Representation and realism in Descartes's meditations
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Recent scholarship regarding Descartes's theory of ideas as presented in his Meditations makes a case for regarding Descartes as a direct realist: someone who believes in the existence of extra-mental objects, and who believes our cognitive activity involves the direct apprehension of those objects. On this view, we have direct cognitive access to those objects through ideas, but such ideas are conceived simply as acts, or operations, of the mind, not as mental objects before the mind. This contrasts with a long-standing view of Descartes as a representational realist: someone who believes in the existence of extra-mental objects, and who believes our cognitive activity involves a mediated relationship with those objects. On this view, we have direct cognitive access only to mediating mental objects, called ideas. In this dissertation, I generally defend a representational realist interpretation of Descartes against several direct realist interpretations. I reject John Yolton's sign-signifier, direct realist interpretation, Deborah Brown's Thomistic direct realist view, and John Carriero's quasi-Aristotelian direct realist view. I also reject the view that we ought to interpret Descartes as a direct realist because the concepts involved in his theory of ideas are owed to direct realist, Scholastic predecessors.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Burns, Shawn |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Philosophy. |
| Primary advisor | De Pierris, Graciela Teresa |
| Thesis advisor | De Pierris, Graciela Teresa |
| Thesis advisor | Findlen, Paula |
| Thesis advisor | Lawlor, Krista |
| Advisor | Findlen, Paula |
| Advisor | Lawlor, Krista |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Shawn Burns. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Philosophy. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Shawn Marcellus Burns
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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