Journal of the History of Philosophy

Descartes on Misrepresentation PAUL HOFFMAN ANY ADEQUATETHEORYof mental representation must include an account of how sensory experience is capable of misrepresenting the world. Misrepresentation occurs, for example, when we look at a straight stick in a glass of water and see it as bent. In order for our visual experience to misrepresent the stick, it must represent the stick, but it must represent the stick as other than it is, as bent rather than straight. To account for misrepresentation, an adequate theory of representation must therefore explain how our sensory experience can represent an object as other than it is. Many philosophers have offered accounts of representation according to which sense experience cannot or at least does not misrepresent the world in optimal conditions or even in normal conditions. 1 Descartes, however, thinks otherwise. In optimal conditions our visual experiences represent physical objects as colored. Descartes maintains that this too counts as misrepresentation , on the ground that color is not a property of physical objects. In the Third Meditation Descartes raises the possibility that our ideas of ' Fred Dretske is an important contemporary philosopher who has offered an account of representation according to which, on my reading, misrepresentation is impossible in normal circumstances. See "Misrepresentation," in Belief, ed. R. Bogdan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), and Explaining Behavior (Cambridge: Bradford Books, 1988), Chapter 3; see also Jerry Fodor's discussion of Dretske's views in "Semantics, Wisconsin Style," Syathese 59 0984): ~3t-5 o. For those approaching this paper from the point of view of contemporary discussions, it is important to point out another way in which Descartes's project differs from that of Dretske. Dretske's discussion of misrepresentation is driven by the aim of providing an account of meaning and by the fundamental assumption that meaning depends on the capacity for misrepresentation. "What we are after is the power of a system to say, mean, or represent (or indeed, take) things as P whether or not P is the case.... For only if a system has [the capacity for misrepresentation] does it have, in its power to get things right, something approximating meaning" (Explaining Behavior, 65.) Descartes, in contrast, is not trying to provide an account of meaning, nor is there evidence that he holds any beliefs about the relation between meaning and the capacity for misrepresentation. What his purposes are in discussing misrepresentation is a matter of dispute to be examined below. [357] 358 JOURNAL or THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 light and colors, sounds, smells, tastes, heat and cold, and the other tactile qualities are materially false (AT VII 43-44). ~ In explanation of this notion, hc says that material falsity occurs in ideas when they represent what is not a thing as if it were a thing (non rem tanquam rein reprcesentant) (AT VII 43; CSM II 3o). He asserts that all ideas are as if of things (nullce ide~enisi tanquam return esse possunt) (AT VII 44; CSM II 3o). So, for example, the idea of cold represents cold to me as something real and positive. But if cold is a privation of heat, then the idea of cold is materially false, since it represents a privation (a non-thing) as a thing (as something real and positive) (AT VII 43-44; CSM II 3o). Material falsity is thus a kind of misrepresentation: to be materially false, at least as it is characterized in the Third Meditation, is to represent a non-thing as if it were a thing. But it is an especially troubling kind of misrepresentation. In her book on Descartes, Margaret Wilson alleges that the concept of material falsity is both a red herring and an embarrassment in the context in which it is presented in the Third Meditation. In this paper I will examine Descartes's notion of material falsity. Hc discusses it not only in the Third Meditation, but also in the Objections and Replies and in the Principles. After a brief introduction to Descartcs's terminology , I will first examine Wilson's interpretation of the Third Meditation. I will argue that, contrary to her reading, Dcscartcs does not believe that our ideas of light, colors...