Descartes on Innate Ideas

Deborah A. Boyle

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781441102874
• eBook ISBN: 9781441100948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The concept of innateness is central to Descartes' epistemology; the Meditations display a new, non-Aristotelian method of acquiring knowledge by attending properly to our innate ideas. Yet understanding Descartes's conception of innate ideas is not an easy task and some commentators have concluded that Descartes held several distinct and unrelated conceptions of innateness. In Descartes on Innate Ideas, however, Deborah Boyle argues that Descartes's remarks on innate ideas in fact form a unified account. Addressing the further question of how Descartes thinks innate ideas are known, the author shows that for Descartes, thinkers have implicit knowledge of their innate ideas. Thus she shows that the actual perception of these innate ideas is, for Descartes, a matter of making them explicit, turning the intellect away from sense-perceptions and towards pure thought. The author also provides a new interpretation of the Cartesian 'natural light', an important mental faculty in Descartes' epistemology.

Chapter 1

The Multiple Meanings of ‘Innate Idea’

Understanding Descartes’ conception of innate ideas first requires understanding what he means by ‘idea.’ In his replies to Hobbes, Descartes asserts that he decided to use the word ‘idea’ ‘because it was the standard philosophical term used to refer to the forms of perception belonging to the divine mind’ (CSM II 127/AT VII 181). But even if this term did have a standard meaning in philosophy at the time, Descartes’ use of it engendered some confusion; in addition to elucidating its meaning in his replies to Hobbes, he claims in the Fifth Set of Replies that the objector, Gassendi, had misinterpreted what he meant by ‘idea’ (CSM II 253/AT VII 366). He also clarifies his meaning in letters to Mersenne of July 1641 (CSMK III 183–5/AT III 382–3 and 392–3).

Getting clear about what Descartes means by ‘idea’ is complicated by the fact that as he uses it, the term is ambiguous, in two distinct ways. First, in Descartes’ early works, the term ‘idea’ refers to a brain state, while in the Meditations he uses it to characterize a purely mental phenomenon. Second, and more importantly, Descartes points out in the Preface to the Meditations that the word ‘idea’ (now understood as a mental phenomenon rather than as a brain state) has two senses, idea as ‘act’ of thought and idea as ‘object’ of thought.

Taking this latter ambiguity seriously is the first step in developing a unified account of Cartesian innate ideas, for it means that ‘innate idea,’ too, is ambiguous between idea as act and idea as object.¹ I discuss these issues in Section 1. But it is also important to note a third meaning of ‘innate idea’ in the Cartesian corpus: ‘innate idea’ can also mean a disposition or capacity to have a certain idea. This sense of ‘innate idea’ is the subject of Section 2, where I will also describe and respond to the secondary literature on this aspect of Descartes’ theory of innateness. As we will see, scholars have been divided on how to interpret the passages in which Descartes characterizes innate ideas as dispositions. Some commentators dismiss these passages as aberrations; others see them as expressing Descartes’ real theory of innate ideas. I argue that neither interpretation is satisfactory: the passages should neither be dismissed nor specially privileged. In Section 3, I turn to John Cottingham’s interpretation of Cartesian innate ideas. Cottingham maintains that Descartes was inconsistent, endorsing both a dispositional account and what he calls a ‘present but submerged’ account of innate ideas. I argue, however, that these two accounts are not actually inconsistent; a unified account of Cartesian innate ideas is possible. On this interpretation, there are three senses of ‘innate idea’: innate idea in the objective sense, material sense, and dispositional sense. But, I will argue, these three senses are interdependent; thus, on my account, we need not take Descartes to be confused or inconsistent in positing multiple senses of ‘innate idea.’ Finally, in Section 4, I turn to another account of Cartesian innateness to be found in the secondary literature, what Robert McRae has identified as the ‘recollection’ account. I argue that the passages McRae points to in support of his interpretation need not be read as indicating a new account of innateness; rather, these passages can be read as consistent with the unified account for which I am arguing.

1.1 Ambiguities in Descartes’ Idea of ‘Idea’

In their objections to the Meditations, both Hobbes and Gassendi evidently take ‘idea’ to be equivalent to ‘image’ (CSM II 126–7/AT VII 179 and CSM II 253/AT VII 366). In defense of his use of this apparently puzzling term, Descartes writes in his Replies to Hobbes:

I used the word ‘idea’ because it 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. And besides, there was not any more appropriate term at my disposal. (CSM II 127–8/AT VII 181)

As this remark makes clear, Descartes means the word ‘idea’ to refer to a mode of thought, and not to a mode of extended substance. Descartes writes in the Second Set of Replies that

it is not only the images depicted in the imagination which I call ‘ideas’. Indeed, in so far as these images are in the corporeal imagination, that is, are depicted in some part of the brain, I do not call them ‘ideas’ at all; I call them ‘ideas’ only in so far as they give form to the mind itself, when it is directed towards that part of the brain. (CSM II 113/AT VII 160–1)

This was certainly true of the Meditations and Descartes’ later works. However, in his early works, such as the Rules for the Direction Of the Mind, the World, and the Treatise On Man, Descartes used ‘idea’ in a quite different sense, to characterize modes of both corporeal and incorporeal substances. In other words, ‘idea’ in the earlier works is ambiguous between a corporeal and an incorporeal sense.² Thus in a discussion of our mental faculties in the Rules (probably written before 1629³), Descartes writes:

Thirdly, the ‘common’ sense functions like a seal, fashioning in the phantasy or imagination, as if in wax, the same figures or ideas which come, pure and without body, from the external senses. The phantasy is a genuine part of the body, and is large enough to allow different parts of it to take on many different figures and, generally, to retain them for some time.⁴ (CSM I 41–2/AT X 414)

If the phantasy is a part of the body, a corporeal substance, and if ideas can be fashioned in the phantasy, then those ideas must also be corporeal. In the World, written between 1630 and 1632,⁵ Descartes consistently uses ‘idea’ to refer to a mode of mental substance, but he typically uses the phrase ‘the ideas we have in our mind.’⁶ That he felt the need to specify that he meant ideas in the mind suggests that he thought there could be ideas in the body, too. And, indeed, just such a usage appears in the Treatise on Man, which he probably began to write in late 1632.⁷ There, Descartes explains how the mechanism of the human body would operate even without being joined to a rational soul. In his account of sensation, he calls the images which are formed in the corporeal imagination ‘idées’ (CSM I 106/AT XI 176), and he explicitly states, ‘I wish to apply the term “idea” generally to all the impressions which the spirits can receive as they leave gland H [the location of the imagination and the “common” sense]’ (CSM I 106/AT XI 177). The ‘spirits’ in this account are corporeal entities, and the ‘impressions’ they receive are, apparently, a physical configuration imparted to them. Thus the word ‘idea’ is being used to describe a brain occurrence, something corporeal rather than something in the soul.⁸

This vacillation between two senses of ‘idea’ could be explained if Descartes had not yet worked out his doctrine that mental substance is distinct from bodily substance. And, in fact, there is little evidence that at the time of writing the Rules Descartes had clearly formulated his doctrine of two substances;⁹ if this is right, then there would have been no reason for him to restrict ‘idea’ to one substance rather than the other. We can see the beginnings of the two-substance doctrine in the World and the Treatise On Man. But only when he began to explore the ramifications of a two-substance doctrine, around the time of the Meditations, would Descartes have realized that he needed either to restrict ‘idea’ to a purely mental sense, or to emphasize that the term has two senses; the passage from the Second Replies shows that he chose the first of these options.¹⁰ By the time of the Meditations, Descartes is quite emphatic that by ‘idea’ he means a mode of thought.

Yet an important ambiguity remains in Descartes’ use of the term ‘idea’ in the later works. While he does consistently use ‘idea’ in the later works to characterize mental rather than physical phenomena, he points out in the Preface to the Meditations that ‘“Idea” can be taken materially, as an operation of the intellect. … Alternatively, it can be taken objectively, as the thing represented by that operation’ (CSM II 7/AT VII 8). In other words, ‘idea’ might refer to an act of thinking, or it might refer to the object of that act. In referring to someone’s idea of a horse, for example, Descartes might mean to refer to the act whereby the person thinks of the horse (the idea in the material sense), but he might also mean to refer to the object of the person’s thought—that is, to the horse being represented (the idea in the objective sense). In his paper ‘The Theory of Ideas,’ Vere Chappell rightly points out that this distinction is ‘the key to understanding Descartes’ whole theory of ideas, which itself is the central component of his theory of knowledge.’¹¹ Chappell also usefully abbreviates ‘idea in the material sense’ and ‘idea in the objective sense’ as idea_m and idea_o, respectively, a convention I shall adopt.

The distinction between ideas_m and ideas_o should be borne in mind whenever Descartes refers to ideas. Consider Descartes’ definition of ‘idea’ in the Second Set of Replies:

I understand this term to mean the form [formam] 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. (CSM II 113/AT VII 160)

In the same passage, he says that ‘thought’ means ‘everything that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it. Thus all the operations of the will, the intellect, the imagination, and the senses are thoughts’ (CSM II 113/AT VII 160). If, as he says here, operations of the intellect are ‘thoughts,’ and (as he says in the Preface to the Meditations) ideas_m are operations of the intellect, then thoughts must be ideas_m. But when he characterizes ideas as the ‘forms’ of particular thoughts, is he referring to ideas_m, or ideas_o?

I think Descartes’ use of the term ‘form’ is a clue that he is referring in this case to ideas_o. Although Descartes explicitly rejects scholastic forms in his account of sense-perception, his use of the technical term ‘forma’ evokes the scholastic distinction between form and matter. According to the scholastics, the form of a thing is what makes that thing what it is. Descartes can be read as suggesting that the ‘matter’ of a thought is the activity of the mind itself, while its ‘form’ is the idea taken objectively; the idea ‘informs’ the mind, so that what the mind thinks is a thought—an idea_m—of the thing of which it has an idea_o. When I have a sensory experience of heat, for example, the idea_o of heat informs my mind; when I have a visual sensory experience of a book, the idea_o of the book informs my mind; when I think of God, the idea_o of God informs my mind; and so on.

What does Descartes mean, then, when he says that we have an idea? How we answer this question will depend on which sense of ‘idea’ is in play. Since ideas_m are acts of thought, one kind of account of what it means to say we have an idea will appeal to the intellectual act that occurs when we have that idea. Thus to say one has an idea might mean one is presented with a visual image, or a sense-perception of another kind. Or it might mean one understands something. For example, in the Third Meditation, the meditator says that he ‘understands [intelligam]’ what a thing, truth and thought are; these are things of which he has innate ideas (CSM II 26/AT VII 38). Likewise, when the meditator refers a few pages later to his ‘idea of God,’ he says, ‘By the word “God” I understand [intelligo] a substance that is infinite, <eternal, immutable,> independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else’ (CSM II 31/AT VII 45). In these cases, to have an idea is to know what the thing is; it is to have a concept of the thing, which presumably means either that one can list various attributes that belong to it or that one can identify the thing under various conditions.¹² When Descartes refers to mental operations like these, acts such as understanding or perceiving, he is most likely referring to an idea_m.

On the other hand, if we are referring to an idea_o, then to say we have some idea is to make a claim about some object of thought. Descartes clarifies this sense of ‘idea’ in the First Set of Replies, saying that ‘an idea is the thing which is thought of in so far as it has objective being in the intellect’ (CSM II 74/AT VII 102). ‘Objective being’ signifies ‘the object’s being in the intellect in the way in which its objects are normally there’ (CSM II 754/AT VII 102). For example, he says, ‘the idea of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect—not 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’ (CSM II 75/AT VII 102–3). His point is that there are two types of existence or being that an object can have. To exist formally is just to exist in the world; substances and their modes possess this sort of existence. To exist objectively, however, is to exist in an intellect. Thus a tree exists formally in my front yard; it exists objectively when I perceive it. So, to say that one has an idea_o is to say that a certain object of thought is present in the mind.

But must an idea_o be the object of some occurrent act of thought? In other words, can we make any sense of the notion of an idea_o without there being an intellectual act in which the idea_o figures—that is, without there being an idea_m? More bluntly, can an idea_o exist in the mind without being perceived, that is, without the thinker being explicitly aware of it?¹³ The received view is that the answer to these questions is ‘no.’ Chappell asserts that to say that ideas_m represent ideas_o is to ‘suggest that the relation is necessary, at least on the side of the idea_o: for it suggests that every idea_o is represented by an idea_m.’¹⁴ Later he suggests that ‘there is no idea_m that is not joined to some one idea_o by the representative relation.’¹⁵ Similarly, Lilli Alanen asserts that the two senses of ‘idea’ are ‘two inseparable sides of the same phenomenon that necessarily occur together—although they can be considered apart for purposes of analysis.’¹⁶

I shall argue that while this may be true of Cartesian adventitious ideas, it need not be true of Cartesian innate ideas. Adventitious ideas, Descartes says in the Third Meditation, differ from innate ideas insofar as the latter seem to come only from his nature, while the former seem to come from some other source—namely, from external objects (CSM II 26/AT VII 38). It is indeed true of Cartesian adventitious ideas that the idea_o is the object of some occurrent act of thought. To have an adventitious idea in the mind is to have a thought of which that idea is the object; that is, for adventitious ideas, every idea in the objective sense is necessarily the object of a correlative idea in the material sense.

However, I shall argue that for Descartes, innate ideas can be in the mind without yet being the actual objects of any occurrent act of thought. That is, for innate ideas, the material and objective senses of ‘idea’ are less closely related: an innate idea can be present in the mind (that is, we can have an innate idea_o) without there being any act of the intellect by which we perceive it (that is, without there being a correlative innate idea_m).

This suggestion may seem unintuitive. However, it allows us to make good sense of the various passages in which Descartes suggests that we can have innate ideas which we haven’t yet noticed. For example, although he thinks that the idea of God is innate, he tells Burman that ‘it does not … seem probable’ that infants have an actual idea of God (CS...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Multiple Meanings of ‘Innate Idea’
• Chapter 2: Innate Ideas as Objects and Acts
• Chapter 3: The Role of ReH ection in Perceiving Innate Ideas
• Chapter 4: The Natural Light Reconsidered
• Chapter 5: The Natural Light and Its Truths
• Chapter 6: Innate Ideas, Corporeal Substance, and Mathematics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index