Descartes's Transformation of the Sensory Perceptional Model in Medieval Philosophy (original) (raw)
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Análisis. Revista de Investigación filosófica, Vol. 2, nº 1 (2015): 163-193.
In this essay, I argue that a proper understanding of the Cartesian proof of the external world sheds light on some vexatious questions concerning his theory of sense perception. Three main points emerge from the discussion: a picture of the mind, conceived as the power of understanding, as essentially related to the physical world; an extension of rationality such that it includes a set of necessities that neither can be deduced from the principles furnished by pure understanding alone nor are to be found among the particular items of sense experience; and a conception of human sense perception as a composite power that includes sensory awareness as well as understanding, and so that establishes a sharp distinction between human and animal sensory awareness. As far as agency is a constitutive ingredient of human sense perception, Descartes’ doctrine is in line with some current versions of a virtue epistemology.
Descartes and the Curious Case of the Origin of Sensory Ideas
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2017
Descartes endorses the two prima facie inconsistent claims that sensory ideas are innate (Claim A) and caused in us by bodies (Claim B). Most scholars believe that Claims A and B can be reconciled by appealing to the notion of occasional or triggering causation. I claim that this notion does not solve the theoretical problems it is introduced to solve and it generates additional difficulties. I argue that these difficulties result from conflating two questions that need to be kept distinct while inquiring about the origin of ideas: the psychological question of the mechanisms by which we acquire ideas and the metaphysical question of how the content of these ideas is determined. I conclude by proposing a new way of reconciling Descartes's Claims A and B in light of this distinction. On my account, Descartes's very views on innateness explain why bodily states must be causes of sensory ideas. Descartes's claim that sensations of color and the like are innate (Claim A) in conjunction with his claim that these sensations are caused in us by bodies-whether they are proximate or distal causes-(Claim B) generates what I call the "curious case of the origin of sensation" (henceforth referred to as the "Curious Case"). 1 Claims A and B are, at least prima facie, inconsistent, because it would seem that an idea whose representational content is caused by the mind is not an idea whose representational content is caused by (interactions with) bodies. 2 This leaves us with the open question of why Descartes did not see any inconsistency between the two claims. Most scholars believe-although for different reasons and with many variations-that the inconsistency between Claims A and B can be solved by appeal to Descartes's (alleged) understanding of bodily states as occasional or triggering causes (call this the 1 Tad Schmaltz, for example, in Schmaltz (1997), 33, writes that none of the claims Descartes makes regarding sensations is more bewildering than his claim that sensations are innate. I will be assuming throughout the paper that Descartes held a representationalist view of sensation, according to which sensations of color represent-although obscurely and confusedly-material objects. This explains why I will be using "sensations" and "sensory ideas" interchangeably. For a defense of a representationalist reading of Cartesian sensations see, for example, Bolton (1986), De Rosa (2010), Schmaltz (1992); Simmons (1999) and Wilson (1990). 2 By "representational content" I mean the "referential content" of ideas. Ideas have referential content insofar as they are about, or stand for, objects other than themselves (whether or not these objects actually exist). Of course, one way of solving the inconsistency is to claim that the mind and bodies are causes of ideas in different ways and so they work together to account for the representational content of the ideas. The most promising proposal of this kind-what I will call the "Triggering Causation Solution"-will be examined in Sections 2 and 3 below.
In the beginning of the skeptical argumentation of the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes’s meditator states: “Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses”. However, since the senses are occasionally in error, she concludes that one should not trust them completely. (AT VII, 18; CSM II, 12.) The laid Empirical Principle, though not upheld by Descartes himself, is the starting point of the Cartesian skepticism and along with its preliminary questioning, sets the stage for the famous scenarios of dreaming and deceiver to follow. However, although the later scenarios have garnered much attention in the secondary literature, Descartes’s approach to skepticism based on particular sensory experience has in most readings been almost completely skipped. Part of the reason might be the anticipation to get to the more interesting argumentation. Another part of it might be the abrupt nature by which Descartes seems to treat the scenario. Despite this abruptness, I maintain that Descartes’s treatment of particular sensory skepticism is crucial to his overall argument and for the achievement of the goals in the Meditations. In this paper, I analyze the skeptical scenario of Occasional Sensory Errors or OSE, arguing for its naturality and reasonable nature, while separating it from systematic doubt of the senses. I read OSE as generating a seriously taken skeptical puzzle for the background of Aristotelian theory of cognition and pre-philosophical naïve realism of everyday life, both of which I identify as models for the Empirical Principle in the beginning of the First Meditation. I also argue that the scenario of OSE can be likewise understood from the point of view of the renaissance and early modern skeptical tradition. However, while succeeding as a serious skeptical scenario, I argue that OSE scenario is not enough for Descartes to generally doubt sensory experience and consider that the senses might be systematically in error. In order to succeed in the systematic doubt of the senses by the dreaming doubt, Descartes needs to guide the meditator from the natural common sense attitude, used in practical everyday life, to the unnatural metaphysical doubt, used in the skeptical project of the Meditations. These two should be considered two different states of mind, with the latter being the metaphysical attitude required for the Cartesian suspension of judgment.
White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities Journal, 2022
René Descartes has often been associated with his advocacy of the mind in understanding and perception. In his Meditations on First Philosophy published in 1641, he put forward a method to understand God that completely excluded sensory experiences. It was an attempt to reform religious meditation by shifting the focus away from the senses to the mind which was also termed the ‘soul’. However, this priority given to the mind was complicated as theologians, especially the Jesuits, developed their meditative methods. Their illustrated meditative handbooks demonstrated that contemplation of the soul could never really be independent of the body and the senses. Looking at a series of engravings in the meditative handbooks, the paper examines a culture in which writers vacillated between the importance of the body and the soul in perception as uncertainty about the operation of these two faculties prevailed. I argue that the engravings in the handbooks did not only depict biblical episodes, but they also ‘substantialised’ the imagination of the meditators by giving the mental images that they were to conceive a physical form. Descartes’ reading of the soul was shaped by such a culture of religious meditation. In contrast to the conventional emphasis on Descartes and his contemporaries questioning the reliability of the corporeal senses in the seventeenth century, these illustrated handbooks instead suggested that there was an increasingly concrete idea of the close relation between the body and a ‘physical’ soul.
Descartes's Meditations: An Introduction
2003
In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, Catherine Wilson examines the arguments of Descartes's famous Meditations, the book which launched modern philosophy. Drawing on the reinterpretations of Descartes's thought of the past twenty-five years, she shows how Descartes constructs a theory of the mind, the body, nature, and God from a premise of radical uncertainty. She discusses in detail the historical context of Descartes's writings, and their relationship to early modern science, and at the same time she introduces concepts and problems that define the philosophical enterprise as it is understood today. Following closely the text of the Meditations and meant to be read alongside them, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well suited to university-level courses on Descartes, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines.
The paper considers Descartes’ theory that brain-states are “instituted by nature” in such a manner as to bring about certain mental states, whereby Descartes intended to account for the mismatch between what bodies are – nothing but “extended things” – and how we perceive them to be. I spell out this theory by studying its evolution throughout Descartes’ writings and its relation to the Scholastic background. In particular, I suggest that Descartes’ theory of an “institution of nature” should be understood as a response to Antonio Rubio’s claim that the “sensible likenesses” (species) of objects are “naturally designed” so as to cause perceivers to assimilate the object’s form. With his theory of an “institution of nature” – I argue – Descartes intended to shift the explanation as to why perceivers have certain sense-perceptions from external objects to the perceivers themselves, thereby making a case for the peculiar human character of our sense-experience and paving the way for an ecological and species-dependent account of perception.