Cartesian ‘Ideas’ and the First (C17) Cognitive Revolution

Jerry Fodor (2003) sees Hume’s Treatise as the foundational document of cognitive science, though he concedes that “Descartes got there first.” However, Hume’s “Cartesianism” is an ambiguous inheritance since Hume’s representational account (and Fodor’s) is closer to Malebranche’s version than Descartes’ own. Descartes shared the ‘pragmatism’ and ‘direct realism’ of Arnauld and later Reid – the doctrine that Fodor sees as “the defining catastrophe” in recent philosophy of mind. Since Putnam (1999) and others defend this Arnauld-Reid view today, there has been less progress since the 17 Century than Fodor suggests. I defend Descartes’ conception of representation against misunderstandings that illuminate issues still at the forefront of debate in cognitive science today. For example, despite the wide currency of Dennett’s term, Descartes was not guilty of the ‘Cartesian Theater’ fallacy and, indeed, in his Dioptrics explicitly argued against a conception of representation that would require the notorious homunculus – in the Malebranchean Theater. Not Much of a Revolution? Jerry Fodor (2003, 2) notes that a shift in philosophical fashions has permitted appreciating Hume more as a psychologist than as a philosopher in the traditional sense concerned with ‘conceptual analysis.’ However, Hume is neither alone, nor the most aggrieved victim of such ‘whig’ history. Notably, Descartes’ work is best seen “as the output of a practicing scientist who, somewhat unfortunately wrote a few short and relatively unimportant philosophical essays” (Clark 1982, 2). This can’t be said of Hume. Aside from his physics, Descartes’ neuroscience in Optics and Treatise of Man were of staggering originality, right in their fundamentals, and still a corrective to widely held theories such as pictorial accounts of imagery. It is in this light that we may appreciate Chomsky’s doubts concerning the radical novelty of the ‘cognitive revolution’ and his remark “it wasn’t all that much of a revolution in my opinion” (1966, 1). He notes that the same convergence of disciplinary interests had taken place in the seventeenth century in what he calls the “first cognitive revolution, perhaps the only real one.” Chomsky adds: ... the second cognitive revolution has rediscovered, reformulated, and to some extent addressed some of the most venerable themes of our cultural tradition, back to its early origins. (1966, 11) Descartes’ Startling Reverse Sign In Yolton’s (1996) view, Descartes is to be credited with having introduced an entirely novel and remarkable doctrine of mental representation. Noting that it has received very little attention, Yolton characterizes this significatory relation as a “curious” and “somewhat obscure” doctrine which turns the conventional account on its head (1996, 73). Yolton writes: Descartes’s account of physical motions as signs is such a startling notion that one wonders about its antecedents. Philosophers before Descartes talked of signs, but I am not aware of any who reversed the normal sign relation. (1996, 190) In his chapter on ‘The Semantic Relation,’ Yolton reports Descartes’ account of perception in Le Monde, taken to illustrate this “second interactive relation, the semantic or significatory relation.” Yolton distinguished this from the more familiar representative relation between an idea and its object, that is, the standard conception of intentionality associated with the sense and reference of symbols. In explaining the novel conception, Yolton cites Descartes’ comparison of this new natural reverse-sign relation with the way in which tears and smiles convey sadness and joy, the point being that in both cases the signs perform their function despite failing to resemble that which they signify. Yolton says of Descartes suggestion: ... it is a reversal of what we might expect. The expectation from what Descartes has been saying is that ideas or sensations are going to be signs; thus, the sensations of light would be a sign of specific motions in the object and air. His problem would accordingly be to explain how we can get information about the world from our ideas and sensations. But the sign relation here suggested is the other way around: the physical motion is the sign of or for the sensation. (1996, 186) Yolton explains that, on this view, “The physical stimulus signifies the idea” (1996, 186) instead of the other way around as we should expect. Yolton follows Alquié, suggesting that “it is clear” that for Descartes “the physical action of light signifies to us the sensation that we feel” and, therefore, in Alquié’s words, “that which we habitually consider as the signified (the physical action) becomes here that which signifies” (Yolton 1996, 186). This is, then, the reverse sign relation which Yolton takes Descartes to be offering as a radically novel account of mental representation. However, the very features which make this such a “startling” view are, at the same time, grounds for being cautious about attributing it to Descartes. That is, what makes the doctrine startling is ipso facto what makes it implausible as an account of the phenomenon and also, consequently, as an account of Descartes’ intentions. Textual support for Yolton’s reverse-sign interpretation is hardly compelling. Using the term ‘sign’ exclusively for Descartes’ novel