This review study looks at David Clemenson’s book Descartes’ Theory of Ideas from both the historical and systematic points of view. From the historical point of view, the theme of the (late) scholastic influences on Descartes’ theory of ideas is tackled, while from the systematic point of view Descartes’ theory is interpreted dealing with the question of Cartesian representationalism or direct (cognitive) realism. An analysis of the immediate Scholastic texts, written by Jesuits (and taught at the Jesuit college La Flèche, where the young Descartes studied) is used by Clemenson to support his argument for a so-called weak version of direct realism, actually identical with a weak version of representationalism. The author of this review study, despite appreciating the connection of these two levels, making possible a consistent interpretation of some of Descartes’ ostensibly contradictory statements, draws attention to certain deficiencies and obscurities concerning, primarily, the scholastic dimension of the subject-matter., Daniel Heider., and Obsahuje poznámky a bibliografii
Current philosophical debates about perception have largely ignored questions concerning the ontological structure of perceptual experience, so as to focus on its intentional and phenomenological character. To illustrate and put pressure on this tendency, I revisit the controversy between doxastic views of perception and Gareth Evans’s objection from over-intellectualization. I suggest that classic versions of the doxastic view are to a good extent driven by an ontological characterization of perceptual attitudes as nonfactive states or dispositions, not by a cognitively complex picture of perceptual content. Conceived along these lines, the doxastic view unveils an ontologically significant story of perceptual experience for at least two reasons: on the one hand, that characterization avoids the line of reasoning leading up to sense-datum theories of perception; and, on the other, it bears on recent discussions about the temporal structure of perceptual experience. Although I do not endorse the doxastic view, my goal is to highlight the importance of the relatively neglected ontological motivations thus driving that kind of account.