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4 - Representing and referring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2009

Deborah J. Brown
Deborah J. Brown
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Summary

The medieval theory of perception was realistic; the senses are the open gates thronged by the ‘species’ which emanate by effluence from the actual object, and passing into the mind nevertheless remain what they were outside it. But if perception is representative, the external world, on its entrance to the mind, passes, as it were, through a toll-gate of unreality, and its bewildered ghost wanders about its new home, for ever doubtful of its own identity.

(Gibson, 1932: 79)

The last chapter argued that the phenomenology of passions is critical for accounting for the awareness we have of ourselves as embodied beings. But Descartes repeatedly refers to the passions as representations, often incorrect or exaggerated, and it is now time to look at the intentionality of the passions and how, in virtue of their representational content, they influence thought and judgement. The epistemic and cognitive effects of the passions depend on their semantic properties, but their status as representations is problematic for a variety of reasons.

As we know from previous chapters, Cartesian passions and sensations do not initiate reception by the intellect of the ‘bewildered ghosts’ of Aristotelian theories: the sensible and non-sensible forms (intentiones) of material things. Cartesian fear does not represent the malicitas of the wolf by sharing some form, inhering in both the wolf and the sense organs, albeit in different ways.

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Descartes and the Passionate Mind , pp. 84 - 115
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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