REPRESENTATIONAL IDEAS SYNTHESE LffiRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University Editors: DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University ofGroningen, The Netherlands PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California JAN WOLEN-SKI, Jagiellonian University, Krak6w, Poland VOLUME 250 REPRESENTA TIONAL IDEAS FROM PLATO TO PATRICIA CHURCHLAND by RICHARD A. WATSON Department of Philosophy, Washington University, SI. Louis. Missouri. USA Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V. Llbrary of Congrass Catalog1ng-ln-Publ1catlon Data Watson. RIchard A.• 1931- Representatlonal ldeas from Plato to Patrlcla Churchland I by Rlchard A. Watson. p. CII. -- (Synthese 11brary ; v. 250) Includes blbllographlcal references and lndex. ISBN 978-94-010-4037-2 ISBN 978-94-011-0075-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-0075-5 1. Idea (Phllosophy) 2. Representatlon (Phllosophy) 1. T1tle. II. Serles. B822.W37 1995 121' .4--dc20 95-11928 ISBN 978-94-010-4037-2 Printed on acid-free paper AlI Rights Reserved © 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1995 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1995 No part of the material protected by this copyright may be reproduced or utilized in any form of by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. On the featureless Tunisian desert, a long-legged, fast-moving ant leaves the protection of the humid nest on a foraging expedition. It moves across the desert in tortuous loops, running first this way, then that, but gradually pro­ gressing ever farther away from the life-sustaining humidity of the nest. Finally it finds the carcass of a scorpion, uses its strong pincers to gouge out a chunk nearly its own size, then turns to orient within one or two degrees of the straight line between itself and the nest entrance, a one-millimeter-wide hole, forty meters distant. It runs a straight line for forty-three meters, holding its course by maintaining its angle to the sun. Three meters past the point at which it should have encountered the entrance, the ant abruptly breaks into the search pattern by which it eventually locates it. A witness to this home­ ward journey finds it hard to resist the inference that the ant on its search for food possessed at every moment a representation of its position relative to the entrance to the nest, a spatial representation that enabled it to compute the solar angle and the distance of the homeward journey from wherever it hap­ pened to encounter food. C.R. Gallistel, The Organization of Learning, p. 1 v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................ ix PREFACE ...................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1 1. Appearance and Reality ....................................................................... 1 2. Representational Ideas ......................................................................... 3 3. Platonic Ideas ....................................................................................... 5 4. Aristotelean Forms ............................................................................... 7 5. Like Knows Like .......... .......... ..... ... ....... ..... .... ........................ .... ..... ... 10 6. Ideas as Effects and Things as Causes ............................................... 11 7. Resemblance ....................................................................................... 14 8. Ontological Models ............................................................................ 17 CHAPTER 2. DESCARTES ....................................................................... 19 1. Image and Concept .... ..... ............. .......... ....... ........ ....... ....... ............ ... 19 2. Imagination and Understanding ........................................................ 22 3. Sensations and Images ....................................................................... 27 4. Non-Resembling Ideas ....................................................................... 30 5. The Priority of Ontology .................................................................... 36 6. What is an Idea? ................................................................................. 37 7. What in an Idea Makes it be of its object? ........................................ 43 8. Summary Conclusion ......................................................................... 47 CHAPTER 3. MALEBRANCHE AND ARNAULD ................................. 49 1. Faculties, Capacities, and Dispositions ............................................. 49 2. Act, Content, and Object ................................................................... 52 3. Ideas as Independent Objects ............................................................. 54 4. Ideas as Acts of Mind ........................................................................ 61 5. Ideas as Transparent, as Searchlights, and as Grapples ................... 64 VB viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 4. LOCKE, BERKELEY, AND HUME .................................. 66 1. Primary and Secondary Ideas ........................................................... 66 2. Non-Representational Ideas ............................................................... 68 3. Particular Ideas .................................................................................. 73 CHAPTER 5. THE PICTURE THEORY ................................................... 77 1. Wittgenstein ....................................................................................... 77 2. Camap ................................................................................................ 82 3. Goodman ............................................................................................ 87 CHAPTER 6. NEUROPHILOSOPHY ..................................................... 100 1. Patricia Churchland ......................................................................... 101 2. Ruth Millikan ........................... ...................... .............. .................... 109 3. Robert Cummins ............................................................................... 111 4. Mark Rollins ..................................................................................... 114 CHAPTER 7. HAVING IDEAS ............................................................... 122 CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSION .................................................................. 142 NOTES ....................................................................................................... 143 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................... 157 SUBJECT INDEX ...................................................................................... 167 NAME INDEX ........................................................................................... 171 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Likeness Problem in Modern Philosophy was brought to my attention by Richard H. Popkin in the first course I ever took in philosophy. Popkin later directed the dissertation I wrote on the scourge of the likeness problem, Simon Foucher. In between, I was instructed concerning the importance of ontology by Gustav Bergmann. And my first essay on the subject was an M.A. thesis directed by Robert G. Turnbull, all of this taking place at the University of Iowa in the early 1950s. Over the years, I have had many discussions about the matter with them, and with Edwin Allaire, Harry Bracken, Claude Chabert, Phillip Cummins, Alan Gabbey, Reinhardt Grossman, Donald Livingston, Jerome Schiller, Sara Shute, Kathleen Squadrito, Henry Van Leeuwen, and Thomas Vernon. More recently, Robert Cummins brought to my attention the ubiquity of resemblance in contemporary theories of representation. Mark Rollins provided an excellent orientation to recent work. Steven Nadler ar­ gued with me about Arnauld and Malebranche, and suggested numerous re­ visions, some of which I have made. Jose R. Maia-Neto made astute comments on early drafts. William Lycan and Ruth Millikan, fine-grained philosophers of high accomplishment, responded heroically to my demands for comments on this coarse-grained commentary. And Justin Leiber combed the manu­ script for me. At Washington University, I appreciate the enlightened policies of Martin Israel, Dean of Arts and Sciences; Roger Gibson, Chair of the De­ partment of Philosophy; and Patty Jo Watson, who provided me with time for research and writing. I thank them all. I also thank the editors of the Ameri­ can Philosophical Quarterly in which a shortened version of Chapter 7, "Hav­ ing Ideas," appeared (Vol. 31, 1944, pp. 185-197). The first draft was completed during 1991-1992 while I was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, Califor­ nia, with financial support provided by the Mellon Foundation, for which I am grateful. I have always benefited from the encouragement of Director Emeritus Gardner Lindzey, to whom I present this book in the guise of a third-quarter report. Finally, I thank Director Philip Converse and Associate Director Robert Scott