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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Descartes' Theory of Ideas

Descartes' Theory of Ideas

Clemenson, David

Hardcover

Series: Continuum Studies in Philosophy, Book 20

Philosophy

ISBN10: 0826487734
ISBN13: 9780826487735
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: Jul 3 2007
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.91
Height: 0.72 Width: 6.47 Depth: 9.36
Language: English
Descartes held that only ideas are immediately perceived, and that all ideas are really identical to mental states. Yet certain passages in the Meditations seem to assert that some extramental individuals -- the sun, for example, or a piece of wax -- can be immediately perceived (not by the senses, but by the intellect). If so then Descartes was committed to the seemingly absurd claim that extramental things can be really identical to mental states. But the claim is not absurd; as this book shows, it is based on a coherent doctrine of intentional representation that was taught at the Jesuit college of La Flèche that Descartes attended as a youth. On this doctrine, an individual that is outside the mind with one sort of being can be inside it with another. This book brings a fresh perspective to the currently deadlocked debate over whether Descartes was a representationalist or a direct realist, and sheds new light on his difficult notions of material falsity and the self-representational character of thought.

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