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Representationalism, judgment and perception of distance: further to Yolton and McRae*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Thomas M. Lennon
Thomas M. Lennon
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario
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Extract

The recent literature has seriously challenged, and in my view defeated, the traditional representationalist interpretation of Descartes. One contributor to it, John Yolton, has recently extended its arguments to argue that the traditional representationalist interpretation of Locke must be relinquished as well, that Locke, following the Cartesian path of Arnauld, held a semiotic theory of ideas which “de-ontologized” them and construed them as signs or cues in the direct perception of physical objects. The Cartesian support for this view, especially in La Dioptrique, has been questioned by R.F. McRae, who argues that “if Locke accepts Descartes' theory of vision, then Descartes' conception of sensations as signs provides no support for the direct realist interpretation of Locke.” My aim here is not to resolve the representationalism issue, but to show the irrelevance to it of the kinds of questions the Yolton-McRae exchange raises concerning sense perception. I shall try to show that there stems from Descartes a single account of those questions the essentials of which are embedded in theories falling on both sides of the representationalism issue. That single account involves a theory of judgment and vision, especially of distance, which in the case of Malebranche and Berkeley, even involves the same confusions.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 151 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1980

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References

Notes

1 “On Being Present to the Mind: A Sketch for the History of an Idea”, Dialogue XIV, 1975, No. 3, pp. 373–388Google Scholar. Cf. also his “Ideas and Knowledge in Seventeenth Century Philosophy”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, January 1975, pp. 145–165.Google Scholar

2 “On Being Present to the Mind: A Reply”, Dialogue XIV, No. 4, 1975, p. 366.Google Scholar

3 La Dioptrique. Descartes Oeuvres Philosophiques, ed. Alquié, F. (Paris: Gamier, 1963) T.I., pp. 584–85.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 654.

5 Ibid., p. 315–16.

6 Loc. cit., p. 665.

7 Ibid. Descartes did not draw the sharp distinction Malebranche later did between a representing idea and a non-representing sensation; but to raise the question only with respect to sensations, as does the Yolton-McRae exchange, already precludes any relation of representation. Sensations are conceived as modes of the mind just because they are not modes of body, hence there is nothing they could represent. This anomaly may be ignored here, however, since the main question will concern not sensations of simple modes like colour, but perceptions of relations which may indeed obtain among bodies.

8 Loc. cit., p. 699. This and every other translation, my own.

9 Loc. cit., p. 704.

10 Thus Berkeley seems to attribute to Descartes precisely the view his simile was designed to deny. An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, pars. 89–90. Works on Vision: George Berkeley, ed. Turbayne, C.M. (Library of Liberal Arts, 1963) pp. 63–4Google Scholar, and see below. Berkeley was likely misled by Molyneux, who may be interpreted as subsuming the Cartesian theory under the following explanation “allowed by all men as satisfactory”: a light ray is conceived of as “a stick giving the retina a certain impulse” and “the mind follows” each stick back to its origin on the object, thus “hunting back those terminating on the upper part of the retina to the bottom part of the object”. Dioptrica Nova (1st ed. 1690, 2nd ed. 1709) p. 289. But of course for Descartes the mind does no such following or hunting.

11 Loc. cit., pp. 705–707.

12 Ibid., p. 110.

13 Ibid., p. 707. Cf. also, Traité de l'homme, ibid. pp. 428–9.

14 Ibid., p. 707.

15 Ibid., p. 710.

16 Ibid., pp. 710–711.

17 Ibid., p. 699.

18 De la recherche de la vérité. Malebranche: Oeuvres Complètes, Vol. I, ed. Rodis-Lewis, G. (Paris: Vrin, 1962), p. 156.Google Scholar

19 Cf. ibid., pp. 50 ff. This is the judgment “formed in us” of Meditations VI. Cf. Loc. cit. Vol. II, p. 486.

20 Alas, Malebranche sometimes says just the opposite. Cf. loc. cit., p. 155. A fuller account of this complicated matter is more than I can attempt here. Cf. my Elucidations of Malebranches's Search After Truth: A translation of the Eclaircissements and a philosophical commentary (The Ohio State University Press, to appear).

21 Loc. cit., p. 156.

22 Ibid., p. 96 var. c.

23 Ibid.

24 Cf. Réponse … à M. Regis, (Loc. cit., 1960), XVII–1, pp. 268, 69.

25 Cf. Recherche, loc. cit., pp. 49–50. Inference is just as passive a perception and is distinguished by its object, a relation between relations.

26 Cf. Rodis-Lewis, G., Nicholas Malebranche (Paris: P.U.F., 1963), p. 21, fr. 2Google Scholar. Also, Reponse, loc. cit., p. 265.

27 Ibid., p. 43. In confusing these two questions, as in so much, Hume followed the lead of Malebranche: “… why we suppose objects to have an existence distinct from the mind and perception. Under this last head I comprehend their situation as well as relations, their external position as well as the independence of their existence and operation.” A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883), p. 188.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 157. Malebranche here uses the term ‘represent’ in its neutral seventeenth-century meaning, “make present”.

29 Cf. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, pars. 42–3, ed. Turbayne, C. M. (Library of Liberal Arts, 1957), p. 42.Google Scholar

30 Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, ed. Turbayne, C. M. (Library of Liberal Arts, 1954), p. 42–4.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., pp. 43–4.

32 Cf. Principles, par. 49.

33 Three Dialogues, loc. cit., p. 98.

34 Luce, A. A., Berkeley and Malebranche: A study in the origins of Berkeley's thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed. 1967), p. 41.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., pp. 41–2. Cf. also Luce's fr. 2.

36 Ibid., pp. 37–8, also p. 46.

37 Ibid., p. 26.

38 Ibid., p. 43. Thus the devise of Bracken's, HarryBerkeley (London: Macmillan, 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Theory of Vision, par. 2, loc. cit. p. 19.

40 Ibid., par. 43, p. 38.

41 Ibid., par. 3, p. 20.

42 Ibid., par. 10, p. 22.

43 Ibid., par. 16, p. 23.

44 Ibid., par. 21, p. 25.

45 Ibid., par. 27, p. 26.

46 Ibid., par. 28, pp. 26–7.

47 Ibid., par. 25, p. 26.

48 Ibid., appendix, p. 100.

49 Ibid., par. 23, p. 25.

50 Ibid., par. 25, p. 26.

51 Ibid., par. 152, p. 94.

52 Ibid., pax. 23, p. 26.

53 Cf. Ibid., par. 87, p. 62. If Descartes precedes Berkeley on this then McRae is right that the inference to distance is causal, though as Hume would have understood it.

54 Ibid., par. 147, p. 92.