Descartes' theory of ideas
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Bibliographic Information
Descartes' theory of ideas
（Continuum studies in philosophy）
Continuum, c2007
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Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Descartes held that only ideas are immediately perceived, and that all ideas are really identical to mental states. Yet certain passages in the Meditations seem to assert that some extramental individuals -- the sun, for example, or a piece of wax -- can be immediately perceived (not by the senses, but by the intellect). If so then Descartes was committed to the seemingly absurd claim that extramental things can be really identical to mental states. But the claim is not absurd; as this book shows, it is based on a coherent doctrine of intentional representation that was taught at the Jesuit college of La Fleche that Descartes attended as a youth. On this doctrine, an individual that is outside the mind with one sort of being can be inside it with another. This book brings a fresh perspective to the currently deadlocked debate over whether Descartes was a representationalist or a direct realist, and sheds new light on his difficult notions of material falsity and the self-representational character of thought.
Table of Contents
- 1. Windows of the Soul: Jesuit Species
- 2. Windows of the Soul: Cartesian Ideas
- 3. Much Ado About Non-Things: Descartes on Sensory Ideas and Material Falsity
- 4. Ideas as Acts and Ideas as Objects: The Arnauld-Malebranche Debate
- 5. Idealist Coda: Berkeley's Master Argument
- Appendix A: Latin text and English translation of Rubio's Tractatus de sensibilibus, part of his Commentariis in libros Aristotelis De Anima. Appendix B: Biographical information on Jesuit philosophers discussed in Chapter 1
- Bibliography
- Index.
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