect is incapable of apprehending, but that this does not mean that God did not equip man with the necessary intellectual faculties to make correct judgments and choose the good wherever the good choice can be clearly and distinctly perceived by the intellect (this is a rough paraphrasing of the end of the meditation). So he resolves that the ability to do or not to do something (the freedom of choice), insofar as it obeys the intellect and chooses the good when such can be clearly and distinctly perceived and refrains from choosing when such cannot, seems to be the only perfect faculty of the mind (AT58).
Why, then, didn't Descartes base his notion of a pure substance distinct from things physical on the power of the will instead of a more broad concept such as the mind? Or, put differently, why refer to it as intellectual substance when the intellect is claimed to be finite and therefore defect and in some way not actually pure?
Perhaps this will become more clear with further reading, but maybe other people have had these same questions.
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Thinking substance seems to include both willing and understanding (not to mention that it also -seems- to include sensing and imagining but does not truly include them because they depend on extended substance in some way). To call it intellectual substance is just a slight misnomer, I think.
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