Descartes on Innate Ideas

186 Pages·2009·0.64 MB·English

by  Deborah A. Boyle

Descartes on Innate Ideas
Continuum Studies in Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum.
The series features fi rst-class scholarly research monographs across the whole fi eld
of philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the fi eld of philosophical
research.
Aesthetic in Kant, James Kirwan
Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion, Aaron Preston
Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus, Christopher Brown
Augustine and Roman Virtue, Brian Harding
The Challenge of Relativism, Patrick Phillips
Demands of Taste in Kant’s Aesthetics, Brent Kalar
Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, Justin Skirry
Descartes’ Theory of Ideas, David Clemenson
Dialectic of Romanticism, Peter Murphy and David Roberts
Hegel’s Philosophy of Language, Jim Vernon
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, David James
The History of Intentionality, Ryan Hickerson
Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, David A. Roberts
Leibniz Re-interpreted, Lloyd Strickland
Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy, H. O. Mounce
Nietzsche and the Greeks, Dale Wilkerson
Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Delbert Reed
Philosophy of Miracles, David Corner
Platonism, Music and the Listener’s Share, Christopher Norris
Popper’s Theory of Science, Carlos Garcia
Role of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Sherry Deveaux
Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, James Delaney
Rousseau’s Theory of Freedom, Matthew Simpson
Spinoza and the Stoics, Firmin DeBrabander
Spinoza’s Radical Cartesian Mind, Tammy Nyden-Bullock
St. Augustine and the Theory of Just War, John Mark Mattox
St. Augustine of Hippo, R. W. Dyson
Thomas Aquinas & John Duns Scotus, Alex Hall
Tolerance and the Ethical Life, Andrew Fiala
Descartes on Innate Ideas
Deborah A. Boyle
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Deborah A. Boyle 2009
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6190-7
ISBN-13: HB: 978-1-8470-6190-4
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Boyle, Deborah A.
Descartes on innate ideas/Deborah A. Boyle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
ISBN 978-1-84706-190-4
1. Descartes, René, 1596-1650. 2. Innate ideas (Philosophy) I. Title.
B1878.K6B69 2009
121’.4--dc22 2008044104
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: The Multiple Meanings of ‘Innate Idea’ 7
1.1 Ambiguities in Descartes’ Idea of ‘Idea’ 8
1.2 The Dispositional Interpretation of Cartesian
Innate Ideas 13
1.3 A Unifi ed Account of Cartesian Innate Ideas 19
1.4 The Recollection Account 22
1.5 Conclusion 26
Chapter 2: Innate Ideas as Objects and Acts 28
2.1 The Role of the Meditator’s Nature 29
2.2 Distinguishing the Innate from the Adventitious
and the Factitious 38
2.3 The Clarity and Distinctness of Innate Ideas 45
2.4 Conclusion 52
Chapter 3: The Role of Refl ection in Perceiving Innate Ideas 54
3.1 The Refl ective Account 55
3.2 Attention, Refl ection, and the Interference
of the Body 62
3.3 Applying the Refl ective Account: Some Examples 67
3.4 Another Example: The Innate Idea of God 72
3.5 Conclusion 80
Chapter 4: The Natural Light Reconsidered 81
4.1 The Natural Light, Common Notions,
and Innateness 82
4.2 A Reply to an Objection 84
4.3 John Morris on the Natural Light 86
vi Contents
4.4 The Natural Light and the Role of the Will 92
4.5 The Metaphor of Light 98
4.6 Conclusion 104
Chapter 5: The Natural Light and Its Truths 105
5.1 Perception by the Natural Light 105
5.2 Some Examples of Perception by the Natural Light 111
5.3 Conclusion 117
Chapter 6: Innate Ideas, Corporeal Substance, and Mathematics 119
6.1 The Innate Idea of Extension 120
6.2 Discovering the Innate Idea of Extension 121
6.3 Perceiving Ideas of Shapes 126
6.4 Perceiving Geometrical Propositions 136
6.5 Perceiving Other Mathematical Propositions 140
6.6 Descartes’ Laws of Motion 144
6.7 Conclusion 146
Notes 147
Bibliography 170
Index 175
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to many people for their support in bringing out this volume.
I owe a great debt to my former advisor, Stephen Engstrom at the University
of Pittsburgh, for his unfailingly careful attention to my thesis work, and for
the many diffi cult questions he asked me. Joseph Camp, Tony Edwards,
Kenneth Manders, and Gerald Massey also offered valuable advice and criti-
cism. I also thank Kenneth Winkler, who fi rst introduced me to Descartes’
Meditations, and Annette Baier, whose stimulating seminar on Descartes led
me to this project.
Portions of the Introduction and some of the material in Chapters 1 and
3 appeared in ‘Descartes on Innate Ideas,’ The Modern Schoolman 78, no. 1
(November 2000): 35–51. Parts of Chapter 4 originally appeared as ‘Des-
cartes’s Natural Light Reconsidered,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 37,
no. 4 (October 1999): 601–12. I am grateful to the editors of these journals
for permission to reprint this material. Passages from The Philosophical Writ-
ings of Descartes, vols. 1 and 2, translated and edited by John Cottingham,
Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1984 and 1985), as well as The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,
vol. 3, translated and edited by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald
Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), are reproduced with the permission of the translators/editors and
Cambridge University Press.
I had the support of my colleagues at the College of Charleston as well as
the capable help of Kate Kenney-Newhard in bringing this book to comple-
tion. Lisa Shapiro and Terry Meyers provided helpful comments on later
drafts of chapters. I would also like to thank Jim Fieser, as well as Tom Crick
and Sarah Campbell of the Continuum International Publishing Group,
for their help in bringing this work to publication. I am also grateful to
Cynthia Lowenthal, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College
of Charleston, for providing funds to cover expenses associated with the
preparation of the manuscript.
viii Acknowledgments
I could not have done any of this work without the support of my family
and friends. I am especially grateful for the encouragement and support
I received from my parents, Terry and Sheila Meyers, and from my hus-
band, Tim, and for the loving patience of my two daughters, Lucy and
Maura.
Introduction
In the Seventh Set of Objections with Replies, Descartes tells Bourdin, ‘My
principal aim has always been to draw attention to certain very simple truths
which are innate in our minds, so that as soon as they are pointed out to
others, they will consider that they have always known them’ (CSM II 312/
AT VII 464).1 And, indeed, the Meditations focuses on the innate ideas of
God, the human soul, and extended substance, showing how the meditator
discovers these ideas, which he realizes he understands more clearly than
anything he knows through the senses. Descartes’ Meditations is thus meant
to be an example of a new, non-Aristotelian method of acquiring knowl-
edge, a model of how to attend properly to our innate ideas, which those
accustomed to the Aristotelian tradition may not even realize they possess.2
Given the centrality of innate ideas to this account, we cannot hope to
understand Descartes’ project without a clear understanding of just what
Descartes means when he says some idea is innate.
But understanding Descartes’ conception of innate ideas is not an easy
task, for two reasons. First, Descartes himself gives a wide range of examples
of innate ideas; they include the ideas of God, himself, thing, thought,
truth, mind, body, triangles, and the number three.3 Other innate ideas
include the idea of extension, the truth that the three interior angles of a
triangle are equivalent to the sum of two right angles and other geometrical
truths, and propositions that Descartes calls ‘common notions,’ such as the
proposition that ‘there must be at least as much reality in the effi cient and
total cause as in the effect of that cause.’4 Descartes also claims at one point
that ‘the very ideas of the motions themselves and of the fi gures are innate
in us,’ and indeed he goes so far as to say that ‘the ideas of pain, colours,
sounds and the like must be all the more innate’ (CSM I 304/AT VIIIB
359). The items on this list are so varied that it is not obvious why they are
innate, or in what respects they are supposed to differ from ideas Descartes
thinks are not innate, such as one’s perception of a fi re or one’s idea of a
hippogriff. So we cannot determine what Descartes means by ‘innate idea’