ABSTRACT
Let me begin with some general remarks about what I was trying to do in writing about Descartes in Perceptual Acquaintance and Perception and Reality. I was attempting to extract from his various texts the outlines of a theory of perception, or some aspects of a theory. Since he did not write a treatise on the subject, or devote a chapter or section to such a theory, any effort to put together passages, hints, suggestions from his writings is bound to be tentative. Wolf-Devine labels such an effort ‘rational reconstruction’. It may be, but as that label was used earlier in the last century for an approach to texts that was not particularly concerned with the accuracy of the fit between text and reconstruction, I am chary of accepting that label. She also quite properly warns of the dangers of using material from texts of different times and occasions. An author’s views may change over time, he may address different audiences with different languages and purposes. I did not think I was finding tensions in various texts which I then tried ‘to harmonise; or to label one of them as his real view and discard the others. I do not find any tensions of conflicts between the various texts I discussed. The question is not ‘Are there conflicts?’ but rather ‘Are there materials for a theory of perception?’ I thought I was ‘painstakingly examin[ing] the terminology Descartes uses to speak about the relation between motions in the brain and our sensations’. That is the way I have always tried to work with an author’s text. That my interpretation of Descartes on brain-motion signs, and his epistemic account of the existence of objects in the mind, is debatable, is of course true, that is the value of an exchange such as this symposium. That I do not have an entirely clear explication of the sign-relation between brain and mind, is also true. I hope one result of this symposium will be a better understanding on my part of the view I have suggested can be extracted from what Descartes said.
