transparency and falsity in descartes's theory of ideas

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Transparency andFalsity in Descartes'sTheory of IdeasClaudia Lorena GarciaPublished online: 08 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: Claudia Lorena Garcia (1999) Transparencyand Falsity in Descartes's Theory of Ideas, International Journal ofPhilosophical Studies, 7:3, 349-372, DOI: 10.1080/096725599341802

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Transparency and Falsity inD escartes’s Theory of Ideas

Clau dia L orena García

Abstract

Here I develop an interpretation of Descartes’ theory of ideas which differsfrom the standard reading in that it incorporates a distinction between whatan idea appears to represent and what it represents. I argue that this inter-pretation not only � nds support in the texts bu t also is requ ired to explaina large nu mber of assertions in Descartes which wou ld otherwise appearirremediably obscu re or problematic. For example, in my interpretation itis not puzzling that D escartes responds to A rnauld’s dif� culty concerningthe notion of material falsity by drawing a distinction between that to whichan idea conforms (that of which the idea tru ly is) and that to which it refers.Fu rthermore, my interpretation also explains how Descartes can intelligiblyreject the view that saying that something is clear and distinct is equ ivalentto saying that it is obviou s. Finally, I argue that my interpretation allowsDescartes’ view that we have some sort of internal access to the objectsactually represented by an idea.

Keywords: Descartes; ideas; material falsity; transparency; representation;A ristotelian-Scholasticism

Ever since D escartes wrote about ideas, thoughts, and minds in theMeditations, almost no one has doubted that he then created a novelmanner of understanding the mental in terms of cognitive transparency.1

Concerning Cartesian ideas, this interpretation says that one always hasan immediate access to the object or objects represented by an idea.

H ere I challenge this manner of understanding Cartesian ideas bydefending an alternative interpretation according to which there is adistinction in D escartes between what an idea appears to represent andwhat it represents.2 I argue that D escartes suggests this distinction in anumber of passages, bu t particu larly in his response to A rnauld’s objec-tion that there can be no materially false ideas – i.e., that non-judgmentalcognitions3 cannot be false – becau se, as some A ristotelian Scholastics had

International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 7 (3), 349–372ISSN 0967–2559 print 1466–4542 online © 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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already argued, the object represented by such a cognition is, by de� ni-tion, that to which the cognition conform s. I show that D escartes’s replyamounts to accepting this de� nition and, at the same time, arguing thatwhat a materially false idea appears to represent differs, in certain ways,from what it actually represents. I fu rther argue against those scholarswho have thought that the notion of material falsity has disastrous conse-quences for D escartes.4

I Ideas and Cognitive Transparency in D escartes.

There is a su rprisingly large number of passages in D escartes which directlysuggest that he handled a distinction between what an idea appears torepresent and what it actually represents. In this section, we shall presentand examine most of these passages. First, there is the manner in whichhe explicitly characterizes ideas in the third M editation:

Some of my thoughts are as it were the images of things (tanqu amrerum imagines), and it is only in these cases that the term ‘idea’ isstrictly appropiate.

(AT VII 37)

Ideas, he says, are tanquam rerum imagines. In another passage in thesame Meditation he drops the ‘imagines’, and says that ‘there can be noideas which are not as it were of things (tanquam rerum )’ (AT VII 44).The French version of this passage reads as follows: ‘there cannot be any[idea] which does not appear (semble) to us to represent some thing’ (ATIX-1 34–5; my translation).

Ideas, then, are those of ou r thoughts which are as it were of things;each of them must appear to us to represent some thing, some res. Anumber of Cartesian scholars overlook the Latin ‘tanquam reru m ’ (‘as if’or ‘as it were’) as well as the French ‘sem ble’ in the above passages.5

However, I think that, in distinguishing between an idea’s being tanqu amrerum and its being rerum – i.e., between an idea’s appearing to repre-sent a thing and its actually representing it – D escartes is opening thedoor to the possibility of speaking intelligibly of the falsity of ideas, some-thing which, as we shall see, A ristotelian Scholastics could generally notdo. Indeed, the very characterization of material falsity in D escartes makesuse of that distinction. To appreciate this, let us examine now the Cartesianconcepts of judgment and of falsity.

D escartes distinguishes, � rst, ideas from judgments, and secondly, thefalsity of judgments (i.e., formal or proper falsity) from the falsity of ideas(that is, material falsity). Now, ideas are distinguished from judgments inthe following manner: the former are more basic than the latter, since anyjudgment presupposes the existence of at least one idea – i.e., the idea of

I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P H I L O SO P H I CA L ST U D I E S

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the object about which the judgment is – while ideas do not presupposejudgments; also ideas are acts of perception while judgments are acts ofthe will.6 Secondly, although in the third Meditation Descartes asserts that,properly speak ing, ideas cannot be false,7 a few pages later he goes on toadd that there is an improper sense in which one can intelligibly say thatsome ideas are false:

there is another kind of falsity, material falsity, which occurs in ideas,when they represent non-things as things (non rem tanquam remrepraesentant).

(AT VII 43)

Thus, concerning an idea – concerning, at least, a materially false idea– it makes sense to distinguish what the idea represents from how it repre-sents it.

Let u s look again at one of the assertions made in the passage quotedabove: a materially false idea represents a non-thing (non res) as if it werea thing (res). What does this mean? A ccording to D escartes, non-thingsare (formally) unreal; and this is to say not only that non-things happennot to exist bu t also that they cannot exist. For example, in the thirdMeditation D escartes says that we cannot tell, of ou r ideas of sensiblequalities, whether these ‘are ideas of real things or of non-things’ (ibid.);8

and in the French version, this statement is expanded to include an expla-nation of ‘non-things’:

I do not know . . . whether the ideas of those qualities of which weare aware are in fact the ideas of some real things, or whether theyrepresent to me nothing bu t some chimerical beings which cannotexist.

(AT IX-1 34; my translation and italic)9

Non-things are in complete opposition to (formally) real things: the for-mer are not (formally) real and cannot exist;10 the latter are (formally) realand can exist. Later, in section IV, I shall complete my defence of this man-ner of understanding the notions of a non-thing and of material falsity.

There is a third set of key passages in D escartes which provide fu rthersupport for my contention that Descartes makes a distinction betweentwo different kinds of content – passages where he asserts that an ideamay contain implicitly many perfections of which one is not immediatelyaware. For example, in the � fth Replies, he says:

Once the idea of the true G od has been conceived, althou gh we maydetect additional perfections in him which we had not yet noticed,this does not mean that we have augmented the idea of God; we

T R A N SPA R E N C Y A N D FA L SI T Y I N D E SCA R T E S

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have simply made it more distinct and explicit (expressior), since, solong as we suppose that ou r original idea was a true one, it musthave contained all these perfections.

(AT VII 371; my italic)11

A dditionally, in the case of obscure and confused ideas – some of whichare false – one often cannot begin to tell what they represent. For example,an idea is called ‘obscure and confused’, Descartes says, ‘because itcontains some element of which we are ignorant’ (AT VII 147).12 Thus,this and the rest of the passages quoted above clearly suggest the followingpoints:

(1) Descartes is committed to rejecting the view that an idea has to bewholly cognitively transparent since (a) sometimes an idea contains thingswe do not immediately notice; (b) sometimes we cannot tell whether anidea represents (objectively contains) a thing or a non-thing; and (c) some-times it represents a non-thing as a thing (tanquam rem ).

(2) D escartes realizes that his account of the distinction between clearand distinct/materially false ideas requ ires him to make some sort of dis-tinction between what an idea presents in an explicit or imm ediate fashion– what it appears to represent – and what the idea contains implicitly.

Moreover, a closer textual examination of the exchange betweenA rnauld and D escartes concerning material falsity fu rther supportscontentions (1) and (2) above. In the next section, I examine some of theconcepts in A ristotelian Scholasticism whose grasp – as I argue in sectionIII – is essential for constructing a coherent and more adequ ate under-standing of the A rnauld – D escartes exchange, and thus of the Cartesiannotions of idea and of material falsity.

II Aristotelian Scholasticism and Non-Judgmental Falsity

In this section, I present and examine the reasons why D escartes’s notionof material falsity could appear very problematic to a philosopher likeA rnauld. It is my contention that A rnauld is worried about a traditionalobjection to the view that non-judgmental cognitions – that is, cognitiveacts or operations distinct from, and more basic than, judgments13 – canbe false.

In A ristotelian Scholasticism, the hylomorphic theory of substance isinextricably intertwined with the theory of cognition and mental repre-sentation. In a nu tshell, the view is that for someone to be able to know,to think abou t, and to sense a certain thing, the very form of that thingmust be found in the appropriate cognitive faculty. The forms, as they arein a certain faculty, are called species.14

For the philosophers within this tradition, then, knowledge of an objectis brought abou t through the inform ation of a faculty by the species of


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that object. Hence the relationship between the cognitive act and its objectis one of conform ity. Suárez, for example, explicitly states this conse-quence: ‘it is necessary that what represents and what is representedconform to each other’ (D M IX, 1, 14). The act of simple non-judgmentalcognition,15 he adds, ‘cannot disagree (difform is) with a thing in so far asit is the object represented’ by that act (ibid.)16

I shall call the view that the object of a non-judgmental cognition mustpossess all – though not necessarily only – the properties that are depictedin the cognition the principle of conform ity. However, note that embracingthis principle seems to lead naturally to the view that, strictly speaking,non-judgmental cognitions cannot be false. On this point it is instructiveto examine Suárez’s view, since D escartes speci� cally refers to these viewsin his response to A rnauld’s objection to the concept of material falsity,17

and since, as we shall see, this objection echoes Suárez’s own objectionagainst non-judgmental falsity.

Suárez argues that a non-judgmental cognition cannot properly be false;if it were (properly) false, then there would have to be a disconformitybetween the cognition and the thing that is the object of the cognition(i.e., the object represented); bu t no such disconformity can occu r becau se,as we saw, ‘it is necessary that what represents and what is representedconform to each other’ (D M IX, 1, 14).18

O n the other hand, by saying that ideas can be materially false, Descartesembraces the view that it is possible for an idea to represent a thing (ora non-thing, as the case may be) as being other than what it is. A s wehave seen, Suárez denies this possibility – and so does A rnauld in hisObjections, as I shall try to show in the next section.

III Descartes and A rnauld on Material Falsity

Many scholars have thought that D escartes’s reply to Arnau ld’s objectionconcerning the notion of material falsity is severely confused.19 My viewis that D escartes’s reply ceases to seem mysterious once we adopt an inter-pretation which introduces a distinction between what an idea appears torepresent and what it actually represents.

The controversy between D escartes and A rnauld on this subject origi-nated in the third Meditation, where D escartes had de� ned material falsityas that which occurs in ideas ‘when they represent non-things as things’(AT VII 43). H e added:

Since there can be no ideas which are not as it were of things(tanquam rerum ), if it is true that cold is nothing bu t the absenceof heat, the idea which represents it to me as something real andpositive deserves to be called false.

(AT VII 44)


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If cold is the absence of a positive property (i.e., if it is a negation), thenthe idea which represents it as something positive – as something real –is false.

A rnauld’s objection consists of an argument to the effect that no ideacan be materially false. H e says:

if cold is merely an absence [i.e., something negative], there cannotever be a positive idea of it, and hence there cannot be an ideawhich is materially false.

(AT VII 207)

A rnauld here is echoing Suárez’s argu ment for the view that non-judg-mental cognitions cannot be false because, as we saw in the previoussection, there cannot be a disconformity between representing and repre-sented.

Notice that the soundness of Arnauld’s objection does not depend onthe tru th of the supposition that cold is the absence or negation of heat,which implies the claim that heat is a positive property. In fact, the argu-ment is applicable to any idea which represents a non-thing – be it anegation, a privation, or an impossibility – as a thing. Indeed, there isreason to believe that, according to Descartes, both the ideas of heat andof cold represent unreal things.20

To A rnauld’s assertion that ‘if cold is merely an absence, then therecannot be an idea of cold which represents it to me as a positive thing’(AT VII 206), D escartes replies that ‘it is clear that he [i.e., A rnauld] isdealing solely with an idea taken in the formal sense’ (AT VII 232). Thus,the principle of conformity – which underlies A rnauld’s claim concerningthe idea of cold – is applicable to an idea only when it is consideredformally.

D escartes goes on to distinguish idea taken materially from idea takenformally, implying that Arnauld is confusing these two aspects of an ideain the formulation of his objection. Our ideas, Descartes says, can beconsidered from two different viewpoints:

when we think of them as representing something we are takingthem . . . form ally. If, however, we were considering them . . . simplyas operations of the intellect, then it could be said that we weretaking them materially.

(AT VII 232)

There are, then, two different ways of considering one and the same idea:(a) materially, as a mode (operation) of thought; and (b) formally, asrepresenting something and as containing (if any) a certain amount ofobjective reality.21


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Notice that, typically, an idea taken materially is interpreted as the ideawithout regard to its content.22 H owever, the only passage in D escartesthat supports this interpretation of an idea taken materially is found inthe third Meditation, where Descartes says that between any two ideas,considered materially, ‘I do not recognize any inequ ality’ (AT VII 40; mytranslation). Yet, later on, in the Principles of Philosophy, he modi� es thisstatement, and says that ou r ideas, taken materially, ‘do not differ muchfrom one another’ (AT VIII-1 11). If indeed to take ideas materially wereto consider them without any regard to their content, then ideas thusconsidered would not in the least differ from one another.

This interpretation of an idea taken materially is common; neverthe-less, I am convinced that it is mistaken. The problem with it, in my view,is that it presupposes that an idea represents something solely in virtueof its content. Here I defend an alternative interpretation of an idea takenmaterially, according to which to consider an idea in this manner is toconsider it in so far as it possesses an explicit or immediate content – acontent which does not of itself have a representative function. To take anidea materially also is, according to this reading, to consider it in so faras it is tanquam rerum , as it were of something – i.e., as that which itappears to represent.23

There are strong reasons to accept this interpretation of an idea taken materially. Thus, the connection between an idea taken materiallyand its having som e sort of content can be appreciated through a fu rtherexamination of D escartes’s reply to A rnauld. So far, this reply hasconsisted in making the distinction between an idea taken materially(materialiter) and the idea taken formally (formaliter) – as, roughly, thedistinction between an idea as a mental operation and the idea as a repre-sentation – implying that Arnauld’s objection could not arise once we takeinto accou nt this distinction.

H owever, it is not yet clear how the m aterialiter/form aliter distinctioncan be a part of a response to Arnauld’s concerns. To appreciate this, wemust notice that, in explaining the distinction, D escartes does not stophere; he fu rther explains it as follows: taken materially, he says, ideas ‘haveno reference to the tru th and falsity of their objects’ (AT VII 232; myitalic) – i.e., taken materially, an idea has no reference to the (objective)reality or unreality of the object represented.24 Furthermore, speaking ofthe idea of cold, taken materially, D escartes adds:

Whether cold is a positive thing or an absence does not affect theidea I have of it, which remains the same as it always was.

(Ibid.)

Taken materially, then, the idea of cold is of cold withou t regard to thereality or unreality of its object.25 Yet this would not be possible if to


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consider an idea materially were to disregard its content – i.e., to disre-gard that (in some sense) it is of something. Further, the principle ofconformity does not apply to the idea taken materially: what cold in factis – whether something real or unreal – does not affect the idea I haveof cold, taken materially.

A dditionally, when the question arises as to what the idea of cold repre-sents – what the idea objectively contains26 – Descartes introduces adistinction between that to which an idea refers and that to which the ideaconform s; and explicitly says:

I think we need to make a distinction, for it often happens in thecase of obscure and confused ideas – and the ideas of heat and coldfall into this category – that an idea is referred to something otherthan that of which it is in fact (revera) the idea.

(AT VII 233)

But, he adds, the same is not true of ou r clear and distinct ideas. Theclear and distinct idea of G od, for example,

cannot be said to refer to something with which it does not corre-spond (conform is).

(Ibid.)

Considering together the two previously quoted passages, we can conclude:(1) that to which the idea conforms is that of which the idea actually orin fact is; (2) that to which the idea refers may sometimes differ from thatto which it conforms;27 and (3) conforming to something is not the onlyaspect or function of an idea.28 Indeed, we saw that there are reasons tothink that, according to D escartes, conforming corresponds only to theidea taken formally.29

These and previous passages also su ggest (4) that the distinction between that to which the idea conform s and that to which the idea refers is a distinction between (respectively) that of which the idea really(revera) is and that of which the idea merely appears to be; and (5) thatthe conforming/referring distinction corresponds to the distinctionbetween (respectively) the formal and the material considerations of anidea.30 If so, then an idea taken materially refers to something; bu t, again,this would not be possible if to take an idea materially were to considerit withou t regard to its content. Indeed, there must be a sense in whichone can appropriately say that an idea, taken materially, at least appearsto be of something. In contrast, when we consider an idea formally – i.e.,in its representing or conforming function – we can appropriately ask whatit is that the idea actually represents.


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IV Material Falsity in D escartes

In this section I complete my defence of a certain manner of understandingthe concept of material falsity in Descartes; an understanding accordingto which a materially false idea is one which represents as real and possiblea pu tative entity which is neither real nor possible.

G rasping D escartes’s motivation in introducing the concept of materialfalsity, I claim, is crucial in understanding this concept. Staying within thebounds of a theory of representation that revolves around the notion ofconform ity, D escartes wants to assert that there is something radicallysuspect with some ideas or concepts, not only with ou r sensory ideas ofsensible qualities,31 bu t also with some key A ristotelian-Scholastic notions;that these ideas fail to correspond not merely to what is, bu t also to whatcan be. Thu s, just as I can mistakenly represent – as possible, tanqu amreru m – a triangle such that the sum of its internal angles is 360 degreeswithout realizing that there can be no such triangle, we are also some-times confronted with certain ideas which represent to us, as possible andreal, ‘things’ which cannot exist.

Take, for example, ou r sensory ideas of sensible qualities: whenDescartes classi� es these as materially false32 and says that a materiallyfalse idea represents a non-thing as a thing,33 he is not merely saying thatthe pu tative qualities these ideas seem to represent happen not to exist inthe physical world. H e saying something stronger: namely, that, unlike theshapes or � gu res which we sensorially perceive and which can actuallyexist in corporeal substances,34 those pu tative qualities we sense – such ascolours, heat, or cold – cannot exist anywhere.

D escartes suggests this idea in different ways: � rst, when he explains inthe French version of the Meditations that the non-things which materi-ally false ideas represent are ‘bu t some chimerical beings which cannotexist’ (AT IX-1 34; my translation); secondly, when he says that ou r sensoryideas of sensible qualities ‘represent nothing real’ (AT VII 234; my trans-lation), and, in consequence, that these ideas lack objective reality35 –something which could not be said of ou r ideas of shapes or � gu res, noteven of those which belong to ou r faculties of imagination or of senseperception: according to D escartes, ou r ideas of modes have some degreeof objective reality, although to a lesser extent than ou r ideas ofsubstances.36 The (clear and distinct) ideas of modes – even of those modesthat happen not to exist – represent properties which can exist.37 Saying,in contrast, that ou r sensory ideas of colour are materially false – that, inconsequence, they represent nothing real and have no objective reality –amounts to saying that the pu tative qualities pu rportedly represented bythose ideas enjoy not even the reduced ontological status of modes; thatthey cannot be counted among the possible modes or qualities that inherein substances.38


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Further, a carefu l examination of what Descartes says to Burman inthis connection supports my interpretation. Burman had objected that‘since all error concerning ideas comes from the relation and applicationto external things, there seems to be no subject-matter for error what-soever if they [i.e., ideas] are not referred to externals’ (AT V 152).Descartes replies:

Even if I do not refer my ideas to anything ou tside myself, there isstill subject-matter for error, since I can make a mistake with regardto the actual nature of the ideas. For example, I may consider theidea of colour, and say that it is a thing or a quality (esse rem, qu al-itatem ); or rather I may say that the colour itself, which is representedby this idea, is something of the kind [i.e., a thing or a quality]. Forexample, I may say whiteness is a quality.

(Ibid.)39

Notice that the mistake I may make lies not in supposing that there existsa white thing, since, even if I do not suppose this, says D escartes, ‘I maystill make a mistake in the abstract, with regard to whiteness itself andits nature’ (ibid.). The mistake, hence, is of a more fundamental sort: itlies in thinking that whiteness is a thing, a res, something that can havesome degree of formal reality, like a mode. A gain, the mistake lies inthinking, in the abstract, that whiteness is a quality, i.e., a possible modi-� cation of a substance.

Furthermore, there are a number of passages in D escartes which suggestthat the reason why he regards ou r ideas of sensible qu alities as materi-ally false, and confused, is that they pu rport to portray certain qualitiesin terms that are both physical and mental. One such passage is found in the Principles of Philosophy, where he says that, when pain and colour‘are judged to be real things existing ou tside ou r mind, there is no way of understanding what sort of things they are’ (AT VIII-1 33), andadds:

If he examines the natu re of what is represented by the sensationof color or pain – what is represented as existing in the colouredbody or the painfu l part (tanquam in corpore colorato vel in parte dolente existens, repraesentet) – he will realize that he is whollyignorant of it.

(Ibid.)

A lready, at the pre-judgmental level, the pu tative quality seemingly repre-sented by the sensation of pain is represented as (tanqu am ) existing orinhering in an extended thing, that is, as being a mode of extension40 –something which, according to D escartes, is downright unintelligible.41


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In addition, for some A ristotelian-Scholastic notions, Descartes elabo-rates a similar diagnosis of the fatal ill that affects them. Consider, forexample, the notion of gravity, or heaviness; that is, the idea of a qualitythat certain bodies were thought to have in virtue of which they werecarried towards their pu tative natural place, which was the centre of theearth. According to Descartes, this idea was materially false (hence,obscu re and confused) because, although gravity in the idea was conceivedof as a quality ‘which inhered in solid bodies’ (AT VII 441), the idea was also ‘taken largely from the idea I had of mind’ (AT VII 442). Theidea, that is, involved the notion that ‘gravity carried bodies towards thecentre of the earth as if it had some knowledge of the centre within itself’ (ibid.)

This idea of gravity – and, as I have argued, ou r sensory ideas of sensiblequalities – is materially false, according to D escartes, because it is notpossible that there exists something that is both a mode of extension anda mode of thought.42 In the case of the idea of gravity, it is materiallyfalse because it is not possible that there is a mode which, when possessedby a corporeal substance, enables this substance to know something. One could form such false ideas, D escartes says, when one does not havethe clear and distinct ideas of corporeal su bstance and of thinkingsubstance, which ideas must explicitly contain the notion of their realdistinctness.43

In a recent article, Paul H offman argues that although D escartes ‘seemscommitted to the view that it is theoretically possible for a sensory ideato represent a non-thing as a thing’44 – that it is possible for a sensoryidea to be materially false – the tru th is that Descartes ‘does not thinkthat as a matter of fact sensory ideas lack objective reality’45 – i.e., arefalse. Now, I disagree with Hoffman on this second point. I think thatthere are su f� cient reasons – both of textual adequacy and of overall inter-pretive coherence – to think that Descartes is committed to the view thatsensory ideas not only can be bu t also are materially false: that they repre-sent non-things and lack objective reality. I have already presented mostof these reasons and shall complete my interpretation in the next sectionby responding to the ‘veil-of-illusion’ objection to it.

H offman, however, thinks that there are serious problems with the inter-pretation I have been defending, to wit, that

[D escartes’s] argument in the Sixth M editation for the existence ofbodies makes it clear that he thinks that ou r sensory ideas, howeverconfused and obscu re, are caused by bodies . . . [further] his physicsru les ou t the possibility that the idea of cold referentially refers to a privation. The idea of cold is presumably caused either by aparticu lar motion or range of motions of bodies or by the absenceof such motions.46


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Hoffman is right in saying that, if sensory ideas were materially false, thenthey could be caused by non-things; by a privation, negation, defect, orlack of a positive property somewhere. Indeed, concerning the actualcauses of materially false ideas, D escartes himself says that those ideasarise when we fail to exercise some faculty;47 false ideas are in us, he says,‘only because we are not wholly perfect’ (AT VI 38), because we lack, orfail to do, something. In the Meditations he claims that materially falseideas ‘arise from nothing (a nihilo procedere)’ (AT VII 44); and he addsan explanation: ‘that is, they are in me only because of a de� ciency orlack of perfection in my nature’ (ibid.). A nd this assertion is in accor-dance with D escartes’s own causal principles; speci� cally, the so-called‘principle of objective reality’. In the third M editation, concerning an ideataken formally – i.e., the idea in so far as it represents something, or inso far as it contains a certain degree of objective reality – he says:

in order for a given idea to contain such and such objective reality,it must su rely derive it from some cause which contains at least asmuch formal reality as there is objective reality in the idea.

(AT VII 41)

Roughly, formal or actual reality is the (degree of) perfection an actuallyexisting thing has in virtue of its positive properties.48 Moreover, the(degree of) objective reality of an idea of X is proportional to the (degreeof) formal reality that X would have if X existed.49 Thus, even if a certainthing does not exist, we can still think about it, have an idea of it; andthis idea has a degree of objective reality proportional to the degree offormal reality that thing would have if it existed.

Note, however, that the causal principle quoted above does not requ irethat an idea be caused by the very thing or things it represents; it onlysays that the cause of an idea has to have at least as much formal realityas there is objective reality in the idea. Here I cannot enter into a detailedexamination of the content of the causal principle. It has been variouslyinterpreted and much discussed in the scholarly literature.50 Yet, howeverit is interpreted, there is no doubt that it implies that, given that a mate-rially false idea represents a non-thing which lacks (formal) reality, amaterially false idea lacks objective reality and its cause must have at leastzero (formal) reality. As we have seen, Descartes mostly favou rs the viewthat the causes of ou r materially false ideas as a matter of fact have exactlyzero (formal) reality and are unreal – these cau ses consist in a privation,defect, or lack we have. H ow? Sometimes a materially false idea comesfrom our own intellectual carelessness; as when I represent to myself aright-angled triangle having the property of being inscribed in a pentagon,without carefu lly examining the question relative to the possible existenceof such a pu tative thing. A t other times, a materially false idea arises, not


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ou t of any intellectual fau lt we could correct, bu t simply because G odcreated us in such a way that we are not perfect in all respects; this iswhat happens in the case of ou r sensory ideas of sensible qualities.51

The important point is that a materially false idea could be caused bysomething having more than zero reality;52 and hence, that even if wegranted that the sixth Meditation argument for the existence of bodiesrequ ired that ou r sensory ideas of sensible qualities (colour, taste, and thelike) are caused by corporeal things or their modes, still this is not incom-patible with his saying that those ideas are materially false.53

Lastly, let us now turn to examine what I consider the most seriousobjection to my overall interpretation.

V Ideas, Faculties, and the Veil of Illusion

So far we have articu lated an interpretation of Descartes’s theory of ideas,and of material falsity, according to which there is a distinction in D escartesbetween what an idea appears to represent and what it actu ally repre-sents: a distinction which helps explain how ideas can be materially false.54

Most interpreters, however, point ou t that the distinction is disastrous forDescartes because, in the third Meditation, the argument for the existenceof God requ ires that we have the ability to know what the idea of Godactually represents.55

Nevertheless, I do not think that my interpretation has as a consequencethat there is a veil of illusion drawn over the object or objects representedby an idea. It is true, however, that, on my interpretation, D escartes wouldhave a serious problem on his hands if his distinction between what anidea appears to represent and what it actually represents implied that wecould not have access to the latter using only those resources available tous at the beginning of the third Meditation – e.g., the explicit or imme-diate contents of ou r ideas, and ou r own mental faculties. D escartes’sposition, however, does not imply this. Indeed, I shall try to show that,according to him, we can have the desired access to the object actuallyrepresented by an idea through the use of ou r faculty of perception. Toappreciate the details of the solu tion to this problem in my interpreta-tion, I explore a bit fu rther the Cartesian conception of a mental faculty.

First, then, D escartes believes that the capacity we have to entertainand form clear and distinct ideas constitu tes an actual faculty of ou rminds.56 When we use this faculty to explicitly portray an object toou rselves, we form an idea which is clear and distinct.57 Yet, since we are� nite and fallible, sometimes we fail to use this faculty; and it is from thisfailure that material falsity arises in ou r ideas.58

Furthermore, of a clear and distinct idea, such as the idea of G od, ‘it cannot be supposed that . . . [it] represents something unreal’ (AT VII46). Clear and distinct ideas have some degree of objective reality, and


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represent real things which can exist.59 I think that Descartes is sayingsomething like this to Caterus concerning clear and distinct ideas: ‘Possibleexistence is contained in the concept or idea of everything that we clearlyand distinctly u nderstand’ (AT VII 116).

A dditionally, we saw that, to A rnauld, Descartes had said that a clearand distinct idea is one which ‘cannot be said to refer to something withwhich it does not correspond (conformis)’ (AT VII 233). The idea is clearsince it, so to speak, explicitly points to the very thing to which the ideaconforms; in other words, its explicit content – that to which it refers, whatit appears to represent – coincides, at least in part, with its implicit content– that to which it conforms.60

But remember that a clear and distinct idea can only be producedthrough the use of ou r faculty of perception. Then it must be that thispartial coincidence of contents – a coincidence in which the clearness anddistinctness of an idea consists – must be the resu lt of u sing ou r facultyof perception, i.e., of applying the principles which de� ne the correct repre-sentation of a thing. It must be, too, that we can get access to the implicitcontent of an idea through its explicit content, since the explicit contentis the only cognitive part of the idea to which we have immediate access.Thus, the implicit content of an idea must itself be constitu ted – in accor-dance with those principles – on the basis of its explicit content; otherwisewe could not have gu aranteed access to the implicit content.

If so, we get the following overall picture: an idea can be consideredeither materially or formally. To consider an idea m aterially is to considerit as a mental event or occurrence that has an explicit content. Moreprecisely, to consider an idea in this manner is to consider it in so far asit explicitly portrays a pu tative entity in terms of certain properties suchthat, for all one could imm ediately tell, they could be jointly instantiated.Moreover, taken materially, an idea could explicitly present a pu tativeentity in terms of certain properties which cannot be jointly instantiatedso long as this impossibility is not imm ediately apparent to the cognizer.61

This is so because an idea taken materially is the idea considered as aproduct of ou r � nite, fallible minds, according to D escartes.62 H ence, theconstraints that govern ideas, when considered materially, are not neces-sarily logical in the sense that there is not always a need to postu late acause for the idea taken materially, other than the ability of ou r minds to conceive and/or combine contents in ways which are not necessarily inaccordance with the principles which govern the correct representation of a thing.

O n the other hand, the idea taken form ally is the idea considered asrepresenting an object, or as conforming to something. A s su ch, the ideais considered as having an implicit content, part of which may or may notbe explicitly present to ou r minds. Roughly, an idea considered formallyis the idea viewed as constitu ted in such a way that it consistently obeys


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certain logical-normative principles characteristic of ou r faculty of percep-tion.63 Further, the content of an idea, when considered formally – i.e.,what the idea actu ally represents – is partially a function of the contentof the idea taken materially, in the following manner:

(1) If an idea taken materially explicitly contains certain properties thatcan in fact be jointly possessed by some thing, then the idea taken formallywill objectively contain or represent the thing (which may or may notexist) which would have all those properties if it existed.

(2) When, on the other hand, an idea taken materially explicitly presentsa pu tative entity in terms of a number of properties which cannot bejointly instantiated, then the idea taken formally will represent a non-thing, and will not represent any entity – which is not to say that the ideawill not represent.64

Note that, according to this interpretation, we can have access to theidea taken formally, i.e., to what is actually represented: we saw that the faculty of perception allows u s to perceive an object clearly anddistinctly; and my interpretation construes the relationship between anidea taken materially and an idea taken formally in such a way that, byusing our faculty of perception, and by knowing only the content of theidea taken materially, we can know which object is represented (objec-tively contained) in the idea. The Evil Demon cannot enter here andsystematically deceive us abou t this content – as he does in mathematics– since, u nlike mathematical facts, the form al content of an idea is consti-tu ted precisely in a m anner that m ak es it knowable by us as long as we usea faculty we possess – i.e., a resource that is strictly intram ental.

VI Conclusion

The interpretation here developed constitu tes a radical departure from thestandard reading of the Cartesian theory of ideas in at least two respects:(1) in the manner it understands an idea taken materially as the idea in sofar as it has an explicit content; and (2) in the distinction it incorporatesbetween what an idea appears to represent and what it represents. I haveargued that this interpretation not only � nds support in the texts bu t alsois required to explain a large number of assertions in Descartes whichwould, on more traditional readings, appear irremediably obscure or prob-lematic. For example, on my interpretation it is neither puzzling nor ad hocthat Descartes responds to A rnauld’s dif� culty concerning the notion ofmaterial falsity by drawing a distinction between that to which an idea conforms (that of which the idea tru ly is) and that to which it refers. Indeed,such a response, in my view, is not only not puzzling bu t to be expected.Moreover, it is not ad hoc because – as I have argued – some such distinction is implicit in D escartes’s very notion of idea as well as in hisnotion of material falsity, both found already in the Meditations.


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Furthermore, my interpretation has even wider implications: it forces usto rethink Descartes’s epistemology, and, in particu lar, to reject the wide-spread opinion that saying that something is clear and distinct is necessarilyequ ivalent to saying that it is obvious. A nd although D escartes himselfemphatically denies this and insists that there is a ‘proper distinctionbetween what is clearly and distinctly perceived and what merely seems orappears to be’ (AT VII 462), few have taken him seriously; this is under-standable enough since, according to more traditional interpretations, hecannot draw this distinction; or if he could, it would be fatal for him to do so.

For D escartes, however, there is a crucial epistemological issue at stake inall of this, since he is convinced that clearing the way for the upcoming phi-losophy of nature requ ires fundamental conceptual (and not merely ‘judg-mental’) changes; it requ ires, in other words, that we discard some of the old,apparently innocent concepts as inherently mistaken.65 Indeed, D escartes’sposition on the nature of ideas and on the possibility of material falsityevinces his conviction that ou r � nitary predicament can infect not only ou rjudgments bu t also the very manner in which we conceive of things.

Universidad Nacional Autonom o de Mexico, Mexico

Notes

1 I shall be u sing the following abbreviations of the editions of the works ofDescartes and others au thors:AT Œuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery (12 vols, Paris: Cerf,

1897–13; reprint, Paris: Vrin, 1957–8).Suárez DA Francisco Suárez, Comentarios a los libros de A ristóteles sobre el

alma, edición bilingüe y traducción por Carlos Baciero y Luis Baciero,edición crítica por Salvador Castellote (4 vols, Madrid: Editorial Labor,1981) .

Suárez DM Francisco Suárez, Dispu taciones metafísicas, edición bilingüe ytraducción por S. Rábade Romeo, S. Caballero Sánchez, y A. Pu igcerverZanón (7 vols, Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1960).

Aquinas DA Thomas A qu inas, In A ristotelis librum D e A nima commentarium ,Ed. A . M. Pirotta, 4th edn (Turin: Marietti, 1959) .

I shall be translating the passages of Suárez’s works here qu oted. When avail-able, and unless otherwise indicated, I shall use the translations found in thefollowing:The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vols I–III, Trans. John Cottingham,

Robert Stoothoff, Du gald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985, 1991).

2 J. M. Beyssade (in ‘Descartes on Material Falsity’, in Phillip Cu mmins and G. Zoeller (eds), Minds, Ideas and Objects (Atascadero: R idgeviewPu blishing Company, 1992), p. 6), asserts that, for Descartes, ‘every thoughtis conscious’. Now, here I argue that, in a sense, this is true of ideas: I amimmediately aware of what an idea appears to represent. Yet this does notmean that I am always immediately aware of the object the idea actuallyrepresents.


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3 By ‘non-judgmental cognitions’ I shall mean cognitive acts or operationsdistinct from, and more basic than, judgments. Essentially, this is what ideasare for Descartes – as we shall see.

4 For example, in her early writings, Margaret Wilson expresses the view thatthe notion of material falsity is a disaster ‘because it entails that the objec-tive reality of an idea [what the idea represents] is not something the ideawears on its face’, Descartes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 112. However, in a more recent work of hers, ‘Descartes on theR epresentationality of Sensation’ (in Central Themes in M odern Philosophy ,ed. J. A . Cover and Mark Ku lstad (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990) pp. 1–22),Wilson appears to think that D escartes’s notion of material falsity, though notfu lly explained, is not necessarily disastrous.

5 J. M. Beyssade asserts that ‘the qu estions to be raised concerning sensationsare, � rst, are they ideas or not and, second, if they are ideas, what are theyof?’ (‘Descartes on Material Falsity’, p. 6). If I am right, however, the secondqu estion one ou ght to ask concerning sensations is rather: if they are ideas,of what do they appear to be, and the third qu estion is: of what are they,actually? Norman Wells also denies that the second and third qu estions aredistinct in Descartes. See his ‘Material Falsity in Descartes, Arnau ld, andSu árez’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 22 (1984), pp. 25–50.

6 See AT VIII–1 17. Judgments – assertions or denials – are acts of the will(see AT VIII–1 18), which also include ‘the likeness of a thing’ (AT VII 37),since judgments presuppose that we have an idea – i.e., perceive an object.See also AT VIII–1 21 and AT XI 342–8.

7 See AT VII 37.8 That a thing exists and that it is (formally) real are not equ ivalent, according

to Descartes (although the latter implies the former). For one, whereas realityis a matter of degrees, existence is not. Formal or actual reality is the degreeof perfection an actually existing thing has in virtue of its form or essence.See AT VII 47, where actual or formal being (esse actuali sive formali) iscontrasted with ‘merely potential being’; and in AT VII 102–3, ‘the sun itselfexisting in the intellect’ (or objectively existing) is contrasted with the sun‘formally existing, as it does in the heavens’. Care mu st be taken not to confusethe formal reality of something – e.g., this body, or my mind, or a particu laridea – with an idea taken formally. The formal reality of any one of my ideasis the degree of perfection that the idea has as an actually existing thing. Assuch, it is only a modi� cation of my mind, and it is less perfect than any otherexisting substance. On the other hand, the idea taken formally (see AT VII232) is the idea considered in so far as it represents a thing which may ormay not exist.

9 There are, I think, conceptual antecedents in the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition corresponding to the Cartesian notion of a non-thing. For example,for Suárez an entity of reason, or entia rationis ‘has in itself no reality (enti-tatem)’ (DM LIV, 1, 6). The concept of an entity of reason has nothing in common with the concept of a real entity, entia realis, and shou ld not,strictly speaking, be called an ‘entity’ (see ibid., 1, 9). Hence, entities of reason (like Cartesian non-things) cannot exist. For a conceptually delicatetreatment of the concept of an entity of reason in Su árez, see John P. Doyle,‘Suárez on Beings of Reason and Tru th (1)’, Vivarium , 25 (1987), pp. 53–60and 69–75.

10 For Descartes, non-things are unreal (AT VII 43, AT IX–1 34), and amongunreal things, Descartes counts privations, negations, and impossibilities (i.e.,


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pu tative entities whose concepts are self-contradictory). See, e.g., AT VII190–1, AT VII 428, and AT VII 138. In his ‘Descartes on Misrepresentation’,Journal of the History of Philosophy, 34 (1996), p. 36, Pau l Hoffman deniesthat Descartes would ever hold that ‘as a matter of fact sensory ideas lackobjective reality’. In section IV, I argue that there are good reasons to thinkHoffman wrong. Also, see n. 32 below.

11 On implicit content, see also AT III 383, AT VII 147, and AT VIII–1 24.Some authors have taken seriously (as I think one should) Descartes’s asser-tion that ou r ideas have an implicit content: e.g., Robert McRae, ‘Descartes’De� nition of Thought’, in Cartesian Studies, ed. R . J. Butler (O xford: BasilBlackwell, 1972), pp. 67–8; and Alan Gewirth, ‘Clearness and Distinctness inDescartes’, Philosophy, 18 (1943), pp. 27–9.

12 See also AT VII 43.13 By ‘non-judgmental cognitions’ I shall mean cognitive acts or operations

whose main function is to represent, perceive, or conceive an object – oper-ations that are distinct from, and more basic than, judgments.

14 In A qu inas see, e.g., DA II, lect. 24, sec. 551. See also III, lect. 2, sec. 590,and lect. 8, sec. 718. Su árez also structu res his account of sensory and intel-lectual cognition around the notion of species. See, e.g., Suárez DA V, 1, 3.

15 Suárez u ses ‘simple cognition’ to refer to a cognitive act whose sole functionis that of representing an object. See, e.g., Su árez D M VIII, 3, 7; VIII, 4, 6;and IX, 1, 14 and 18. Simple cognitions are non-judgmental. See, e.g., VIII,4, 5, Su árez also accepts that there are certain complex cognitions that arenon-judgmental. See ibid.; and VIII, 4,5.

16 See also Su árez DM IX, 1, 21; and IX, 1, 15.17 See AT VII 235.18 Note that Aqu inas agrees with Su árez that simple non-judgmental cognitions

cannot be false. See, e.g.: ‘ju st as sight is fallible with respect to its properobject, so is the intellect with respect to essence’ (DA III, lect. 11, sec. 762).Pau l Hoffman (‘Descartes on Misrepresentation’, pp. 366–9) thinks that bothAquinas and other seventeenth-centu ry scholastic philosophers – such asRuvio – allow for the possibility of the falsity of sensory cognition. AsHoffman tells it, however, it appears to me that what these Scholastics aretalking about is a sense of non-judgmental ‘falsity’ which Su árez later calls‘improper falsity’, which is completely different from Descartes’s materialfalsity: improper falsity (falsitas improprie dicta), for Suárez, occu rs when athing which is not represented by a cognition nevertheless closely resemblesthe object represented, a fact which may easily lead one to judge mistakenlythat that thing is the object represented (see DM IX, 1, 16–22). Bu t this isnot what constitu tes D escartes’s material falsity, which ‘occu rs in ideas whenthey represent non-things as things (non rem tanquam rem repraesentant)’(AT VII 43). In this case, the idea gives occasion to error because what itrepresents is represented as, in some way, being other than what it is.

19 For example, Margaret Wilson, in her earlier Descartes, thinks that this reply‘is a model of confusion confounded’ (p. 110). Anthony Kenny has a similarlow opinion of Descartes’s reply to Arnau ld. See his Descartes: A Study ofhis Philosophy (New York: Random Hou se, 1968), pp. 119–20.

20 See AT VII 46 and 233–4; and n. 32 below.21 Notice that this is a distinction between two different ways of considering one

and the same idea. See Monte L. Cook’s ‘The Alleged Ambiguity of “Idea”in Descartes’ Philosophy’, Sou thwestern Journal of Philosophy , 6 (1975), pp. 87–94.


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22 For example, E . J. A shworth implicitly accepts this interpretation when shesets up a contrast between an idea in so far as it is ‘a mode or attribu tethrough which the mind might be perceived’ (idea taken materially) and theidea ‘considered as having a certain content’, which she identi� es with theidea taken objectively or formally. See her ‘Descartes’ Theory of ObjectiveR eality’, New Scholasticism , 49 (1975), p. 335; my italic. In her Descartes(p. 111), Margaret Wilson also appears to accept implicitly this interpretationof an idea taken materially.

23 The connection between an idea’s being tanquam rerum and its appearing torepresent something can be seen when one considers the French translation– authorized by Descartes – of the Latin phrase ‘nu llae ideae nisi tanquamrerum esse possunt [there can be no ideas which are not as it were of things]’(AT VII 44): ‘Il n’y en peu t avoir aucune [idée] qu i ne nous semble représenterqu elque chose [there cannot be an idea which does not appear to u s to repre-sent some thing]’ (AT IX–1 34–5; my italic and translation).

24 See AT V 356: ‘Truth consists in being and falsehood in non-being.’ Therewas a tradition in the Schools that spoke of an ontological or transcendentaltru th – i.e., the tru th of things – to denote the reality of things. See, e.g.,Su árez D M VIII, 7, 4.

25 I agree with Pau l Hoffman that ‘an idea’s being as if of something is notconceptually or logically connected to its having objective reality. An ideataken materially . . . can also be as if of something’ (‘Descartes onMisrepresentation’, p. 372; my italic).

26 The qu estion is whether the idea of cold ‘objectively contains’ (represents)some positive entity, whether it is ‘coldness itself [if any] in so far as it existsobjectively in the intellect’ (AT VII 206 and 233).

27 In her more recent ‘Descartes on the Representationality’, p. 9, MargaretWilson distingu ishes what an idea presentationally represents from what itreferentially represents. Her terminological choices are unfortunate, I think– not very close to Descartes’s own choice of words, for I think that what anidea ‘presents’ me with (what I am immediately aware of) is what Descarteshimself, in the fou rth Replies, calls the ‘reference’ of the idea (that to whichthe idea is referred), which he distingu ishes from that to which the ideaconforms, which – as is clear from the text – is that of which the idea tru lyis, what the idea really represents. Terminological differences aside, however,I agree with Wilson that material falsity arises in ideas (roughly) when thereis a mismatch between what the idea in fact represents and what it presents(appears to represent).

28 In some sense, I agree with Pau l Hoffman when he says that Descartes’s view ‘is similar to the Aristotelian view in that he thinks cognition occurs when things that exist ou tside the sou l come to have another kind of existence in u s’. See his ‘Descartes on Misrepresentation’, p. 370. It is true that, in essence,D escartes’s view of cognitive representation is similar to the mainstreamScholastic Aristotelian view; yet it differs from it in that D escartes rejects the concept of substantial form, although he accepts that ‘there are someimmutable and eternal essences’. Thus, the similarity between that Scholasticview and D escartes’s own view on representation, I think, lies in the fact thatboth wou ld accept that, in a primary sense, a cognition or idea represents a thingwhen its essence has an objective existence in the sou l. See, e.g., AT VII 371: ‘An idea represents the essence of a thing.’ See also AT VII 8: the thing repre-sented by an idea, ‘even if it is not regarded as existing ou tside the intellect, canstill, in virtue of its essence, be more perfect than myself’. See also AT IV 350.


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29 I disagree with Wilson when she suggests that the best account Descartescou ld construe of the ‘referential’ representative function of an idea – whatI call ‘actually representing’ or ‘conforming’ – is a causal account. By the‘causal account’ she means an account according to which ‘an idea referen-tially represents its cause (or cause under normal conditions)’ (‘Descartes onthe Representationality’, p. 11). I think that, though at some point Descartestoyed with a causal account, he actually discarded it. Now, although I thinkthat Descartes cannot construct an interesting causal account of representa-tion which could avoid all the many kinds of counterexamples to which it is vu lnerable – innate ideas, abstract ideas, ideas of non-existents, even perhaps sensory ideas – I do not deny that he is interested in answering thequ estion concerning the causes of ideas. What I deny is that, for D escartes,this qu estion is the same as the question concerning the natu re of mentalrepresentation.

30 This assumption is necessary to explain why Descartes suggests to Arnau ldthat, in making the materialiter/formaliter distinction, he pu ts himself in theposition of responding satisfactorily to the objection. However – and this issomething which has baf� ed many interpreters – that distinction, understoodin the standard manner as the distinction between the idea as a thoughtwithou t regard to its content and the idea with regard to its content, simplydoes not furnish one with suf� cient conceptual resou rces to answer the objection. What I am suggesting – with good textual support – is that thematerialiter/formaliter distinction is the distinction between two distinct cogni-tive functions of an idea, referring and conforming.

31 By ‘sensible qualities’ I mean here what is pu rportedly represented in ou rsensory ideas of colou rs, sounds, textu res, odours, etc., with the exclusion ofthe modes of extension – which are but magnitudes – such as size, shape,motion, � gure, etc.

32 See AT VII 46: it cannot be said that the clear and distinct idea of God ‘isperhaps materially false . . . which is what I observed [noticed, animadverti]just a moment ago in the case of the ideas of heat and cold (caloris & frig-oris)’. See also AT VII 233–4: ‘Confused ideas which are made up at will bythe mind [i.e., factitious ideas] . . . do not provide as mu ch scope for error asthe confused ideas arriving from the senses, such as the ideas of heat andcold (if it is true, as I have said (u t dixi), that these ideas do not representanything real (nihil reale exhibere)).’ Notice that, in this passage, the 1904printing of the seventh volume of the AT edition says ‘caloris & frigoris’ (heatand cold); while a more recent reprint, e.g., that of 1983, changes this to‘coloris & frigoris’ (colour and cold) without any explanation, which leads meto consider the latter as a typographical error. This is con� rmed by the Frenchtranslation of this passage, au thorized by Descartes: ‘les idées du froid & dela chaleur . . . ne représentent rien de réel’ (AT IX–1 181). Note that Pau lHoffman believes that Descartes never held that sensory ideas are materiallyfalse. See his ‘Descartes on Misrepresentation’, esp. p. 361. I think that thereare good reasons to reject Hoffman’s interpretation, besides reasons of textualadequ acy. In this and the next section, I shall complete the task of fu rnishingthose reasons.

33 See AT VII 30.34 See AT VIII–1 34: ‘there are many other featu res, such as size, shape

and nu mber which we clearly perceive to be actually or at least possiblypresent in objects in a way exactly corresponding to ou r sensory perception(in sensu)’.


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35 See AT VII 44: if ou r sensory ideas of sensible qu alities ‘are false, that is,represent non-things, I know by the natural light that they arise from nothing’,and thus have no objective reality whatsoever.

36 For the notion of degrees of formal and/or objective reality, see AT VII 40,AT VII 165–6, AT VII 185. For the notion of a mode, see, e.g., AT VIII–2355, and AT IV 349.

37 See AT VIII–1 33 and 34, AT VII 43 and 63, and AT III 692, where Descartesexplicitly states that we clearly and distinctly perceive the modes of corpo-real substances. And since anything we perceive clearly and distinctly canexist (see AT III 544–5, AT V 160 and AT VII 152), it follows that the modesof extension can exist in those substances.

38 For the technical sense of the word ‘quality’ in Descartes, see AT VIII–1 24and 26.

39 O ne mu st be carefu l in interpreting the part of this passage where Descartessays that it wou ld be a mistake to say that the idea of colou r ‘is a thing or aqu ality’. He cannot be saying that the idea, considered as a mode of thought,is not a res, i.e., is not real, because, thus considered, the idea has som e degreeof (formal) reality. See, e.g., AT VII 165. Hence, he is speaking of the ideataken formally – i.e., in so far as it represents an object. This explains whyin this passage he goes on to say: ‘or rather I may say that the colou r itself,which is represented by this idea . . .’.

40 D escartes says that ‘we feel pain as it were (tanquam ) in ou r foot . . . [orthat] we see light as it were (tanquam ) in the sun’ (AT VII–1 32–3). Noticethe use of ‘tanqu am ’ in this passage: it indicates that Descartes is talkingabout what the sensory idea appears to represent – i.e., abou t the idea takenmaterially.

41 See AT VIII–1 34, where Descartes says that ‘we cannot � nd any intelligibleresemblance between the colou r which we suppose to be in objects and thatwhich we experience in ou r sensation’ (my italic). See also AT VII 411–3. Inher D escartes, p. 114, Margaret Wilson agrees that, according to Descartes,ou r ideas of sensible qualities lack objective reality in the sense that they ‘failto exhibit to u s any possibly existent qu ality in an intelligible manner’.

42 D escartes holds that the Scholastic-A ristotelian notion of substantial formsuffers from the same malady that affects the notion of heaviness examinedhere. Unfortunately, he does not offer, for the notion of form, as detailed andclear an explanation as the one he elaborates for heaviness, of how such anotion proceeds from the mingling of the ideas of body and mind. A lso, notethat often Descartes’s criticism of the notion of either heaviness or substan-tial form accompanies a rejection of the ideas of qu alities, or real qu alities(e.g., of heat or cold), for the same reasons. See AT III 420–1, AT III 667,AT III 693, AT V 222, and AT VII 442–3.

43 For example, the clear and distinct idea of body mu st include, says Descartes,the notion that it is essentially an extended, non-thinking thing. See AT VII78. I mu st emphasize that the reason why an idea is materially false, on myinterpretation, is not that it fails to represent – which is what Norman Wells,for example, says. See Norman Wells, ‘Material Falsity’, p. 37. Indeed, I thinkthat there are compelling reasons to reject Wells’ interpretation: principally,that Descartes himself carefu lly characterizes materially false ideas as thosewhich represent non-things as things, and not as those which do not represent.

44 H offman, ‘D escartes on Misrepresentation’, p. 363.45 Ibid., 361.46 Ibid., 362.


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47 See, e.g., AT III 434.48 One mu st not confuse the formal reality of an idea – its degree of perfection

merely as a modi� cation of an existing mental substance – with the idea takenformally – i.e., the idea considered as representing some thing which may ormay not exist. See n. 8 above.

49 The objective reality of an idea is ‘the being (entitatem) of the thing which is represented by an idea, in so far as this exists in the idea’ (AT VII161), even if no such thing actually exists. The degree of objective reality of an idea is proportional to the degree of formal reality that the object represented by the idea would have if it existed: see, e.g., AT VII 41 and ATVII 165.

50 See, e.g., E ileen O’Neill, ‘Mind–Body Interaction and MetaphysicalConsistency: A Defense of Descartes’, Journal of the History of Philosophy ,2 (1987), pp. 227–45; Kenneth Clatterbaugh, ‘Descartes’ Causal LikenessPrinciple’, Philosophical Review, 89 (1980), pp. 379–402; and Margaret Wilson,‘Descartes on the Origin of Sensation’, Philosophical Topics, 19 (1991), pp. 293–323.

51 The fact that, e.g., the wounding of my foot results in my experiencing asensation of pain as occu rring in a bodily part – i.e., results in an idea thatis u seful though materially false – is u ltimately du e to a certain imperfectionin my nature, e.g., du e to the fact that I do not have the non-sensory repre-sentational capability and the inferential speed necessary to predict in timeall of the possible and probable dangers to my body at any given moment.Of cou rse, God’s decision to create us this way (as opposed to some otherway) is not arbitrary, according to Descartes: it is the system which ‘is mostespecially and most frequ ently conducive to the preservation of the healthyman’ (AT VII 87).

52 Indeed, in the third Meditation, Descartes says that it cou ld not be said ofhis idea of God that it ‘is perhaps materially false and so cou ld have comefrom nothing <i.e., cou ld be in me in virtue of my imperfection>’ (AT VII46; words in angle brackets added in the French version).

53 There is a second part to Hoffman’s objection: he says that, in the argumentfor the existence of bodies in the sixth Meditation, Descartes makes it clearthat bodies or modes of bodies are the causes of sensory ideas. The state-ment of the argument itself, however, does not literally assert that ou r sensoryideas of sensible qu alities – colour, taste, texture, and the like – are causedby some corporeal things or their modes. And it is a matter of controversyand of differing interpretative strategies whether the argument itself requ iresthat one makes such an assumption concerning the causes of those ideas. Ido not think so; yet because of obvious limitations of space I cannot offerhere a detailed interpretation. I can only point ou t that, in interpreting theargument, one cou ld say that, it only refers to ou r sensory ideas of modes,and not of sensible qu alities. After all, Descartes himself makes a distinctionbetween those two kinds of ideas in the third Meditation when he is askingwhich of those ideas he cou ld have caused himself (see AT VII 43–5). If weinterpret the argument in this manner, one cou ld still accept Descartes’s viewthat ou r sensory ideas of sensible qu alities arise from our own imperfections.

54 Few authors, however, have accepted this distinction; for example, CalvinNormore accepts it in some form when he distingu ishes ‘a su rface structureand a deep structu re’ of an idea (see his ‘Meaning and Objective Being:Descartes and his Sources’, in Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1986,) p. 227). In contrast, most other authors


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either overlook that this distinction exists in Descartes (see Field, ‘Descarteson the Material Falsity’, p. 310), or else attempt to argu e that it does not exist(see Wells, ‘Material Falsity’, p. 28, no. 20).

55 See Wilson, Descartes, p. 113.56 For example, to Hyperaspistes, he says: ‘It is through a real (realem) facu lty

of the mind that it perceives two things, one apart from the other, as completethings; and . . . it is through a lack of the same facu lty (facu ltatis privationem )that the mind apprehends these two things in a confused manner, as a singlething’ (AT III 434). Since the perception of a thing as a complete thingincludes the clear and distinct perception or idea of that thing (see AT VII220–7), and since the mind can perceive a complete thing only through theuse of a certain faculty, the possession of this facu lty is requ ired in order forus to have clear and distinct ideas. Another passage where Descartes talksabout the connection that exists between the clearness of ou r ideas and ou rfacu lty of perception is found at AT VIII–1 16.

57 See AT VIII–1 21, where Descartes’ distingu ishes the faculty of perception(also called ‘the light of natu re’) from the faculty of assent. Whereas ideasare acts of perception, judgments are acts of assent. See AT VII 376–7 andAT VIII–1 17.

58 In different passages Descartes repeats this theme, to wit, that material falsityin ou r ideas is not the result of the exercise of some facu lty: see, e.g., AT VI38 and AT VII 44.

59 The passages where D escartes explicitly states the connection between anidea’s having some degree of objective reality and the possibility that it repre-sents an existing thing are AT III 544–5, AT V 160, AT VII 152, and AT III215. Many au thors acknowledge this connection in Descartes. See, e.g.,Normore, ‘Meaning and Objective Being’, 238; and Norman J. Wells,‘Objective Reality of Ideas in Descartes, Caterus, and Su arez’, Journal of theH istory of Philosophy , 28 (1990), pp. 48, 56.

60 This is one of the respects in which my views and A lan Gewirth’s differ: hesays that ‘the clearness and distinctness of an idea may be said to consist inthe “equ ality” of its direct and interpretive contents’. See his ‘Clearness andD istinctness’, p. 24. In contrast, in my view, the content of a clear and distinctidea, taken materially, need only be identical with a part of the content of the idea taken formally or objectively. The reason why I set it up this way inmy interpretation is that, according to Descartes, the idea of God can be clearand distinct even if, taken materially, it explicitly portrays only some of Hisattributes. See AT VII 220–5 and AT VII 373. In my ‘Descartes: la imagi-nación y el mu ndo físico’, Diánoia, 41 (1995), pp. 65–82, I also argue that thisis what allows Descartes to assert that we can clearly and distinctly imaginea mode of extension even though we cannot in any way imagine some of thefeatures essential to that mode.

61 We saw that an idea taken materially is tanquam rerum . In ou r interpreta-tion this means that we cannot explicitly or consciously portray a thing interms of a set of properties which are such that (1) they cannot be jointlyinstantiated, and (2) their, so to speak, incompatibility is immediately apparentto the cognizer who entertains them all together.

62 See AT VII 8: ‘“Idea” can be taken materially, as an operation of the intel-lect, in which case it cannot be said to be more perfect than me’; and ATVII 41: the idea taken materially ‘requ ires no formal reality except what itderives from my thought, of which it is a mode’.

63 A lan G ewirth expresses a somewhat similar thought when he says that an


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idea taken formally (or what he calls the ‘direct content’ of an idea) is theidea viewed normatively. See his ‘Clearness and D istinctness’, pp. 25–6.

64 This is what happens in the case of materially false ideas.65 In my ‘Descartes: La teoría de las ideas y el cambio cientí� co’, Cu adernos de

� losofía (Buenos Aires, A rgentina; forthcoming), I argue in more detail forthe claim that Descartes has a theoretical need to introduce the concept ofmaterial falsity.


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transparency and falsity in descartes's theory of ideas

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