{"id":22097,"date":"2025-04-04T07:40:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T07:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/?p=22097"},"modified":"2025-04-21T13:35:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T13:35:18","slug":"investigating-alan-nelsons-idea-with-chatgpt-4-5-february-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drdavidcring.net\/descartes-ideas\/idea\/investigating-alan-nelsons-idea-with-chatgpt-4-5-february-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigating Alan Nelson\u2019s \u201cIdea\u201d with ChatGPT 4.5 (February 2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Summarize and analyze Alan Nelson\u2019s<\/a> \"An<\/a> entry \u201cIdea<\/a>\u201d in the book \u201cThe Cambridge Descartes Lexicon<\/a><\/em>\u201d \"An<\/a> edited by Lawrence<\/a> Nolan<\/a> <\/strong> \"A<\/a>, but ignore his examination and presentation on innate ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Idea \/ 387<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IDEA:<\/strong> Ideas are modes of thought that function in various important ways in Descartes\u2019 philosophy . It is in virtue of ideas that thought is intentional and gives meaning to words. Ideas are the subject matter for true and false judgments that are expressed in propositional forms, and they are the basis of the certain foundations of knowledge (scientia<\/em>). This variety of functions is correlated with a complex set of theoretical distinctions that apply to ideas. Most of these are first explained rather than just used in the Third Meditation of the Meditations on First Philosophy<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

First, however, considerations of order appear to dictate that I now classify my thoughts into defi nite kinds, and ask which of them can properly be said to be the bearers of truth and falsity. Some of my thoughts are as it were the images of things [tanquam rerum imagines<\/em>], and it is only in these cases that the term \u201cidea\u201d is strictly appropriate\u2014for example when I think of a man, or a chimera, or the sky, or an angel , or God. (AT VII 36\u201337, CSM II 25\u201326)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This passage continues by noting that some thoughts have \u201cadditional forms,\u201d which include volitional aspects. So all modes of thought include an ideational aspect in the \u201cstrictly appropriate\u201d sense, while some include volitional aspects as well (AT VIIIA 17, CSM I 204; cf. AT III 295, CSMK 172). That contrast is important in the Fourth Meditation\u2019s theodicy of error (see error, theodicies of<\/strong>). The quoted Third Meditation passage goes on to introduce the question of truth and falsity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Now as far as ideas are concerned, provided they are considered solely in themselves and I do not refer them to anything else, they cannot strictly speaking be false; for whether it is a goat or a chimera that I am imagining, it is just as true that I imagine the former as the latter.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Ideas are not themselves true or false \u201cstrictly speaking.\u201d Descartes will, however, later allow that, less strictly speaking, ideas that are not clear and distinct (see clarity and distinctness<\/strong>) can be regarded as materially false<\/strong> when they provide subject matter for erroneous judgment (AT VII 232\u201333, CSM II 163; see Wilson 1978, ch. 5; Alanen 2003, ch. 5; and Nelson 1996). In the context of the Third Meditation, clear and distinct ideas are brought in as a part of the technical means of establishing the existence of God. Here it is important to note that while all ideas are, \u201cas it were,\u201d images, clear and distinct ideas of essences are purely intellectual and involve no corporeal images. Descartes explains in Third Replies that he chose the term \u201cidea\u201d because \u201cit was the standard philosophical term used to refer to the forms of perception belonging to the divine mind, even though we recognize that God does not possess any corporeal imagination\u201d (AT VII 181, CSM II 127\u201328).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

388 \/ Idea<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AT VII 181, CSM II 127\u201328). The procedure of the Third Meditation\u2019s cosmological argument further requires an explicit classification of ideas according to their formal and objective reality (see being, formal versus objective<\/strong>). Their formal reality is simply their existence as modes of thought. Objective reality is connected with representation and intentionality. Descartes argues that because the idea of God includes an actually infinite degree of objective reality, it represents a formal\u2014that is, actually existing\u2014infinity of reality. Along the same lines, the cosmological argument depends on there being exactly three degrees of objective reality: infinite, finite substantial, and modal (AT VII 185, CSM II 130).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The connection between representation, especially the representation of extramental objects, and objective reality is one of the most difficult parts of Descartes\u2019 theory of ideas; it has accordingly led to divergent interpretations. One class of interpretations can be approached from the definition of \u201cidea\u201d in the Geometrical Exposition. The definition, like the Third Meditation, adverts to the notion of form:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I understand this term to mean the form of any given thought immediate perception of which makes me aware of the thought. Hence, whenever I express something in words, and understand what I am saying, this very fact makes it certain that there is within me an idea of what is signified by the words in question. (AT VII 160, CSM II 113)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This leads to the next term defined in the Geometrical Exposition, \u201cobjective reality\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

By this I mean the being of the thing which is represented by an idea, in so far as this exists in the idea. . . . For whatever we perceive as being in the objects of our ideas exists objectively in the ideas themselves. (AT VII 161, CSM II 113\u201314; cf. AT VII 102, CSM II 74\u201375)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is ambiguous. It could mean simply that the term \u201cobjective reality\u201d indicates that an idea represents some object\u2014usually an extramental object. This object has its own formal reality and that formal reality is what is represented in virtue of the idea\u2019s objective reality. In short, \u201c\u2018objective being\u2019 simply means being in the intellect in the way in which objects are normally there\u201d (AT VII 102, CSM II 74). A different reading suggested to some by the wording of the definition understands Descartes not only to be using medieval terminology but to be deeply indebted to medieval theories of cognition. In these theories, an object can have two sorts of being, formal being and objective being. These two \u201cmodes\u201d of being correspond to the way things exist in the mind and the way the very same things exist outside the mind (see, e.g., Alanen 2003, 122\u201337, and Brown 2008, 198\u2013202). Descartes\u2019 own<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idea \/ 389<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

explication of the passage just quoted from First Replies immediately follows it and supports this reading, especially in the first clause:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

By this I mean that the idea of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect\u2014not of course formally existing, as it does in the heavens, but objectively existing, i.e., in the way in which objects normally are in the intellect. (AT VII 102\u20133, CSM II 75)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In such theories, it would be unacceptable to say that God literally exists in the mind or the mind itself has a second sort of existence in the mind, so this reading is meant to apply to adventitious sensory ideas but not to innate ideas (see Ayers 1998 and Carriero 2009, 11\u201321).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rival reading of these texts has Descartes diverging more sharply from medieval theories. Instead of putting weight on a medieval notion of form, representation is instead emphasized and taken to be intrinsic to thought. Consequently, the representational, or objective, feature of thought is what individuates one idea from another as modes of thought. Ideas \u201cform\u201d thoughts, thereby particularizing them, but only insofar as representations are distinguished from one another (see Lennon 1974).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stressing the representational character of ideas helps absolve Descartes of the charge that he failed fully to excise Aristotelian devices from his philosophy. Focusing on representation, however, puts pressure on the analogy between ideas and images. On one reading, ideas are (as it were) imagistic objects that are perceived by the mind in a separate act or operation. It is as if the \u201cmind\u2019s eye\u201d examined ideas to ascertain their content. Some support for this might be found in the preface to the Meditations where Descartes distinguishes ideas taken \u201cmaterially,\u201d that is, as operations, from ideas taken objectively (AT VII 8, CSM II 7). If that is not the same as the closely related formal-objective distinction, it could seem to entail that extramental objects are cognized by the mind, or perhaps the mind\u2019s eye, indirectly by the mediation of ideas (see Kenny 1968, ch. 5, and Newman forthcoming). A variation on this theme makes the operation and the representation different aspects of one and the same idea (Chappell 1986, Smith 2005). In that case, the perception of extramental objects would be mediated by the objective aspect of the idea. Yet another reading takes ideas themselves to be perceptive acts, so cognition of extramental items is unmediated and direct (see Nadler 2006). The fundamental issue of the directness of perception, unresolvable by straightforward examination of Descartes\u2019 writings, concerns the fine-grained details of the modal distinction as it applies to thought itself (see distinction [real, modal, and rational<\/strong>]). If perceptions consist of acts and objects that are sharply individuated, separate modes, then there is a clear sense in which cognition of extramental objects is indirect. If, however, there is no more than a theoretical or rational distinction between act and object, then the issue might be<\/p>\n\n\n\n

390 \/ Idea<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

merely terminological. Ideas could be regarded as having both active and passive aspects, and depending on the question at hand, either could receive the theoretical focus (Nelson 1997).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A further important classification of ideas is tentatively characterized in the Third Meditation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Among my ideas, some appear to be innate, some to be adventitious and others to have been invented by me [factae<\/em>, i.e., \u201cfactitious\u201d]. My understanding of what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is, seems to derive simply from my own nature. But my hearing a noise, as I do now, or seeing the sun, or feeling the fire, comes from things which are located outside me, or so I have hitherto judged. Lastly, sirens, hippogriffs, and the like are my own invention [finguntur<\/em>]. (AT VII 37\u201338, CSM II 26)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Descartes is most appropriately characterized as a rationalist not because he denigrated sensation (he did no such thing) but because he held that the fundamental principles of knowledge and reason are innate to the mind. Throughout his career, he highlighted the importance of what is innate, native, inborn, implanted (as seeds), primitive, or primary to the mind (see, e.g., AT X 373\u201376, CSM I 17\u201318; AT XI 47, CSM I 97; AT VI 41, CSM I 131; AT VIIIB 166\u201367, CSMK 222; AT III 665\u201368, CSMK 218\u201319; AT III 691\u201392, CSMK 226\u201327; AT IXB 14, CSM I 186; and the subsequent quotations in this entry). It is not surprising then, that understanding Descartes\u2019 doctrine of innate ideas is crucial for understanding adventitious and invented ideas as well. By the end of the Third Meditation, it is made clear that the idea of God is innate. \u201cAnd indeed it is no surprise that God, in creating me, should have placed this idea in me to be, as it were, the mark of the craftsman stamped on his work\u201d (AT VII 51, CSM II 35). In the preface to the Principles of Philosophy<\/em>, Descartes explains that there are only three foundational principles or innate ideas: one\u2019s own thought, God, and extension (AT IXB 10, CSM I 184; see Nelson 2008 for discussion and some reasons for thinking that the idea of the human being is a fourth foundational innate idea). In the preface to the Principles<\/em>, Descartes states that an important feature of these three is that all of his metaphysics can be clearly and distinctly deduced from them. This makes the exact count of ideas called \u201cinnate\u201d indeterminate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because innate ideas can be clearly and distinctly perceived, their objects are true and immutable natures, and they yield knowledge of essences (see Nolan 1997 and Cunning 2003). This is connected with innate ideas being simple and indivisible; conversely, ideas that are complex are ultimately composed of innate ideas. These doctrines first appear in the early, unpublished Rules for the Direction of the Mind<\/em>. There he writes of simple natures being intuited instead of ideas<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idea \/ 391<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

being clearly and distinctly perceived, but the variation is mostly terminological. On this point, it is arguable that Descartes\u2019 writings are continuous from early to late (Marion 1999, 20\u201342). In Rule 8, for example, we find that \u201cthere can be no falsity save in composite natures which are put together by the intellect \u201d (AT X 399, CSM I 32). This is a striking anticipation of the famous analogy with painting in the First Meditation. Descartes there compares a painter\u2019s creating fantastic composite representations from the simple elements of shapes and colors. Dream doubt there applies to all complex sensory perceptions because they might be as unrealistic as the painter\u2019s inventions. But an even more hyperbolic form of doubt is required to raise any question about whatever very simple perceptions we might have (AT VII 19\u201320, CSM II 14\u201315).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The connection between innate ideas, simplicity, and truth is exploited throughout Descartes\u2019 writings. Rule 12 contains a particularly clear, early statement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Simple natures are all self-evident and never contain any falsity. This can be easily shown if we distinguish between the faculty by which our intellect intuits and knows things and the faculty by which it makes affirmative or negative judgments. . . . it is evident that we are mistaken if we ever judge that we lack complete knowledge of any one of these simple natures . . . . otherwise it could not be said to be simple, but a composite made up of that which we perceive in it and that of which we judge we are ignorant. (AT X 420\u201321, CSM I 45; cf. AT X 399, CSM I 32)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The reference to judgment here is very important. The point is that when innate ideas are considered separately, the resulting perceptions are clear and distinct. But there is a danger of falsity when ideas are combined into complex judgments. In fact, confused and obscure ideas are produced in precisely this way. Ideas become fused together, \u201ccon-fused\u201d (confusus<\/em>) by judgments so that they can be mistakenly regarded as unities. This can result in further false judgments. The problem is minimized when the relations among components of composite ideas remain clear and distinct, as in mathematical demonstrations, for example. But the danger is particularly acute when these judgments involve affirmations about extramental reality. This insight from some of Descartes\u2019 earliest writings is found again in the Sixth Replies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It happens in almost every case of imperfect knowledge that many things are apprehended together as a unity, though they will later have to be distinguished by a more careful examination. (AT VII 445, CSM II 300; cf. AT VII 147, CSM II 105)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

392 \/ Idea<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we find it yet again in a letter to Mersenne<\/strong> written after the Meditations in 1641:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I explained in my Reply to the First Objections how a triangle inscribed in a square can be taken as a single idea or as several. Altogether, I think that all those which involve no affirmation or negation are innate in us; for the sense-organs do not bring us anything which is like the idea which arises in us on the occasion of their stimulus, and so this idea must have been in us before. (AT III 418, CSMK 187)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commentators have had difficulty discerning a coherent account of innate ideas in Descartes\u2019 writings (McRae 1972; Wilson 1978, 152\u201365; Jolley 1990, 12\u201354). If innate ideas are clearly and distinctly perceived, does this mean that infants do so? If they are instead perceived only when appropriately occasioned, does that mean that they are irreducible, occult dispositions of the sort that later philosophers learned to distrust? Perhaps Descartes would have answered these questions by appealing to the way in which confused ideas\u2014those of infants, for example\u2014are composed of simpler, innate elements. It follows that one would always be aware of ideas that included innate ideas as components, but one might never come to perceive innate ideas clearly and distinctly. Doing so would require literally distinguishing them from the other confusing elements. Converting confused ideas into clear and distinct perceptions typically requires meditation and the application of analysis and the method of doubt (AT VII 157, CSM II 111) (see analysis versus synthesis<\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letter to Mersenne just quoted might seem to bring out a remarkable sense in which Descartes maintained that all ideas are innate. Sensation results in ideas that represent existing bodies, yet Descartes\u2019 anti-Scholastic natural philosophy and dualism entail that nothing corporeal can be literally transmitted into a thinking thing. The letter is not aberrant; in 1648, just two years before his death, he penned this well-known passage in the Comments on a Certain Broadsheet<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[There] is nothing in our ideas which is not innate to the mind or the faculty of thinking with the sole exception of those circumstances which relate to experience, such as the fact that we judge that this or that idea which we now have immediately before our mind refers to a certain thing situated outside us. . . . The very ideas of the motions themselves and of the figures are innate in us. The ideas of pain, colours, sounds and the like must be all the more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions. (AT VIIIB 358\u201359, CSM 1 304)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance that Descartes\u2019 assigns to some ideas in virtue of their being innate could not be supported unless there were some adventitious and factitious ideas with<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idea \/ 393<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

which to contrast them. A clue to Descartes\u2019 meaning is provide by passages in which he maintains that even sensory ideas can be clearly and distinctly perceived. The discussion of how sensations are known at the end of the first part of the Principles<\/em> is crucial:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[Sensations, emotions, and appetites] may be clearly perceived provided we take great care in our judgements concerning them to include no more than what is strictly contained in our perception\u2014no more than that of which we have inner awareness. (AT VIIIA 32, CSM I 216)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

We must be very careful to note that pain and colour and so on are clearly and distinctly perceived when they are regarded merely as sensations or thoughts. (AT VIIIA 33, CSM I 217)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These texts do not say that colored objects or painful limbs are clearly and distinctly perceived. Those ideas are confused complexes; they are also adventitious. Instead, they can be read as saying that if we take great care and separate the simplest sensory elements from confusing judgments about bodies, we can clearly and distinctly perceive the residue of that analysis. So these simple sensory ideas are the ones that are identified as innate in the notorious passage quoted from the Comments on a Certain Broadsheet<\/em>, and adventitious ideas of colored bodies and painful limbs involve the \u201ccircumstances which relate to experience,\u201d that is, the human sensation of bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Descartes never conclusively settles a number of difficult issues about ideas and human sense perception so commentators have had a good deal of work to do on this topic. One set of issues is brought to a head when Descartes distinguishes \u201cthree grades of sensory response\u201d in the Sixth Replies. The first grade straightforwardly consists in the purely material operation of the human body<\/strong>. The third grade includes considerable cognitive processing. \u201cIt includes all the judgements about things outside us which we have been accustomed to make from our earliest years\u2014judgements which are occasioned by the movements of these bodily organs\u201d (AT VII: 436\u201337; CSM II: 294\u201395). The third grade of sensory response clearly involves many complicated matters, but it is easily characterized without recourse to any details about the theory of ideas. It is thus at the second grade of sensory response that most interpretive difficulties arise. Just before the last quoted passage we find this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The second grade comprises all the immediate effects produced in the mind as a result of its being united with a bodily organ. . . . Such effects include the perceptions of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, colours, sound, taste, smell, heat, cold, and the like, which arise from the union and as it were the intermingling of mind and body, as explained in the Sixth Meditation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

394 \/ Idea<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cimmediacy\u201d of the ideas at this second grade evidently consists in the absence of judgment or reasoning. The passage continues with an example of visual perception:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[The second grade] extends to the mere perception of the colour and light reflected. . . . it arises from the fact that the mind is so intimately conjoined with the body that it is affected by the movements which occur in it. Nothing more than this should be referred to the sensory faculty if we wish to distinguish it carefully from the intellect.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is thus an ineffable consequence of the union of mind and body that the second grade of response in the mind arises from the first grade of response in the human body. Descartes might be committed to the position that the second grade includes not only sensory ideas of, for example, color, sound, texture, and pain but also the innate idea of extension (see Wilson 1999, ch. 5). In the Meditations<\/em>and Principles<\/em>, this is arguably an important component of the proof of the existence of body. It would also help explain the representative character of the ideas at the second grade. Although the sensory content only confusedly represents material things, the extended component can be made clear and distinct. This means that it can be the basis of true judgments concerning material things. But the inclusion of extension in the second grade also highlights an important problem about the purely sensory components at that grade. It might seem they cannot represent or have objective reality at all because the motions in external bodies that effect the second grade in no way resemble those modes of thought (Wilson 1999; Simmons 1999, 2014; Nelson 2013). One might conclude that these purely sensory aspects of thought represent the mind, or perhaps instead the human being . One might alternatively conclude that they are not ideas at all, or simply that Descartes himself did not have a fully coherent theory. This last alternative inspired a good deal of the early reception of Descartes\u2019 philosophy in such thinkers as Arnauld, Malebranche, Desgabets, R\u00e9gis, Spinoza, and Locke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See also:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n