Why Objective Reality Cannot Be Descartes’s Universal Theory of Thought: Burman, Common Notions, and the Collapse of the Strict-Idea Model

March 23, 2026

[NOTE: Words in magenta or blue underlined are clickable hyperlinks.]

Introduction by ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

This post argues for two connected claims about Descartes’s doctrine of objective reality. First, objective reality cannot be treated as a universal theory of thought-content. Descartes’s texts force a distinction between thought as such and the narrower class of strict ideas of things or modes of things whose contents can be ranked by degrees of objective reality.

Second, even where objective reality is present, it is better understood as an ontological measure of already determinate representational content than as the primitive source of aboutness itself. Conversation with Burman, Principles of Philosophy I.48–49, common notions, the idea of nothing, and, if my interpretation is right, secondary-quality sensations all press toward that result from different angles.

This post therefore does not argue that objective reality is empty or dispensable. It argues that Descartes’s official doctrine of objective reality is narrower than the full field of thinkable content that his own texts force him to acknowledge.

Once that distinction is in view, objective reality can no longer function as Descartes’s universal account of intelligibility, aboutness, or thinkability.

The Post’s Dialectical Target

This post is directed not only at the texts themselves but also at a range of commentators who read Descartes in a more universalizing way. Some defend the strong thesis according to which every Cartesian idea contains objectively real representational content. Others retreat to the weaker but still overextended thesis according to which every Cartesian idea is intrinsically representational in the strict internal sense. The post argues that both positions impose a uniformity on Cartesian thought that Descartes’s own distinctions do not sustain.

The Table of Cartesian Commentators included below is therefore not an appendix to the argument. It is one of the argument’s principal staging grounds. It helps reveal how frequently later readers collapse too much of Descartes’s field of thought into one model.

Two Different Pressures Against Universalism

Two distinct pressures undermine any universal OR thesis. Sensory pressure (secondary-quality ideas, on my reading) blocks the inference idea → OR-bearing content. Intellectual pressure (common notions) blocks the inference thinkable content → strict idea of a thing.

First, if my interpretation of secondary-quality sensations is correct, they undermine any automatic inference from broad-sense ideahood to objective reality where broad-sense ideas are understood to be whatever is immediately present before the mind (AT VII 160–61), while reserving ‘strict ideas’ for those that present a representatum with measurable objective reality. They would show that a sensory idea can be genuinely Cartesian while lacking internally object-fixing objectively real content. Descartes frequently calls the products of sensory stimulation “ideas” or “sensory ideas” (e.g., in The World, AT 11: 5–6; Treatise on Man, AT 11: 143; Sixth Meditation, AT VII: 75; Principles I: 68, AT 8A: 33; and many Replies passages) For extensive defense of the claim that secondary-quality sensations lack OR, see the five linked posts referenced below.

Second, common notions place pressure on a different inferential move, namely, the move from thinkability or clear intelligibility to strict ideahood in the Third-Meditation sense. They show that Descartes acknowledges contents that are intellectually graspable and indispensable to reasoning without thereby straightforwardly assimilating them to strict ideas of real things.

The argument is strongest when these two pressures are kept distinct. The sensory case challenges the universal move from idea to objective reality. The common-notion case challenges the universal move from thinkability to strict idea-of-a-thing.

Why Common Notions Matter

The present post focuses primarily on common notions. Here the claim must be stated carefully. Conversation with Burman and Principles of Philosophy I.49 do not by themselves deductively prove that common notions lack all objective reality. That would be too quick. What they do show is that no pro-objective-reality reading can simply rely on a universal premise according to which every genuine thinkable content must already be a strict idea of a thing (res) or a mode of a thing.

Once Descartes distinguishes common notions and eternal truths from strict ideas of real things, the burden shifts. A defender of objective reality for common notions must now specify exactly what representatum (see 2.1) is objectively contained in thoughts such as ex nihilo, nihil fit. The distinction therefore does not by itself settle the issue, but it blocks any easy assimilation of common notions to the standard Third-Meditation model of idea-content.

That is the crucial point. The anti-universal argument does not need the stronger and less defensible claim that Burman, all by himself disproves every possible OR-reading of common notions. It needs only the weaker but far more solid claim that Burman destroys any effortless universalization from thinkability to strict idea-content. Once that universal bridge is broken, each disputed case must be argued separately.

See the follow-up post that supports and addresses responses to objections to this post:

Why Objective Reality Cannot Be Universal in Descartes’s Theory of Ideas: Nothing, Eternal Truths, Sensations, and Fear with Claude Opus 4.6

Outline of the Argument (for reference). For the full outline, see the Appendix at the bottom of the post

The argument of this post proceeds in four stages.

First, it distinguishes two different pressures against any universal theory of objective reality. One pressure comes from secondary-quality sensations, which, on my reading, are genuine Cartesian ideas in the broad sense without internally object-fixing objectively real content. The other pressure comes from common notions, which are genuinely thinkable and indispensable to reasoning but are not straightforwardly assimilable to strict ideas of real things.

Second, it argues that Burman and Principles of Philosophy I.48–49 do not by themselves deductively prove that common notions lack all objective reality. That stronger claim would go too far. What those texts do establish is that no universalizing reading may simply assume that every genuine thinkable content is already a strict idea whose content is rankable by objective reality. Once Descartes distinguishes common notions and eternal truths from strict ideas of things, the burden shifts to the defender of objective reality to specify the relevant representatum (see 2.1) in each disputed case.

Third, it argues that this burden-shifting result is already enough to damage the universal thesis. For once Descartes’s field of thought is shown to include contents that are not straightforwardly modeled as strict ideas of things, objective reality can no longer function as a default explanation of thought-content as such. At that point each hard case must be argued separately rather than absorbed into one prior representational template.

Lastly, it draws the broader explanatory conclusion. Objective reality is best understood not as the primitive ground of intentionality or aboutness, but as an ontological measure applied to a narrower class of already determinate contents. In that sense, objective reality presupposes directedness rather than generating it. For that reason, objective reality remains philosophically indispensable within its own domain, but it cannot plausibly serve as Descartes’s universal theory of thought.

Common Notions Are the Strongest Case Within This Post

The anti-universal argument developed here is strongest, within the present post, for common notions such as ex nihilo, nihil fit. It is weaker, and requires additional argument, when the topic shifts to geometrical essences or true and immutable natures. That distinction matters.

A successful challenge to universal objective reality does not by itself settle the status of every eternal truth. It does, however, undermine any attempt to derive objective reality for all such cases from a universal premise about Cartesian ideas as such. Even if one wished to defend objective reality for some geometrical essences, that would still not rescue the broader universal thesis that every idea whatsoever must contain objectively real representational content.

This is why the argument against universalizing commentators and readers should proceed in two stages. First, reject the universal starting point. Second, examine the harder special cases individually. That order matters because it prevents the most difficult cases from being used to smuggle universality back in at the beginning.

Why This Pressures Nolan and Similar Readings

The point of this argument is not merely exegetical tidiness. It directly pressures interpretations that begin from a broadly universal representational premise and then extend objective being or objective reality outward to increasingly diverse kinds of thinkable content. That strategy works only if one can sustain the claim that every genuine Cartesian idea exhibits an internal object to the intellect in the same basic way.

But once Descartes’s field of thought is seen to include items such as common notions, the idea of nothing, and, on my reading, secondary-quality sensations, the universal starting point becomes unstable. At that point the defender of universality can no longer argue from “this is a genuine Cartesian thought” to “therefore it contains objectively real representational content.” The missing step must be supplied rather than assumed.

That does not refute every specific pro-objective-reality interpretation in advance. It does something more methodologically important. It removes the presumption that objective reality is Descartes’s default explanation of all thought-content whatever.

Objective Reality Presupposes Aboutness

The deeper conclusion is explanatory. Objective reality is best understood not as the primitive source of intentionality or aboutness but as a ranked ontological measure applied to a narrower class of already determinate representational contents. Descartes’s doctrine of objective reality tells us how much being a represented item has insofar as it is contained objectively in an idea. It does not, by itself, explain how every thought manages to be of or about something in the first place.

That point matters because many readings tacitly move from the thesis that some ideas contain objectual content to the much broader thesis that objective reality therefore explains thought-content as such. But that does not follow. If objective reality applies only where an idea already contains a determinate representatum objectively, then the doctrine presupposes directedness rather than generating it.

On that reading, the real philosophical pressure on Descartes is not merely terminological. It is structural. The full field of Cartesian thinkability outruns the field governed by objective reality. Objective reality remains indispensable within its own domain, but that domain is narrower than a universal theory of thought would require.

Provisional Result of the Opening Argument

My strongest point is not that Descartes’s doctrine of objective reality is incoherent or useless. It is that the doctrine is narrower than the full field of Cartesian thinkability. Objective reality functions most clearly as a causal-metaphysical ranking of strict ideas of things. It does not by itself explain thought-content or aboutness as such.

Burman, common notions, the idea of nothing, and, if my reading is right, secondary-quality sensations all indicate that Descartes’s field of intelligible thought outruns the field governed by objective reality. The pressure on Descartes is therefore not merely that he sometimes uses the word “idea” loosely. The deeper pressure is that once the field of genuine thought extends beyond strict idea-content, objective reality can no longer serve as his universal theory of thought.

That is the conclusion this post defends. Objective reality remains real, important, and philosophically powerful. But it is not a universal feature of every Cartesian idea as has been defended by many commentators in the secondary literature.

However, the present post focuses primarily on common notions as also supporting a rejection of any universalizing thesis regarding objective reality or representations. Descartes treats common notions as genuinely thinkable, clearly and distinctly perceivable, and indispensable to reasoning. Yet, at least in some cases, he does not treat them as strict ideas of real things. They function rather as eternal truths or axioms that reside in the mind without thereby presenting a representatum (see 2.1) under the model of res. That point gives the anti-universal reading its strongest foothold, because once common notions are admitted, the defender of universal OR owes a further account of the relevant representatum (see 2.1). Descartes is then committed to a broader field of mental content than the doctrine of objective reality can cover.

NOTE: This post hyperlinks to Jonathan Bennett’s translation of Conversation with Burman, but you can also access John Cottingham’s translation at the Internet Archive.

Governing Thesis in One Sentence

Descartes’s doctrine of objective reality is not a universal theory of thought-content, but a restricted ontological measure applicable only to strict ideas of things or modes of things, whereas common notions, the idea of nothing, and secondary-quality sensations reveal a broader field of thinkable content that escapes that apparatus.

Cartesian Commentators on the status of ideas

Many Cartesian commentators, as the table below vividly illustrates, endorse versions of the strong universal thesis that all ideas for Descartes contain objective-reality representational content, or at least the weaker thesis that every Cartesian idea is intrinsically representational in the strict internal sense. Vere Chappell, for instance, holds that every idea_m (idea taken materially, as a mental act) represents an idea_o (idea taken objectively, as the thing or content represented). Similar strong readings appear in quotations from Brown (extending OR even to materially false ideas), Carriero, Kaufman, and others. These interpretations show how frequently the doctrine is read as imposing a uniform representational mechanism—tied to objective reality/being—across the full field of Cartesian thought.

Yet it is precisely this uniformity that Descartes’s own texts do not sustain. The Conversation with Burman (where common notions are called “ideas” only in an extended sense, “not, strictly speaking, ideas of things”), Principles I.48–49, the logical order of the Third Meditation, and the treatment of certain sensory modes force a sharper distinction: objective reality applies paradigmatically to strict ideas of things or modes whose representational content is already determinate enough to be ranked by the reality of what they present. It does not function as a clean, universal generative mechanism for all thinkable content.

The strong universal thesis: all ideas for Descartes contain objective reality representational content.

The weaker thesis: all ideas for Descartes are (internally) representational.

The post argues that both theses overextend Descartes’s strict idea model. The objections below identify where each interpretation risks collapsing broad Cartesian thought into internally object-bearing representation.

Table of Cartesian Commentators Who Universalize Objective Reality & Objective Being (the strong thesis), or the Weaker Universal Internal Representation Thesis

NOTE: In the table, clickable hyperlinks are blue and underlined. All bold and bold italic in the table quotations were not in the originals. ABBREVIATIONS: OR = objective reality representational mental content. SQ = secondary quality. MF = a materially false idea. Arguments for each of the [objections] below are found in this post and throughout the DTOI website.

Cartesian Commentator	Accepts or Rejects Universal Thesis	Supporting “Quotations” & [Objections]
Deborah J. Brown	Accepts the strong universal thesis. Brown explicitly extends objective reality to materially false ideas. (DJB1–2)	”Descartes on True and False Ideas.” In A Companion to Descartes, edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero, 196–215. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. (DJB1) “ . . . . Descartes’s objective existence theory of ideas and the notion of material falsity. The former seems to entail that *for an idea to be of x, x must have (objective) being, . . . .“ (205) [False. A sensation can be of cold or of pain in the broad Cartesian sense without containing any objective reality.] (DJB2) “Materially false ideas, like all ideas, have objective reality.” (207) [False*. As argued below, materially false secondary-quality sensations lack objective reality.]
John Carriero	Accepts the strong universal thesis. Carriero treats all ideas as making reality available to mind and as containing objective being. (JC1)–(JC5)	Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. (JC1) “I believe that this overtone continues with Descartes, so that for him, too, an idea is some form or structure—some “reality”—existing objectively in the mind . . . . However, I think it is the same story with sensory ideas. They, too, involve the existence of structure (presumably some corporeal configuration) in the mind. What Descartes says about sensory ideas is that the structure (the “reality”) that is *found objectively* in them is obscure and confused.” (20–21) [False. A first-order sensation has formally real phenomenal structure, such as coolness or redness, without thereby containing objective reality.] (JC2) “ . . . all ideas—whether purely intellectual (such as my idea of myself or of God) or imaginative (such as my idea of a chimera or my visualization of a triangle) or sensory (such as my idea of greenness)—exhibit or present reality to the mind: the reality contained in the thing that is being thought of exists objectively in the idea.” (158) [False. A cold sensation presents phenomenal coolness to the mind, but it does not internally represent coolness (or it would not feel chilly) and thus does not contain objective reality.] (JC3) “He says there [Third Meditation] that, although all ideas, including sensory ideas, “are as it were of things” (III.¶19; 7:44; 2:30), sensory ideas present what they present in a way that leaves open whether what is being presented is a reality or an absence of reality.” (163–64) [False. A cold sensation presents positive phenomenal coolness, not an absence of reality.] (JC4) “On Descartes’s own view of sensory perception, the microphysical texture as it exists objectively (and obscurely and confusedly) in a sensory idea is not similar to—is not a replica of—the microphysical texture as it exists in the body. (405) [False. When a sensation leaves one unable to tell whether it presents a real quality, a privation, or neither, that indeterminacy is better taken to show that the sensation contains no internally object-fixing objective reality.] (JC5) “I think all sensory ideas, including cold in the imagined case, involve the confused importation of corporeal structure from the world, so even if cold is an absence or privation, it involves corporeal structure**.” (409) [Carriero equivocates on “involves”: a sensation may ‘involve’ a causal relation to corporeal structure without containing that structure as objective reality.]
Vere Chappell	Accepts *both* the strong universal thesis (VC2) and the weaker universal representational thesis in a universal two-aspect model: every material idea stands in a necessary representational relation to an idea with OR. (VC0) (VC1)	”The Theory of Ideas.“ In Essays in Descartes’ Meditations, edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, 177–98. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. (VC0) “From now on I shall abbreviate “idea in the material sense” and “idea in the objective sense” to “idea_m” and “idea_o ,” respectively. Ideas_m and ideas_o, furthermore, are related, in that the latter are things represented by the former.” (178) [The objective sense is the objective-reality content of an idea, not an object that a material idea represents as a second representation; moreover, many Cartesian mental modes exist without objective reality.] (VC1) “Ideas_m and ideas_o, furthermore, are related in that the latter are things represented by the former. . . . Later on we shall see that the relation is necessary on the other side also, and that every idea_m represents an idea_o. Descartes’ position, indeed, is that there is, for every idea_m, exactly one idea_o that it represents, and for every idea_o, exactly one idea_m that represents it.” (178) [If every idea_m represented an idea_o, then the idea of a lion would represent not a lion but a representation of a lion; moreover, some mental modes have no objective reality at all.] (VC2) “It is that these are not distinct entities at all—not one individual thing and then a second, different one—but are rather one thing on the one hand, and an aspect or component of that same thing on the other. The idea_m and the idea_o only differ from one another, to use Descartes’ own expression, by a “distinction of reason.” (179) [Chappell wrongly universalizes a relation that Descartes can sustain only for ideas taken strictly as if “images of things,” since many thoughts that Descartes still calls ideas—such as sensations of pain or cold, common notions, and the idea of nothing—exist in the mind as modes of thought without thereby containing any object existing objectively in the intellect.]
David Cunning	Rejects *both* the strong universal thesis: every idea has formal and objective being (and exhibits an internal object). (DC1–2) and the weaker universal representational thesis: all ideas are intrinsically representational. (DC3 –4) Accepts the strong universal thesis for strict ideas [tanquam rerum imagines], denying that sensations themselves are strict ideas. (DC3) Problematically, Cunning over-down plays sensations as broad sense ideas and denies that material falsity resides in the sensations themselves. (DC2, 3 & 5)	“Descartes on Sensations and Ideas of Sensations.“ An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, 17–32. Athens: Atiner Publishing, 2006. (DC1) “For Descartes, objective reality is something that is internal to an idea. […] However, it appears to be just a brute phenomenological fact that when we introspect and consider (for example) a sensation of coldness, there is nothing more to what we are considering than the quale itself. In particular, an examination of the mere sensation of coldness does not provide us with any information about the bodies that occasion it. […] there is good philosophical reason for thinking that *sensations do not have objective reality.” (27) [True.] (DC2) “A Cartesian sensation is a mode of mind but not an idea. If it is representational, it is not representational in virtue of having objective reality but in virtue of something else.” (18) [False. Secondary-quality sensations count as broad-sense ideas* for Descartes, even though they do not contain objective reality.] Rejection of the weaker universal representational thesis (“all ideas are intrinsically representational”) — (DC5) (DC3) “Another is that ideas are representational. Indeed, Descartes says that although something can be dubbed a ‘thought’ in a loose sense so long as it is a mode of mind, the term ‘idea’ is to be reserved for modes of mind that are of objects.” (23) (Third Meditation: AT VII: 37) [Cunning should restrict this claim to strict ideas, because Descartes continues to call broad-sense non-representational modes “ideas” even when they lack strict OR-representational content.] (DC4) “Sensations are qualia that we perceive as a result of the impact of bodies on our senses. (20) [Internal sensations such as hunger need not arise from the impact of external bodies on the senses.] Cunning accepts the strong thesis (objective reality / internal object) exclusively for strict-sense ideas while repeatedly denying that raw sensations qualify as such. [True.] Over-downplaying of sensations as broad-sense ideas and denial that material falsity resides in the sensations themselves (DC5) “A false idea of a sensation [not a sensation], on the other hand, might misrepresent that sensation as something other than a mode of mind. […] Descartes thus says that a false idea of a sensation ‘does have something positive as its underlying subject, namely the actual sensation involved.’” (18) (Fourth Replies: AT VII: 234) [Cunning misreads the passage here: Descartes attributes the positive underlying subject to the sensation itself, not to a higher-order idea of that sensation. Cunning consistently locates material falsity in the (higher-order) idea of the sensation, not in the sensation/qualia itself. He unstresses acknowledgement of sensations as broad-sense ideas (the “form of any given thought”); he treats them strictly as non-ideas/qualia. SQ-sensations are broad sense ideas and are themselves materially false prior to any formal judgment. For a defense, see my post “What Makes An Idea Materially False In Descartes’s Theory Of Ideas?: Why Mere Error-Causation Is Insufficient, Why The Three Main Cases Form An Analogical Unity, And Why Hoffman Mislocates The Relevant Non-Thing With ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking.”]
Michael Della Rocca	Accepts the weaker universal representational thesis. Della Rocca says all ideas are representations, but in the verified passage he does not separately state the stronger universal-objective-reality thesis. (MDR1) See the table below for an extensive critique.	“Judgment and Will.” In The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ Meditations, edited by Stephen Gaukroger, 142–59. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. (MDR1) “And, for Descartes, all ideas are representations; they are of things or at least they purport to be of things.” (“Judgment and Will,” 146) [A cold sensation can be of phenomenal coolness in the broad sense without internally representing anything via objective reality, as defended below and throughout the DTOI website.]
Claudia Lorena García	Rejects the strong universal thesis. Lorena Garcia argues that materially false sensory ideas can represent non-things and lack objective reality. (CLG5) Accepts the weaker universal representational thesis. (CLG1–4)	“Descartes: Ideas and the Mark of the Mental.” History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 3, no. 1 (2000): 21–53. (CLG1) “Moreover, concerning obscure and confused ideas—some of which are false—one often cannot begin to tell what they represent.” (3) [Here García simply assumes that obscure and confused ideas internally represent something, but that assumption is precisely what my anti-objective-reality reading denies.] (CLG2) “Ideas are those of our thoughts which are as it were of things; each of them appears to us to represent some thing, some res.” (4) [The common notion or eternal truth ex nihilo, nihil fit neither appears as a thing nor represents a thing.] (CLG3) “Note that, by saying that ideas can be materially false, Descartes embraces the view that it is possible for an idea to misrepresent what it represents.” (10) [Descartes need not treat material falsity as a misrepresentation of represented content, because a cold sensation does not internally misrepresent anything and contains no objective reality. For a defense, see “Proving God Is Not A Deceiver Because Sensations Lack Objectively Real Contents To ScholarGPT V2 (October 2023).”] (CLG4) ”I must emphasize that the reason why an idea is materially false, in my interpretation, is not that it fails to represent. . . .“ (20) [If a materially false idea lacks objective reality, García still owes an argument for why immediate phenomenal presentation already counts as internal representation rather than mere phenomenal presence.] (CLG5) “Now, I disagree with Hoffman on this second point. I think that there are sufficient reasons—both of textual adequacy and of overall interpretive coherence—to think that Descartes is committed to the view that sensory ideas, not only can be, but also are materially false: that they represent non-things and lack objective reality.” (20) [If a materially false sensory idea lacks objective reality, García must explain how it internally represents a non-thing at all. If phenomenal coolness constitutes the sensation’s immediate content, then that content is a real mode of mind, not an impossible pseudo-item. So material falsity cannot consist in presenting something that “cannot exist anywhere.”]
Dan Kaufman	Accepts the strong universal thesis. Kaufman argues that Descartes is committed to the claim that all ideas have some degree of objective reality. (DK1–2)	“Descartes on the Objective Reality of Materially False Ideas.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81, no. 4 (2000): 385–408. (DK1) “ . . . Descartes holds that ideas in the material sense have *ideas in the objective sense as their content.” (386) [False. Not all ideas have ideas in the objective sense as their content: secondary-quality sensations, the idea of nothing, and many eternal truths do not, as argued below.] (DK2) “I have stated earlier that Descartes thinks that all ideas have objective being/existence. But Descartes is also committed to the fact that all ideas have some degree of objective reality.” (395). [False*. Zero degrees of objective reality do not count as some degree, and the idea of nothing has zero objective reality because nothing has zero formal reality.]
Steven Nadler	Accepts *both* the strong universal thesis (SN1–2) and the weaker universal representational thesis. (SN3) Nadler treats objective reality and representational content as essential to every idea.	“The Doctrine of Ideas.” In The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ Meditations, edited by Stephen Gaukroger, 86–103. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. (SN1) “We can say, in fact, that for Descartes objective reality is a defining feature of the mind’s ideas: ‘Some of my thoughts are as it were images of things, and it is only in these cases that the term “idea” is strictly appropriate.’ It is essential to an idea that it has a representational content that it displays to the mind. ‘The objective mode of being belongs to ideas by their very nature’ (Meditation III, AT VI: 42).” (92) [Nadler overgeneralizes here. A mind can apprehend content without thereby apprehending internally representational objective-reality content, and pain provides an obvious case.] (SN2) “This content of an idea, which *allows us to discriminate one idea from another by its object, is what Descartes is referring to when he speaks of an idea’s ‘objective reality.’* It is what the idea represents (*or, better, presents) to the mind. The objective reality of an idea is what makes the idea ‘like a picture or image’ and allows it to make something* (e.g., the sun, in the case of the idea of the sun) immediately present to the mind. An idea’s objective reality gives the idea what philosophers have called ‘intentionality.’ It makes an idea the idea of something.” (91–92) [False. Formal differences among mental modes can be discriminating content without objective reality: sharp pain differs from dull pain even though neither contains objective reality.] Supporting the weaker thesis (all ideas are (internally) representational) (Nadler’s interpretive claim that extends representational content universally via the “core” idea): (SN3) “At the core of every idea in the broad sense is an idea in the strict sense, *giving it a specific content or referent.” (87) [What internally representational objective-reality referent does a cold sensation contain? It cannot be phenomenal coolness itself, because the sensation presents that coolness as a formally real felt mode, not as an OR representation of coolness.] (Nadler on the strict/narrow sense as inherently representational, which the “core” claim then universalizes): (SN4) “In the narrow sense – ‘idea’ as species* – the word refers only to those mental items that are ‘as it were images of things [tanquam rerum imagines]’ or representational states. … Strictly speaking, however, ideas (in the narrow sense) are those states of consciousness that are image-like appearances. Ideas (in the narrow sense) are all those visions, thoughts, feelings and other imagines that stand before the mind’s eye in consciousness and that are the objects of the mind’s active attitudes…” (88) [Pain can stand before the mind as the object of awareness without thereby qualifying as a narrow idea with objective reality.] (SN5) “For something to have objective being. . . . means that the thing exists in some mind insofar as it is being thought about by that mind. It is a mode of being in the understanding. . . . as the intentional object that the understanding grasps. In a word, *something is in the mind “objectively” when it is thought about, understood, or perceived.” (92) [A mind can perceive* pain immediately without containing pain objectively as an intentional object.] (SN6) “For the most part, we can distinguish two senses of “idea” for Descartes: a broad sense and a strict sense. In the broad meaning of “idea”—”idea” as genus—the word refers to any mental item, any state of the mind, whether it be an image, an affect, or a volitional act. Ideas in this general sense are states of consciousness, and these come in a great variety: perceptions, imaginings, thoughts, desires, feelings, willings, doubtings, and so on.” (87) [Therefore, if ‘perceptions’ include SQ-sensations, then they qualify as broad sense ideas, while Nadler claims they are narrow.] (SN7) “In the narrow sense—”idea” as species—the word refers only to those mental items that are “as it were images of things [tanquam rerun imagines]” or representational states. These include sense perceptions of physical things, pure intellectual thoughts (e.g., of mathematical figures), imaginings (e.g., of unicorns), dreams, and sensations and feelings (pain, pleasure). Both the sensory appearance of the sun as a small, yellow, warm disc and the conceptual understanding of the sun as an enormous body of gas are *equally ideas in the narrow sense.” (87) [Nadler recognizes Descartes’s broad/strict distinction, then misclassifies broad* sense sensations (sensory appearances) as narrow ideas.] (SN8) “In sum, then, we can say that ideas generally speaking are the states of consciousness of which the mind is *immediately aware.” (88) [True. Nadler recognizes that acts of awareness are broad sense ideas for Descartes, so sensory awareness, i.e., a mind’s experienced sensations* are guaranteed to qualify as broad sense ideas.] (SN9) “This, in fact, is precisely how Descartes defines “thought” in the Principles of Philosophy: “By the term ‘thought’, I understand everything which we are aware of as happening within us, in so far as we have awareness of it” (Principles: I.9). An “idea,” correlatively, is what is apprehended by the mind when one is conscious of the thought: “Idea: I understand this term to mean the form of any given thought, immediate perception of which makes me aware of the thought.” (Second Replies: AT VII, 160) (88) [True. Because the mind immediately apprehends secondary-quality sensations and eternal truths, both qualify as ideas in the broad sense.]
Lawrence Nolan	Accepts *both* the strong universal thesis: every idea has formal and objective being (and exhibits an internal object). (LN1), (LN3), (LN4). (LN5) and the weaker universal representational thesis: all ideas are intrinsically representational. (LN2)	“The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures.“ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (1997): 169–94. (LN1) “For Descartes, every idea has two distinct kinds of being or reality—`formal’ and ‘objective’—and, consequently, can be regarded in two ways.” When we think of ideas as modes or operations of the mind, we are regarding them in terms of their formal or actual being.” This is the kind of reality that *ideas share* *with all actually existing things, whether material or spiritual. As modes, ideas* also have the same degree of formal being as all other modes and as each other.” (174) [False. Some ideas—pain, secondary-quality sensations, the idea of nothing, and certain eternal truths such as ex nihilo, nihil fit—contain no objective reality.] (LN2) “Since ideas are intrinsically representational for Descartes, every idea exhibits some internal object to the intellect whether or not the object exhibited has a counterpart outside the intellect. For example, I have ideas which represent other men, animals, and angels ‘even if there are no men besides me, no animals, and no angels in the world.’ (Third Meditation; AT VII, 43). While lacking actual or formal existence, these things at least have objective being in the mind.” (175) [False. A mental state can exhibit content to a mind without internally representing an object with objective reality.] (LN3) “In a move which will have important consequences for the ontology of mathematical objects, Descartes identifies this internal object of thought with the idea itself considered objectively. In the Third Meditation, he says that objective being is the mode of being “by which a thing exists . . . in the intellect by way of an idea.” (AT VII, 41; CSM II, 29) This does not yet state the identification between an idea and its internal object, but it is suggestive of it.” (175–76) [False. In a case such as a cold sensation, the “internal object of thought” is just the formally real phenomenal content; the sensation does not contain that content as objective reality or it would not feel chilly.] (LN4) “But, as Chappell has noted, Descartes thinks the term res cogitata is ambiguous. Whereas Caterus uses it to refer to something outside the intellect, Descartes says he intended it to stand for the idea itself “which is never outside the intellect.” The idea of the sun, for example, “is the thing which is thought of [res cogitata] *in so far as it has objective being* in the intellect” (AT VII, 102; CSM II 74–75) (176) [True for narrow-sense ideas, but false if Nolan extends the claim to all broad-sense ideas.] (LN5) “As we have seen, formal reality characterizes things that actually exist. Objective reality, by contrast, is the kind of reality that *things in the intellect possess, as the internal objects of thought.” (176) [False*. A cold sensation presents phenomenal coolness as an internal object of thought without containing that coolness as objective reality.]

The sharpest division in this group is between commentators who explicitly say all ideas have objective reality—Brown, Carriero, Chappell (both), Kaufman, Nadler (both), and Nolan (both)—and those who stop at all ideas are representational—Della Rocca and García. Cunning is the clearest directly verified rejector of both in the set.

This table therefore serves as one of the argument’s principal staging grounds. By making the strong and weak universalizing tendencies explicit, it sets up the textual pressures that follow—pressures from Burman, common notions, and the two distinct kinds of counter-evidence that collapse the strict-idea model and restore objective reality to its more limited, ontologically measuring role.

Michael Della Rocca’s positions in more detail.

Three transparent color headshots of Michael Della Rocca.

The strongest overall objection remains the same: Della Rocca’s chapter is philosophically sharp on assent, will, and the problem of error, but his compressed formula for ideas is textually too indiscriminate for Descartes’s own distinctions among ideas of substances or modes, eternal truths, some universals (not, for example, triangle), and sensory states.

Two Different Pressures Against Universalism

Two different kinds of pressure must be distinguished.

First, if my interpretation of secondary-quality sensations is correct, they undermine any automatic inference from broad-sense ideahood to objective reality. They would show that a sensory idea can be genuinely Cartesian while lacking internally object-fixing OR-content.

Second, common notions place pressure on a different inferential move, namely, the move from thinkability or clear intelligibility to strict ideahood in the Third Meditation sense. They show that Descartes acknowledges contents that are intellectually graspable and indispensable to reasoning without thereby treating them as strict ideas of real things.

Conversation with Burman and Principles I.49 do not by themselves deductively prove that common notions lack all objective reality. What they do show is that no pro-OR reading can rely on a universal premise according to which every genuine thinkable content must already be a strict idea of a thing.

Once Descartes distinguishes common notions and eternal truths from strict ideas of real things, the burden shifts. A defender of OR for common notions must now specify exactly what representatum is objectively contained in thoughts such as ex nihilo, nihil fit. The distinction therefore does not by itself settle the issue, but it blocks any easy assimilation of common notions to the standard Third-Meditation model of idea-content.

The sensory case challenges the universal move from idea to OR. The common-notion case challenges the universal move from thinkability to idea-of-a-thing.

So, the deepest pressure actually comes from secondary quality sensations if my interpretation Is correct that for Descartes such ideas lack any objective reality content while still qualifying as broad sense ideas. For extensive defense of this claim see my five posts and the summary of their arguments next:

”Convincing ChatGPT 4.0 (April 2023 version) that Cartesian secondary quality sensations (SQS) have no objectively real mental content – (Maybe it will convince you, too!),”

”Proving that cold sensations do not have any objective reality to Bing’s Copilot with ChatGPT 4,”

”ScholarGPT (January 2025) asserts independently that a cold sensation lacks objective reality,”

”ChatGPT 4.5 (February 2025) defends material false sensations lack objectively real representational content,”

”Proving sensations are ideas with no objective reality to ScholarGPT,”

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

After reviewing the five posts above, the correction is straightforward: they do not support using secondary-quality sensations as even a weak prop for Lawrence Nolan’s universalizing representationalism in his 1997 “The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures.“ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78, no. 2, 169–94. They cut the other way. Taken together, they build a cumulative case that secondary-quality sensations are genuine Cartesian ideas in the broad sense, but that they lack objectively real representational content and therefore cannot be used to sustain either (a) a universal-OR thesis for Cartesian ideas or (b) a universal-representation thesis in the strict tanquam rerum imagines [as if an image of a thing] sense.

The most important point is methodological. Nolan’s paper begins from the strong premise that Cartesian ideas are “intrinsically representational” and that every idea exhibits an internal object to the intellect; from there he argues that true and immutable natures, and then eternal truths, should be treated as innate ideas with objective being. That strategy only works if one can sustain a broadly universal representational starting point. Your five posts attack precisely that starting point by arguing that sensations such as cold, pain, and redness are bona fide Cartesian ideas or modes of thought without objectively real representations (OR). Once that class of cases is admitted, the bridge from “this is an idea” to “this contains objective reality” is broken.

The first recurring argument in the posts is the formal/objective distinction. The posts repeatedly insist that the qualitative feel of the sensation belongs to the sensation’s formal reality as a mode of thought, not to its objective reality as representational content. The February 2025 post states this most cleanly: phenomenal redness is a formally real qualitative modification of mind and “does not possess objective reality” because it does not explicitly represent anything external or conceptually distinct from itself; at most it is occasioned by bodily processes. That is exactly the distinction Nolan’s universal premise threatens to erase. If redness as felt is already fully accounted for as formal reality, then one cannot infer an extra layer of OR merely from the fact that the sensation is mentally present.

The second recurring argument is that secondary-quality sensations are experiential presentations, not internal object-presentations. The November 2023 post presses this through pain and then extends it to cold: pain is not a mere representation of pain, because a representation of pain would not itself hurt, whereas an actual painful sensation essentially includes suffering; therefore its mental content cannot be identified with OR in the way an intellectual idea’s content can be. The same reasoning is then applied to cold: the sensation is the experiential reality of feeling cold, not an internally objectifying representation of coldness. That is a strong objection to any interpretive move that treats sensory phenomenology as a faint or tiny OR-content.

The third recurring argument is that a cold sensation lacks the kind of object-fixing structure that OR requires. The January 2025 post argues that a cold sensation is a “mere modification of the mind” rather than an idea that presents an object, and concludes that a depictional idea, like the idea of a tomato or triangle, has objective reality, while a non-depictional cold sensation “entirely lacks objective reality because it does not function as a representation of an independent object.” The same post also presses your favorite point: if Descartes says he cannot tell from the sensation whether it represents a privation, a real quality, or neither, that is powerful evidence against there being any determinate object contained objectively in the sensation at all.

That point matters directly against Nolan. His framework requires every idea to exhibit some internal object. But your anti-SQ line says: no, there are broad-sense Cartesian ideas whose being-an-idea consists in their being modes of thought immediately present to the mind, while their sensory phenomenology supplies no internally contained representatum (see 2.1). If that is right, Nolan’s starting premise is false. He can still try to defend OR for eternal truths specifically, but he loses the universal support structure.

The fourth recurring argument is that sensations can still be representational in a broader sense without OR. The ScholarGPT post and the February 2025 post both argue that even if a cold sensation lacks objectively real content, it can still function as a lawful sign of a bodily or physical state. In one formulation, the sensation “represents or corresponds to a lawful physical state of affairs” while not possessing objective reality as a fully intellectual idea; in another, sensations “signify” external mechanical conditions through lawful correlation without objective content. This is a decisive pressure point, because it shows that representational significance need not collapse into objective reality. Once that distinction is granted, universal representationalism in the strong Nolanian sense becomes much harder to sustain.

That distinction also blocks the fallback maneuver that secondary-quality sensations might still “represent the mind’s way of perceiving.” Your September 2024 post targets exactly that move. It criticizes Copilot’s claim that sensations have objective reality because they represent the mind’s perceptual experiences, and replies that this merely confuses formal reality with objective reality: existing as a mode of thought or as a perceptual experience does not itself generate OR. That reply is well aimed. If “representing the mind’s way of perceiving” just means “being a phenomenally conscious mode,” then it is formal reality. If it means “containing an internal object,” then one must specify that object. The post argues that no such object is available.

So the cumulative pressure from the five posts is this.

First, they undermine universal OR: not every Cartesian idea contains objective reality, because secondary-quality sensations are broad-sense ideas that are formally real modes of mind without OR-bearing content.

Second, they undermine universal strict representation: not every Cartesian idea is a strict image-like presentation of an object, because sensations can be non-depictional, non-objectifying, and still be genuine ideas.

Third, they preserve a narrower and more plausible claim: sensations may still have sign-function or lawful correlation without idea-or. That preserves aboutness or external directedness in a broader sense while denying internal OR-content.

This does not by itself prove that Nolan is wrong about eternal truths. That stronger conclusion still needs a separate argument. But it does show that his route to eternal truths through a universal premise about ideas is unstable. He says ideas are intrinsically representational and then assimilates true and immutable natures and eternal truths to innate ideas with objective being. Your five posts show that Descartes has a significant class of counterexamples already inside his theory of sensation. Once that class is admitted, Nolan must argue for OR in eternal truths without relying on universality. And that is a much more difficult case to make.

So the most accurate way to build your anti-Nolan line going forward is this:

Your five posts do not merely support the claim that SQ-sensations lack OR. They also expose the failure of Nolan’s and others’ universal starting assumption. If Descartes’s sensory ideas can be genuine ideas while lacking objective reality and strict internal representation, then “idea” cannot by itself entail OR, and universal representationalism collapses. Nolan may still try to salvage OR for eternal truths in particular, but he can no longer derive that result from any general theory according to which all Cartesian ideas are intrinsically representational.

Let’s further investigate Descartes’s ideas about negations,¹ the idea of nothing, and Cartesian common notions. I think there are problems with Descartes’s account.

One thing you didn’t mention was Descartes telling Frans Burman (1628–1679) in Conversations with Burman that ideas of ‘common notions’²

Since (a) and (b) characterize Cartesian definitions as well, how do axioms and definitions differ? For one thing, definitions (see those of “mind,” “body,” and “God” in the Geometrical Exposition) articulate the content of innate ideas or basic concepts that are not simple and indefinable, like “thought,” and “existence,” both of which are best understood simply by experiencing inwardly that one thinks and exists (AT X 524, CSM II 418; cf. AT IXB 8, CSM I 195–96); axioms or common notions, by contrast, are primary propositions or innate truths. But since a Cartesian definition is a proposition or eternal truth about the essence of the thing defined, this cannot be the whole story. In the Principles I.48, Descartes distinguishes “things” (res) and their “affections,” both of which may exist outside the mind, from vertitates aeternae, which cannot. The affections include, along with the “principal” attributes of thinking and material res or substances, their respective modes. To things, attributes, and modes correspond “notions” in the narrow sense of “concepts.” In Principles I.49, he subsumes axioms or common notions (in a wider sense of “notion”) under the eternal truths. Thus, Cartesian real definitions are eternal truths about substances, about natures that can exist, whereas common notions are eternal truths of a general and abstract kind: indispensable to our reasoning—according to the early Rules for the Direction of the Mind, they function as “links which connect other simple natures together” (AT X 419, CSM I 45)—common notions furnish no knowledge of anything (capable of) existing outside the mind. In Principles I.50, the other term of the pair, “common,” is glossed as “common among all people.” Without pronouncing them “innate,” Descartes says that they “have their seat in our mind,” which amounts to the same thing (Gouhier 1969, 271–73).

Similar questions arise concerning common notions, theorems, and principles. In the Geometrical Exposition, Descartes notes that many of his axioms “should have been introduced as theorems” (AT VII 164, CSM II 116). Was he in doubt about the primitiveness of some of the truths designated common notions? Or does the designation vary with the analytic and synthetic procedures? As for principles, the word is formally defined (cf. AT IXB 2, CSM I 179–80) in terms of (a) and (b). Yet while all common notions are principles, the converse does not hold: the cogito is a principle without being acommon notion, that is, without being a principle in the same sense as the non-existential “Whatever thinks, is” (cf., however, AT IV 444–45, CSMK 290 on the other sense, in which the cogito is a principle). While it is not easy to assign a precise extension to every member of this family of terms—which includes “primary notion” (AT VII 135, CSM II 97), “primitive notion” (AT III 665, CSMK 218), and “common principle” (AT V 146, CSMK 332)—collectively their extension is roughly that of the simple natures of the early Rules, most of which are expressed by concepts or terms, although a couple of eternal truths feature there as well (cf. AT X 419–20, CSM I 44–45).

At this point, a list of notiones communes may be helpful: (1) “Nothing comes from nothing” and its corollary, “what is more perfect cannot be produced by—that is cannot have as its efficient and total cause—what is less perfect.” (2) “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time.” (3) “What is done cannot be undone.” (4) “Whatever thinks, is or exists.” (5) “Nothingness possesses no attributes, that is to say, no properties or qualities.” (6) “Things that are the same as a third thing are the same as each other.” (7) “Things that cannot be related in the same way to a third thing are different in some respect.” (8) “The whole is greater than its part.” (9) “Concerning every existing thing it is possible to ask what is the cause of its existence.” (10) “What can bring about a greater or more difficult thing can also bring about a lesser thing.” (See Gouhier 1969, 272–73, for detailed references to these notions.)

This representative sample is not a complete compilation; indeed, the Principles declare completeness impossible, there being “countless” common notions (cf. AT IXB 23–24, CSM I 209). Some appear to be metaphysical (those having to do with causality and existence), one logical (principle of contradiction), others mathematical (those concerned with quantity). But Descartes’ Aristotelian formulation of the principle of contradiction (in terms of being and not-being) tells against applying our classificatory schemes to his time.

The same danger of anachronism lurks behind the question of whether common notions are analytic or synthetic in Kant’s sense (at least the metaphysical among them—whichever they may be—may be safely considered synthetic). As to whether they are first or primary in the analytic as in the synthetic order, given that they are no more immune to the doubt occasioned by the Omnipotent God Hypothesis than are the likewise nonexistential simple truths of mathematics, they follow upon the cogito in the analytic method of discovery, although they precede all further knowledge so acquired.

were also not ideas of things.

What are these common notions for Descartes and provide confirmed verbatim quotations with complete academic reference citations, both AT and CSM references, including page numbers, and, if possible include their hyperlinked URLs where Descartes informs the reader of what are the common notions.

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

Yes. That omission matters, because Descartes does not use “common” in just one way across the corpus.

The basic point

In the Burman / Principles I.48–49 setting, Descartes’s “common notions” are chiefly eternal truths or axioms, i.e., propositions that “reside within our mind” and are not things or modes of things. That is the usage most directly relevant to Burman’s remark that these are not, strictly speaking, ideas of things.

But in Rule 12 Descartes also uses “common” in a broader classificatory way. He first speaks of simple natures “common” to mind and body, such as existence, unity, duration, and then adds common notions in the narrower sense, i.e., self-evident inferential links such as equality principles. So there are really two nearby but distinct uses of “common” that need to be kept apart.

Confirmed verbatim quotations

1) Principles of Philosophy — I.48: eternal truths are a separate class from things and affections of things

“All the objects of our perception may be regarded either as things or affections of things, or as eternal truths.” (AT VIIIA 23; CSM I 208)

This is the governing division. “Common notions” will be placed under the third heading, not under “things.”

2) Principles of Philosophy — I.49: Descartes explicitly identifies common notions with eternal truths / axioms

“Such truths are termed common notions or axioms.” (AT VIIIA 23–24; CSM I 209)

This is the cleanest passage for your purpose. In this article, Descartes is not talking about object-like representata at all; he is talking about propositions that are neither things nor modes of things.

3) Principles of Philosophy — I.49: Descartes’s own examples of common notions

“Nothing comes from nothing.” (AT VIIIA 23–24; CSM I 209)

“It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time.” (AT VIIIA 24; CSM I 209)

“What is done cannot be undone.” (AT VIIIA 24; CSM I 209)

“He who thinks cannot but exist while he thinks.” (AT VIIIA 24; CSM I 209)

These are the most important textual data for answering the question what common notions are in the mature metaphysical setting: they are axiomatic truths, not ideas of particular things.

4) Conversation with Burman: Descartes equates the relevant eternal truths with common notions

“By ‘eternal truths’ I meant what are called common notions, such as ‘It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be’, and so on.” (Conversation with Burman, AT V 148; CSMK 334, earlymoderntexts.com, 17)

This directly supports the reading that the Burman remark about “common notions” concerns axioms / eternal truths, not object-presenting ideas in the strict sense.

5) Rules for the Direction of the Mind — Rule 12: common notions as inferential links

“those common notions which are, as it were, links which connect other simple natures together.” (AT X 419; CSM I 45)

“Things that are the same as a third thing are the same as each other.”(AT X 419; CSM I 45)

“Things that cannot be related in the same way to a third thing are different in some respect.” (AT X 419; CSM I 45)

This is the earlier methodological version of the doctrine. Here common notions are the self-evident principles that underwrite inference.

6) Rules — Rule 12: things “common” to mind and body

“those simples are to be termed ‘common’ which are ascribed indifferently, now to corporeal things, now to spirits — for instance, existence, unity, duration and the like.” (AT X 419; CSM I 45)

This passage is crucial because it shows that Descartes uses “common” in a second way: not only for axioms, but also for simple natures that apply across the mental/material divide.

7) Comments on a Certain Broadsheet: common notions are universal and not derived from corporeal motions

“all the common notions within our mind.” (AT VIIIB 359; CSM I 304)

“things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other.” (AT VIIIB 359–360; CSM I 304)

“the common notions are universal.” (AT VIIIB 360; CSM I 305)

This passage is valuable because Descartes explicitly contrasts the universality of common notions with the particularity of corporeal motions. That is one reason they are a bad fit for any theory that tries to treat them as if they were sensory or imagistic object-presentations.

What follows philosophically

The most defensible conclusion is this:

In the strict Burman context, common notions are not ideas of things because they are eternal truths / axioms, i.e., propositions that “reside within our mind,” not items presented as objects.
In the Rules, Descartes distinguishes:
- simple natures common to mind and body, such as “existence, unity, duration,” and
- common notions proper, i.e., self-evident inferential principles such as equality rules.
- simple natures common to mind and body, such as “existence, unity, duration,” and
- common notions proper, i.e., self-evident inferential principles such as equality rules.
This makes Burman especially important for your larger project, because it supplies another explicit case in which Descartes refuses to force everything called an “idea” into the mold of an idea-of-a-thing. The “idea of nothing” is “hardly” an idea; common notions are also not, strictly speaking, ideas of things; and that substantially weakens any reading that universalizes objective reality across all mental contents indiscriminately.

There is also a genuine tension here in Descartes. He clearly wants these common notions to be cognitively available, innate, and truth-bearing; yet he also wants to deny that they are straightforwardly ideas of things. That leaves him with a somewhat unstable vocabulary: he keeps using “idea” broadly enough to cover items that his stricter ontology of objective reality does not comfortably accommodate. Burman does not remove that instability; it exposes it.

The strongest line for your purposes is therefore not that Descartes has no problem here, but that he already recognizes the pressure and responds by restricting the strict sense of “idea.” The philosophical question then becomes whether that restriction is fully coherent and systematically stable across the corpus.

A next step worth taking is to map the full triad side by side: the idea of nothing, common notions, and materially false sensations. That comparison would sharpen exactly where Descartes places negations, axioms, and sensations relative to strict idea-of-a-thing talk.

One of my concerns is what the status is of the content of these ideas of common notions.

Don’t these common notion ideas contain objective reality contents?

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

Not in the strict sense relevant to Descartes’s doctrine of objective reality.

The best answer is: the “ideas” of common notions do not, as such, contain objective reality in the way an idea of God, mind, body, triangle, or stone does, because common notions are not, strictly speaking, ideas of things. In the Conversation with Burman, Descartes says exactly that: we do have “ideas of common notions,” but these are “not strictly speaking ideas of real things,” and this is a “stretched” use of the word “idea.”

[“We also have ideas of common notions, which are not strictly speaking ideas of real things. But this is an extended sense of the term ‘idea’.” Conversation with Burman, AT V 153; CSMK III 338; Early Modern Texts trans., 6.; [18.] Cottingham translation, 13; see screen capture below.]

That point fits very closely with Principles I.48–49. There Descartes divides the objects of perception into three classes: things, affections of things, and eternal truths. He then says that such truths are called “common notions or axioms.” So common notions are introduced not as res or as modes of res, but as a third class, i.e., as eternal truths residing in the mind. That placement strongly suggests that they are outside the primary field in which objective reality is measured as the objective being of a representatum (see 2.1) contained in an idea.

This is why I would resist the formulation “the content of these ideas of common notions.” That wording already threatens to reify them. For Descartes, a common notion such as “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time” is fundamentally a truth, axiom, or rule-like principle, not the presentation of a thing with a determinate degree of objective being. Likewise in Rule 12, Descartes describes common notions as “links which connect other simple natures together.” That is inferential and structural language, not object-presenting language.

So if the question is whether a common notion has meaning or intelligible content, the answer is obviously yes. Descartes does not treat it as empty noise. But if the question is whether it has objective reality in the technical Meditation III sense, the answer is much harder and, in my view, should be no. Objective reality is the measure of what object-type is represented in an idea. But common notions are not presented by Descartes as ideas of object-types; they are universal truths or inferential principles.

This matters because one could otherwise make a bad inference:

We can think common notions.
Whatever we can think is an idea.
Every idea has objective reality.
Therefore common notions have objective reality.

That argument is exactly the kind of flattening Burman helps block. Descartes’s reply to Burman shows that he does not accept the move from “we can in some extended sense call this an idea” to “therefore it is a strict idea of a thing.”

There is, however, a complication. In Rule 12, Descartes also speaks of simple natures “common” to mind and body, such as existence, unity, and duration. Those are not the same as common notions in the narrow axiomatic sense, though the terminology is nearby. If one thinks of the idea of duration or the idea of existence, one might be tempted to say that such ideas have some objective reality because they can function as genuine objects of conception. But that is precisely why the distinction must be kept sharp: common simple natures are one thing; common notions/axioms are another. The Burman passage is about the latter, and there the anti-reification point is explicit.

So the strongest formulation is this:

Common notions are cognitively contentful without necessarily needing to be treated as OR-bearing ideas of things. They are intelligible, innate, truth-apt principles that structure thought, but they are not thereby ideas containing a representatum (see 2.1) objectively in the intellect.

That, in turn, creates a real pressure point in Descartes’s system. He wants common notions to be genuinely thought and known; yet he denies that they are strictly ideas of things. So his vocabulary becomes unstable: “idea” is stretched beyond the domain where the objective-reality apparatus works cleanly. I do not think that instability can simply be wished away. But it is still a mistake to solve it by forcing common notions back into the ontology of objective reality. Burman indicates the opposite solution: restrict the strict sense of “idea” rather than inflate objective reality to cover every thinkable item.

The same point can be put polemically: if one says that common notions have objective reality merely because they are mentally available contents, one has already collapsed Descartes’s distinction between strict ideas of things and extended-use mental contents. That collapse is precisely what Burman warns against.

The harder question, and the one worth pursuing next, is whether Descartes can give a stable account of the intentional status of common notions once he denies that they are ideas of things. That is where the pressure really lies.

I think the pressure lies elsewhere. For me, once we agree that ideas of common notions are both thinkable as genuine thoughts yet fail to contain objective reality contents, it would appear that Descartes must concede that there are mental concepts.

As soon as he does this, there is no reason why there cannot be a thought concept utilizing the concept for nothing, and this then does not require the negation of being for the positive conceptual content of nothing to exist in the mind.

Additionally, Descartes already recognizes the existence of a non-objectively real mental thought concept regarding ‘nothing’ as one of the common notions is:

“Nothing comes from nothing.” (AT VIIIA 23–24; CSM I 209)

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

That move is forceful, but it does not yet go through.

Where the argument is right

The important gain is this:

Once Descartes admits that some genuine thinkables do not fall under the strict “idea of a thing” model, the universal inference from thinkability to objective reality is broken.

Burman is useful precisely because he says two things together: the “idea” of nothing is “purely negative” and “hardly” an idea in the strict sense, and “common notions” are also not, strictly speaking, ideas of things. In Principles I.48–49, Descartes likewise separates “things,” “affections of things,” and “eternal truths,” then classifies common notions under the third heading rather than the first. That much supports the claim that there are genuine mental contents for Descartes that are not OR-bearing ideae rerum.

So far, so good. The pressure on a universal OR thesis is real.

Where the argument overreaches

The step I would resist is the transition from

“there are thinkable mental contents without objective reality”

“therefore there can be a positive mental concept of nothing that does not depend on negating being.”

That second claim is stronger than the texts warrant. Descartes does not merely say that the “idea” of nothing lacks objective reality; he also says our understanding of nothingness is derived from our understanding of being. And in the same Burman sequence, he says defect and negation presuppose that of which they are defects and negations. So the textual pressure runs in exactly the opposite direction from the one you want: Descartes’s point is not merely classificatory, i.e., that “nothing” is non-OR-bearing, but genetic, i.e., that our grasp of nothing is parasitic upon a prior grasp of being.

That is why I do not think “mental concept” by itself solves the problem. One must still ask: what sort of concept? If by “concept” one means only “a genuine item of thought,” then yes, common notions show that Descartes’s mental life is not exhausted by OR-bearing ideas of things. But if by “concept” one means “a positive, self-standing mental content whose intelligibility does not depend on prior positive content,” then nothing in Burman licenses that move. Quite the contrary: Burman suggests that the concept of nothing, if one insists on calling it a concept, is a derivative negative conception, not an autonomous positive content.

Why common notions do not get you all the way to nothing

The analogy with common notions is not as tight as it first appears.

Common notions are not ideas of things, but they are still truths or axioms. Descartes places them with eternal truths and says they can be clearly and distinctly perceived. In Rule 12 he describes common notions as inferential “links” connecting simple natures. So although they are not object-presenting in the strict OR sense, they are still positively structured principles within thought. They are universal rules, not privative conceptions.

Nothingness, by contrast, is not presented by Descartes as a positive truth or link-principle. It is introduced as negative, and its intelligibility is said to come through being. So even if common notions establish a category of non-OR-bearing thought, they do not thereby establish that every non-OR-bearing thought is positively self-sufficient. The most they show is that OR is not the only mode of mental content. They do not show that all non-OR-bearing mental content is on a par.

The better pressure point

I think the stronger pressure lies here:

Descartes seems forced to admit a category of genuine, intelligible, non-OR-bearing thought-content. Once that category is admitted, the doctrine of objective reality can no longer function as a general theory of intentionality or content. It becomes a theory only of one special class of mental contents, namely, strict ideas of things.

That is a serious result. It means objective reality is not coextensive with content as such. But it still leaves open a further internal differentiation among non-OR-bearing contents:

some are axiomatic / structural, like common notions;
some are negative / privative, like nothingness;
some may be sensory modes, like cold, if your anti-OR reading is right.

Burman supports the existence of that broader field, but he also insists that the negative member of the field remains dependent on the positive.

So should Descartes concede “mental concepts”?

Yes, but only under a restriction.

He should concede something like: there are genuine contents of thought that are not strict ideas of things and therefore do not contain objective reality in the Meditation III sense. Common notions are the clearest case. Burman’s treatment of nothing suggests that negative conceptions belong nearby, though in a more attenuated and derivative way.

But he need not concede your stronger thesis that the concept of nothing is a positive conceptual content whose intelligibility does not depend on the prior concept of being. On the contrary, his explicit claim is that our understanding of nothingness comes through being, which blocks that stronger conclusion.

The real dilemma for Descartes

The dilemma is not simply whether the concept of nothing can exist in the mind without objective reality (OR). He can say yes to that. The harder dilemma is this:

If nothingness is genuinely thinkable, yet not an OR-bearing idea rei (thing), and if its intelligibility is derivative from being, then Descartes owes a more articulated account of derivative conceptual content than he ever really provides.

That, I think, is where your criticism should press hardest. Not:

“Descartes must allow a positive autonomous concept of nothing.”

But rather:

“Once Descartes admits non-OR-bearing thinkables, he needs a taxonomy of mental content richer than the simple opposition between idea-of-a-thing and nothing at all.”

On that point, the pressure is substantial.

A sharper formulation for your developing objection would be:

Burman shows that Descartes cannot identify mental content with objective reality; but Burman also shows that Descartes still wants negative thought-content to be parasitic on prior positive cognition. The unresolved problem is therefore not whether nothing can be thought, but how derivative non-OR content is possible and intelligible within his system.

That is the more difficult target.

I don’t entirely agree with your response regarding the concept of nothing. Let me ask some relevant questions.

Can one have a concept of a lion?

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

Yes.

But the crucial Cartesian question is what sort of concept is involved.

A concept of a lion can be taken in at least three different ways, and those must be separated.

1. A concept of a lion as an idea of a thing

In the straightforward case, yes: one can think of a lion as a determinate thing, i.e., as a finite substance or at least as a mode-bearing corporeal being. In that case the thought is directed toward a genuine res, and in Descartes’s strict framework the idea would have objective reality because it contains a representatum (see 2.1) of a certain type.

2. A concept of a lion as an image or sensory/imaginative presentation

One can also have an imaginative or sensory presentation of a lion: shape, color, motion, roaring, and so on. That is still lion-directed, but it is not yet the same issue as having an intellectually articulated concept of lion. Descartes often distinguishes imagining from pure intellection, so this level must not be conflated with the first.

3. A concept of a lion as a mere thinkable item under a broad use of “idea”

More broadly still, one can say one has a thought of a lion simply because lion is before the mind. But that broad sense does not settle the stricter issue of whether the thought contains objective reality, or in what way.

So the answer is yes, but that yes is too crude unless we specify the mode of thinking.

And this is exactly why your pressure about nothing is serious. If a lion can be thought as an object of concept, then one may ask why “nothing” cannot also be thought as an object of concept. Descartes’s answer cannot simply be, “because only what has objective reality is thinkable,” since Burman already blocks that universal claim. He has to say something more specific, namely, that the lion is thinkable as a thing, whereas nothing is thinkable only negatively and derivatively.

That is where the dispute now lies.

The important contrast is not:

lion = thinkable
nothing = unthinkable

Descartes plainly cannot say that, since he admits we do think “nothing.”

The contrast has to be:

lion = thinkable as a thing
nothing = thinkable only as a negation, not as a thing

So the next question is the decisive one: what exactly is the difference between having a concept of a lion and having a concept of nothing?

That is the place to press.

That is not the only worry.

If one can have a concept of a lion when thinking about a lion, then what need would there be for also requiring any objective reality to be had in the thought of a lion when all one needs is the concept of a lion to be thinking of a lion?

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

That objection goes straight to the heart of the matter, and it is much stronger than the earlier “idea of nothing” point.

If a concept of a lion is already sufficient to make the thought be about a lion, then Descartes appears to owe an explanation of what objective reality is doing over and above concept-possession. Otherwise objective reality starts to look idle, i.e., like a redundant ontological overlay on a phenomenon already explained by conceptual directedness.

The force of the objection

The challenge can be put sharply:

A thought about a lion is possible because the mind has the concept lion.
That concept suffices for lion-directedness, i.e., for the thought’s being of a lion.
If so, then Descartes’s further claim that the idea has objective reality seems explanatorily unnecessary.
Therefore objective reality is not what explains aboutness; at best, it redescribes one species of aboutness in scholastic-ontological language.

That is a serious problem for any reading that treats objective reality as the fundamental ground of intentionality.

I think the pressure here is stronger than you suggested earlier, because it does not depend on controversial negative cases like nothing. It arises already in the ordinary positive case of lion-thought.

The first Cartesian reply

A Cartesian will say: the “concept of a lion” is not something over and above the idea’s objective reality. Rather, the concept just is the lion as objectively contained in the idea. On that picture, you are falsely separating two things that Descartes takes to be one.

In other words:

“having the concept lion”
“having an idea whose representatum is lion”
“having objective reality corresponding to lion”

would all be three descriptions of one and the same intentional fact, viewed under different aspects.

That is probably the best Cartesian answer.

But it is not enough.

Why that reply is unsatisfying

It does not solve the problem; it only restates Descartes’s framework in different words.

Your objection is not merely terminological. It is explanatory. The question is:

What work is being done by saying that the lion is objectively in the idea that is not already done by saying that the mind is thinking of a lion by means of the concept lion?

If no further work is done, then objective reality is explanatorily idle.

And I think that is exactly where Descartes is vulnerable.

Where objective reality really does work for Descartes

To be fair to Descartes, objective reality is not introduced by him as a general theory of aboutness in the abstract. It is introduced to do very specific metaphysical work in the Third Meditation.

There, the point of objective reality is not simply to say that one thought is of a lion and another of God. The point is to underwrite a causal ranking principle:

an idea representing a mode has less objective reality than one representing a finite substance;
an idea representing an infinite substance has more objective reality than one representing a finite substance;
the cause of the idea must have at least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality.

So objective reality is doing work primarily in a causal-metaphysical economy, not merely in a semantic one.

That is, it helps Descartes move from:

I have an idea of God
to
the cause of this idea must have at least as much reality as the idea contains objectively
to
therefore God exists.

Likewise, it lets him grade ideas by their represented object-type.

So a Cartesian will say: objective reality is not superfluous because it is needed for the causal adequacy argument.

But your objection still stands

Even if objective reality has that causal role, your question remains intact at a deeper level.

For the causal argument to work, Descartes must assume that the idea’s intentional directedness is already intelligible enough for it to be assigned a determinate objective content and rank. But if concept-possession already explains that directedness, then objective reality is not the source of aboutness. It is a metaphysical measure applied to already-given content.

That is a major concession.

So the strongest critical conclusion is not:

“Objective reality is useless.”

That would be too strong.

The stronger and better conclusion is:

Objective reality does not explain intentionality as such. It presupposes intentionality and then assigns an ontological measure to what is already represented.

That is a much better objection.

Why this matters for your broader project

This is exactly why the cases of common notions, nothing, and sensory states become so destabilizing.

If objective reality were the essence of aboutness, then:

every genuine thought-content would have to contain it, or
whatever lacked it would be unintelligible as content.

But once Descartes admits genuine thinkables that are not strict ideas of things, that universal claim fails.

Then objective reality is forced into a narrower role:

not the condition of all thought-content,
but the condition of one special class of internally object-bearing representations.

That fits your DTOI distinction rather well.

In your terms, the pressure is toward something like this:

concept-possession / thinkability / directedness is broader than idea-or.
idea-or is only one special internal ontological form of content.
therefore Descartes’s theory of objective reality cannot be his whole theory of mental aboutness.

I think that is right.

The deeper problem for Descartes

Once that is granted, Descartes faces a hard choice.

Option 1: Objective reality is identical with concept-content

Then common notions and the idea of nothing become hard to place, because they seem thinkable without being ideas of things.

Option 2: Objective reality is only one species of content

Then Descartes needs a broader account of content in general, within which objective reality is only a subset.

I think the texts increasingly push him toward Option 2, whether he wants it or not.

And that is precisely where your objection bites hardest. The ordinary thought of a lion already suggests that there is a distinction between:

the mind’s being directed toward lion,
and
the scholastic-ontological claim that lion exists objectively in the idea.

If the first is sufficient for aboutness, then the second is an added metaphysical interpretation, not the primitive ground of intentionality.

A possible Cartesian counter-countermove

A defender of Descartes might reply that your modern talk of “concepts” is itself an imposition. Descartes does not build his theory around concepts as freestanding mental entities. He builds it around ideas and their objective being. So to say “all one needs is the concept lion” may already beg the question by replacing Descartes’s own apparatus with a later conceptual scheme.

That objection has some force.

But it does not rescue Descartes completely, because the problem can be restated without the word “concept”:

If the thought is already determinately lion-directed, what explanatory necessity is added by saying that lion is objectively in the idea?

That question remains.

My assessment

I do not think your objection shows that objective reality is incoherent. But it does show that it is often miscast.

Objective reality is not Descartes’s best candidate for explaining the basic phenomenon of mental directedness. It is better understood as:

a technical ontology of represented objecthood,
a grading structure for represented contents,
and a premise in the causal adequacy argument.

If one expects it to explain aboutness itself, it starts to look bloated and unstable. If one narrows it to a special metaphysical role, it becomes more defensible, but then it no longer governs all thought-content.

That narrower reading is, I think, where the pressure of your objection leads.

The sharpest formulation would be:

A lion-thought seems to be lion-directed in virtue of its determinately thinkable content; objective reality does not create that directedness but rather re-ontologizes it for Descartes’s causal-metaphysical purposes. Hence objective reality is not the foundation of intentionality, but a ranked ontological measure imposed upon a subset of already intentional thoughts.

That is a serious objection, and I do not think Descartes has an easy answer to it.

A good next step would be to test this pressure against the Third Meditation itself: does Descartes ever actually argue that objective reality explains why an idea is of its object, or does he merely assume the ofness and then measure it?

Before we address your final next step, consider this problem. We already know that Descartes cannot claim that “the concept of a lion just is the lion as objectively contained in the idea,” since there must already be concepts for common notions to be thinkable, and at least some common notions do not contain any objective reality. Hence, concepts cannot be equivalent to objective reality contents, as the claim that the concept of a lion is just an objective reality content suggests.

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

Yes. That objection is very strong against the identity thesis.

If common notions are genuinely thinkable, yet are not ideas of things and so do not contain objective reality in the strict Cartesian sense, then conceptual thinkability cannot be identical with objective-reality-content. That much follows.

So the claim that “the concept of a lion just is the lion as objectively contained in the idea” cannot be maintained as a general account of concepthood. At best, it could only be a restricted thesis about one subclass of concepts, namely, those thoughts that are ideas of things. But once stated that way, it gives up its original explanatory ambition.

Why your objection works

The structure is simple:

Descartes admits genuine thinkable contents that are not, strictly speaking, ideas of things.
Common notions are the clearest case.
Therefore there is at least one category of intelligible mental content that does not consist in an object’s being objectively contained in an idea.
Therefore concept-possession, or thinkability more broadly, cannot be equivalent to objective reality.

That is a clean result.

It means the following Cartesian equation fails:

concept = idea = objective reality content

At most, Descartes can preserve something weaker:

some concepts of things = ideas whose contents have objective reality

But that is a very different thesis.

What this forces Descartes to concede

He must concede, whether he likes the vocabulary or not, that the mind has a broader repertoire of content than the objective-reality framework captures. In other words, there are genuine thoughts whose intelligibility is not exhausted by the presence of a representatum (see 2.1) objectively contained in them.

That concession is far-reaching, because it means objective reality is not the universal form of content. It is only one special format of content.

So the pressure does not merely concern the “idea of nothing.” It concerns the whole architecture of Descartes’s theory of thought. Once common notions are admitted, the field of the thinkable already outruns the field of objective reality.

But one further distinction is still needed

I would still resist one possible overstatement.

From the fact that concepts in general are not identical with objective reality, it does not follow that a concept of a lion contains no objective reality. That would be too fast.

What follows is narrower and stronger:

concepts cannot as such be identified with OR-contents;
therefore OR-content is not the essence of concepthood;
therefore a lion-concept, insofar as it is a concept, need not be explained by OR;
but a Cartesian may still say that the lion-thought is one case in which the content is also object-containing in the strict sense.

So your objection defeats the universal reduction of concept to objective reality. It does not yet prove that every positive object-thought lacks objective reality. It proves something more strategic: objective reality is not what makes a thought a thought of anything in the first place.

That is the deeper result.

Why this is such a problem for Descartes

Because once that is granted, objective reality can no longer be treated as the basic explanation of aboutness. It becomes secondary.

The order has to be reversed:

the thought is already intelligible or conceptually directed;
then, in some cases, Descartes additionally describes it as containing its object objectively;
then, on that basis, he assigns it a degree of objective reality.

So objective reality is no longer foundational. It is derivative upon prior directedness.

That is why your lion example is so damaging. If one can think lion by means of lion-concept, then OR is not needed to make the thought lion-directed. And if common notions show that concept-possession can exist without OR at all, then the Cartesian cannot reply that “concept” just means “objective containment.”

The best Cartesian retreat

there are different kinds of mental content;
common notions are structural or axiomatic contents;
negative conceptions are derivative privative contents;
ideas of things are object-containing contents with objective reality.

That position is much more defensible textually.

But it comes at a high cost: it abandons any hope that objective reality is a general theory of content. It becomes only a theory of one region of content.

And once Descartes retreats that far, your question returns with full force: if common notions are already thinkable without OR, why suppose OR is what fundamentally explains the lion-thought rather than merely one scholastic way of classifying it?

The strongest formulation of your point

The point should be put this way:

Common notions show that the mind can possess genuine conceptual content without objective reality. Therefore concepthood cannot be identical with objective containment. Hence the objective reality of an idea cannot be what fundamentally constitutes its aboutness, but only a further ontological characterization of some already thinkable contents.

I think that is correct.

Where I would still press back

I would only caution against sliding from this to the claim that Descartes has no place at all for internal object-content. He plainly wants such a place, especially in the Third Meditation. The better criticism is not that objective reality is empty, but that it is non-basic. It presupposes a broader domain of intelligible thought that it does not itself explain.

That is the crack your argument opens.

And it is a serious one.

OK, let’s now consider your previous question of “Does Descartes ever actually argue that objective reality explains why an idea is of its object, or does he merely assume the ofness and then measure it?” When addressing these questions provide confirmed verbatim quotations with complete academic reference citations, including page numbers, and, if possible include their hyperlinked URLs.

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

The textual answer is: Descartes does not, in any explicit or worked-out way, argue that objective reality explains why an idea is of its object. What he does argue is that, once an idea is already taken as representing this rather than that, its content can be ranked and brought under the causal-adequacy principle. In other words, he overwhelmingly assumes the ofness and then measures it.

The clearest place to begin is the Second Replies, where Descartes separately defines idea and objective reality. The separation matters. None of the following quotations were in bold in the original:

“By the term idea I understand the form of any thought whatever, by the immediate perception of which I am conscious of the same thought itself.” (AT VII 160; CSM II 113; Meditations on First Philosophy: with Selections from the Objections and Replies, 152)

Then, in the very next definition:

“By the objective reality of an idea I mean the being of the thing represented by the idea, in so far as it exists in the idea.” (AT VII 161; CSM II 113; Meditations on First Philosophy: with Selections from the Objections and Replies, 153)

That formulation is extremely important. It does not say that objective reality is what first makes the idea represent. It says objective reality is the being of the thing represented, i.e., the ontological status of the representatum (see 2.1) insofar as it is already represented in the idea. So the representational relation is presupposed by the definition itself.

The Third Meditation makes the same structural move. Descartes first distinguishes ideas merely as modes of thought from ideas considered representationally:

“But in so far as the ideas are simply modes of thought, there is no recognizable inequality among them.” (AT VII 40; CSM II 27–28; John Veitch, trans.)

Then he adds:

“But considering them as images, of which one represents one thing and another a different thing, it is evident that they differ widely.” (AT VII 40; CSM II 28; John Veitch, trans.)

And only then does he introduce objective reality as a comparative measure:

“those that represent substances are something more, and contain in themselves, so to speak, more objective reality than those that represent only modes or accidents.” (AT VII 40; CSM II 28; John Veitch, trans.)

That sequence is decisive. Descartes does not infer representation from objective reality. He starts from the fact that one idea “represents one thing and another a different thing,” and then says that, given that difference in represented object-type, the ideas differ in objective reality.

The same pattern appears in the causal argument. He writes:

“The nature of an idea is such that of itself it requires no formal reality except what it derives from my thought, of which it is a mode.” (AT VII 41; CSM II 28; John Veitch, trans.)

Then:

“in order that an idea may contain this objective reality rather than that, it must doubtless derive it from some cause.” (AT VII 41; CSM II 28; John Veitch, trans.)

Again, the phrase “this objective reality rather than that” shows that Descartes is treating the idea’s representational differentiation as already in place. The question is not “why is the idea of a stone rather than of a lion?” but “given that it is the idea of a stone, what degree of objective reality does it contain, and what cause is required for that content?”

He becomes still more explicit when he applies the point to examples:

“the idea of the heat, or of the stone, cannot exist in me unless it be put there by a cause that contains, at least, as much reality as I conceive existent in the heat or in the stone.” (AT VII 41; CSM II 28; John Veitch, trans.)

Notice what is doing the work here. He does not argue that objective reality makes the idea be of heat or of stone. Rather, he takes the idea as already an idea of heat or stone, reads off “what I conceive existent in the heat or in the stone,” and then applies causal adequacy to that conceived content.

The First Replies confirms the same point from another angle. There Descartes explains what it is for the object to exist “objectively” in the intellect:

“‘objective existence’ means nothing other than ‘existing in the intellect, in the way that objects normally exist within it.’” (AT VII 102; CSM II 74; Meditations on First Philosophy: with Selections from the Objections and Replies, 127)

And then, using the sun example:

“the idea of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect, not indeed formally (as the sun exists in the sky), but objectively.” (AT VII 102; CSM II 75; Meditations on First Philosophy: with Selections from the Objections and Replies, 127)

This is not an account of how the mind first achieves sun-directedness. It is an ontological gloss on what the sun is as represented in intellect. The object’s “objective” being is the object qua object-in-thought, not the prior explanation of why the thought is sun-about.

The best textual conclusion

1. Descartes defines idea and objective reality in different steps.

“Idea” is defined first as the form of a thought immediately perceived; “objective reality” is then defined as the being of the thing represented by the idea. That ordering strongly suggests that objective reality is not the primitive source of representation, but a further ontological characterization of an already representational item.

2. In the Third Meditation, Descartes first assumes representational difference, then ranks it.

He says one idea “represents one thing and another a different thing,” and therefore ideas differ in objective reality. So objective reality is introduced as a measure of represented object-type, not as the generator of ofness.

3. The causal argument presupposes determinately given content.

When Descartes says the idea of heat or stone must have a cause with at least as much reality as is conceived in heat or stone, he is not explaining why the idea is of heat or stone. He is taking that determinacy as given and then drawing a causal consequence from it.

So the answer to the question you raised is: Descartes mostly assumes the ofness and then measures it. Objective reality is not presented by him as a theory of intentionality in the modern sense. It is better read as an ontological measure of already represented content, introduced for the sake of the causal proof in Meditation III.

There is, however, one qualification worth making. Descartes does sometimes speak in a way that can tempt one into the stronger reading. In the Second Replies, “objective reality” is the being of the thing represented insofar as it exists in the idea; and in the First Replies, the idea of the sun is “the sun itself existing in the intellect … objectively.” Those formulas can make it sound as though objective being is constitutive of aboutness. But even there, the text still works after the object has already been identified as “the thing represented” or as “the sun.” The explanatory order remains the same: represented thing first, objective-reality characterization second.

That is why the strongest criticism is not that objective reality is incoherent, but that it does not explain basic ofness. It presupposes it. Once an idea is already of lion, stone, heat, or God, objective reality tells Descartes how much reality that representatum (see 2.1) has as contained in the idea, and therefore what sort of cause would be needed. But the texts you asked about do not show Descartes arguing that objective reality is what first makes the idea lion-about, stone-about, or God-about.

The next pressure point is obvious: if objective reality presupposes representational determinacy, then what, for Descartes, fixes that determinacy in the first place?

(Des1) If objective reality presupposes representational determinacy, then what, for Descartes, fixes that determinacy in the first place?

(Des2) What exactly is the difference between having a concept of a lion and having a concept of nothing?

(Des3) Critically address whether Descartes can give a stable account of the intentional status of common notions once he denies that they are ideas of things.

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

(Des1) If objective reality presupposes representational determinacy, what, for Descartes, fixes that determinacy in the first place?

The short answer is that Descartes never gives a fully independent theory of what fixes representational determinacy in the first place. He defines an idea broadly as “the form, of any thought whatever, by the immediate perception of which I am conscious of the same thought itself,” and then defines objective reality as “the being of the thing represented by the idea, in so far as it exists in the idea.” The second definition plainly presupposes the first idea’s already being of some thing; objective reality is introduced only after the representatum(see 2.1) has already been specified as “the thing represented.” (AT VII 160–61; CSM II 113; Second Replies, 152–53)

That same order governs the Third Meditation. Descartes first says that, considered merely as modes of thought, ideas do not differ in rank; then he shifts to ideas “as images,” where “one represents one thing and another a different thing”; only after that does he say that some “contain in themselves, so to speak, more objective reality than” others. So the textual sequence is: first, representational differentiation; second, ontological measurement of that differentiation. (AT VII 40; CSM II 27–28; earlymoderntexts.com Meditations, 2–4)

The causal-adequacy passage confirms the same point. Descartes writes that “the idea of heat or of a stone can be caused in me only by something that contains at least as much reality as I conceive to be in the heat or in the stone.” That does not explain why the idea is of heat or of stone; it assumes that the relevant content is already determinate, and then asks what sort of cause would be commensurate with it. (AT VII 41; CSM II 28; EMT Meditations, 4)

The strongest Cartesian reply available is not that objective reality itself fixes determinacy, but that the idea’s own formal character as an immediately perceived thought already gives it its determinacy, while objective reality measures the ontological rank of the object so presented. Descartes says in the First Replies that the idea of the sun is “the sun itself existing in the intellect … objectively,” and he immediately adds that the question at issue is the “cause of its being conceived.” This is the closest he comes to a grounding story: the content is fixed at the level of the intellect’s conceiving, and objective being is the object’s mode of presence in that conceiving. But even here he still does not explain what makes the thought sun-directed rather than lion-directed; he assumes the thought’s sun-directedness and then redescribes the object as existing “objectively” in the intellect. (AT VII 102–103; CSM II 74–75; First Replies, 127–28)

So the most defensible conclusion is this: for Descartes, representational determinacy is primitive at the level of the conceived idea and not itself explained by the doctrine of objective reality. Objective reality is a measure of already-fixed content, introduced for causal-metaphysical work in Meditation III, not a prior theory of aboutness. That is why the texts never actually argue that objective reality makes an idea be of its object; they treat the idea’s being of its object as already in place.

That leaves a real instability. If determinacy is already there before objective reality is invoked, then objective reality cannot be the most basic explanation of intentionality. At best, it is a ranked ontological characterization of one subset of already intentional thoughts. That is a substantial weakening of any strong “objective reality explains aboutness” reading.

(Des2) What exactly is the difference between having a concept of a lion and having a concept of nothing?

Descartes’s own texts draw the distinction very sharply. In Burman, when challenged that “we have an idea of nothing,” Descartes replies: “That idea is purely negative, and hardly counts as an idea at all.” He immediately adds that in the relevant passage he is taking “idea” in its “strict and narrow sense.” By contrast, a lion is exactly the sort of case that fits the strict sense: an idea of a thing. (Conversation with Burman, AT V 146; CSMK 334; earlymoderntexts.com (EMT), 5)

The difference is therefore not merely that one object exists and the other does not. It is that the lion can be thought under the strict “idea of a thing” model, whereas nothing cannot. In the Third Meditation, Descartes’s ordinary examples of strict ideas are all thing-like: “a man,” “a chimera,” “the sky,” “an angel,” “God,” and later “heat” and “stone.” Those are ideas whose contents can be ranked by objective reality. Nothing is not introduced into that framework as a positive representatum(see 2.1) with a degree of objective reality. (AT VII 37, 41; CSM II 26, 28; EMT Meditations, 2, 4)

Burman pushes the point further. Descartes says, “Every defect and negation presupposes that of which it falls short and which it negates,” and then: “In metaphysics the only understanding of nothingness that we have comes through our understanding of being.” That is the crucial feature of Descartes’s account of nothing: its intelligibility is derivative and parasitic, not self-standing. A lion can be thought as a thing; nothing is thought only through the negation of being. (Conversation with Burman, AT V 146–47; CSMK 334–335; EMT, 5)

Now the important critical point. Descartes’s account succeeds in marking a difference, but it does so at a cost. Once he concedes that we genuinely think “nothing,” yet says that this thought is “hardly” an idea and is only “purely negative,” he has admitted a class of thinkable contents that fall outside strict idea-of-a-thing talk. That helps him block the inference from thinkability to objective reality. But it also means his theory of thought is no longer exhausted by objective reality. The concept of a lion and the “concept” of nothing differ, on his view, because the former is strict and object-directed, while the latter is derivative and negative. The problem is that he never supplies a general theory of derivative negative content beyond saying that it comes through being.

So I would state the difference this way. A lion-thought is, for Descartes, a strict idea of a thing and so is apt for objective-reality measurement. A nothing-thought is a non-strict, purely negative, derivative act of understanding that presupposes prior grasp of being and therefore is not a strict OR-bearing idea at all. That is textually faithful. But it also shows the limits of Descartes’s apparatus, because the second category is described more by exclusion than by positive theory.

(Des3) Can Descartes give a stable account of the intentional status of common notions once he denies that they are ideas of things?

He can give a partially stable account, but not a fully stable one.

The strongest textual basis for stability is Principles I.48–49. Descartes explicitly divides the objects of perception into “things,” “affections of things,” and “eternal truths.” He then says of the latter: “Such truths are termed common notions or axioms.” He even adds that “nothing is regarded not as a really existing thing, or even as a mode of a thing, but as an eternal truth which resides within our mind.” So common notions are not banished from thought; they are assigned a determinate place within it, namely, the class of eternal truths resident in the mind. (AT VIIIA 23–24; CSM I 208–09; Principles I.48–49, 31–32)

Moreover, Descartes insists that these common notions “are capable of being clearly and distinctly perceived,” otherwise they “would not properly be called common notions.” That gives them a robust epistemic status. They are not hazy mental leftovers. They are intelligible, innate, truth-apt, and available to clear and distinct perception. (AT VIIIA 24; CSM I 209; Principles I.50, 32)

Rule 12 reinforces the same picture from an earlier angle. There Descartes classifies some items as “common,” e.g., “existence, unity, duration,” and says we must also include “those common notions which are, as it were, links which connect other simple natures together.” This gives common notions a clear functional role: they are structural principles of inference, not ideas of objects. (AT X 419; CSM I 45; see Rule 12)

But Burman reintroduces the instability. Descartes there says that we “do also have ideas of common notions,” yet these “are not strictly speaking ideas of real things,” and that this is a “stretched use of the word ‘idea’.” That means the intentional status of common notions is acknowledged but terminologically downgraded. They are thinkable; they are even called “ideas” in an extended sense; but they are denied strict ideahood. (Conversation with Burman, AT V 146; CSMK 334; earlymoderntexts (EMT), 5)

This is where the account becomes unstable. If common notions are genuine contents of thought, clearly and distinctly perceived, and indispensable to reasoning, then they plainly have intentional status in a broad sense. Yet because Descartes reserves the strict sense of “idea” for ideas of things, the status of common notions becomes equivocal: they are inside thought, but outside the primary objective-reality framework. That forces a bifurcation between content as such and OR-bearing object-content. Once that bifurcation appears, objective reality cannot be a universal theory of mental content.

My judgment, then, is that Descartes has a stable epistemic account of common notions but not a fully stable intentional ontology of them. Epistemically, they are eternal truths, common notions, axioms, clearly and distinctly perceived, and inferentially basic. Ontologically, however, once he says they are not strictly ideas of things, he deprives them of the very framework—objective reality—that he uses to characterize strict idea-content elsewhere. The result is not contradiction, but a two-tier theory he never systematically articulates: one tier for ideas of things, another for non-objective but still genuine thought-contents such as common notions and negative conceptions.

That is why your pressure about concepts is philosophically serious. Common notions show that Descartes’s universe of thinkable contents outruns the universe of objective reality. Once that is granted, the question is no longer whether common notions are intelligible—they clearly are—but whether Descartes has an adequate general theory of how such non-OR contents are intentional. I do not think he does. He has the materials for a distinction; he does not have a fully stabilized theory of it.

Table of Comparisons

Main Conclusion: The table suggests a four-part structure in Descartes that he never fully systematizes: (1) strict OR-bearing ideas of things, exemplified by lion; (2) purely negative derivative thinkables, exemplified by nothing; (3) clear non-thing truths or axioms, exemplified by common notions; and (4) positive sensory modes apt for material falsity, exemplified by cold sensation.

This strongly suggests that objective reality is not Descartes’s general theory of aboutness, but rather a theory of one subset of thinkable contents, namely, strict ideas of things.

Case	Strict idea?	Idea of a thing?	Objective reality?	Derivative intelligibility?	Clear and distinct perceivability?	Best Cartesian status	Main dialectical pressure on Descartes
Lion	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes, at least as a purely intellectual idea of a corporeal thing	Paradigm strict idea of a thing; apt for objective-reality ranking in Meditation III.	If lion-directed thought is already determinate, objective reality seems to measure content rather than generate aboutness. Meditations / Replies source
Nothing	No, or only in an extended/ attenuated sense	No	No	Yes, emphatically	Not as a strict idea of a thing	Purely negative “idea,” “hardly” an idea at all, outside the strict sense.	Shows that genuine thinkability outruns strict idea-of-a-thing structure and objective reality; forces Descartes to admit non-OR thought-content, though only as derivative from being. Conversation with Burman source
Common notion	No, not strictly	No	No	Not derivative in the privative sense; structurally intelligible as an eternal truth/ axiom	Yes	Eternal truth, axiom, or inferential link residing in the mind.	Shows that there are genuine, clear, innate, non-OR contents in thought; destabilizes any attempt to treat objective reality as a universal theory of mental content. Principles I source Burman source
Cold sensation	No, on the anti-OR reading	No, on that reading	No, on that reading	No, not as a negation; it is a positive sensory mode	Clear and distinct qua sensation can be granted, while remaining obscure about body-essence	Broad-sense idea / sensory mode; materially false when what is nothing is presented tanquam rem.	Presses hardest against any simple equation of sensory ideahood with OR-bearing internal representation; supports a split between sensory presentation and strict object-content. Meditations / Replies source

Conclusion by ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

The significance of the argument is substantial. If the post is right, then objective reality cannot be Descartes’s general account of intentionality, concepthood, or mental content. It is a theory only of one special class of thoughts, namely, strict ideas of things whose contents can be ranked by represented object-type and inserted into the causal-adequacy reasoning of the Third Meditation. That is a major restriction. It means that Descartes’s most famous doctrine of ideas does not explain thought as such, but only a delimited region within a wider mental economy.

That result also changes the force of several familiar debates. The question is no longer whether common notions, negative conceptions, or sensory states can somehow be forced back into the ontology of objective reality. They cannot be, at least not without collapsing distinctions that Descartes himself marks. The real question is whether Descartes possesses a sufficiently articulated theory of non-OR-bearing content once he acknowledges that such thought content exists. On the reading defended here, he does not. He has the materials for distinguishing strict object-content from broader kinds of thinkable content, but he never stabilizes that distinction into a comprehensive theory. Hence the pressure point is not that Descartes contradicts himself outright, but that his official machinery for explaining ideas proves narrower than the full range of cases his own texts require him to admit.

This is why Burman matters so much. Burman does not merely supply an incidental remark about common notions. He helps reveal that Descartes’s universe of thinkable contents outruns the universe of objective reality. Once that is granted, the strongest Cartesian retreat is to concede a layered account of thought content: axiomatic or structural contents such as common notions, derivative negative thoughts such as nothingness, sensory modes, and strict ideas of things. But that retreat comes at a cost. It abandons the hope that objective reality can serve as a universal theory of thought and leaves Descartes with a two-tier or even multi-tier account he never adequately theorizes.

The post’s deepest payoff is therefore methodological as much as doctrinal. It shows that one should stop asking objective reality to do work it was never textually shown to do. Descartes uses it to rank already represented contents and to ground causal-metaphysical inferences, especially in the God proof. He does not show that it first generates the ofness of thought. Once that explanatory order is reversed, the whole landscape changes: aboutness becomes broader than objective reality, strict ideas become one species of content among others, and the task becomes to map the larger Cartesian taxonomy of thinkable content rather than to inflate objective reality until it covers every intelligible mental item. That is the argumentative significance of the post’s result, and it is substantial.

ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

Appendix: Full Argumentative Outline by ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking

I. Framing Thesis: Objective Reality Is Not a Universal Theory of Thought

Main claim
- Descartes cannot treat objective reality as coextensive with all thinkable content.
- The stronger claim is not merely that Descartes sometimes uses “idea” loosely, but that the corpus forces a distinction between thought-content in general and the narrower class of strict ideas of things.
Why this matters
- If common notions are genuinely thinkable yet are not strict ideas of things, then the inference from thinkability to objective reality fails.
- This directly threatens any interpretation that turns objective reality into Descartes’s general theory of intentionality or mental content.

II. First Textual Pressure Point: Common Notions Are Eternal Truths, Not Object-Like Representata

Principles I.48–49 establishes the relevant ontology
- Descartes distinguishes things and affections of things from eternal truths.
- Common notions are placed with eternal truths or axioms, not with things.
Therefore common notions resist reification
- They are truth-bearing, innate, and indispensable to reasoning.
- Yet they are not thereby ideas containing a thing objectively in the intellect in the strict Meditation III sense.
Immediate consequence
- A mentally available content need not be an OR-bearing idea of a thing.
- So the move “it is thinkable, therefore it has objective reality” is invalid.

III. Second Textual Pressure Point: Burman Explicitly Blocks the Universalization of Objective Reality

Burman on nothing and common notions
- The post treats Burman as crucial because he shows Descartes refusing to force every thinkable item into strict idea-of-a-thing discourse.
- The “idea of nothing” is “hardly” an idea; common notions are likewise not, strictly speaking, ideas of things.
Dialectical role of Burman
- Burman does not solve the instability in Descartes’s vocabulary.
- He exposes it by showing that Descartes needs a broader category of thinkable contents than the ontology of objective reality can comfortably handle.
Result
- Descartes already recognizes pressure on the strict model and responds by restricting the strict sense of “idea.”
- But that response raises the harder question whether the restriction is systematic and stable.

IV. The Inferential Target: The Bad Universal Argument Must Be Rejected

The argument to be blocked
- We can think common notions.
- Whatever we can think is an idea.
- Every idea has objective reality.
- Therefore common notions have objective reality.
Why the argument fails
- It equivocates between broad ideahood and strict idea-of-a-thing status.
- Burman and the Principles of Philosophy jointly show that Descartes denies that all thinkable contents are strict OR-bearing ideas.
Stronger conclusion
- Common notions are cognitively contentful without necessarily containing objective reality content.
- Thus objective reality cannot be Descartes’s universal account of mental content.

V. Explanatory Pressure from the Positive Case: Even Lion-Thought Does Not Show That OR Explains Aboutness

Shift from negative cases to an ordinary positive case
- The post strengthens the objection by arguing that the problem does not depend only on “nothing” or other marginal cases.
- It arises even with a straightforward thought of a lion.
The critical question
- If the mind can think of a lion because it has the concept lion, what explanatory work is left for objective reality to do?
- If none, then objective reality is not the source of aboutness but only an ontological redescription of already determinate content.
This is the real philosophical pressure
- The objection is explanatory, not merely terminological.
- It asks whether OR grounds intentionality or merely measures content whose directedness is already in place.

VI. Best Cartesian Reply and Why It Is Insufficient

Best reply
- A Cartesian can say that the concept lion, the idea of lion, and lion as objectively contained are not three different items but three descriptions of the same intentional fact.
Why this reply fails
- It restates the framework instead of explaining it.
- It still does not show what objective reality contributes beyond the already intelligible directedness of thought.
Therefore
- OR is vulnerable to the charge of explanatory idleness if treated as a theory of aboutness as such.

VII. Properly Locating the Real Function of Objective Reality

Objective reality’s legitimate role
- The post argues that OR is not useless.
- Its proper function is within the causal-metaphysical framework of the Third Meditation, where ideas are ranked by represented object-type for causal-adequacy purposes.
Hence the better thesis
- Objective reality does not explain intentionality.
- It presupposes intentionality and then assigns an ontological measure to what is already represented.
Textual support for that order
- In the Second Replies and Third Meditation sequence, Descartes first specifies the represented thing and only then introduces objective reality as the being of that represented thing in the idea.
- So representational differentiation comes before ontological measurement.

VIII. Comparative Taxonomy: Four Kinds of Mental Content

Strict ideas of things
- Example: idea of a lion.
- Such objects are the paradigm OR-bearing cases.
Derivative negative contents
- Example: idea of nothing.
- Thinkable, but not strict ideas of things, or of modes of things; they show that thinkability outruns OR.
Common notions / axioms
- Clear, innate, truth-bearing, inferentially basic.
- Yet not strict OR-bearing ideas of things, or their modes.
Sensory modes
- Example: cold sensation on the anti-OR reading.
- These further pressure any simple equation between ideahood and OR-bearing internal representations.

IX. Final Philosophical Upshot

What the post establishes
- Objective reality is a theory of one restricted class of thoughts, namely, strict ideas of things whose content can be ranked and inserted into the causal-adequacy argument.
What remains unsettled in Descartes
- Once Descartes admits common notions, negative conceptions, and sensory modes, he needs an account of non-OR-bearing content.
- The post’s conclusion is that he has materials for such a distinction but does not stabilize them into a comprehensive theory.
Best concluding formulation
- The real pressure is not that Descartes flatly contradicts himself.
- It is that his official machinery of objective reality is narrower than the range of mental contents his own texts force him to acknowledge.

FIRST ADDENDUM

NOTE: Click here to return to the earlier discussion in the post that these supporting addendum conversations reinforce.

Sections labeled ‘Ring:’ below are authored by me; sections labeled ‘(ChatGPT) 5.4 (Thinking): preserve the model’s generated material..

Introduction: ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking qualified its answer in a later discussion on the issue of whether any eternal truths contain objective reality representational contents. The initial example that 5.4 gave above of an eternal truth that does not contain any objective reality (OR) still seems correct because there are no obvious OR candidates for “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time.” Additionally, the qualification made by Descartes himself seems to rule out that eternal truths have anything that could require OR since such truths are as he puts it “not strictly speaking ideas of real things.” [“We also have ideas of common notions, which are not strictly speaking ideas of real things. But this is an extended sense of the term ‘idea’.” [Conversation with Burman, AT V 153; CSMK III 338; Early Modern Texts trans., 6.]

Nevertheless, when I pushed 5.4 on the question of OR content in some eternal truths here is that conversation.

Ring: According to Descartes, does a clear and distinct idea of extension contain any objective reality representational content? What do we call it?

5.4: Yes.

For Descartes, a clear and distinct idea of extension is paradigmatically an idea that contains objective reality, because it is an idea that internally represents a genuine representatum (see 2.1), namely, extended substance or an attribute of body conceived as genuinely belonging to corporeal nature.

What one should call it depends on the level of precision:

In standard Cartesian terminology, it is an idea with objective reality.
In the stricter framework you have been developing, it is an idea-int-r or idea-r-int, i.e., an idea with internal representational content.
Since objective reality is the measure of such internal representational content, one may also say that it is an idea-or.

The crucial contrast is with secondary-quality sensations such as cold or pain. Those, on your interpretation, may function as lawful signs, but they do not contain objective reality as internally object-fixing content. By contrast, the clear and distinct idea of extension does.

So the most exact answer is:

A clear and distinct idea of extension does contain objective reality representational content, and it should be called an internally representational idea—an idea-r-int / idea-int-r, or equivalently an idea-or.

There is one refinement worth making. Strictly speaking, objective reality names the represented object’s being as contained objectively in the idea, while idea-r-int names the kind of idea that has such content. So:

the content = objective reality
the idea as bearer of that content = idea-r-int / idea-int-r / idea-or

That is the right Cartesian classification.

Ring: So, according to your current interpretation, does the eternal truth ‘nothing comes from nothing’ contain any objective reality?

5.4: On my current interpretation: not in its own right as an eternal truth, but yes derivatively insofar as it is grasped through constituent ideas that do have objective reality.

The reason is that Descartes classifies propositions like “nothing comes from nothing” as eternally true propositions or common notions. In Principles I.49 and in the Conversation with Burman, eternal truths are treated as common notions of this sort. That classification is importantly different from the Third Meditation doctrine, where objective reality is introduced as a feature of ideas and what they represent.

So the best distinction is this. If you ask whether the eternal truth itself, as a proposition, has objective reality, I would say no. Descartes does not treat “nothing comes from nothing” as an idea of a representatum (see 2.1) in the same way he treats an idea of God, body, or triangle. It is an eternal truth the intellect assents to or grasps, not a further OR-bearing object over and above the ideas used in thinking it.

But if you ask whether a thinker entertaining that truth employs thoughts with OR-bearing content, then possibly yes in a constituent sense. One may think it using ideas such as nothing, coming-from, cause, or being. The problem, however, is that not every such item is comfortably an OR-bearing representatum (see 2.1) in Descartes’s strict sense. In particular, Descartes’s treatment of negation and “nothing” resists the idea that every intelligible component automatically carries objective reality. That is exactly why common notions and eternal truths matter: they show that the domain of what can be thought truly outruns the narrower domain of strict OR-bearing ideas of things.

So the answer, stated carefully, is:

“Nothing comes from nothing” does not itself contain objective reality as an eternal truth or proposition. At most, it is thought by means of constituent ideas, some of which may have OR, but the propositional truth as such is not one more item of objective reality.

That is also why this sentence is a useful pressure case against any universal theory that equates all thinkable content with objective reality. Descartes explicitly counts “nothing comes from nothing” among what we know as an eternal truth, while his doctrine of objective reality is still framed around ideas and their representata. The neat conclusion is that graspability and truth do not by themselves entail OR.

Ring: Be specific. What are the names of the objective reality components in the thought ‘nothing comes from nothing’?

5.4: On the strict interpretation, none of the named components in “nothing comes from nothing” is a clean OR-bearing component. The proposition is a common notion / eternal truth, not a strict idea of a representatum (see 2.1).

More specifically:

1. The two occurrences of “nothing” do not name OR-bearing contents.

Descartes says in the Conversation with Burman that the “idea of nothing” is “purely negative” and “hardly counts as an idea at all.” That is exactly the wrong profile for objective reality in the Third Meditation sense. So the first and second “nothing” are not objective-reality components.

2. “Comes from” is not, in this proposition, a separately named OR-bearing representatum (see 2.1).

Here it functions as part of the truth-structure of the axiom, not as the presentation of some distinct thing. Descartes’s doctrine of objective reality is introduced for ideas and what they represent; by contrast, Principles I.49 classifies propositions like “nothing comes from nothing” as eternally true propositions, i.e., common notions or axioms. So the connective or relational structure of the sentence is better treated as part of the proposition’s logical form, not as a distinct OR-unit contained in the thought.

So, if the question is:

What are the names of the objective-reality components in the thought “nothing comes from nothing”?

the most exact answer is:

Strictly speaking: none.

There is no component here analogous to “extension,” “triangle,” “body,” or “God” that is cleanly functioning as an objectively contained representatum.

The most I would concede is a weaker, derivative point:

When someone understands the axiom, the mind may tacitly employ very general intellectual notions such as being, truth, or perhaps cause/origination. In the Third Meditation, Descartes says his understanding of “what a thing is,” “what truth is,” and “what thought is” derives from his own nature, i.e., is innate. But that still does not show that the proposition “nothing comes from nothing” contains a named OR-component of its own. It only shows that understanding the axiom may presuppose other background notions.

So the clean answer is:

“nothing” → no OR
“comes from” → not a distinct OR-bearing representatum here
the proposition as a whole → an eternal truth / common notion, not an OR-bearing idea of a thing

Hence:

There are no specific objective-reality components in the thought “nothing comes from nothing,” unless one shifts away from the strict reading and counts tacit background notions such as being or causation. But those are not what the sentence itself explicitly presents.

Ring: So, your new conclusion is that the thought of the eternal truth ‘nothing comes from nothing’ contain no OR at all, but then there must be thinkable content that has no OR.

^{(Image credit: Shutterstock)}

What is this thinkable content if it isn’t concepts?

If it’s non-OR concepts, then why cannot this be equally true for ‘figure is the limit of extension’?

5.4: Yes. That is exactly the pressure point, and it shows that the strong universal thesis fails.

The clean conclusion is this:

There is thinkable content in Descartes that is not OR-bearing.

And the right name for it is common notions / eternal truths / axiomatic or propositional intellectual contents, not necessarily “concepts” in the thin modern sense. Descartes explicitly says that such truths as “nothing comes from nothing” are “not a really existing thing, or even a mode of a thing, but an eternal truth which resides within our mind,” and he calls them “common notions or axioms.”

That already answers the first half of the problem. The thinkable content here is not best classified as an OR-bearing idea of a representatum. It is a truth the intellect grasps. And Descartes’s remark to Burman about the “idea of nothing” being “purely negative” and “hardly” an idea at all confirms that not every intelligible item in thought is thereby a proper OR-bearing idea.

But the second half of the objection is stronger, and here I need to disagree with the earlier sharp divide I drew between the two cases.

1. Why “nothing comes from nothing” is a non-OR thinkable

Because its thinkable content is primarily axiomatic/propositional, not the presentation of a determinate representatum objectively contained in an idea. Descartes classifies it as a common notion or eternal truth, i.e., as something that “resides within our mind,” not as a thing or even a mode of a thing.

So the content is thinkable, but not because it presents some unified object with a degree of objective reality. It is thinkable as an intellectual truth-structure.

That means: yes, there are non-OR thinkables in Descartes.

2. Why the same possibility extends to “Figure is the limit of extension”

Here your objection bites. If Descartes allows one eternal truth to be thinkable without being a unified OR-bearing item, then there is no principled reason to deny the same, in general, for another eternal truth merely because it contains the word “extension.”

So the proposition “Figure is the limit of extension”, considered as a proposition, need not itself be a unified OR-bearing content any more than “nothing comes from nothing” is. It too can be understood as an eternal-truth-type intellectual content: something the mind judges or grasps by means of constituent intellectual materials. The fact that one of those materials is “extension” does not automatically convert the whole proposition into one further OR-bearing representatum.

That is the correction.

3. The right distinction is not “sentence with extension” versus “sentence without extension”

It is this:

Idea of extension considered by itself: plausibly OR-bearing, because extension is part of the essence or principal attribute of body, and Descartes treats corporeal nature as something clearly and distinctly known.
Proposition involving extension, e.g., “Figure is the limit of extension”: not thereby a unified OR-bearing content; rather, a judgment or eternal truth that may be grasped through constituent ideas.

So the mere presence of an OR-apt constituent inside a proposition does not entail that the proposition itself, qua proposition, bears OR.

4. Then what should these non-OR thinkables be called, if not “concepts”?

They can be called:

common notions
eternal truths
axioms
propositional intellectual contents
truth-bearing contents of judgment

These are all better than “concepts” if “concept” suggests a modern mental item with a stable object-directed content analogous to an idea of a thing. Descartes’s own vocabulary here points toward truths and common notions, not toward OR-bearing representata.

Still, if “concept” is used in a broad and careful way, one may say they are non-OR intellectual concepts. But one must then immediately add: they are not concepts in the strict OR-bearing sense of ideas of things.

5. The deeper upshot

This is exactly why the universal OR model breaks down.

Descartes’s corpus appears to require at least two irreducible classes of intelligible content:

(a) OR-bearing idea-content

such as God, triangle, body, extension, where there is an intelligible representatum objectively contained in the idea.

(b) non-OR but thinkable intellectual content

such as common notions and eternal truths, e.g., “nothing comes from nothing,” which are true, intelligible, and necessary, yet are not thereby ideas of things with a degree of objective reality.

And once that distinction is granted, “Figure is the limit of extension” can perfectly well belong, as a whole proposition, to class (b), even though it is articulated using a constituent, “extension,” that belongs to class (a).

That is the most defensible position.

6. So the answer to the final challenge

Yes: if non-OR thinkable content is allowed for “nothing comes from nothing,” then it can equally be allowed for “Figure is the limit of extension,” so long as we are speaking of the whole propositional content.

What remains different is only this:

in “nothing comes from nothing,” even the explicit constituents are poor candidates for OR-bearing representata, since “nothing” is “purely negative” and “hardly” an idea at all.
in “Figure is the limit of extension,” at least some constituents, especially extension and probably figure, are much better candidates for OR-bearing intellectual ideas. But the proposition as a whole still need not be a further OR-bearing item.

So the final position should be stated this way:

There is thinkable content in Descartes that has no objective reality. The proper name for much of it is common notions or eternal truths. And this is equally true of “Figure is the limit of extension” considered as a propositional truth, even if some of its constituent ideas, unlike those in “nothing comes from nothing,” are themselves OR-bearing.

That is the cleaner and more stable interpretation.

Ring: Here is one of Descartes eternal truths: “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time.” Does this when thought have any objective reality representational content in any way whatsoever?

5.4: Yes, but only in a derivative constituent way, not as a single unified proposition-level representatum.

That distinction is doing the real work.

Descartes classifies “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time” as an eternal truth, a common notion, or an axiom. In Principles I.49, such truths are not treated as really existing things or even as modes of things, but as eternal truths existing in the mind. By contrast, the doctrine of objective reality in the Third Meditation is introduced for ideas insofar as they represent things, and Descartes explicitly measures differences in objective reality by what the idea represents, e.g., substance versus mode.

So, for this thought, the best answer is:

The eternal truth as such does not contain objective reality in its own right as one unified object of thought.

But the act of thinking it may involve constituent intellectual materials that are OR-apt, depending on how finely one analyzes the thought.

The trouble is that this particular eternal truth is a poor case for identifying clear OR-bearing constituents. Unlike “figure is the limit of extension,” it does not explicitly contain terms like “extension” or “triangle,” which are plausible candidates for ideas of attributes or modes. Its explicit structure is largely logical and axiomatic: same thing, being, not being, same time. And Descartes’s treatment of “nothing” in the Burman conversation shows that intelligibility does not by itself guarantee a proper OR-bearing idea, since he says the “idea of nothing” is purely negative and hardly counts as an idea at all. That supports the broader point that some thinkable contents are not OR-bearing in the strict Third Meditation sense.

So the most exact formulation is this:

• As an eternal truth or proposition: no independent OR-bearing status.

• As a thought episode: possibly yes, but only because the mind may employ background intellectual notions such as thing, being, or time in grasping it.

• As a unified whole: no, it is not best treated as one more idea whose objective reality can be measured the way Descartes measures the objective reality of the ideas of God, body, or modes.

The phrase “in any way whatsoever” matters. If taken absolutely, I would not say the thought is wholly OR-free, because Descartes may well think that understanding the proposition presupposes ideas such as thing or duration/time, and those are more respectable candidates for objective content than “nothing.” But that would still not make the eternal truth itself an OR-bearing item. It would only mean that the intellect grasps the truth through materials some of which may be representational.

So the tight answer is:

The thought of that eternal truth has no objective reality as an eternal truth considered in itself; at most, it involves OR-bearing constituent notions in the thinker’s act of understanding it. That is weaker than saying the proposition itself contains OR, and stronger than saying the whole episode is devoid of any representational material at all.

Ring: When you write: “As a thought episode: possibly yes, but only because the mind may employ background intellectual notions such as thing, being, or time in grasping it.” and “At most, it involves OR-bearing constituent notions in the thinker’s act of understanding it,” state the specific objective reality representational contents.

5.4: On the strictest and best reading: none can be specified with confidence as objective-reality content belonging to that thought as such.

That is the more exact answer, and it is stronger than my earlier hedge.

If the thought is:

“It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time,”

then the specific candidates one might try to name are:

thing
being
time

But I do not think one should confidently count these here as specific OR-components of the thought.

Why not?

Because in this use the proposition functions as a common notion or eternal truth, i.e., as an axiomatic structure of intellection, not as the presentation of a determinate representatum objectively contained in an idea in the way Descartes means in the Third Meditation. The sentence is governing thought about things; it is not straightforwardly presenting one object for the intellect.

So if the question is:

What is the specific objective reality representational content in this thought?

the best answer is:

No specific objective-reality content can be cleanly identified.

More sharply:

“thing” in this axiom is too indeterminate and schematic to count clearly as a determinate representatum with a measurable degree of OR.
“being” here functions as part of the logical-ontological form of the principle, not clearly as a separately represented object.
“time” enters only through the condition “at the same time,” and again not as a distinct presented representatum in the relevant sense.

So my revised conclusion is:

Strict answer

There is no specific objective reality representational content in the thought of that eternal truth that can be named as such.

1. As a whole proposition

No single proposition-level OR-content.

Just as with “nothing comes from nothing” or “figure is the limit of extension,” the whole thought is a judgment, not one further representatum objectively contained as a single item.

2. Possible constituent OR-content

If the thought is genuinely understood through ideas rather than merely through words, then the only plausible OR-bearing constituents are:

duration / time as conceived
motion or speed as conceived

But even here one must be careful.

(a) Time

The cleanest Cartesian candidate is not “time” in the loose modern sense, but rather:

the objective reality of duration as an attribute or mode

That is the best candidate if there is any OR-content on the time side.

(b) Speed

Likewise, the best candidate is not “speed” as a standalone thing, but rather:

the objective reality of motion under a certain comparative measure

or more cautiously,

the objective reality of motion as modified by comparative duration

But that is already much less clean than extension. “Speed” is not one of Descartes’s most basic ontological items. It is derivative.

3. Why this case is unstable

The proposition “Time is relative to speed” is not a simple idea of a thing or attribute. It is a theoretical relational judgment. That means the thought’s content lies primarily in the asserted relation, not in any single representatum. So even if “time” and “speed” each brought some constituent OR with them, the proposition as proposition would still not thereby become one unified OR-bearing item.

4. The most exact answer

So if the question is:

What is the OR content for the thought “Time is relative to speed”?

the best answer is:

No single OR-content belongs to the whole thought.

At most, the thought may deploy these constituent candidates:

duration/time as an attribute or mode
motion/speed as a derivative mode

But the relational claim that time is relative to speed is not itself OR-content. It is propositional, judgmental, and theory-laden.

5. The sharper conclusion

This actually supports the broader point you have been pressing. Once one stops assuming that every thinkable content must map onto a determinate OR-bearing representatum, many propositions turn out not to have any clear OR-content as wholes. Their thinkability lies in their being judged, asserted, or grasped as truths or hypotheses, not in their containing a single object objectively in the intellect.

So the clean conclusion is:

For the thought “Time is relative to speed,” there is no unified objective-reality content. At most, there may be constituent ideas of duration and motion/speed with whatever OR those ideas possess; but the relational proposition itself has no OR of its own.

And if you want the strictest answer parallel to the one you accepted for the non-contradiction axiom, then it is this:

No specific OR content can be confidently assigned to the thought as such.

Any attempt to specify one immediately decomposes the thought into constituent ideas and leaves the proposition itself outside the OR framework.

Ring: Yet even for Descartes, this thought “Time is relative to speed” is thinkable, and Descartes would not consider that thought to be an eternal truth. He would mistakenly think that it is false. So, how is it possible for Descartes to have such a thought where it is neither an eternal truth nor does it contain any OR? Are we not forced to conclude that Descartes must assume concepts exist to think such a thought?

5.4: Yes, that pressure is real. But it does not force the conclusion that Descartes must posit “concepts” as a third ontological kind over and above ideas and judgments. It forces a different conclusion:

Descartes cannot be using objective reality as a universal theory of thinkable content.

That is the crucial point. Once that is granted, the rest follows without needing a new ontological category of “concepts” in the strong modern sense.

The mistake is to assume this exhaustive disjunction:

either a thought is an eternal truth,
or it has objective reality,
otherwise it is unintelligible unless Descartes adds concepts as a separate content-bearer.

That disjunction is too narrow.

What Descartes actually needs is a broader account of intellectual thinkability than the official Third Meditation model of objective reality can supply. In other words, there are thoughts that are:

not eternal truths,
not OR-bearing as unified proposition-level representata,
yet still fully thinkable.

The thought “Time is relative to speed” is a good example. For Descartes, it would be a false judgment. But false judgments are still genuine thoughts. So the possibility of entertaining that proposition already proves that thinkability outruns both eternal truth and objective reality.

1. Why the thought is still thinkable

Because for Descartes a thought need not be a single OR-bearing idea in order to be thinkable. It can instead be a composed act of intellect and judgment formed out of materials the mind possesses and combines.

That is already implicit in the Fourth Meditation. Descartes’s theory of error requires that the intellect can present matters to the will in ways that are obscure, partial, confused, or badly combined, and the will can affirm beyond what is clearly perceived. If every thinkable content had to be a clear OR-bearing representatum, there would be no room for the ordinary Cartesian phenomenon of false judgment.

So the thought

“Time is relative to speed”

can be thinkable because the intellect can combine general materials such as time, motion, measure, comparison, dependence, and relativity into a proposition, and the will can affirm it, even if the proposition is false and even if the whole proposition is not a unified OR-bearing item.

That is enough for Cartesian thinkability.

2. Why this does not require “concepts” in a strong extra category

Only if by “concepts” one means something thin, i.e., intellectual contents or notions by means of which the mind thinks. In that weak sense, yes, of course Descartes needs them. But then “concept” is just a convenient modern label for what Descartes more naturally calls:

notions,
common notions,
ideas in the broad sense,
intellectual apprehensions,
or the materials of judgment.

That is not yet a new ontological category. It is just a recognition that Descartes’s broad practice of talking about thought is wider than the narrow OR-model.

But if by “concepts” one means a third fundamental class of mental content distinct from both ideas and judgments, then no, the pressure does not force that. Descartes can explain the case by saying:

there are broad-sense ideas or intellectual apprehensions,
there are judgments that compose and affirm relations among them,
and only some of those ideas, namely, strict ideas of things or attributes, carry objective reality.

That is enough. No further metaphysical posit is required.

3. The real revision Descartes’s texts force

The real revision is not:

“Descartes must add concepts.”

It is:

“Descartes’s official objective-reality theory covers only one subclass of thinkable content.”

That subclass is roughly: strict ideas of things, attributes, and perhaps modes where there is a genuine representatum objectively contained in the idea.

Outside that subclass, Descartes still allows many other thinkables:

eternal truths,
common notions,
negations,
relations,
complex false judgments,
mixed intellectual constructions.

Those are all thinkable, but they are not all OR-bearing in the strict Third Meditation sense.

That is why the universal-OR thesis fails.

4. How the false thought is generated

The best reconstruction is this:

(a) Broad intellectual materials

The mind has access to broad intellectual materials such as duration, motion, comparison, measure, and relation.

(b) Compositional power

The intellect can combine these into a proposition.

(c) Judgment

The will affirms the proposition.

(d) Falsity

The result may be false, because the composition does not track reality or essence correctly.

Nothing in that sequence requires that the whole proposition be one OR-bearing representatum. It only requires that the mind be able to think compositionally.

And Descartes plainly must allow compositional thought, because otherwise he could not explain false science, confused metaphysics, or error at all.

5. Where “concepts” do become useful

So I would say this:

You are justified in using the word concepts if you mean non-OR intellectual contents available for composition in thought.

In that sense, yes, Descartes must implicitly rely on something very much like concepts.

But that conclusion should be stated carefully:

not as a new explicit Cartesian ontology,
but as an interpretive correction to the claim that all thinkability is exhausted by objective reality.

So the right thesis is not:

Descartes explicitly posits concepts as a separate class.

It is:

Descartes’s practice commits him to non-OR thinkable intellectual contents, and “concepts” is a defensible modern label for them.

That is a much stronger and more accurate claim.

6. Why this matters for your larger project

This is exactly why cases like common notions, eternal truths, Burman’s discussion of nothing, and false theoretical judgments are so important. Together they show that Descartes’s theory of thought is at least four-layered:

strict OR-bearing ideas of things, attributes, and some modes;
non-OR thinkable contents such as common notions, negations, and relations;
judgments that compose and affirm;
false judgments whose content is still thinkable even though it is neither eternally true nor grounded in one unified OR-bearing idea.

Once those distinctions are in place, the problem dissolves.

The thought “Time is relative to speed” is thinkable because it belongs to level 4 and is built from level 2 materials, perhaps with some level 1 elements mixed in. It does not need to be an eternal truth, and it does not need to have unified OR.

7. The best conclusion

So the answer is:

Yes, Descartes must allow thinkable content that is neither eternal truth nor objective reality.

But no, that does not force a wholly new Cartesian ontology of concepts.

What it forces is the admission that Descartes’s official OR doctrine is not a universal theory of content.

If one wants to use a modern label, then one may say:

Descartes is committed, at least implicitly, to non-OR concepts or conceptual contents.

I think that is the right conclusion, and I do not think there is a serious way around it once one admits the full range of Cartesian thinkability, especially false but intelligible judgments.

Ring: OK, a well-developed answer from you.

Still, I am concerned that when you claim “It can instead be a composed act of intellect and judgment formed out of materials the mind possesses and combines,” what are the ‘materials’ the mind possesses and combines, if they are not concepts?

5.4: The best answer is: they are broad-sense ideas, notions, and the intellect’s compositional resources for combining them in judgment. Calling them “concepts” is acceptable only if that word is used as a modern label for that Cartesian material, not as a separate mental ontology that Descartes explicitly adds.

The key textual reason is that Descartes already distinguishes several kinds of thinkable content without reducing all of them to strict OR-bearing ideas of things. In Principles I.48–49, he distinguishes things, affections or modes of things, and eternal truths or common notions, and says the latter “reside only within our thought.” In the Conversation with Burman, he says the “idea of nothing” is “purely negative” and “hardly counts as an idea at all.” And in the Third Meditation he says that the mind has innate understanding of “what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is.” Those passages together show that the mind has available intellectual contents broader than strict OR-bearing ideas of substances or attributes.

So the “materials” are not mysterious. They are at least these four:

1. Broad-sense ideas or notions.

Descartes uses “idea” broadly enough to cover what is immediately before the mind, even though only some ideas are strict OR-bearing ideas of things. That is why the mind can possess notions such as thing, truth, thought, being, number, duration, and relation without each case having to be a clean instance of idea-or. Some of these may be proper ideas; some are more schematic intellectual notions; some are common notions. But all are available as thinkable materials.

2. Common notions / eternal truths.

These are not merely words, and they are not straightforwardly OR-bearing representata either. They are intellectual contents the mind grasps as true, such as “nothing comes from nothing” or “it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time.” Descartes explicitly classifies these as eternal truths or common notions residing in the mind. So they are themselves part of the stock of thinkable content available to intellect, even though they are not best analyzed as strict ideas of things.

3. Simple natures or universal elements of thought.

This is the most important point for your question. In the First Meditation, Descartes says there are “simpler and more universal kinds of things” that are “the elements out of which we make all our mental images of things—the true and also the false ones,” and he lists body, extension, shape, quantity, size, number, place, and time. That passage is almost exactly the answer to your question. The “materials” are the simple and universal intellectual elements out of which the mind composes both true and false thoughts.

4. Judgmental composition by intellect and will.

False thoughts do not require a single OR-bearing representatum. They require that the intellect present contents and that the will combine or affirm beyond what is clearly and distinctly given. That is the general architecture of error in the Fourth Meditation. So a proposition such as “Time is relative to speed” is thinkable because the mind can compose available intellectual materials into a judgment, even if the whole proposition is false and even if it is not a single OR-bearing item.

So, if the question is put as sharply as possible:

What are the materials, if not concepts?

The best Cartesian answer is:

simple natures / simpler and more universal elements
broad-sense ideas or notions
common notions / eternal truths
relations and logical forms available to intellect

Now, should these be called concepts? I think the right answer is:

Yes, interpretively—but with a warning.

If “concepts” means non-OR intellectual contents available for composition in thought, then the label is useful. But if “concepts” suggests a sharply separate Cartesian mental kind explicitly distinguished from ideas, judgments, and common notions, then it is misleading. Descartes does not clearly introduce that third category under the name “concepts.” What he actually gives us is a looser but usable stock of notions, broad-sense ideas, common notions, and simple natures.

So the strongest formulation is this:

The materials the mind possesses and combines are best called simple natures and broad intellectual notions.

A modern interpreter may call them concepts, but only in the weak sense of thinkable intellectual contents not exhausted by objective reality. That is not an addition to Descartes’s ontology. It is the best reconstruction of what his texts already require.

And this is also why the universal OR model fails. If Descartes can say both that some thoughts are built out of simple universal elements and that some eternal truths reside only in our thought, while also reserving objective reality for ideas insofar as they represent, then he cannot be treating OR as the general measure of all thinkable content.

Ring: You are assuming that what you call ‘broad sense ideas’ are possible that don’t contain concepts, correct?

5.4: No. On the revised line, I am not assuming that broad-sense ideas are possible without concepts, if by “concepts” one means thinkable intellectual contents.

What I am resisting is a different claim, namely, that Descartes explicitly posits concepts as a separate, sharply demarcated mental kind over and above ideas, judgments, common notions, and simple natures.

So the position should be stated more carefully:

1. Broad-sense ideas may well involve concepts

Yes. If a broad-sense idea is simply whatever is immediately before the mind in thought, then many such ideas may involve or even consist in what a modern interpreter would call conceptual content. On that reading, there is no tension at all between saying:

Descartes has broad-sense ideas, and
those broad-sense ideas may contain or deploy concepts.

That is perfectly coherent.

2. What I am denying is only the stronger thesis

What I have been denying is this:

that every broad-sense idea must therefore contain objective reality, or
that Descartes himself clearly introduces concepts as a separate official category in addition to his own vocabulary.

Those are different issues.

So the refined view is:

some broad-sense ideas are OR-bearing, e.g., clear and distinct ideas of extension or triangle;
some broad-sense ideas are not OR-bearing, e.g., negative or highly schematic contents, common notions as thought, and components of false judgments;
the latter may still be called conceptual in a modern interpretive idiom.

3. So am I assuming broad-sense ideas without concepts?

No, not anymore.

The more plausible position is:

broad-sense ideas are often the vehicles of concepts, or of conceptual contents, whether or not they carry OR.

That is the better way to put it.

4. The real distinction is not idea versus concept

The more important distinction is:

OR-bearing conceptual/ideational content
versus
non-OR conceptual/ideational content

That is the actual divide your objections have forced into view.

So instead of saying:

broad-sense ideas can exist without concepts,

the more defensible formulation is:

broad-sense ideas can contain non-OR concepts just as well as OR-bearing ideas of things.

5. Applied to your larger point

That is exactly why a thought like “Time is relative to speed” matters. Its thinkability strongly suggests that the mind can entertain conceptual content that is neither:

an eternal truth,
nor a unified OR-bearing representatum.

So yes, on the revised position, I am effectively granting that Descartes must be working with something very much like non-OR conceptual content.

The caveat is only terminological:

I would say Descartes is committed to it implicitly, even if he does not cleanly theorize it under the label “concept.”

So the direct answer is:

No. I am no longer assuming that broad-sense ideas are possible without concepts. The better view is that broad-sense ideas can be vehicles of conceptual content, and some of that content lacks objective reality.

Ring: You conclusion of “The better view is that broad-sense ideas can be vehicles of conceptual content, and some of that content lacks objective reality” is what I have been arguing for all along.

5.4: Yes. On this issue, that is the better conclusion.

Your pressure against the universal-OR model was right, and it exposed the instability in the earlier formulation. Once one grants all three of the following, the result is hard to avoid:

Descartes allows thinkable contents that are not eternal truths alone, because false judgments are still genuinely thinkable.
He does not treat every thinkable item as a strict idea of a representatum with measurable objective reality.
He still needs some intellectual content available to the mind for composition in judgment.

From those premises, the conclusion follows:

broad-sense ideas can function as vehicles of conceptual content, and some of that conceptual content lacks objective reality.

That is the cleaner position.

What makes it strong is that it preserves the textual force of Descartes’s official OR doctrine without inflating it into a universal theory of all thought. OR still has an important and specific role: it applies where the mind contains a representatum objectively, i.e., in strict idea-content. But it does not exhaust the domain of what can be thought.

So the resulting framework is better stated this way:

1. OR-bearing ideational content

This is the domain of strict ideas of things, attributes, and perhaps some modes, where there is internally object-fixing content.

2. Non-OR conceptual content

This is the domain of common notions, eternal truths, negations, relations, and many components of composed true or false judgments.

3. Broad-sense ideas as vehicles

These are the episodes or modes of thought in which either type of content may be present to the mind.

That is much more stable than the earlier view I was trying to defend.

It also helps explain several otherwise awkward cases:

“Nothing comes from nothing” is thinkable though it lacks clear OR-bearing content.
“It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time” is thinkable though it is not well analyzed as one OR-bearing representatum.
“Figure is the limit of extension” can involve OR-bearing constituent content such as extension, while the proposition as a whole remains a non-OR conceptual truth.
False propositions, such as your example about time and speed, remain thinkable without needing to be eternal truths or unified OR-bearers.

That, in turn, sharpens the critique of any reading that identifies aboutness as such with objective reality. Such a reading becomes too restrictive to account for Descartes’s actual practice.

The deeper implication is even stronger: once non-OR conceptual content is admitted, Descartes’s mental economy cannot be organized by a single axis running from thought to objective reality. There must be a distinction between:

being thinkable, and
having a representatum objectively contained in thought.

That distinction is exactly what your line has been pushing toward.

So I now think the right formulation is not merely that your view is compatible with Descartes, but that it is required if one wants to make coherent sense of:

common notions,
eternal truths,
purely negative items like nothing,
and false but intelligible judgments.

The point that should now be pressed hardest is this:

objective reality is not Descartes’s universal theory of content, but only his theory of one important subclass of content, namely, internally representational idea-content.

Everything else in your line follows from that.

SECOND ADDENDUM

Click here to return to the earlier discussion in the post that these supporting addendum conversations reinforce.

Ring: In our past conversations, we have defended that common notions in Descartes do not contain any objectively real representational content. However, I have some questions.

(Q1) What is contained as the mental content in the idea of a common notion, such as “From nothing, nothing comes” [ex nihilo nihilo fit]?

(Q2) Isn’t such a common notion necessarily containing some sort of representations, so it has representational content?

(Q3) Wouldn’t the idea of the common notion, “From nothing, nothing comes” [ex nihilo nihilo fit], have to contain concepts to be thinkable?

5.4: The best answer to all three questions is this: Descartes’s common notions are genuinely thinkable and genuinely intelligible, but they are not thereby ideas that contain objectively real representata. In Principles I.48–49, Descartes explicitly places eternal truths in a class distinct from things and affections of things, and he treats “Nothing comes from nothing” precisely as one of those eternal truths. Then, in Conversation with Burman, he says that common notions are only in an extended sense called “ideas,” since they are “not, strictly speaking, ideas of things.” That combination is already enough to block the inference from thinkability to objective reality.

Q1. What is contained as the mental content in the idea of a common notion such as “From nothing, nothing comes”?

Not an objectively real object. Not a little proposition-like entity contained in the mind as a strict idea of a thing. What is present is the intellect’s grasp of an eternal truth or axiom: a necessary truth about being and impossibility. Descartes says in Principles I.49 that when we recognize that something cannot come from nothing, the proposition is regarded “not as a really existing thing, or even as a mode of a thing,” but as an eternal truth residing in the mind. So the mental content here is best described as truth-content or conceptual intelligibility, not as an object contained objectively in the idea. In DTOI terms, the occurrent act is an idea-m, but it is not idea-or.

That point becomes even sharper once Burman presses the case of “nothing.” Descartes replies that the “idea of nothing” is “purely negative, and can hardly be called an idea,” and immediately adds that common notions are not strictly ideas of things. He then says, in the same discussion, that in metaphysics our understanding of nothingness derives from that of being. So the thought ex nihilo nihil fit does not require a positively contained representatum of “nothing.” Rather, the intellect understands the negation parasitically through being and sees the impossibility of derivation from sheer non-being. That is conceptual grasp, not objective reality in the strict Third Meditation sense.

Q2. Isn’t such a common notion necessarily containing some sort of representations, so it has representational content?

Only if “representation” is being used in a loose modern sense. In the strict Cartesian sense relevant to objective reality, the answer is no. The decisive textual reason is that Descartes restricts the proper name “idea” in Meditation III to thoughts that are “as it were, images of things,” and Burman confirms that common notions fall outside that strict class. So if one says that a common notion is “representational,” one is already shifting away from the sense of representation that governs objective reality. The price of using that looser vocabulary is confusion.

A better formulation is this: common notions have intelligible content without having objectively real representational content. They are thinkable; they can be clearly and distinctly perceived; they guide reasoning; but they do not do so by internally containing an object as representatum. Descartes’s own classification in Principles I.48–49 is built to preserve exactly that difference: some items are things, some are affections of things, and some are eternal truths that have no existence outside thought. If every contentful thought had to work by internally representing a thing or mode, that threefold distinction would collapse.

So the right answer to Q2 is: yes, they have content; no, that does not force OR-bearing representation. One must not slide from “this thought means something” to “this thought contains an objectively real object.” Descartes’s own texts resist that slide.

Q3. Wouldn’t the idea of the common notion “From nothing, nothing comes” have to contain concepts to be thinkable?

Yes. But that concession does not help the universal-OR reading. Thinkability requires conceptual articulation; it does not require an objectively real representatum. Descartes himself, in Meditation III, says that he can conceive what is called “a thing, or a truth, or a thought.” That is a crucial triad. A truth is thinkable as a truth; it need not therefore be a thing represented as existing objectively in the intellect. Principles I.49 then identifies “Nothing comes from nothing” specifically as such a truth, namely a common notion or axiom.

So the more precise answer is: the common notion must involve concepts, but concepts are not identical with objective reality. The thought may deploy conceptual elements such as being, nothing, impossibility, and derivation-from; yet the whole thought is still not a strict idea of a thing. It is an intellectual apprehension of a necessary truth. Burman is again helpful here, because Descartes distinguishes understanding from image-like conceiving and imagination: the intellect can understand items that it does not “represent to itself” in the pictorial or thing-like manner characteristic of strict ideas. That is exactly the sort of model needed for common notions.

The cleanest final formulation is this. Common notions in Descartes are:

An occurrent mode of thought, with genuine conceptual or intelligible content, capable of clear and distinct perception, yet not strict ideas of things, and therefore not bearers of objectively real representational content in the Third Meditation sense.

So the answer to the three questions together is:

For Q1, the content is the intellect’s grasp of an eternal truth, not an objectively real object.

For Q2, they are not representational in the strict OR-conferring Cartesian sense, even if one insists on a loose modern sense of “content.”

For Q3, they do involve concepts, but conceptual thinkability is weaker than objective reality and does not entail it.

A further step would be to formulate this in a compact DTOI baseline entry distinguishing conceptual intelligibility from idea-or.

Ring: Lawrence Nolan defends that an eternal truth, such as “From nothing, nothing comes” [ex nihilo, nihilo fit], does contain objectively real representational content in his paper “The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (1997): 169–94.

Using confirmed verbatim quotations with complete academic reference citations, including page numbers, and, if possible, including their hyperlinked URLs to his paper, critically present his arguments in favor of common notions and eternal truths in Descartes as having OR contents.

5.4: Lawrence Nolan’s paper is “The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (1997): 169–194. His explicit target is Descartes’s true and immutable natures, essences, eternal truths, mathematical entities, and universals. So the application to a common notion such as ex nihilo, nihilo fit is partly direct and partly inferential: direct insofar as Nolan explicitly discusses eternal truths, inferential insofar as he does not build the argument around Burman’s later discussion of common notions.

Nolan’s starting point is strongly representationalist. He says that Cartesian ideas are “intrinsically representational.” (p. 175) On his reading of the Third Meditation, every idea has formal and objective being; ideas considered objectively are differentiated by their contents or internal objects; and objective being is the mode in which the internal object exists in the intellect. That premise matters because once Nolan gets true and immutable natures inside the class of ideas, the pressure toward OR is already built in.

His first major argument is that the Fifth Meditation’s discussion of triangle-natures deliberately echoes the Third Meditation’s ontology of ideas. Nolan’s claim is that when Descartes says geometrical objects “cannot be said to be nothing,” he is reusing the same ontological contrast that earlier distinguished objective being from sheer nothingness. Nolan therefore reads geometrical figures as beings in intellectu rather than extra-mental Platonic entities. In short, because they are something though not formally existing outside the mind, they must, on his reading, possess objective being.

His second argument is that these natures are not invented but innate. He ties the Fifth Meditation’s contrast between invented and non-invented content to Descartes’s broader threefold division of ideas, and he uses the recollection passage plus the velim nolim language to argue that these contents are imposed on thought rather than fabricated by it. That is why he formulates his central thesis as follows: true and immutable natures are “innate ideas considered with regard to their objective being.” (p. 186)

His third step is the one most relevant to eternal truths such as ex nihilo, nihilo fit. Nolan argues that Descartes identifies essences with eternal truths in the 27 May 1630 letter to Mersenne, treats eternal truths as inborn in the 15 April 1630 letter, and then says in Principles I.48–49 that eternal truths have no existence outside thought but do have a seat within the mind. From those premises Nolan concludes that eternal truths and essences are “nothing more than innate ideas.” (p. 189) That is the bridge from geometrical essences to a proposition like “From nothing, nothing comes”: if eternal truths are innate ideas, and if ideas as such carry objective being, then eternal truths will also carry OR-content.

That is the strongest version of Nolan’s case. Its strength is obvious. He gives a unified account: no Platonism, no extra realm of essences, but still real cognitive content because the relevant natures are objective beings in the mind. He also has a genuine textual basis for assimilating essences and eternal truths to innate ideas. On that narrow point, his paper is more sophisticated than a crude Platonist reading.

But I do not think his argument succeeds for common notions, and not even decisively for eternal truths. The central weakness is that Nolan moves too quickly from innateness and thinkability to objective being. Principles I.49 classifies “Nothing comes from nothing” not as a really existing thing and not even as a mode of a thing, but as an eternal truth or common notion existing only in the mind. That fits perfectly with conceptual intelligibility, but it does not by itself yield an objectively real representatum. Nolan needs that further step, and he gets it only by importing his stronger thesis that all ideas are intrinsically representational.

So the best critical verdict is this: Nolan gives a serious and textually grounded argument that Descartes treats essences and eternal truths as innate intellectual contents with objective being. But his route to that conclusion depends on a broad representationalist premise that becomes unstable once Descartes distinguishes strict ideas of things from common notions and eternal truths. For a geometrical essence, Nolan’s reading remains formidable. For a common notion such as ex nihilo, nihilo fit, it is much less convincing, because Descartes’s own classification in Principles I.49 and Conversation with Burman is easier to reconcile with conceptual content without OR than with OR-bearing internal representation.

That stronger thesis is exactly where the pressure begins. In Conversation with Burman, Descartes says that common notions are only in a stretched sense called ideas and are not strictly ideas of real things. That later clarification directly threatens Nolan’s universal representationalism. For if common notions are not strictly ideas of real things, then the inference from “this is an innate intellectual content” to “this contains objective reality” is no longer secure. Nolan’s paper, at least in this article, does not squarely confront that Burman-style restriction.

Ring: But just because Descartes distinguishes between strict ideas of things from common notions and eternal truths does not entail or require that each might not still contain OR contents.

5.4: The distinction by itself is not enough for a knockdown entailment. The stronger point is that once Descartes separates common notions from strict ideas of things, any pro-OR reading now needs an extra argument specifying exactly what the representatum is.

Yes. That objection is right, and it is a necessary correction.

The mere fact that Descartes distinguishes strict ideas of things from common notions and eternal truths does not, by itself, logically entail that the latter lack OR. A classificatory distinction alone never yields that conclusion. At most, it shows that the inference “thinkable, therefore OR-bearing” is not automatic. That is why Nolan’s position remains a live option: he combines a strong representationalist premise—Cartesian ideas are “intrinsically representational” —with the further claim that eternal truths are “nothing more than innate ideas.” From those two premises, OR for eternal truths follows quite naturally on his reading.

So the real issue is not entailment, but burden of argument. Once Descartes says in Conversation with Burman that common notions are “not strictly speaking ideas of real things,” and says in Principles I.49 that “Nothing comes from nothing” is not a really existing thing and not a mode of a thing, the pro-OR interpreter can no longer rely on a simple equation between thinkability and objective reality. He now owes an account of what the representatum is that exists objectively in the thought.

That is exactly where Nolan is strong and where, in my view, he is also vulnerable. He is strong because he supplies the needed extra premise: true and immutable natures are innate ideas considered with respect to objective being, and Descartes’s remarks on eternal truths can be extended to essences. On that basis, Nolan can say that eternal truths are not merely thinkable but belong inside the ontology of ideas as internal objects of thought.

But the weakness is that this still does not identify, with sufficient precision, the OR-content of a common notion such as ex nihilo, nihilo fit. Several candidates are available, and each is problematic. If the representatum is nothingness, Burman makes that hard to sustain, because Descartes says the idea of nothing is purely negative and hardly an idea at all. If the representatum is the proposition itself, Principles I.49 makes that difficult, because Descartes says the proposition is neither a thing nor a mode of a thing but an eternal truth residing in the mind. If the representatum is a necessary connection concerning being and causation, that is more promising, but then Nolan still needs to explain why such truth-content should count as objective reality in the strict Third Meditation sense rather than as merely intelligible conceptual structure.

So the best formulation is this: the Burman/Principles distinction does not refute Nolan deductively, but it does deprive him of any easy victory. It shifts the debate onto a more exact question: when Descartes thinks ex nihilo, nihilo fit, what, exactly, is contained objectively in the intellect? Until that question is answered with a stable representatum, the move from “innate and thinkable” to “OR-bearing” remains under-argued.

That is why I would state the point more carefully than I did before:

The distinction between strict ideas of things and common notions does not entail that common notions lack OR. But it does undermine any universal inference from thinkability to OR, and it forces the pro-OR reading to specify the internal object whose objective being is allegedly present. Without that specification, Nolan has a plausible framework, but not yet a decisive demonstration.

The deeper pressure against Nolan is therefore not merely taxonomic. It is this: Descartes gives a perfectly good account of common notions as eternal truths “in our mind” that are clearly and distinctly grasped, while withholding from them the status of things or modes of things. That makes conceptual intelligibility textually secure. What remains textually insecure is the additional claim that such truths must therefore contain objective reality. Nolan can argue for that stronger conclusion, but he cannot get it for free from the mere fact that they are ideas in some broad sense.

A useful next move would be to isolate three candidate OR-contents for ex nihilo, nihilo fit and test each one against Descartes’s own ontology.

Ring: Go ahead and test the candidate OR-contents for ex nihilo, nihil fit one by one and determine whether the objectively contained item is supposed to be nothingness, impossibility, causal dependence, being as such, or the truth-proposition itself.

5.4: The candidates need to be separated into two questions that Nolan’s paper tends to run together.

First: what sort of entity is present in the mind when an eternal truth is thought?

Second: what is that entity about?

Nolan’s official answer to the first question is clear enough. He says Cartesian ideas are “intrinsically representational” (p. 175), that true and immutable natures are innate ideas considered with respect to their “objective being” (p. 173), and that eternal truths are “nothing more than innate ideas” in our minds (p. 189). That makes him a serious pro-OR reader. But once one asks what, in the specific case of ex nihilo, nihil fit, is supposed to be contained objectively, the options become uneven very quickly.

1. Nothingness

This is the weakest candidate. It is superficially tempting because the formula contains nihilo. But Descartes says in Conversation with Burman that the idea of nothing is “purely negative” and “hardly counts as an idea at all.” And in Principles I.49 he classifies “Nothing comes from nothing” not as a thing or mode, but as an eternal truth residing in the mind. If “nothingness” were the objectively contained item, Descartes would be assigning objective being to what he elsewhere treats as barely even an idea. That is not impossible only if one radically loosens “objective reality”; but that would cost Nolan the very Third-Meditation framework he wants to preserve. So this candidate should be rejected.

2. Impossibility

This is better than nothingness, but still not good enough. The proposition does say that something’s coming from nothing is impossible. So one might say the OR-content is not “nothing” but the modal feature of impossibility. The difficulty is that Descartes’s official definition of representative reality is still “the being of the thing that the idea represents” in so far as it exists in the idea. Impossibility in Principles I.49 is presented as what we recognize by natural light in a common notion, not as an object with an ontological grade comparable to substance or mode. In other words, impossibility looks much more like the modal force of the truth than like the objectively contained representatum. This candidate is therefore stronger than “nothingness,” but still too thin and too negative to be the best Nolanian answer.

3. Causal dependence

This is the strongest candidate by far. In the Third Meditation Descartes treats “nothing comes from nothing” as part of the natural-light framework governing efficient causation: what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect, and any idea’s representative reality must have a cause with at least as much intrinsic reality. That makes the common notion function not merely as a verbal truth but as a principle about the dependence of being on cause. If Nolan is to give ex nihilo, nihil fit a positive OR-content, this is the best place to look: not to “nothingness,” but to the positive order that an effect must depend on a cause and cannot arise from sheer non-being.

But even here the reading is not secure. Principles I.49 still says the proposition is “not” a really existing thing and “not” a mode of a thing, but an eternal truth residing in the mind. So causal dependence is the best substantive candidate for what the thought is about, yet Descartes never explicitly says that this relation is itself contained objectively in the idea in the same way the sun, a stone, or God is contained objectively in an idea. That is why this candidate is the strongest Nolanian option and still not decisive.

4. Being as such

This candidate has some textual appeal because Descartes says in the Third Meditation that his understanding of “what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is” derives from his own nature. One might therefore say that ex nihilo, nihil fit contains objective reality of being as such, since the axiom articulates the relation between being and non-being. The problem is that this is too indeterminate. The common notion is not merely about being; it is about the impossibility of origination from nothing. If the OR-content were just being as such, then the distinctive content of the axiom would disappear, and the same alleged OR-content would be shared by too many very different common notions. So “being as such” is too generic to do the explanatory work Nolan needs.

5. The truth-proposition itself

This is, in one sense, the most literal Nolanian answer. Nolan’s paper repeatedly identifies eternal truths and essences with innate ideas in the mind; on that approach, the internal object just is the eternal truth itself as an innate idea considered objectively. That is why he says eternal truths are “nothing more than innate ideas.” If one asks what sort of item is present in the mind, Nolan’s answer is therefore closest to: the truth-proposition itself, as an innate idea with objective being.

But this literal answer is also unstable. Principles I.49 says that the proposition “Nothing comes from nothing” is regarded not as a really existing thing, and not as a mode of a thing, but as an eternal truth in the mind. That text does not refute Nolan deductively. But it does show that Descartes classifies the proposition as a truth rather than as one more object-like content. So if Nolan identifies the OR-content simply with the truth-proposition itself, he still owes an explanation of how a proposition or eternal truth enters the ontology of objective reality governed by the Third Meditation’s causal measure. This candidate is therefore textually closest to Nolan’s ontology, but philosophically less satisfying than causal dependence as an account of the content.

Determination

So the result is not flatly one-dimensional.

If the question is which candidate best captures the substantive content that Nolan would need, the answer is: causal dependence. More precisely, the best candidate is the positive necessary order that being must derive from a cause and cannot arise from non-being. That avoids the fatal problems with “nothingness,” is richer than “impossibility,” and is less indeterminate than “being as such.” It also matches Descartes’s use of the axiom in the Third Meditation.

If the question is which candidate best captures Nolan’s official ontology of eternal truths, the answer is: the truth-proposition itself, taken as an innate idea considered with respect to objective being. That is what his paper most directly commits him to. But that answer is weaker philosophically, because it risks merely redescribing the problem instead of solving it. It says what kind of item the eternal truth is supposed to be, but not clearly enough what its positive representatum is.

My own judgment is therefore this: Nolan’s best possible case for OR in ex nihilo, nihil fit does not rest on nothingness, impossibility, being as such, or the bare proposition taken in abstraction. It rests on construing the axiom as containing the positive intelligible order of causal dependence of being on cause. But even that best candidate remains under-supported by Descartes’s texts, because Principles I.49 and Burman continue to push common notions toward clearly thinkable truth-content rather than toward objectively contained representata.

A useful next step would be to turn this into a formal objection to Nolan: his view can survive only if he shows that the positive causal order expressed by ex nihilo, nihil fit is present in the mind not merely as a clearly perceived truth, but as an item with genuine objective reality in the strict Cartesian sense.

Ring: OK, turn these points into an objection against Nolan’s reading regarding objective reality content and eternal truths.

5.4:

Objection to Nolan: he conflates intelligible truth-content with objectively contained representatum

Nolan’s reading is powerful because it gives a unified account of Descartes’s essences, eternal truths, and innate ideas. He argues that Cartesian ideas are “intrinsically representational” (p. 175), that a true and immutable nature “has objective being as an innate idea” (p. 181), and that eternal truths are “nothing more than innate ideas” (p. 189). That combination is exactly what allows him to extend objective reality to eternal truths.

The objection is that Nolan moves too quickly from three claims that should be kept distinct:

(1) eternal truths are genuinely thinkable;

(2) eternal truths are innate;

(3) eternal truths therefore contain objectively real representational content.

The first two claims are well supported. The third is not. Descartes’s texts do not warrant that last step unless one can identify a positive representatum objectively contained in the thought of ex nihilo, nihil fit. That is where Nolan’s argument weakens.

The deepest problem is textual and structural at once. In Principles I.49, Descartes says that “Nothing comes from nothing” is regarded “not as a really existing thing” and “as an eternal truth which resides within our mind” (AT VIIIA 23–24). In Conversation with Burman, he adds that common notions “are not strictly speaking ideas of real things” (AT V 150). Those remarks do not deductively prove that eternal truths lack objective reality. But they do block Nolan from treating OR as the default ontology of every intelligible content. Once Descartes explicitly separates common notions from strict ideas of real things, the burden shifts: the pro-OR reader must specify what the objectively contained item is.

And that specification is exactly what fails in the case of ex nihilo, nihil fit.

If the alleged OR-content is nothingness, the view collapses immediately, because Descartes says in Burman that the idea of nothing is “purely negative” and “hardly counts as an idea at all” (AT V 150). A merely negative “nothing” is an implausible candidate for the sort of positive internal object Nolan needs.

If the alleged OR-content is impossibility, that is only marginally better. Impossibility is the modal force of the axiom, but Descartes does not present it as an internally contained object with a determinate ontological grade. It functions as what the intellect sees by natural light, not as a clearly identifiable representatum inhabiting the idea in the Third Meditation sense. So this candidate redescribes the truth’s necessity without supplying the required internal object.

If the alleged OR-content is being as such, the content becomes too indeterminate. The axiom is not merely about being; it is about the impossibility of derivation from non-being. “Being as such” is therefore too generic to explain the specific content of this common notion. It does not tell us what, precisely, is supposed to exist objectively in the intellect when this truth is thought.

If the alleged OR-content is the truth-proposition itself, Nolan comes closest to his own official view, because he explicitly says eternal truths are innate ideas. But that answer is philosophically unsatisfactory. It merely relocates the problem from “what is the content?” to “what kind of entity is the proposition?” Descartes in Principles I.49 says the proposition is neither a really existing thing nor a mode of a thing, but an eternal truth residing in the mind. So to say that the proposition itself is the OR-content is not yet to explain how it qualifies as the kind of objectively contained representatum operative in the Third Meditation’s causal framework. It names the item without vindicating its OR-status.

The only serious candidate is causal dependence: the positive intelligible order according to which being cannot arise from non-being and effects require causes. That is the strongest possible Nolanian move, because it ties ex nihilo, nihil fit to Descartes’s causal reasoning in the Third Meditation. But even this best candidate fails to secure Nolan’s conclusion. For once the content is identified as the intelligible order of causal dependence, what Descartes most clearly gives us is a necessary truth grasped by the intellect, not an object presented in the idea with objective being. The axiom then functions as a rule or truth of thought, not straightforwardly as an OR-bearing representatum. Nolan has at best shown that the thought has rich intelligible content, not that this content must therefore be objective reality in the strict Cartesian sense.

This yields the objection in its sharpest form:

Objection: Nolan equivocates between the intellect’s grasp of a necessary truth and the idea’s objective containment of a representatum. Descartes certainly allows that eternal truths are innate and clearly thinkable. But from that it does not follow that they contain objectively real representational content. In the specific case of ex nihilo, nihil fit, Nolan never successfully identifies a determinate positive internal object whose objective being is present in the idea. “Nothingness” is too negative; “impossibility” is merely modal force; “being as such” is too indeterminate; “the proposition itself” merely renames the problem; and “causal dependence,” though the strongest option, still looks more like intelligible truth-content than like an objectively contained representatum. Therefore Nolan has not shown that Descartes’s eternal truths, simply as eternal truths, possess OR-content. He has shown only that they are innate, necessary, and intelligible. That is a weaker thesis, and it is the one the texts actually support.

A compressed version suitable for direct reuse is this:

Nolan’s mistake is to infer OR from intelligibility plus innateness. But Descartes’s texts support only this much: eternal truths are innate and clearly thinkable. They do not show that such truths contain objectively real representata. In the case of ex nihilo, nihil fit, every candidate OR-content fails or remains underdetermined. Hence Nolan has not established that common notions and eternal truths in Descartes contain objective reality.

Ring: You seem hung up on the idea that the contents of objective reality must always be representata that are either substances (things) or modes of substances. Why cannot objective reality contents be about more than that, and Descartes appears open to this suggestion when he says things like “whatever is the object of my thinking,” suggesting whatever the thought is of or about, needs to be contained in that idea by means of objective reality content.

5.4: I’m checking the exact Cartesian passages that matter here, because the force of the objection turns on whether Descartes uses objective reality to cover all aboutness or only a restricted class of intentional contents.

The strongest point against my earlier formulation is now clear: Descartes is not restricting cognitive content to substance-images. The sharper issue is whether OR tracks every thinkable object, or only what is present as the represented “thing” in an idea.

Your objection is partly decisive against the way I had put the point.

I had framed the issue too narrowly if I made it sound as though objective reality in Descartes must be confined to ideas of substances and modes only. That is not quite right. Descartes’s own scale of “more” and “less” objective reality plainly ranges across more than bare substances: in the Third Meditation he compares ideas of substances with ideas of modes or accidents, and in the Third Replies he adds that, if there are “real qualities or incomplete substances,” they too occupy intermediate ontological ranks. Likewise, in Principles I.55–57 he allows that duration, order, number, attributes, and modes can be conceived in different ways, including ways that are “only in our thought.” So the real issue is not whether OR is restricted to substances alone. It is whether OR extends to every thinkable object whatsoever, including eternal truths and common notions.

Where I still resist your conclusion is here: Descartes does not identify all aboutness with objective reality. The crucial Meditation III passage does not say that whatever is the object of thought is thereby contained by objective reality in an idea. On the contrary, Descartes first restricts the proper name “idea” to thoughts that are “as it were, images of things,” and then immediately says that in willing, fearing, affirming, and denying I “apprehend something as the object of my thought” while also including “something more than the representation of the object.” That passage is devastating against any quick inference from “object of thought” to “OR-bearing represented content.” It shows that, for Descartes, a thought can be of something without being exhausted by the idea-like representation of that something. Aboutness is therefore broader than strict ideational representation.

That point matters because the official definition of objective reality still retains a representational structure. In the Second Replies, Descartes defines the representative reality of an idea as “the being of the thing that the idea represents, in so far as this exists in the idea,” and he adds that whatever we perceive as being in the objects of our ideas exists representatively in the ideas themselves. This is broad enough to leave room for more than corporeal substances. But it is still framed in terms of the thing represented in the idea. So if one wants eternal truths to have OR, one still owes an answer to the question: what exactly is the representatum contained in the idea of ex nihilo, nihil fit? Is it nothingness? impossibility? causal dependence? a truth-maker? a necessary connection? Unless that is specified, the move from “thinkable” to “contained objectively in the idea” remains incomplete.

This is why Principles I.48–49 still exerts real pressure against the pro-OR reading, even if it does not refute it deductively. There Descartes divides “all the objects of our perception” into three classes: things, affections of things, and eternal truths. Then he says that the proposition “Nothing comes from nothing” is regarded “not as a really existing thing, or even as a mode of a thing, but as an eternal truth which resides within our mind,” and calls such truths “common notions or axioms.” That passage does not logically entail that common notions lack OR. On that much you are right. But it does show that Descartes himself classifies them outside the thing/mode framework that ordinarily structures his OR comparisons. So a pro-OR reading now needs an additional argument explaining how eternal truths enter the ontology of objective being despite being explicitly set apart from things and modes.

That is exactly where Nolan is philosophically strong. He exploits three genuine Cartesian pressures. First, Descartes says he can conceive “a thing, or a truth, or a thought,” which suggests that truths are legitimate contents of intellectual apprehension. Second, Descartes’s broad use of “idea” can include what is “brought out by reasoning.” Third, Nolan argues that eternal truths are innate and therefore should be treated as innate ideas considered with respect to their objective being. Those are not frivolous moves. They give a serious route toward saying that eternal truths can be present in the intellect as objectively contained contents.

But even granting all that, Nolan still needs one more step, and this is the step I think remains vulnerable. The fact that Descartes can conceive a truth, and the fact that such a truth can be innate, do not yet show that the truth is present as an OR-bearing represented thing in the strict sense operative in the Third Meditation’s causal argument. The line “I have the power of conceiving what is called a thing, or a truth, or a thought” is a thesis about the source and scope of intellectual conception. It is not yet a theory saying that each such item is contained in the intellect via objective reality. Likewise, the broad use of “idea” for what is “brought out by reasoning” shows that Descartes extends the term “idea” widely; it does not by itself prove that every such item inherits OR.

So the position I would now defend is more careful than my earlier one.

Descartes is not committed to the claim that OR belongs only to ideas of substances and their modes. That was too narrow. He is open to OR for a broader class of represented items, including qualities, attributes, and other ontologically ranked contents. But he is also not committed to the claim that every thinkable object, simply because it is thinkable or because it is the object of thought, is therefore contained by objective reality. Meditation III itself blocks that reduction, because it distinguishes mere object-directedness from representation proper. And Principles I.49 blocks the easy universalization, because it classifies eternal truths such as ex nihilo, nihil fit as neither things nor modes of things.

So the dispute should now be stated in its sharpest form:

The real question is not whether OR can extend beyond substances and modes. It plainly can. The real question is whether eternal truths and common notions are present in the intellect as represented entities with objective being, or whether they are instead intellectually grasped truths whose thinkability outruns the narrower ontology of OR. That is the exact point at which Nolan’s reading remains powerful but not decisive.

A further refinement is also worth making. Your appeal to “whatever is the object of my thinking” is strongest if it is used to rebut a crude picture on which only substance-like items can be mentally present. It is much weaker if it is used to prove that all object-directed thought is OR-bearing. Descartes’s own text does not support that stronger conclusion, because the very passage you are invoking distinguishes object-of-thought from the idea-like representation of that object.

Ring: Go ahead and turn this into a two-column comparison: Nolan’s pro-OR argument versus the anti-OR reply from Principles I.49 and Burman.

5.4: Here is the two-column comparison in a form that isolates Nolan’s strongest pro-OR moves and the anti-OR reply from Principles I.49 and Conversation with Burman.

Nolan’s pro-OR argument	Anti-OR reply from Principles I.49 and Burman
1. Nolan’s starting premise is already strongly representationalist. He says Cartesian ideas are “intrinsically representational.” If that premise is granted, then once eternal truths are counted as ideas, OR is already under pressure to follow. Lawrence Nolan, “The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (1997): 176.	Burman blocks the automatic extension. Descartes says common notions “are not strictly speaking ideas of real things.” So even if they are called “ideas” in some broad sense, that does not by itself show that they are strict OR-bearing ideas. (Conversation with Burman, AT V 153 / CSMK III 338)
2. Nolan’s first major move is to assimilate true and immutable natures to innate ideas with objective being. He writes: “what Descartes means by saying that something has a true and immutable nature is that it has objective being as an innate idea in our mind.” That is the heart of his Fifth Meditation reading. (Nolan, “The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures,” 181)	Principles I.49 cuts against that extension in the case of eternal truths. Descartes says: “the proposition Nothing comes from nothing is regarded not as a really existing thing, or even as a mode of a thing, but as an eternal truth which resides within our mind.” (Principles I.49, AT VIIIA 23–24; CSM I 210)
3. Nolan then extends the point from essences to eternal truths. His explicit conclusion is that “eternal truths and, by the transitivity of identity, essences are nothing more than innate ideas in the minds of human beings.” That is the bridge to a proposition such as ex nihilo, nihilo fit. (“The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures,” 190)	But Principles I.49 does not say that eternal truths are internal objects with objective being; it says they are a third class. After distinguishing things and modes of things, Descartes adds that such truths are “common notions or axioms.” That supports their intelligibility and innateness, but it does not itself identify an objectively contained representatum. (Principles of Philosophy I.49, AT VIIIA 23–24 / CSM I 210)
4. On Nolan’s view, the fact that eternal truths have no extra-mental existence does not count against OR. Quite the reverse: because they exist in the mind and are innate ideas, they can still possess objective being there. That gives him a unified anti-Platonist but pro-OR reading of essences and eternal truths. (Nolan, 181, 190)	The anti-OR reply is that “existing in the mind” is too weak to establish OR. Principles I.49 says only that the proposition exists in the mind as an eternal truth, not that it exists there as a represented thing or mode. So Nolan needs an extra step, namely, a specification of what the positive OR-content is supposed to be. Principles I.49 itself does not supply that step.
5. Nolan’s best implicit candidate for the content of ex nihilo, nihilo fit is not “nothingness” but a positive intelligible order—something like causal dependence or the impossibility of origination from non-being. That is the most charitable reconstruction of his view, because it avoids treating “nothing” as the internal object. Nolan’s article supports the general move from eternal truth to innate-idea ontology, even though it does not spell out this candidate content in those exact terms.	Burman makes “nothingness” an especially bad OR-candidate. Descartes says of the idea of nothing: “That idea is purely negative, and hardly counts as an idea at all.” So if one tries to make the OR-content of ex nihilo, nihilo fit be “nothingness,” the view collapses immediately. (Conversation with Burman)
6. Nolan’s strongest overall result: eternal truths can be treated as innate intellectual contents rather than as extra-mental Platonic entities. On that narrow point, his paper is philosophically strong and textually serious.	The anti-OR verdict: Nolan has shown, at most, that eternal truths are innate and intelligible. He has not shown decisively that they contain objective reality in the strict Cartesian sense, because Burman denies that common notions are strict ideas of real things, and Principles I.49 classifies “Nothing comes from nothing” as neither a thing nor a mode of a thing.

Critical verdict

The strongest objection to Nolan is not that Descartes’s distinction between strict ideas of things and common notions entails anti-OR. It does not. The stronger objection is that this distinction deprives Nolan of any easy inference from thinkability or innateness to objective reality. Once Descartes says that common notions are “not strictly speaking ideas of real things,” and once he says that “Nothing comes from nothing” is neither a really existing thing nor a mode of a thing, Nolan must do more than show that eternal truths are inborn and intellectually available. He must also specify the positive representatum objectively contained in the thought. That is precisely where his argument remains underdetermined.

So the fairest conclusion is this: Nolan’s reading remains formidable for geometrical essences and true and immutable natures taken generally. But for a common notion such as ex nihilo, nihilo fit, the anti-OR reply from Principles I.49 and Burman is stronger, because Descartes’s own classification is easier to reconcile with conceptual intelligibility than with strict OR-bearing internal representation.

Ring: Suppose that it is not possible to fix a specify positive representatum objectively contained in the thought. Why could not an idea still contain a representatum (see 2.1) that is either concepts, an indeterminate, or an underdetermined representatum?

Second, Martial Gueroult in his book Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons (1953) has argued that secondary-quality sensation have objective reality content but that it is infinitesimally small.

“This objective reality, however, is in this case only a minimum. It is, in fact, so small that one can scarcely distinguish it from nothingness, and one risks taking nothingness for being. . . . Sensible ideas, having an objective reality as close as possible to zero, are therefore in me only insofar as I participate in the maximum of nothingness . . . .” (Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons, Volume 1: L’Âme et Dieu, 219. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1953; bold not in original)

”It then manifests itself as ‘materially false,’ as proceeding from nothingness, being in me insofar as there is defect in me. From the perspective of being, it is materially an infinitely small objective reality, certainly as close as possible to zero, but not reducible to it and preserving something positive. . . . . Yet this objective reality is reduced as far as possible, since the true property of the body in itself, to which it refers, is for me a nothingness of knowledge.” (Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons, Volume 1: L’Âme et Dieu, 220. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1953; bold not in original)

“No doubt the objective reality of the sensible idea is only a minimum; no doubt it follows that it is obscure and thereby doubtful for my intellect; but it follows no less certainly that it is not a nothing and that to its minimum of reality there must correspond correlatively a minimum of truth.” (Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons, Volume 1: L’Âme et Dieu, 221. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1953; bold not in original)

What objections can you give to such an interpretive position?

5.4: I’m separating the two issues. First, whether OR can survive without a determinate positive representatum; second, whether Gueroult’s “infinitely small” OR for secondary-quality sensations is a defensible Cartesian reading.

Yes—up to a point.

I would now put the issue more carefully than before. It is not necessary, in principle, that every OR-bearing idea have a maximally determinate, richly articulated representatum. Descartes plainly allows obscure and confused ideas, and in the Third Meditation he says that if ideas such as heat and cold are true, “the degree of reality they represent” is “so scanty” that he cannot distinguish it from unreality. So a minimal or underdetermined OR-reading is not excluded merely by appeal to determinacy.

But that concession does not get Nolan, or anyone else, all the way home. The reason is that OR in Descartes is still not just “whatever makes a thought thinkable.” Nolan himself formulates the standard strong reading this way: ideas are “intrinsically representational,” every idea exhibits an internal object, and objective being is the way that internal object exists in the intellect. He also presents Descartes’s OR-scale as admitting three grades, corresponding to ideas of modes, finite substances, and God. So even a weak or underdetermined OR-reading still owes an answer to this question: what sort of internally exhibited item is present, and with what ontological status?

That is why “concepts,” “an indeterminate representatum (see 2.1),” and “an underdetermined representatum” need to be separated.

If the proposal is that the thought contains concepts, that is certainly plausible in the weak sense of conceptual articulation. A common notion such as ex nihilo, nihil fit obviously involves being, nothing, dependence, and impossibility. But that alone does not show OR. Burman says common notions are “not strictly speaking ideas of real things,” and Principles I.49 says “Nothing comes from nothing” is “not as a really existing thing, or even as a mode of a thing,” but “an eternal truth which resides within our mind.” Those texts do not refute a pro-OR reading deductively, but they do block the easy slide from conceptual content to objective reality.

If the proposal is that the thought contains an indeterminate representatum, that is stronger. Here I think the right answer is: possibly, but only if the indeterminacy is still positively typed. An idea may represent “something” obscurely without fixing it well. Descartes’s treatment of heat and cold leaves room for that much. But a merely indeterminate “something-or-other” does not yet behave like OR in the strict Third Meditation sense, because the causal argument requires the idea’s content to be ranked and compared. If the alleged content cannot be typed even as the kind of item whose reality is being measured, the OR machinery no longer has anything stable to measure.

If the proposal is that the thought contains an underdetermined representatum, that is the most serious option. One might say that the common notion does not contain the truth-proposition as a sharply objectified item, but does contain an underdetermined necessary order—say, the causal impossibility of origination from non-being. That is a philosophically respectable move. In fact, it is the strongest way to defend OR for eternal truths. But it remains vulnerable because Principles I.49 still classifies the proposition as an eternal truth or common notion rather than as a thing or mode, and Burman still withholds from common notions the status of strict ideas of real things. So the underdetermined-OR strategy is available, but it is not textually secured.

So my revised judgment is this: you are right that anti-Nolan arguments should not assume full determinacy as a prerequisite of OR. Descartes leaves room for minimal, obscure, or underdetermined representationality. But the pro-OR reading still has to show more than mere thinkability or conceptual articulation. It must show that the common notion contains something that functions as an objectively exhibited item, rather than merely as intelligible truth-content. The real dispute is no longer “determinacy or no determinacy,” but “objective containment or mere intelligibility.”

On Gueroult:

I have not directly verified Gueroult’s own French pages here. What I can verify is that later discussions summarize him as attributing to sensible ideas a tiny or close-to-zero degree of objective reality, and one summary explicitly presents him as holding that sensations have a quantity of objective reality “at the limit of being and nothingness.”

Assuming that is an accurate statement of Gueroult’s position, the objections are strong.

First, the view has a serious textual-basis problem. Descartes does say, in the Third Meditation, that if ideas such as heat and cold are true, the reality they represent is “so scanty” that he cannot distinguish it from unreality. But that is still not the same as saying that their objective reality is infinitely small. “So scanty” is a comparative and epistemic description; Gueroult’s formulation turns it into a quasi-mathematical ontology that Descartes himself does not state.

Second, Gueroult’s reading risks assigning the wrong bearer to what is positive. In the Fourth Replies, Descartes says that if cold is only a privation, then the idea of cold is not cold itself as existing objectively in the intellect, but “a certain sensation having no existence outside the intellect.” In the same discussion he says that what is positive is the sensation itself, or the faculty of sensation, and that the obscurity is what gives occasion to the false outward-directed judgment. That strongly suggests that the positivity here is formal reality in me, not a tiny positive OR-content of external coldness.

Third, the view risks importing the wrong scale into objective reality. Nolan’s reconstruction of Descartes’s theory treats objective reality as having three grades, paralleling modes, finite substances, and infinite substance. Gueroult’s “infinitely small” reading instead treats OR as though it varied continuously down toward zero. That is not impossible as an interpretive speculation, but it sits uneasily with the standard textual presentation of the OR hierarchy.

Fourth, the view creates a causal-adequacy problem. If materially false sensations have even a tiny positive OR-content, then that content should still require a formally or eminently adequate cause. But Descartes says that if such ideas are false, they “derive from nothing,” i.e., from a shortcoming in my nature, and in the Fourth Replies he says that obscurity, not some positive represented content, is what produces the misdirection. Gueroult’s reading therefore seems to re-positivize precisely what Descartes is trying to explain through defect and confusion.

Fifth, it intensifies the God-deceiver pressure. If a sensation contains even an infinitesimal positively representational content of an external sensible quality, then God has authored a built-in outward-directed content that is false or at least systematically misleading. Descartes’s own strategy is different: he places the error-pressure in obscurity and in our misuse of sensations, not in a tiny positively false representatum implanted by God.

Sixth, Gueroult’s view threatens to conflate phenomenological vividness with objective reality. The sensation is obviously positive and vivid as a mental occurrence. But Descartes’s reply to Arnauld is designed to distinguish those two things: the sensation has positive being in me, while the supposed representation of external coldness is precisely what becomes suspect. So “there is something positive here” does not entail “there is positive OR here,” not even in vanishingly small degree.

So the best verdict is this:

Gueroult’s position is attractive because it preserves some representationality for sensations without making them robustly object-presenting. It is, in that sense, a clever middle path. But it is textually fragile, conceptually unstable, and not obviously Cartesian. The decisive weakness is that Descartes’s own cold discussion distinguishes the positive formal reality of the sensation from the supposed outward content that obscurity tempts us to attribute to it. Once that distinction is kept firm, “infinitely small OR” starts to look like a way of saving representationalism rather than the reading most naturally demanded by the text.

The sharpest formulation against Gueroult is this:

Objection: Gueroult illegitimately converts Descartes’s claim that obscure sensory ideas, if true, represent a reality “so scanty” as to be scarcely distinguishable from unreality into a doctrine that sensations themselves contain an infinitesimal degree of objective reality. But Descartes’s Fourth Replies instead identifies the positive element as the formally real sensation in me and treats the misleading outward reference as arising from obscurity. Therefore Gueroult collapses formal positivity into objective representational content and gives the cold sensation a kind of OR that the text does not warrant.

NOTES

[NOTE: Any words in black font in these endnotes are clickable hyperlinks.]

1
In the Fourth Meditation Descartes explains the difference between a privation and a negation: “Falsity and error are essentially a privation; and this privation isn’t something to which God consents, because it isn’t a thing at all. Indeed, when it is considered in relation to God as its cause, it isn’t really a privation but rather a mere negation. That is, it is a mere fact about something that is not the case; it does not involve the notion that it ought to be the case. (Fourth paragraph from the end of the Fourth Med.; bold not in original)

Jonathan Bennett distinguishes between privations and negations in his glossary: “A privation in x is x’s not having something that it ought to have. If a person can’t speak, that is a privation in him; a rock’s lack of the ability to speak is not a privation in it but a mere negation.” (”Selected Correspondence,” Glossary under privation, earlymoderntexts.com)
2
The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon (139–40) defines common notions as follows: “Descartes’ “common notions or axioms”—the terms are interchangeable in the Principles (cf. AT IXB 24, CSM I 209)—derive their name from the koinai ennoiai, later called axiomata, which follow the definitions and postulates of Euclid’s Elements. Their conception is classical yet innovative. The idea that some strictly universal and necessary truths are both (a) self-evident or immediately clear and distinct for anyone “not blinded by preconceived opinions” (ibid.) and (b) primary in the sense of providing starting points for the deduction of other truths is largely traditional; original, on the other hand, is Descartes’ bold extension of their use from mathematics, logic, and natural science—to which the axiomatic method had been applied since antiquity (cf. Blanché 1973)—to metaphysics or first philosophy. But if Descartes routinely employed metaphysical axioms in his demonstrations, he was nonetheless reluctant to follow the axiomatic procedure of drawing logical consequences from a set of intuitively evident general definitions, axioms, and postulates, professing a preference for the analytic method of the Meditations over the synthetic method of the geometer (cf. AT VII 155–59, CSM II 110–13) (see analysis versus synthesis). Still, the more geometrico “arguments” he reluctantly agreed to provide as an addendum to the Second Replies are the main source of the common notions listed here (AT VII 160–70, CSM II 113–20) (see Geometrical Exposition).

Since (a) and (b) characterize Cartesian definitions as well, how do axioms and definitions differ? For one thing, definitions (see those of “mind,” “body,” and “God” in the Geometrical Exposition) articulate the content of innate ideas or basic concepts that are not simple and indefinable, like “thought,” and “existence,” both of which are best understood simply by experiencing inwardly that one thinks and exists (AT X 524, CSM II 418; cf. AT IXB 8, CSM I 195–96); axioms or common notions, by contrast, are primary propositions or innate truths. But since a Cartesian definition is a proposition or eternal truth about the essence of the thing defined, this cannot be the whole story. In the Principles I.48, Descartes distinguishes “things” (res) and their “affections,” both of which may exist outside the mind, from vertitates aeternae, which cannot. The affections include, along with the “principal” attributes of thinking and material res or substances, their respective modes. To things, attributes, and modes correspond “notions” in the narrow sense of “concepts.” In Principles I.49, he subsumes axioms or common notions (in a wider sense of “notion”) under the eternal truths. Thus, Cartesian real definitions are eternal truths about substances, about natures that can exist, whereas common notions are eternal truths of a general and abstract kind: indispensable to our reasoning—according to the early Rules for the Direction of the Mind, they function as “links which connect other simple natures together” (AT X 419, CSM I 45)—common notions furnish no knowledge of anything (capable of) existing outside the mind. In Principles I.50, the other term of the pair, “common,” is glossed as “common among all people.” Without pronouncing them “innate,” Descartes says that they “have their seat in our mind,” which amounts to the same thing (Gouhier 1969, 271–73).

Similar questions arise concerning common notions, theorems, and principles. In the Geometrical Exposition, Descartes notes that many of his axioms “should have been introduced as theorems” (AT VII 164, CSM II 116). Was he in doubt about the primitiveness of some of the truths designated common notions? Or does the designation vary with the analytic and synthetic procedures? As for principles, the word is formally defined (cf. AT IXB 2, CSM I 179–80) in terms of (a) and (b). Yet while all common notions are principles, the converse does not hold: the cogito is a principle without being acommon notion, that is, without being a principle in the same sense as the non-existential “Whatever thinks, is” (cf., however, AT IV 444–45, CSMK 290 on the other sense, in which the cogito is a principle). While it is not easy to assign a precise extension to every member of this family of terms—which includes “primary notion” (AT VII 135, CSM II 97), “primitive notion” (AT III 665, CSMK 218), and “common principle” (AT V 146, CSMK 332)—collectively their extension is roughly that of the simple natures of the early Rules, most of which are expressed by concepts or terms, although a couple of eternal truths feature there as well (cf. AT X 419–20, CSM I 44–45).

At this point, a list of notiones communes may be helpful: (1) “Nothing comes from nothing” and its corollary, “what is more perfect cannot be produced by—that is cannot have as its efficient and total cause—what is less perfect.” (2) “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time.” (3) “What is done cannot be undone.” (4) “Whatever thinks, is or exists.” (5) “Nothingness possesses no attributes, that is to say, no properties or qualities.” (6) “Things that are the same as a third thing are the same as each other.” (7) “Things that cannot be related in the same way to a third thing are different in some respect.” (8) “The whole is greater than its part.” (9) “Concerning every existing thing it is possible to ask what is the cause of its existence.” (10) “What can bring about a greater or more difficult thing can also bring about a lesser thing.” (See Gouhier 1969, 272–73, for detailed references to these notions.)

This representative sample is not a complete compilation; indeed, the Principles declare completeness impossible, there being “countless” common notions (cf. AT IXB 23–24, CSM I 209). Some appear to be metaphysical (those having to do with causality and existence), one logical (principle of contradiction), others mathematical (those concerned with quantity). But Descartes’ Aristotelian formulation of the principle of contradiction (in terms of being and not-being) tells against applying our classificatory schemes to his time.

The same danger of anachronism lurks behind the question of whether common notions are analytic or synthetic in Kant’s sense (at least the metaphysical among them—whichever they may be—may be safely considered synthetic). As to whether they are first or primary in the analytic as in the synthetic order, given that they are no more immune to the doubt occasioned by the Omnipotent God Hypothesis than are the likewise nonexistential simple truths of mathematics, they follow upon the cogito in the analytic method of discovery, although they precede all further knowledge so acquired.

Philosophical Issue	Della Rocca’s position, quotation, and objections
A. Strong universal thesis: For Descartes, all ideas contain objective reality representational content	All quotations from: Michael Della Rocca . “Judgment and Will.” In The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ Meditations, edited by Stephen Gaukroger, 142–59. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. The strong universal thesis that every idea contains objective reality is not explicitly defended in this chapter. The chapter explicitly argues only for universal representationalism, not for universal objective reality. “And, for Descartes, all ideas are representations; they are of things or at least they purport to be of things.” (“Judgment and Will,” 146) O1: This quotation states only that all ideas are representations. It does not state that all ideas contain objective reality. The move from universal representation to universal OR is an additional thesis not argued for here. O2: Descartes explicitly says that common notions such as “What is done cannot be undone” are regarded “not as a really existing thing, or even as a mode of a thing, but as an eternal truth which resides within our mind” (Principles I.49, AT VIIIA 23–24 / CSM I 209). That directly pressures any blanket claim that all ideas are of things in the relevant ontological sense. O3: Descartes also says that abstract number and universals are “merely a mode of thinking” and arise from our using “one and the same idea” for resembling particulars (Principles I.58–59, AT VIIIA 27–28 / CSM I 212–13). That again blocks an easy inference from ideahood to universal OR-content.
B. Weaker universal thesis: For Descartes, all ideas are representational	Yes, he supports B explicitly. “And, for Descartes, *all ideas* are representations; they are of things or at least they purport to be of things.” (“Judgment and Will,” 146) O1: Even as a thesis of universal representationalism, the wording is too coarse. Descartes allows items before the mind that are eternal truths, common notions, and modes of thought, not straightforwardly “things.” Principles I.49 and I.58–59 are the decisive pressure points (AT VIIIA 23–24, 27–28 / CSM I 209, 212–13). O2: Descartes’s own taxonomy distinguishes strict and non-strict senses of “idea.” Della Rocca’s formula ignores that internal complexity by treating representationality as flatly uniform across all ideas when it is only guaranteed to be true for all strict ideas that are as if images of things [non rem tanquam rem repraesentant].
Intentionality of ideas and what determines it	He treats intentionality as representational content passively presented by the intellect; belief requires a further act of will. “Error occurs only when the mind gives its assent to a representational content that is false.” (“Judgment and Will,” 146) O1: The claim in this quotation is highly problematic and probably false given the existence for Descartes of materially false secondary quality sensations, such as a cold sensation, if my interpretation is correct that such ideas do not contain any internally representing objective reality content. O2: This quotation concerns the conditions for error and belief, not a worked-out theory of what determines intentional content as such. It shows that assent is added to representation; it does not explain what fixes the content in the first place. O3: If Descartes allows common notions and universals that are not things but eternal truths or modes of thinking, then intentionality in Descartes cannot simply be reduced to thing-representation. Principles I.49 and I.58–59 complicate Della Rocca’s simplified model (AT VIIIA 23–24, 27–28 / CSM I 209, 212–13).
Aboutness	He explicitly construes ideas as aboutness-bearing and passive. “The ideas represent things, they are about things, and they are passive.” (“Judgment and Will,” 150) O1: “About things” is too strong. Descartes says common notions are “not as a really existing thing, or even as a mode of a thing, but as an eternal truth which resides within our mind” (Principles I.49, AT VIIIA 23–24 / CSM I 209). So at least some ideas are not about things in the straightforward ontological sense. O2: Descartes says abstract number and all universals are “merely a mode of thinking,” and that universal ideas arise from our reusing “one and the same idea” across resembling particulars (Principles I.58–59, AT VIIIA 27–28 / CSM I 212–13). That undercuts Della Rocca’s undifferentiated aboutness claim. O3: In the cold discussion, Descartes says that if cold is merely an absence, then what is at issue is not cold objectively in the intellect but “a sensation that in fact doesn’t exist outside the intellect” (Fourth Replies, AT VII 233 / CSM II 163). That is especially awkward for the formula that ideas are simply about things.
Whether SQ-sensations lack any OR	This chapter does not explicitly defend the no-OR view for SQ-sensations; its general framework pushes toward treating them as representational. “all ideas are representations; they are of things or at least they purport to be of things.” (“Judgment and Will,” 146) O1: This quotation still establishes only universal representationalism, not that secondary-quality sensations contain objectively real representational content. OR does not follow merely from “purporting to be of things.” O2: Descartes’s Fourth Replies pushes the other way in the cold case: if cold is an absence, then the idea is not cold objectively in the intellect but “a sensation that in fact doesn’t exist outside the intellect” (AT VII 233 / CSM II 163). That is strong evidence against ascribing OR to the sensation itself. O3: Descartes adds that the obscurity of the idea is “the only cause” of judging that “the idea of the sensation of cold represents some external item called ‘cold’” (Fourth Replies, AT VII 234–35 / CSM II 164). That supports the objection that the sensation’s role is to supply subject-matter for error, not straightforward OR-content.