Descartes on the innateness of all ideas

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 355-388

  Gorham, Geoffrey ^a  

^a MACALESTER COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 56449127219     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2002.10716523     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. For instance, see Anthony Kenny, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy (New York: Random House 1968), 104-5;
2. Robert McRae, 'Innate Ideas,' in Cartesian Studies, R.J. Butler, ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1972), 50-3;
3. Robert Adams, 'Where Do Our Ideas Come From - Descartes vs. Locke,' Innate Ideas, Stephen P. Stich, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press 1975), 76-8;
4. Desmond Clarke, Descartes' Philosophy of Science (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1982), 50-2;
5. John Cottingham, Descartes (Oxford: Blackwell 1986), 147-8;
6. Bernard Williams, Descartes: The Project of Pure Inquiry (London: Penguin 1987), 133-5;
7. Nicholas Jolley, The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1990), 36-42;
8. Margaret Wilson, 'Descartes on the Origin of Sensation,' Philosophical Topics 19 (1991) 293-323, at 302-4;
9. Daniel Garber, 'Descartes and Occasionalism,' in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, Steven Nadler, ed. (University Park: Penn State University Press 1993), 22-3
10. Steven Nadler, 'Descartes and Occasional Causation,' British Journal for the History of Philosophy 2 (1994) 35-54, at 47-51
11. and The Occasionalism of Louis de la Forge,' in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, Steven Nadler, ed. (University Park: Penn State University Press 1993), 66-8;
12. Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995), 408-10;
13. Tad Schmaltz, 'Descartes on Innate Ideas, Sensation and Scholasticism: The Response to Regius,' in Oxford Studies in the History of Philosophy, Vol. II: Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy, M.A. Stewart, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997), 34-44
14. and 'Sensation, Occasionalism and Descartes' Causal Principles,' in Minds, Ideas and Objects: Essays on the Theory of Representation in Modern Philosophy, Philip Cummins and G. Zoeller, eds. (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview 1991), 42-9;
15. Kenneth Clatterbaugh, The Causation Debate in Early Modern Philosophy: 1637-1739 (New York: Routledge 1999), 38;
16. Marleen Rozemond, 'Descartes on Mind-Body Interaction: What's the Problem?' Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999) 435-67, at 449-62;
17. David Scott, 'Occasionalism and Occasional Causation in Descartes's Philosophy,' Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (2000) 503-28, at 516-20;
18. Nancy Kendrick, 'Why Cartesian Ideas of Sense are Innate,' The Southern Journal of Philosophy 37 (2000) 413-28, at 414.
19. See Janet Broughton, 'Adequate Causes and Natural Change in Descartes' Philosophy,' in Human Nature and Natural Knowledge, Alan Donagan, Anthony Petrovich, and Michael Wedin, eds. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1986), 116-19.
20. Kenneth Winkler is another author who seems inclined to the non-causal interpretation, though his position is more guarded than Broughton. Winkler writes that Descartes 'is uneasy about the further claim that they [bodies] play a causal role, not because he wants to deny it, but because he is not prepared to specify the sense in which it is true' ('Grades of Cartesian Innateness,' British Journal for the History of Philosophy 1 [1993] 23-44, at 32).
21. John Yolton, in Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1984), 30
22. and Daise Radner, 'Is There a Problem of Cartesian Interaction?' Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985) 227-31 also argue, though on the basis of very different considerations from one another, that Descartes cannot regard bodies as simply the efficient causes of ideas.
23. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Peter H. Nidditch, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975), 50
24. See also AT 8B 366, AT 3 430, AT 8B 166, AT 4 187-188; CSM 1 309, CSMK 194, CSMK 222, CSMK 248.
25. 2 since they all 'come solely from the power of thinking within me.' But, unlike Clarke, Descartes does not seem to require (at least not in the Comments) that in order for an idea to be innate in this sense it must be the result of reflection. Rather, Descartes says simply that the mind 'forms' its ideas on the occasion of sensory stimulation. Miles (ch. 18) develops a detailed 'reflexive- dispositional' theory of innateness, which attempts to preserve the best features of McRae's and Clarke's interpretations, and also illuminate Descartes's theory of the mind as a whole. But Miles does not attempt to apply this theory to the Comments thesis of universal innateness. Rather, he thinks that the universal innateness thesis expresses a 'rather misleading' conception of innateness (Miles, 293). For another useful discussion of the various 'grades' of innateness in Descartes's writings, see Winkler. Winkler ties Descartes's conception of innateness closely to his conception of a person's 'nature,' but admits that this conception does not seem to be at work in the arguments for universal innateness (31). Finally, Deborah Boyle, 'Descartes on Innate Ideas,' The Modern Schoolman 78 (2000) 35-51, attempts to account for Descartes's disparate uses of the term 'innate idea' in terms of his different senses of 'idea,' though again she does not discuss the universal innateness thesis in any detail.
26. Thus Descartes says that God causes himself not by any 'positive influence,' but only by the immensity of his own power (AT 7 109 and AT 7 236-237; CSM 2 79 and CSM 2 165). For a recent analysis of the sense in which God could be his own cause, according to Descartes, see Daniel Flage and Clarence Bonnen, 'Descartes on Causation,' The Review of Metaphysics 50 (1997) 841-72.
27. For a discussion of Descartes's views on causation which is much more skeptical about their significance, and even their coherence, see Jonathan Bennett, Learning from Six Philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, 2 Volumes (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001), ch. 5).
28. This causal condition is found, in various forms, throughout Descartes's writings: AT 6 34, AT 8 11, AT 7 40-2, 104-5, 135, 161, 165, 168, 366, AT 3 274, 428, 545; CSM 1 128, 198-99; CSM 2 28-9, 76, 97, 114, 116, 118, 252; CSMK 166, 192, 211. For more detailed discussion of the principle, see Kenneth Clatterbaugh, 'Descartes's Causal Likeness Principle,' Philosophical Review 89 (1980) 379-402;
29. Eileen O'Neill, 'Mind-Body Interaction and Metaphysical Consistency: A Defense of Descartes,' Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (1987) 227-45;
30. Geoffrey Gorham, 'Causation and Similarity in Descartes,' in New Essays on the Rationalists, R. Gennaro and C. Huenemann, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999)
31. David Hausman and Alan Hausman, Descartes's Legacy: Minds and Meaning in Early Modern Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1997), 42-7; and Gorham ('Descartes's Dilemma').
32. This tension in Descartes's views about the origin of sensory ideas is evident also in the case of dreams, which he regarded as both involuntary and internally caused. Cf. David Fate Norton, 'Descartes on Unknown Faculties: An Essential Inconsistency,' Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968) 245-56, and Wilson (305-6).
33. For an interesting recent analysis of the official proof, which gives special attention to the unknown faculty problem, but which disagrees in several respects with the analysis offered here, see Lex Newman, 'Descartes on Unknown Faculties and Our Knowledge of the External World,' The Philosophical Review 103 (1994) 489-531.