3
Ideas and Reality
1

TAs office h.
none
2

Bibliographical Resources (reminder):
Descartes’ Meditations (with Critics and Replies) +
Discourse free at:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_descarte.html

Leibniz’s New Essays free at:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_leibniz.html

3
By Now you should have read Descartes’
Meditations.
For the next 2 meetings you should read the
preface and ch. 1 of Leibniz’s New Essays
It would also help if you can read Leibniz’s
Monadology (also on Leibniz’s link)
4

Further bibliography on Descartes:
Cottingham J. (1986). Descartes. Blackwell, Oxford

Further bibliography on/by Chomsky:
Chomsky N. (2000). New Horizons in the Study of
Language and Mind. Cambridge UP: Cambridge
McGilvray J. (1999). Chomsky: Language, Mind, and Politics.
Polity Press: Cambridge
5

The following can also be useful
Antony L. M. & Hornstein N. (eds.) (2003).
Chomsky and His Critics. Blackwell: Oxford
Smith, N. (1999) Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals.
Cambridge UP: Cambridge
Wilson C. (2003). Descartes’s Meditations: An
Introduction. Cambridge UP: Cambridge
6
Perception

Sensory Grasp
Our perception of ordinary objects may be obscure
and confuse (e.g. change in phenomenological
properties).
But objects possess all the properties which we clearly
and distinctly understand, i.e. the essential, eternal and
immutable properties.
7

Essential properties of material objects
Are true of matter under each manifestation and all
conceivable conditions: they transcend the qualia; they
are senses-independent.
These properties can be cashed out extensionally and,
as such can be characterized in mere geometrical terms.
(See the mathematical model of knowledge).
8

Res Extensa
It is the nature or essence of corporeal things (substantia
corporealis).
It is a subject of predication, a bearer of attributes.
Roughly it is something we can say something about.
(see the subject/predicate distinction which will be
central in Leibniz’s metaphysics).
It is independent and can stand on its own. It is
independent of anything except God.
9
Ideas

Ideas:
(i) Formal Nature
(ii) Material Nature
(iii) Reflexivity/Self-Referentiality

Descartes distinguishes between the material reality
of an idea (this is the intellectual act/operation of the
thinking) and the formal reality of an idea (this is the
representational power of the idea).
These are two aspects of the very same thing, the idea.
10
‘Idea’ can be taken materially, as an operation of the intellect,
in which case it cannot be said to be more perfect than me.
Alternatively it can be taken objectively, as the thing
represented by that operation; and this thing, even if it is not
regarded as existing outside the intellect, can still, in virtue of
its essence, be more perfect than myself. (Preface to Meditations;
CSM II: 7)
The idea of God, even if it exists only in my intellect is
more perfect than myself because of its essence.
11

an idea is reflexive (self-referential)
The holder of the idea is aware/conscious of this very
idea in so long as s/he entertains it.
in nostro sentendi modo cogitatio includitur [thought is included
in our mode of sensation] (Letter to More, 5 Feb. 1649; CSMK III:
365).
This allows to block an infinite regress (cf. homunculus
fallacy).
12

The awareness one has of the idea one entertains is not
another idea (or meta-idea) that one entertains of the
former.
The reflexive consciousness of the idea is contained
into the idea itself.
Hence, because of this direct awareness, there isn’t a
regress of ideas of ideas.
13
The Threefold Aspect of Ideas
(i) Formal Nature (semantic property)
(ii) Material Nature (mental act)
(iii) Reflexivity/Self-Referentiality (direct awareness)

The material nature of an idea, i.e. its being a mental
act, may help to explain their causal power.
Since an idea is an act occurring in one’s mind, this act
can trigger one to behave in a given way.
14

The formal nature of an idea should explain their
semantics and contribute in determining the truthvalue of a thought.
This explains the aboutness or intentionality of ideas,
i.e. what an idea stands for / represents.
15

The reflexivity of ideas helps explaining their
subjective character.
In so long as one is entertaining an idea one is aware of
this very idea. And one cannot not be aware of it.
And (because of the reflexivity) one is aware of an idea
without having to perceive it.
Immediate acquaintance of the idea.
16

Meta-Idea
The reflexive character of an idea does not prevent one
to have an idea about a given idea (a meta-idea).
In that case one is aware of the meta-idea.
This is similar to the difference between thinking about
red and thinking about “red”.
17
Introspection and Nativism

Methodology: Introspection
The true understanding of reality requires the mind to
turn on itself and make abstraction of all information
gained from the senses.

Innate Ideas
The possession of an idea needs a cause. Thus
adventitious ideas are causes by the senses, while an
innate idea is causes by God.
18

True ideas are innate in us.
The first, basic and more important, idea is the idea of
God.
Having achieved knowledge of God we can then
proceed to the knowledge of external reality.
The latter is gained by the grasping of (innate)
mathematical concepts.
The essence of reality (its being extended) can be
expressed in geometrical terms.
19
I apply the term ‘innate’ to the ideas or notions that are the
form of those thoughts in order to distinguish them from
others, which I call ‘adventious’ or ‘made up’. This is the
same sense as that in which we say that generosity is ‘innate’ in
certain families, or that certain diseases such as gout or stones
are innate in others: it is not so much that the babies of such
families suffer from these diseases in their mother’s womb,
but simply that they are born with a ‘faculty’ or tendency to
contract them. (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet; CSM I: 303-4)
20
Nothing reaches our mind from the external objects through the
sense organs except certain corporeal motions … The idea of
pain, colours, sounds and the like must be all the more
innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our
mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is
no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal
motions. Is it possible to imagine anything more absurd than
that all the common notions within our mind arise from such
motions and cannot exist without them? I would like our author
to tell me what the corporeal motion is that is capable of
forming some common notion to the effect that ‘things which
are equal to a third thing are equal to each other’, or any other he
cares to take. (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet; CSM I: 304)

In claiming that “there is no similarity” Descartes
seems to suggest that ideas are like images …
21
Knowledge of ideas

Awareness of Ideas
A child (untrained mind) faces difficulties to grasp the
innate true ideas because her mind is flooded with
bodily stimulus preventing the inward look which
ultimately allows the grasping of the true ideas.
In early childhood the mind is too closely tied to the
body.
The body is seen as an obstruction to the mind.
22

Ideas are in the Mind
What does it mean to say that ideas are in the mind?
An idea is in the form of a thought and one is aware of
it by immediate perception. (see reflexivity, selfreferentiality of ideas)
But at any given time one is only aware of a tiny
fraction of the idea that is in one’s mind.
23

Possession of Ideas
Should be understood in a dispositional, rather than
actual, way.
To have an idea of X is to be disposed, by appropriate
reflection, to recognize certain truths about X.
24
“idea”

In using the word “idea” Descartes means both the
concept and the propositions one has about the
concept.
Thus one having an innate idea of a triangle is one
having the concept of a triangle and the proposition
that the sum of its angles is 180 degrees.
25

Having an idea entails having propositional
knowledge (e.g.: I have the idea of God, so I know
that he is all powerful …)
Cf: knowing that vs. knowing how, see also epistemic vs.
non-epistemic seeing. (savoir vs. connaitre)
E.g. “Knowing how to swim” vs. “Knowing that
Ottawa is north of Toronto”
“Seeing a chameleon” vs. “Seeing that the chameleon is
on the branch”
26
Tree Kind of Ideas

1. Innate

2. Adventitious
They come from an external source.

3. Fictional
They are made up or invented.
27

Since sense-perception is not a matter of a simple
reception of the mind, all ideas must, in a sense, be
innate.
The ideas of pain, colour, sounds, etc. must all be
innate (sensations such as pain, colour, etc. are not in
the objects).
Sensory ideas should not be conceived as coming from
the external world: they depends and should be
explained in terms of the innate structure of the
mind.
28
Ideas as Representations

Descartes gives up the (scholastic) view that the mind
grasps images which are transmitted from the objects.
When Descartes compared ideas to images may be to
stress that ideas, like images, are representatives, i.e. to
underlie the intentionality of our thoughts.
29

Ideas may be conceived along symbols, for there are
many way of representing an object.
Representation need not be by images or
resemblances.
“Cheese” stands for cheese. In French we have
“fromage” … Yet “cheese” and “fromage” don’t
resemble cheese ….
Symbols are arbitrary.
30

Ideas as symbols
Words, as you well know, bear no resemblance to the things
they signify, and yet they make us think of these things,
frequently even without our paying attention to the sounds of
the words or to their syllables. Thus it may happen that we hear
an utterance whose meaning we understand perfectly well, but
afterward we cannot say in what language it was spoken. Now, if
words, which signify nothing except by human convention,
suffice to make us think of things to which they bear no
resemblance, then why could nature not also have established
some sign which would make us have the sensation of
light, even if the sign contained nothing in itself which is
similar to that sensation? (The World or Treatise on Light; CSM I:
81)
31

For Descartes clear and distinct ideas are conform
and similar to their object.
Yet the similarity must not be compared or understood
in terms of the similarity that may be involved in a
representative picture.
If that were the case ideas would merely be a mental
thing. (Ideas would have only their formal reality, i.e.
their representational power).
32
We would thus reject the materiality of ideas (the fact
that they are an intellectual act/an operation of our
thinking activity) and the view that they are selfreferential.
A picture is neither an act, nor reflexive/selfreferential.
(cf. the (i) Formal Nature,(ii) Material Nature, and (iii)
Reflexivity/Self-Referentiality aspect of ideas).
33
Port Royal Logic and Grammar

The view that ideas are not images is also defended by
Arnauld & Nicole in their Port Royal Logic:
Whenever we speak of ideas, then, we are not referring to
images painted in the fantasy, but to anything in the mind
when we can trustfully say that we are conceiving something,
however we conceive it. (Arnauld & Nicole 1662: 26)
34
Similarity Relation

Similarity Relation: The Ontological Thesis of the
Double Existence

The (intentional) notion of similarity involved must be
understood against the Scholastic tradition.
Descartes explains the similarity relation of ideas in
terms of their objective reality and this is tantamount
of the medieval notion of esse objectivum.
35
Scholastic Tradition

Within the medieval/scholastic tradition “similarity” is
not understood along a pictorial resemblance, but as a
kind of identity.

Within the scholastic tradition we find the thesis of the
double existence.
A specific form can exist in two distinct ways (cf. St
Thomas): either materially (de re) as a form of a material
thing or immaterially, as a form informing the intellect.
36

The specis in mentis is similar to the external form.
Every time one entertains a clear and distinct idea there
is an identity relation between the form informing the
intellect and the form informing the external reality.
I.e. the very same form informs both the mind and
reality.
37

The idea of a double existence (the esse objectivum) goes
hand in hand with the Causal Adequacy Principle.
I.e. the self-evident principle that there must be as
much reality in the efficient and total cause that there is
in the effect of that cause (ex nihilo nihil fit).
38
Reification of ideas

The Reification of Ideas: Ideas qua Mental
Objects
Ideas are objects of our knowledge and they are known
before the knowledge of external objects
Cf. We had ideas during the doubt, thus before
knowing that the external world exists.
39

The knowledge of ideas must precede the knowledge
of the external objects.
For it is only via that knowledge that we can prove the
existence of the external world and, thus, defeat
scepticism.
40

Tension between the view of ideas as (mental)
objects and the view of ideas as mental acts
I.e. a tension between their material nature and their
formal nature.
Ideas conceived as acts do not enter as intermediary
between the mental activity and the objects they stand
for, while ideas conceived as objects are intermediary
between the mind and the world: one “grasp” and
object by “grasping” the idea that stands for that object.
In that case an idea is an epistemic tertium quid between
the mind and the external reality.
41
Innate vs. Adventitious Ideas

Even if all ideas are somewhat innate the distinction
between innate and adventitious ideas subsists insofar
as we must distinguish between those (innate) abstract
ideas which the mind grasp independently of the
stimuli and the ideas arising because triggered by
external stimuli (e.g. perception).
Cf. the idea of God vs. the idea one has of the pen one
is perceiving.
42
Mind/World relation

In giving up the naïve (scholastic) view that the mind
(via the ideas) relates to the external world because our
ideas copy the objects they stand for—i.e. that the
intentional relationship is one of similarity—Descartes
creates a gap between the mind and the world.

How does one’s idea of X stand for X if the former is
not an image of the latter?
God, the creator, guarantees that our mind reflects
accurately the structure of reality. The
aboutness/intentionality is guaranteed by Good.
43
[A]n idea is the thing which is thought of in so far as it has
objective being in the intellect … which is never outside the
intellect, and in this sense ‘objective being’ simply means being in
the intellect in the way in which objects are normally there …
But if the question is what the idea of the sun is, and we answer
that it is the thing which is thought of, insofar as it has objective
being in the intellect, no one will take this to be the sun itself …
‘objective being in the intellect’ will not here mean ‘the
determination of an act of the intellect by means of an object’,
but will signify the object’s being in the intellect in the way in
which its objects are normally there. By this I mean that the idea
of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect—not of
course formally existing, as it does in the heavens, but
objectively existing, i.e. in the way in which objects normally
are in the intellect. Now this mode of being is of course much
less perfect than that possessed by things which exist outside the
intellect; but, as I did explain, it has not therefore simply nothing.
(First Set of Replies; CSM II: 74-5)
44

Aboutness
Ideas are about object because they are “similar” to
them. But “similarity” is not understood along a
pictorial resemblance. It is a kind of identity.
This comes from the scholastic thesis of the double
existence.
The aboutness/intentionality of our ideas is granted by
God via the objective reality, i.e. double existence.
45