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Idea

from ENTRIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

By
Alan Nelson
Edited by
Lawrence Nolan
Alan Nelson
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lawrence Nolan
Affiliation:
California State University, Long Beach
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Summary

Ideas are modes of thought that function in various important ways in Descartes’ philosophy. It is in virtue of ideas that thought is intentional and gives meaning to words. Ideas are the subject matter for true and false judgments that are expressed in propositional forms, and they are the basis of the certain foundations of knowledge (scientia). This variety of functions is correlated with a complex set of theoretical distinctions that apply to ideas. Most of these are first explained rather than just used in the Third Meditation of the Meditations on First Philosophy:

First, however, considerations of order appear to dictate that I now classify my thoughts into definite kinds, and ask which of them can properly be said to be the bearers of truth and falsity. Some of my thoughts are as it were the images of things [tanquam rerum imagines], and it is only in these cases that the term “idea” is strictly appropriate – for example when I think of a man, or a chimera, or the sky, or an angel, or God.

(AT VII 36–37, CSM II 25–26)

This passage continues by noting that some thoughts have “additional forms,” which include volitional aspects. So all modes of thought include an ideational aspect in the “strictly appropriate” sense, while some include volitional aspects as well (AT VIIIA 17, CSM I 204; cf. AT III 295, CSMK 172). That contrast is important in the Fourth Meditation's theodicy of error (see error, theodicies of). The quoted Third Meditation passage goes on to introduce the question of truth and falsity:

Now as far as ideas are concerned, provided they are considered solely in themselves and I do not refer them to anything else, they cannot strictly speaking be false; for whether it is a goat or a chimera that I am imagining, it is just as true that I imagine the former as the latter.

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The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon , pp. 387 - 395
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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  • Idea
  • Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
  • Book: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
  • Online publication: 05 January 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894695.139
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  • Idea
  • Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
  • Book: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
  • Online publication: 05 January 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894695.139
Available formats
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  • Idea
  • Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
  • Book: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
  • Online publication: 05 January 2016
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894695.139
Available formats
×