ABSTRACT
From the point of view of the Meditations, our ability to grasp the crucial difference between the true scientific image and the false commonsense image of the world rests on our acceptance of the proposition that the perceptions of the former are clear and distinct, while those of the latter are obscure and confused. It is, I have suggested, a major failing of Descartes’s argument there, that he gives us so little reason, or compelling basis, for accepting this proposition. One is just supposed, somehow, to ‘see’ it. But the situation seems to be still worse with respect to Descartes’s hints in the Principles that there is a further difference between sensations and real perceptions, having to do with their representational character. As I have interpreted him, Descartes is suggesting there that ideas of colors, tastes and so forth are presented as mere sensations, while those of extension, figure and motion are given to us as exhibiting certain things or modes of things. And this proposition seems to be not obscure or illdefended, but false. At the very least it is difficult to overcome the prejudices of one’s youth to the extent necessary to perceive a relevant phenomenological difference between the ‘ideas’ of color and extension-or between the perceived color and the shape ‘of’ a particular object.14
