1. What exactly does “idea” mean in Descartes’s texts, and is it legitimate to treat “idea” as having both a strict/representational and a non-strict/awareness sense?
* You (Ring) adopt a two-tiered sense of “idea” in order to resolve the triad. But is that indexical distinction genuinely present in Descartes’s usage (or defensible by his method), or is it a modern maneuver?
* Could this be seen as splitting hairs or smuggling in an illicit distinction?
2. Is Smith right to insist that Descartes accepts (1) “ideas are representational” and (3) “sensations are not representational,” thereby rejecting (2)?
* Is it uncontroversial that Descartes always treats all ideas as representational in the strong, objective-reality sense?
* Or might there be exceptional cases in which he allows something like “idea” to function more loosely (so that (2) is plausible without contradiction)?
3. Does the dream / evil-genius argument conclusively show that a sensation must be purely mental (a mode of mind) and not a corporeal-mental hybrid?
* Ring uses the identity of the phenomenal experience in dreaming to argue against Smith’s “corporeal-mental modal complex.”
* But could Smith reply that the hybrid view only aims to describe how sensations normally function in embodied human experience, not in hypothetical purely mental simulations?
* If so, does that concede too much to Ring?
4. If sensations are non-representational in the strict sense, can they still play a genuine “representational” or “signifying” role (via lawful natural signs) and does that count as a form of representation compatible with Descartes?
* Ring’s (P1) proposes that sensations are representational in a weak (indexical) sense: “lawfully connected natural signs to … configurations of matter in motion.”
* Is this move philosophically stable? Does it reintroduce a representational content that undermines the “non-representational” claim in (3)?
* Does Descartes ever conceive of sensations as “signs” in precisely this weaker way?
5. How should we construe the ontology of sensations: mode of the mind, mode of the union, or some hybrid?
* The choice seems to shape whether one must treat the body component as constitutive.
* Could there be a middle ground: sensations as modes of the union (or the composite) which nevertheless reduce to mental modes in certain contexts?
* Would that approach preserve the triadic consistency or reintroduce tensions?
6. How does Descartes’s doctrine of material falsity bear on whether sensations are representational ideas or not?
* If sensations are materially false ideas (i.e. representing something that doesn’t conform to the external object), does that not already presuppose that sensations contain representational content (even if false)?
* Can Ring’s distinction between strict and non-strict ideas accommodate the status of materially false sensations in Descartes?
* Does rejecting (2) force us to reconceive materially false ideas?
7. Could the notion of “the idea of a sensation” (a reflective, representational idea about one’s sensation) serve to mediate between pure sensations and proper ideas?
* Perhaps what we call “sensory ideas” in Descartes are properly these reflective ideas, not the raw sensation themselves.
* Does this move vindicate Smith’s rejection of (2) while still giving sense to talk of ideas of sensations?
* Would that conception still leave some residual tension in the triad?
8. If we accept Ring’s resolution, what criteria distinguish when an idea is “strict (representational)” versus “non-strict (object of awareness)” in practice?
* Is there a principled, Descartes-style test for when “idea” is used in one sense or the other?
* Might that risk circularity or ad hoc splitting of usages?
* How would one respond to a critic who accuses this of quietly reintroducing an equivocation?
9. Is there textual warrant in Descartes for the assertion that sensations “contain no objectively real representational content” (i.e. are not tanquam rerum imagines)?
* Ring’s position hinges on that denial.
* But are there passages that seem to ascribe representational content even to sensory ideas (for example, in the Passions, or in the Principles)?
* How should one weigh those against the stronger claims?
10. Assuming the triad is resolved by rejecting (2) in the strict sense, are there other lurking contradictions or tensions introduced elsewhere in Descartes’s system (e.g. in the relation between the mind and body, or the role of God as guarantor) by this move?
* For instance, does it undermine how Descartes uses sensation to ground his proof that God is no deceiver?
* Or does it affect the coherence of the union of mind and body, insofar as he sometimes seems to treat sensations as bridging the two?
* Could Smith press a dialectical “second round” by showing that rejecting (2) destabilizes some other Cartesian commitments?
Below are compact, verbatim passages (with standard scholarly references and page numbers) that appear to ascribe some representational direction to sensory items—e.g., speaking of sensations as referred to external objects or as of something in bodies. I give CSM and AT references and include stable, accessible URLs that reproduce the same English wording.
- Principles of Philosophy I, §70
“It is clear, then, that when we say that we perceive colours in objects, this is really just the same as saying that we perceive something in the objects whose nature we do not know, but which produces in us a certain very clear and vivid sensation which we call the sensation of colour.” (CSM I: 218; AT VIIIA: 34. Accessible in secondary literature quoting the CSM text verbatim:)
- Passions of the Soul I, §23 (surrounding Descartes’s tripartite distinction)
“Thus, when we see the light of a torch and hear the sound of a bell, the sound and the light are two different actions which, simply by arousing two different movements in some of our nerves and, through them, in our brain, give the soul two different sensations. And we refer these sensations to the subjects we suppose to be their causes in such a way that we think we see the torch itself and hear the bell, and not that we have sensory perception merely of the movements coming from these objects.” (CSM I: 337; AT XI: 346.)
- Passions of the Soul I, §25
“Now all our perceptions—those that we relate to objects outside us and those that we relate to the various states of our body—are indeed passions with respect to our soul, taking ‘passion’ in its most general sense; but we usually restrict the term ‘passion’ to signify only perceptions that relate to the soul itself.” (CSM I: 337; AT XI: 347–348)
- Principles of Philosophy I, §68 (useful for the contrast Descartes draws between sensations as thoughts and our tendency to take them as in objects)
“In order to distinguish what is clear in this connection from what is obscure, we must be very careful to note that pain and colour and so on are clearly and distinctly perceived when they are regarded merely as sensations or thoughts. But when they are judged to be real things existing outside our mind, there is no way of understanding what sort of things they are. If someone says he sees colour in a body or feels pain in a limb, all he is really saying is that he sees or feels something in the body or limb, though he does not know what it is.” (CSM I pagination around §68; AT VIIIA context for §68.)
These are the clearest places—in the Principles and the Passions—where Descartes explicitly talks as if sensory items are referred to external subjects or as of something in bodies, even while he immediately constrains what (if anything) they genuinely resemble or present in the objects.
What is it about any of these quotations that supports that a cold sensation contains a representation of anything about external physical objects or of a perceiver’s physical body?
None of the four verified passages you asked about actually supports the claim that a cold sensation—or any secondary-quality sensation—contains a representation of an external or bodily state in Descartes’s own sense of objective reality.
Here’s why, case by case:
1. Principles I.70
“We perceive something in the objects whose nature we do not know, but which produces in us a certain very clear and vivid sensation which we call the sensation of colour.” (AT VIIIA 34; CSM I 218)
The grammar might sound representational (“we perceive something in the objects”), but Descartes immediately empties that phrase of intentional content: what we perceive in the objects is unknown in nature. The sensation of colour is the only item clearly and distinctly known; the “something in the objects” is merely the hidden cause. Thus, the quotation denies rather than affirms that the sensation itself represents that cause. It establishes an epistemic correlation, not a representational containment.
2. Passions I.23
“We refer these sensations to the subjects we suppose to be their causes in such a way that we think we see the torch itself and hear the bell…” (AT XI 346; CSM I 337)
The verb “refer” (rapportons) describes an act of judgment or inclination, not a representational structure internal to the sensation. Descartes’s next clause—“we think we see the torch itself”—marks this as a cognitive misdirection of the will, not a property of the sensation’s content. The sensation’s formal being is just a mode of thought; the reference is the soul’s interpretive act. So this passage explicitly separates presentation (the feeling) from representation (the mental act of taking-as).
3. Passions I.25
“All our perceptions … are indeed passions with respect to our soul… but we usually restrict the term ‘passion’ to signify only perceptions that relate to the soul itself.” (AT XI 347–48; CSM I 337)
Here Descartes re-classifies sensations as passions of the soul—i.e., internal affections, not depictions. To say that some “relate to objects outside us” simply describes the ordinary direction of attention, not representational content. Their ontological status is as modes of the soul, not as ideas containing objects.
4. Principles I.68
“Pain and colour and so on are clearly and distinctly perceived when they are regarded merely as sensations or thoughts. But when they are judged to be real things existing outside our mind, there is no way of understanding what sort of things they are.” (AT VIIIA 33–34; CSM I 217)
This is the strongest evidence against representational containment. Sensations are “clearly and distinctly perceived” qua sensations precisely because they have no obscure representational reference. The confusion arises only when we “judge them to be real things outside our mind.” Hence, Descartes distinguishes the phenomenal givenness (formally real mode) from any representational content (objective reality)—explicitly denying the latter.
Conclusion
Each text shows only:
- an epistemic correlation (a causal relation between body and mind),
- an act of referral or judgment (the mind’s inclination to treat sensations as of something external),
but never an ontological containment of the external or bodily state as objectively real content within the sensation.
Therefore, none of these passages support the claim that a cold sensation—or any secondary-quality sensation—contains a representation of external physical objects or of the perceiver’s body. They support the opposite: sensations are formally real, phenomenally clear, and non-representational qua sensations; their apparent “ofness” arises only from a subsequent act of mental reference or misinterpretation.