ABSTRACT
When philosophers today think of Descartes’ views about the mind, they are likely to think of his substance dualism and the attendant difficulties explaining mind-body interaction. Descartes’ primary methodology in the philosophy of mind, is to deduce conclusions about the nature and workings of the mind via the intellect alone, operating over divinely implanted innate ideas. Descartes’ methodology relies on the possession of innate ideas whose content we fully grasp only after meditating. Descartes’ procedure in the Meditations is designed to establish the primacy of the intellect over the senses. One aspect of Descartes’ theory of sensation that has received a great deal of attention in the secondary literature in recent years is his account of how we calculate size and distance in vision. Another is the status and nature of secondary-quality sensations.
