Lecture on An Epistemological Reading of Descartes on Material Falsity

A Lecture on an Epistemic Reading of Cartesian Material Falsehood by Ezequiel Zerbudis[edit]

Everything in bold was not in original.

Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía,, Vol. XXXVII No 2 (Primavera 2011)

UNA LECTURA EPISTÉMICA DE LA FALSEDAD MATERIAL CARTESIANA Ezequiel Zerbudis Universidad de Buenos Aires Universidad Nacional del Litoral

Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1676, California, Stanford University Press; pp. 111–38.

Recibido: 11-2011; aceptado: 12-2011

PALABRAS CLAVE: SENSACIÓN, REPRESENTACIÓN, FALSEDAD, IDEA.

ABSTRACT: In the present paper I defend an interpretation of the Cartesian notion of material falsity that it would be adequate to describe as ‘epistemic’, as opposed to most other views in the literature, which could be described as ‘metaphysical’. Whereas metaphysical conceptions of material falsity consider an idea to be such because of some kind of failure in their representative properties, that is, in the relation between what they exhibit and their objects, an epistemic view considers that what makes an idea materially false is some kind of opacity that precludes their representational properties to be known in the first place. In the paper the evidence for these two kinds of reading is assessed, and it is shown that epistemic views are clearly more adequate.

As is known, Descartes introduces the notion of material falsity in the context of the presentation of (the first version of) the a posteriori proof of the existence of God in the third of the Metaphysical Meditations (i.e., in the context of the proof that proceeds from our possession of a certain idea of God). By introducing it, he presents it as a peculiar type of falsehood that, unlike what happens with formal falsehood (or falsehood in the strict sense), affects not judgments, but the ideas themselves. The objective of the present work is to try to give an explanation of this notion of material falsity that is compatible (or, at least, as compatible as possible) with the various statements of Descartes regarding this notion, something that has been result, as can be seen from a minimal examination of the relevant literature, notoriously difficult. In fact, the discussion on this topic has a long tradition among Cartesian commentators and, given that our interpretation is quite far from the proposals made by the majority of them, we would like to begin our treatment of the issue by outlining a taxonomy and a brief characterization of some of the most influential interpretations. This will allow us to then turn to the texts to consider and evaluate the textual evidence that, prima facie, would favor each of these different interpretations. After granting that in a first instance the different groups of positions, including the one to which the proposal defended here belongs, would seem to be supported in equal measure by various texts of the third meditation, I move on to consider the sources of evidence additional information that could be used to decide the issue. In this sense, I try to show that the position I favor is clearly superior when considered in the light of this additional evidence (in which we must include some other Cartesian texts, intelligibility per se (or lack of intelligibility) of the relevant theses, and the capacity that the various positions would have to offer some reasonable interpretation of the evidence in principle adverse), and that therefore this proposal should be adopted as the most adequate explanation of the notion Cartesian of material falsity.

1. The received conceptions and their primary textual bases.

As we already anticipated, the discussion on the notion of material falsity has a quite variegated tradition, however, I believe that a fairly simple taxonomy can be made of the different positions defended (at least as long as only their characteristics are considered). more general). In my opinion, these could be divided, in the broadest way, between those that could be called, following Kaufmann (2000), metaphysical conceptions of material falsity, and those that could be called, on the contrary, epistemic conceptions. Basically, what distinguishes these two types of positions is that while metaphysical conceptions (which have clearly been the majority in the literature) define the contrast between ideas that are materially false and those that are not based on differences in representative properties of the ideas, that is, from the supposedly diverse relationships that would occur in these two cases between the ideas (understood as mental modes) and their objects, the epistemic conceptions place the basis of said differences, by the various ways and degrees in which the subjects possessing these ideas could access their representative properties and, eventually, grasp their content. This contrast between metaphysical and epistemic conceptions is, in our opinion, the most important when evaluating the different positions on how to understand material falsity, so in what follows we will dedicate ourselves above all to studying the relative advantages of these two types of positions.

Notwithstanding this, it is also worth noting, if only to somehow complete the picture of the situation given here, that metaphysical conceptions could in turn be divided into two groups, namely, those corresponding to conceptions that we could call narrow and broad of material falsehood. A narrow conception is one that would be held by those who believe that certain ideas are materially false by virtue of the fact that there is a certain mismatch or inadequacy between the supposed positive character of what is presented in the idea, on the one hand, and the supposed negative character (i.e., privative) of what is represented by it, by the other (from which it would follow that, while the idea of cold would be materially false, that of heat would not be – given the assumption that the

As we have already anticipated, the discussion about the notion of material falsehood has a rather multi-folded tradition, however, which, I believe, a fairly simple taxonomy of the different positions defended can be made (at least as long as only their most general characteristics are considered). In my opinion, these could be divided, in the broadest way, between those that could be called, following Kaufmann (2000), metaphysical conceptions of material falsehood, and those that could be called, on the contrary, epistemic conceptions. Basically, what distinguishes these two types of positions is that while the metaphysical conceptions (which have been clearly majority in the literature) define the contrast between materially false ideas and those that are not from differences in the representative properties of the ideas, that is, from the supposedly diverse relationships that would occur in those two cases between the ideas (understood as mental modes) and their objects, the epistemic conceptions place the basis of such differences, on the contrary, the various modes and degrees in which the subjects possessing these ideas could Get to access its representative properties and, eventually, capture their content. This contrast between metaphysical and epistemic conceptions is, in our opinion, the most important when evaluating the different positions about how to understand material falsehood, so in what follows we will dedicate ourselves above all to studying the relative advantages of these two types of positions.

Nevertheless, it is also worth noting, even if it is not to somehow complete the picture of situation here, that metaphysical conceptions could in turn be divided into two groups, namely, those corresponding to conceptions that we could call narrow and broad of material falsehood. A narrow conception is one that would be held by those who believe that certain ideas are materially false by virtue of the fact that there is a certain misplacement or inadequacy between the supposed positive character of what is presented in the idea, on the one hand, and the alleged negative character (i.e., exclusive) of what is represented by it, on the other (it would follow that, while the idea of cold would be materially false, that of heat would not be—given the assumption that cold is effectively the deprivation of heat). On the other hand, those who defend a broad conception consider that the materially false character of an idea derives from the more general circumstance, from which the one outlined when explaining the narrow notion would be nothing more than a particular case, according to which a similar idea would represent "a non-thing as a thing" - what can be read, taking into account the significance of this Cartesian turn, in terms that an idea represents something not possible as if it were possible (with which both the idea of heat and the idea of cold would be (or could be) materially false).

Returning in any case to the main contrast between metaphysical and epistemic conceptions that we want to present here, perhaps it can help to clarify their nature a consideration of the main texts in which the defenders of these different types of positions base their positions. The textual evidence, in fact, seems to oscillate, in particular with regard to the original presentation of the notion that concerns us in the third meditation, between favoring one or another position. Let's consider the central piece of the passage in which Descartes introduces for the first time the notion of material falsehood (subdivided for further references):

[1] As for the other things, such as light, colors, sounds, smells, flavors, heat, cold, and the other qualities that fall into the domain of touch, they are in my thought with so much darkness and confusion, that I even ignore if they are true, or false and only apparent, that is, if the ideas that I conceive of these qualities are in effect ideas of some real things, or if they do not represent me more than chimerical beings, which cannot exist [lat: an ideae, quas de illis habeo, sint rerum quarundam ideae, an non Rerum: or if the ideas I have of them are ideas of certain things, or not of things].

[2] Well, even though you have already noticed above that only in the trials can you find true and formal falsehood, you can nevertheless find in the ideas a certain material falsehood, namely, as long as they represent what is nothing as if it were something [lat: cum non rem tanquam rem repraesentant].

[3] For example, the ideas I have of cold and heat are so unclear and different that through them I cannot discern if the cold is only a deprivation of heat, or if the heat is a deprivation of the cold, or if one and the other are real qualities, or if they are not;

[4] And while, since ideas are like images, there can be none that does not seem to us to represent something [lat: quia nullae ideae nisi tanquam rerum esse possunt] [GOOGLE translate: because no ideas can exist except as things], if it is correct to say that cold is nothing more than a deprivation of heat, the idea that represents it to me as something real and positive will not be called false for no reason, and so other similar ideas (AT VII, 43-4; AT IX-1, 34-5).

As I said, the different sections of this text seem to oscillate between supporting a metaphysical or epistemic interpretation of material falsehood. Thus, for example, the passages [2] and [4] seem to give quite good sustenance to various metaphysical readings; in particular, [2] seems to support a broad metaphysical conception, according to which the distinctive thing about materially false ideas is that they represent (types of) states of things that, ultimately, are impossible, as if they were possible (as it is argued, in a paradigmatic way, in the conception defended by Field (1993); I return to this below). In effect, the distinction between res and non res to which the passage alludes in its Latin version corresponds, as made explicit in the French version (in particular in the way in which this distinction appears towards the end of [1]), with the contrast between possible (res: quelques choses réelles) [GOOGLE translate: some real things] and impossible (non res: êtres chimériques, qui ne peuvent exister) [GOOGLE translate: chimerical beings, who cannot exist] entities. In particular, what these ideas would represent as possible is that certain sensory qualities, such as red or heat, were modes or accidents of corporeal substances; being that this is really impossible, since such qualities, in the way in which they are phenomenally given, are nothing more than accidents or modes of a thinking substance and, therefore, sufficiently incongruous with respect to an extensive substance to be able to inhere in it.

The whole phrase 'non rerum' is the plural genitive of 'non res,' a no thing). The presence of the accusative 'non rem' in the next section makes it preferable, in my opinion, this second reading.

[4], on the other hand, even presenting a more ambiguous wording, it seems to give some sustenance to a narrow metaphysical position, according to which, as we saw, the materially false ideas would be that they present something that is metaphysically "negative" (that is, a deprivation) as if it were something positive: in terms of the example presented in this text, what would happen here is that the idea of cold seems to offer the subject a phenomenological character as positive as the one that presents the idea of heat (in the sense, I think, intuitive enough that both are presented in the form of a certain qualitative aspect that is evident and sufficiently distinguishable from others for the subject); as a result of which, if the cold is not something positive from an ontological point of view, the idea of cold would be misleading in a way that the idea of heat would not be—mode of deception would be, precisely, that of the materially false ideas.

Anyway, beyond the variety of metaphysical position in question, the most important thing to note about them, and that consists precisely of what this character confers on them, is that it is considered that the defective, problematic or deceptiveness of the materially false ideas would be given at the level of the relationship between what the idea presents and what it represents (to use in this case Wilson's terminology (1990)): thus, in [2], it is said that certain ideas are materially false "as long as they represent what is nothing as if it were something" and in [4], speaking of the cold as deprivation, it is also said that "the idea that represents it to me as something real and positive will not be called false for no reason." That is, these passages, which apparently always emphasize whether or not the representative function of the idea is properly fulfilled, seem to suggest that the problem of material falsehood is a problem with respect to the correspondence (or not) between what an idea seems to represent, that is, the type or degree of reality that it exhibits, so to speak, on its surface, on the one hand, and, on the other, the type or degree of reality of what, in fact, represents. 3. On the other hand, the differences between the two varieties (narrow and wide) that we pointed out above derive from the specific way in which the type of failure in question is explained: in one case, the failure derives from the fact that an idea would present something as possible (like a res) when in reality it is not (it is a non res); in another, it would be that the idea presents something as positive, when in reality it is not'—since it would be nothing more than a deprivation. 4.

3. Note that the notion of correspondence or adequacy involved here is not the traditional one linked to the corresponding definition of the

True; in the latter case, it is the adequacy between certain ideas (or, more precisely, certain propositional contents encoded in certain ideas) and certain objects, or states of things, existing; while here the relationship is not intended as taking place with something existing (Descartes explicitly says that what interests us in this case are rather ways of being true or false that go beyond the relationship with the existing, AT V, 152) but with something real (that is, something that could exist). One of the central problems that metaphysical theories of material falsehood have is precisely, as we will see later, in explaining what this type of correspondence or adequacy could consist of.

4. As we have already said, in the present work we are interested, above all, in analyzing in a global way the contrast between metaphysical and epistemic conceptions, and for this reason we will not go into more detail regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the different variants within these groups of positions. However, it should be noted that the narrow metaphysical conception has obvious and, I believe, insurmountable textual problems, which originate, in particular, in the fact that Descartes himself insistently mentions both cold and heat as materially false ideas (cf., for example, the text [1] cited above in the text). It is true, on the other hand, that in general positions of the narrow type have not been sustained in the relevant literature, but at most they have been considered as options that eventually correspond to discard (cf. for example Wilson 1978, p. 109; perhaps also Arnauld took into account this reading for those same purposes, cf. below the text [5]); an exception is that of R. Biscia (cf. her 2010), who justly defends a conception of the narrow type. Among the defenders of broad metaphysical conceptions are Gewirth 1943, Gueroult 1953, Wilson 1990, Field 1993, Alanen 1994 and Brown 2008; on the other hand, although Bolton 1986, Beyssade 1992, and DeRosa 2004 incorporate epistemic elements in the elaboration of their proposals, the general framework in which they do it remains, in my opinion, one of a metaphysical type.

Later we will see some difficulties when trying to specify the content of these proposals. Now I would rather draw attention to the fact that the remaining sections of the aforementioned passage point, on the contrary, in another direction, that is, in the direction of 'epistemic' interpretations, as I have called them above, which is the type of interpretation that I am going to defend here. Note that in [3] it is said that "the ideas I have of the cold and the heat are so unclear and different that through them I cannot discern if the cold is only a deprivation of heat, or if the heat is a deprivation of the cold, or if one and the other are real qualities, or if they are not" (my emphasis); that is, it does not seem that the notion that is wanted to be delineated in these passages concerns a certain type of certain relationship that would be given between what is presented and what is represented by some ideas, but rather that notion would consist of that, simply, some of such ideas are presented with such a degree of darkness and confusion that we cannot even access, so to speak, to see what is "inside" the idea—in particular, we would not have adequate access to these assumptions various aspects of it or, above all, to the relationship of representation or adequacy that would be given between them. An idea would be materially false, then, by virtue of that difficulty it creates for epistemic access to its content.

2. Looking for additional evidence in other Cartesian texts

As we have just seen, the text in which Descartes presents the notion of material falsehood in the Third Meditation seems too ambiguous to allow us to determine, on its own, which interpretation of that notion, that is, is one of a metaphysical or epistemic type, would be the most appropriate. To try to decide this issue, however, it seems that we could make use of at least three other types of additional evidence. That is, we could:

(A) Analyze other relevant texts in the Cartesian corpus;

(B) Evaluate the coherence and intelligibility of the proposals themselves, especially when they are put in connection with other Cartesian theses and texts, in particular those referring to some more general relevant notions, such as representation; and finally

(C) See to what extent each of these conceptions is able to account for the evidence, textual and otherwise, which, prima facie, would seem to favor the alternative conception. 6.

In what follows we are going to deal with, in the order in which we come from exposing them, these three types of considerations, starting, in the rest of this section, with the first of them.

In the rest of the Cartesian corpus there are, in addition to some loose references (as in the First Replies, AT VII, 114; IX-1, 91), which help little to resolve the question, basically two relevant discussions of the notion of material falsehood: on the one hand, a fairly extensive discussion that appears in the fourth series of Objections and Replies that Descartes exchanges with Arnauld and, on the other, a rather brief allusion in the Conversation with Burman.. I think that both texts are, especially if taken globally, decisive in favor of an epistemic interpretation of the notion of material falsehood. But let's see in order, to show that this is so, what these passages tell us.

It is advisable to start at the beginning, that is, with Arnauld's objections. In a passage of these, at the beginning of the second section of them, which contains objections "About God," Arnauld raises a question about materially false ideas that is particularly interesting taking into account our objectives here, since it clearly presupposes a metaphysical interpretation of the notion of material falsehood. In fact, it is a question that could be translated, using the terminology we put forward in the previous section, as a question about how the type of relationship between what is presented and what is represented that the notion of material falsehood, understood in a metaphysical way, postulates could take place. Arnauld says:

6. An additional criterion against which these two types of positions could be evaluated could be whether any of them better fulfills the role that the plot structure of the text makes fall on the notion of a materially false idea. However, although it is debatable what that role is actually, I am not going to consider this issue here, since I believe both positions are on an equal footing in this regard.

[5] Finally, what does this idea of cold, which you say is materially false, represent to your spirit? A deprivation? So it is true. A positive being? So it is not the idea of cold. (AT VII, 207; IX–1, 161–62)

This criticism also presupposes, on the other hand, a rather specific conception of the representation that Arnauld takes of the scholastic tradition, according to which the representation of an object by a mind (or, more specifically, by a mental mode, of an idea) is understood in terms of the intentional non-existence of the object represented in the mind of the agent. It is also a conception that he believes he has every right to assign (with good reason, as we will see) to Descartes (in fact, beyond the direct testimonies that we will consider shortly, some central Cartesian theses, such as the introduction of the distinction between formal and objective reality, and the application to the scope of the ideas of the principle of causal adequacy, would be poorly intelligible outside this ideological framework). If this is so, a criticism based on such a conception of intentionality would even have the value of an internal criticism. That such a conception is in fact budgeted by Arnauld, and that it is what is at the basis of [his] criticism, is clear, for example, from the following text (which also helps us in the task of making explicit the conception in question):

[6] Well, what is the idea of cold? It is the cold itself, while it is objectively in understanding; but if the cold is a deprivation, it could not be objectively in understanding for an idea whose objective being was a positive being; therefore, if the cold is only a deprivation, your idea can never be positive, and consequently there can be none that is materially false (AT VII, 206; IX-1, 161).

That is, Arnauld's accusation basically consists of the fact that, if we accept a theory of intentionality such as the one expressed in [6], the notion of a materially false idea, which Arnauld clearly understands here in the manner of the conceptions we called metaphysical, since it refers to the relationship between what is exhibited by the idea and its object, is incoherent and, consequently, impossible—in the language of the French translator of Descartes, a chimera.

It is very instructive to consider the answer that Descartes gives to this criticism: in a very direct way, what he says to Arnauld is that the objection he intends to make is directly inappropriate, since in doing so, his author shows that he is completely wrong in his appreciation of what is the point of the notion of material falsehood. This is already clear even before dealing with the objection in detail, from the very moment he lists, to organize his response, the criticisms that are made to him in that series of objections. Descartes says in that context, and then more specifically moving on to the subject at hand, the following:

[7] He [Arnauld] deals only with three things in this part [the one dedicated to God], with which [one] can easily agree as he understands them; but that I took in another sense when I wrote them, meaning that can also be taken as true.

The first is that some ideas are materially false; that is, according to my sense, that they are such that they give the judgment matter or occasion of error; but he, considering the ideas as formally taken, maintains that there is no falsehood in them. (AT VII, 231; IX–1, 179, italics in the original)

It is very clear from this text, first of all, that, according to Descartes, Arnauld misunderstood what was the point that he wanted to make when introducing the notion of material falsehood—indeed, he says twice in a few lines that he understood this notion with a different meaning from the one he wanted to give him ("but that I took in another sense when he wrote . . .", and also: " . . . according to my sense . . . ", which presupposes a contrast between his meaning and the one in which Arnauld takes it). And, secondly, he explicitly says that the meaning that he, Descartes, wanted to give to his notion, is, precisely, the one that we had identified as the one corresponding to the epistemic interpretation: "that they are such that they give judgment matter or occasion of error," that is, that they are so dark and confused that their content cannot be grasped clearly and that, therefore, as long as we make judgments based on the way in which they appear to us, we will be victims of a propensity to make mistakes, that is, to formulate judgments that may be formally false.

There are several other passages in the Cartesian response that endorse this reading. But it seems particularly interesting to cite the one in which he directly answers the reproach that Arnauld presented through the text [5]:

[8] But Mr. Arnauld asks me what represents me [lat: exhibeat, presents] this idea of cold, which I said was materially false: well, he says, if it represents a deprivation, then it is true; if a positive being, then it is by no means the idea of cold. What I admit to him; but I only call it false because, being dark and confused, I cannot discern if it represents something to me that, outside of my feeling [sentiment; lat: sensum], is positive or not; this is the reason why I have the opportunity to judge that it is something positive, although perhaps it is nothing more than a simple deprivation. (AT VII, 234; IX-1, 181)

We see that here Descartes does two things: on the one hand, he admits the conception of intentionality that, for Arnauld, generated the problem with respect to the notion of material falsehood understood in a metaphysical sense (remember that in the text [7] Descartes admitted that, in the sense in which Arnauld understood the notions involved, what he said was correct); on the other hand, he expresses again, by contrast, that his position is not one that can be attacked on the basis of these doctrines about intentionality, basically, because the notion of material falsehood, as he understands it, does not concern the foundations of the representative function of the ideas considered by themselves 8 but, rather, only to the darkness that covers them and that prevents us from discerning and evaluating the functioning of that representative capacity in some of them (that is, in the terms in which we have been expressing it, it defends here again an epistemic conception of material falsehood). That is, Descartes admits that our idea of cold is nothing other than the cold that is present in our understanding "of the way in which objects have a habit of being in it" (as expressed in the First Replies, AT VII, 102–3; IX–1, 82), only that in the case of cold and other materially false ideas these are too opaque for us to discern precisely what is represented by such ideas.

It should be noted, for the rest, that although what is said in these Fourth Answers, and in particular what appears in this text [8], can be made to a large extent in agreement with what was said in the Third Meditation, there are still differences in emphasis between these two texts. I mean that in the Replies a greater emphasis is placed, in my opinion, on certain aspects of the notion of material falsehood that we could characterize as "functional": thus, while in the Third Meditation it seemed to take as the central character of materially false ideas the fact that they were very dark and confusing, of what was followed as a consequence that could not be accurately determined the type or degree of reality of what is represented there, in the response to Arnauld it seems to be considered the propensity of materially false ideas to give "occasion or material to error" as its central or defining character. This change is what seems to be at the basis of a certain increase in the extension, so to speak, of this notion, which will now include, in addition to the ideas of sensation (approximately, those that will be considered in the later philosophy as "ideas of secondary qualities"), also to the ideas of certain individuals, such as those of the "gods of the idolaters," and to certain appetites and passions in general, such as the thirst for the hydropic [dropsical].

8. I think that, when speaking here of "the ideas taken by themselves," I allude to the same thing that Descartes alludes to when saying that the problems mentioned by Arnauld concern the ideas "formally taken" (AT VII, 231, 232; IX–1, 179, 180). I'm not sure what Descartes means by that turn, although the reference to a notion of Aristotelian shape seems to suggest something like "what it is to be an idea," that is, the notion of idea in the strict sense (in opposition to its implementations, accidental characters, etc.).

Now, it seems clear that this development of the notion, originated in the emphasis placed on those functional aspects, would favor an epistemic interpretation: in fact, it seems difficult to assume that the type of failures in the representative capacities that the defenders of a metaphysical conception suppose defining materially false ideas can also take place with respect to these cases: does it make sense to say that pagan gods, for example, are deprivations (or, in general, negative entities in some sense), or that the thirst for the hydropic would represent a non-thing—that is, an impossible thing? I don't think so. On the contrary, it does seem to make sense to say that it is obscure to us what these ideas represent and, even more, that by virtue of that these ideas give us material by mistake.

The other text that deals with the subject we are dealing with, although in a much shorter way is, as we said, the Conversation with Burman. Again, what is said there supports the interpretation we are holding. Responding to a query from Burman about why he said in the Third Meditation that, "without referring them [to the ideas] to anything else, they could hardly give me material for the error," Descartes says the following:

[9] Even when I don't refer my ideas to anything outside of myself, there is anyway material for error, since I can make a mistake in relation to the very nature of the ideas. (...)[ 10] For example, I can say that whiteness is a quality; and even if I do not refer this idea to anything else outside of myself - even if I do not say or assume that there is something white - I can anyway make a mistake in the abstract, regarding whiteness itself and its nature or the idea I have of it (AT V, 152).

Although it is not explicitly said here that what is described in relation to the ideas involved in these cases is due to their darkness or confusion, the mention of the "matter for error" in the first of the texts suggests that everything said in [9] refers, in a sufficiently clear way, to the conception of the material falsehood that Descartes defended in the Fourth Answers. Moreover: in some sense, it could even be said that it expands what was said there, since it makes it clear here that the error we make in these cases is an error "in relation to the very nature of the idea," which can perfectly be interpreted in terms of the central idea of the epistemic conception, namely, that the problem with materially false ideas takes place with respect to our acce-

So (difficult) to its content. The text [10], on the other hand, could be read as endorsing, rather, a metaphysical conception, by suggesting that what is at stake in cases of materially false ideas is some type of categorical error; but although the categorical error can be effectively involved, it is essential to note that nothing that is said makes us assume that said error originates in the very representative function of the idea, in its nature, but rather the quotation as a whole allows to assume, on the contrary, that the error derives rather from judgments Incorrect that are made, precisely, because those ideas are such that they give "matter for error."

Natural from the point of view of the conception defended here: according to this interpretation, referring certain ideas "to things other than those of which the ideas are truly" would be nothing more than a particular type of effect of the materially false character of certain ideas, namely, the one that consists of making erroneous judgments regarding what is represented by them, due to the darkness and confusion that characterizes them.

3. Some difficulties of metaphysical conception

In addition to the direct textual evidence that we have just offered, it seems that there is an additional point that plays in favor of the interpretation suggested here, namely, that while the notion of material falsehood that arises from this interpretation seems sufficiently clear and, in addition, it can be formulated in a way that is intelligible by itself and coherent with other Cartesian theses, it is not clear that the same can be said of the interpretations that we have called "metaphysical". In general, these have, in addition to problems being able to be expressed in a way that is plausible, certain difficulties in being able to be integrated with other Cartesian theses and, finally, also textual problems, since it does not seem that they can be made compatible, through reasonable interpretations, with several passages that refer explicitly to material falsehood (several of which we have come to see). We also saw that, strictly speaking, many of these difficulties of the metaphysical interpretations of material falsehood had already appeared summarized in Arnauld's criticisms, which, as we pointed out, were aimed in particular at a notion of material falsehood understood in this way.

It is worth noting, with regard to the first point mentioned, that, at some point or another, the same defenders of metaphysical conceptions of material falsehood have to admit that something of what they are saying, or some notion or distinction that they are introducing, is not entirely clear (and, in other cases, even if they themselves do not say it, it is equally notorious that this is so). It would exceed the purposes of the present work to carefully analyze in this regard each of the meta-physical proposals that has been formulated in the literature. However, it can be shown that some of the paradigmatic proposals that have been made in this sense suffer from problems of this type. To start with a notorious example, it is worth mentioning that Margaret Dauler Wilson has to presuppose, so that her proposal about how to understand the notion of material falsehood can even be formulated, that the Cartesian notion of representation (or perhaps better, of representative capacity of ideas) must be interpreted as a mixed notion, which involves a "presentational" element along with another "referential". Now, regarding one of these notions, he admits that "I am not going to pretend that the notion of referential representation is ultimately clear" (Wilson 1990, 74), and then say, regarding a proposal to understand this last notion in causal terms, that

[11] In general, I suspect that the explanation in causal terms was influential in Descartes' thought, even though he was not able to develop it completely, to create a theory immune to counter-examples. Beyond this observation, I am not able to clarify more precisely the hybrid conception of the representation that I have attributed to Descartes (Wilson 1990, 76).

Other proposals rather have the problem of how to reconcile what they claim regarding materially false ideas with other recognized Cartesian doctrines. For example, Martial Gueroult is forced to assume that materially false ideas have an infinitely small degree of objective reality - an idea notoriously devoid of textual basis (Gueroult 1953, 218-9), Lilli Alanen has to assume that what takes place in these ideas is that there are certain "implicit judgments" through which the subject would compose complex ideas inadequately (Alanen 1994, 244), Deborah Brown has to assume something similar in relation to her idea that materially false ideas consist of complex ideas in which I refer qualities present in the sensation to substances (bodies) in which they do not They can inherit (Brown 2008, 208 ss.), and something similar happens with R. Field, who in a similar spirit suggests that cases of materially false ideas are cases in which we combine ideas in certain ways with the ideas of substances of which they could not be modes (cf. Field 1993, passim); in relation to these last three cases, I do not want to deny that references or erroneous judgments of this type are intimately connected with the notion of material falsehood; my point here is only that while it is clearly understood what such errors could consist of if they are taken as taking place through (explicit) judgments that are based on the examination of Confusing ideas, it is not very well understood how it is that they could take place (implicitly) as an internal function of the ideas themselves - that is, as part of an explanation of their own representative capacities. In general, as can be seen, these proposals appear in tension with some theses characteristic of Cartesian philosophy; more specifically, with certain theses about the intentionality and the origin of the objective reality of ideas and also, perhaps, with the idea that judgments are voluntary acts, and that they are, at least presumably, necessaryly conscious (it is not so clear anyway that this is unequivocally the case in Descartes; but the analysis of this issue would exceed the objectives of the present work).

Eventually, these problems also result in textual problems. In general, it can be said, with respect to many of the proposals that we have just mentioned, that no matter how much the notions that are appealed to to explain the notion of material falsehood undoubtedly play a role in the Cartesian corpus, many of them are never mentioned by Descartes in relation to materially false ideas. And, more in particular, many times those who propose this type of reading are forced to interpret some texts in a completely implausible way. I would like to exemplify the latter again from Wilson's article cited above. It is necessary to take into account, to understand the quote we will make, that the mixed notion of representation that we saw that Wilson assigned to Descartes is contrasted by this author with the notion of representation that she assigns to Arnauld, which would be purely "presentational" (and which is summarized in her thesis that the idea of cold "is the cold itself, while it is objectively in understanding"). Now, since she assumes that this contrast occurs, Wilson has problems explaining why Descartes accepts, as we saw, what Arnauld says about this issue (cf. the text [8] above). He says about this point, then, that "Discards, in a rather surprising way, agrees with the objection" (emphasis of his), and then go on to comment in this way a fragment of [8]:

[12]

Although Descartes seems to abandon his position in front of the other here [seems to give away the store here], I think he has simply expressed himself ineptly. He does not really want to retract his position that a particular "positive" feeling counts as the "idea of cold," even if the cold is in fact a deprivation. Despite apparent verbal indications to the contrary, he really remains in his original path: the sensation of cold represents referencially the cold (...) but does not present the cold as it is" (Wilson 1990, 75).

It seems reasonable to say that, in this case, the interpretation of Descartes' words has been forced in a perhaps excessive way, trying to adapt the spirit of the text (since it is not possible to do it with the letter) to the favorite conception of the commentator. It is clear to me, on the other hand, that many of the other metaphysical conceptions also suffer from disadvantages similar to those we saw in the examples considered, although, by the way, I have not shown that this is so, but I have only suggested it from some cases and paradigmatic quotes. In any case, the indications presented seem sufficient to strongly suggest that what happens is that these proposals are misguided in a fundamental way, which in turn can well be understood as additional evidence in favor of the alternative conception defended here.

4. How to interpret prima facie evidence favorable to metaphysical positions

In the two previous sections, we were accumulating positive evidence in favor of the epistemic conception and negative evidence against the different metaphysical conceptions. However, it remains to be seen if it would be possible to explain in some way compatible with the epistemic conception the positive evidence that, according to us, could be alleged in favor of metaphysical conceptions. In what follows we propose, first of all, to reconsider the textual evidence that, as we saw in the first section of this work, could be argued in favor of that position, to finally proceed to evaluating other conceptual and historical reasons that could be alleged in favor of this type of conception. Ultimately, we will consider that such evidence is not conclusive in favor of metaphysical conception.

We saw above that, in the original presentation that Descartes makes of the notion of material falsehood in the third meditation, approximately half of the passages supported an epistemic reading, while the other half seemed to suggest a metaphysical reading. Could there be a reading of these last passages according to which this suggestion is deactivated? Let's look again at the relevant texts:

[1]

As for the other things, such as light, colors, sounds, smells, flavors, heat, cold, and the other qualities that fall into the domain of touch, they are in my thought with so much darkness and confusion, that I even ignore if they are true, or false and only apparent, that is, if the ideas that I conceive of these qualities are in effect ideas of some real things, or if they do not represent me more than chimerical beings, which cannot exist.

[2]

Well, even if you have already noticed above that only in the trials can the true and formal falsehood be found, you can nevertheless find in the ideas a certain material falsehood, namely, as long as they represent what is nothing as if it were something.

[3]

For example, the ideas I have of cold and heat are so unclear and different that through them I cannot discern if the cold is only a deprivation of heat, or if the heat is a deprivation of the cold, or if one and the other are real qualities, or if they are not;

[4]

And while, since ideas are like images, there can be none that does not seem to represent something to us, if it is correct to say that the cold is nothing more than a deprivation of heat, the idea that represents it to me as something real and positive will not be called false for no reason, and thus other similar ideas (AT VII, 43-4; AT IX-1, 34-5).

The task does not seem easy, but I think the following is a perfectly plausible interpretation of this passage: materially false ideas are dark and confusing ideas that, as such, can give rise, in the subject of which they are ideas, to erroneous judgments regarding what is represented in them, that is, according to what is suggested in [1], they can make this subject judge that certain things that are nothing more than chimerical beings are real (so far we have, by the way, more than a reformulation of the epistemic conception of material falsehood). Now, for this subject who judges in this way on the basis of what is presented in an idea of this type, that idea represents, that is, it works in it as the basis for accepting, the content of that judgment that it causes - for example, the circumstance that something is real, or that a certain situation is possible, even if, if all the evidence provided by the idea were weighed, it could well not be. That is, such ideas can be the occasion of similar cases of formal falsehood, and, even more, they can produce a strong propensity to generate them. This is, I think, what is ultimately said in [2] and in [4], when it is said, for example, that these ideas "represent what is nothing as if it were something." Of course, even though this reading is sufficiently plausible to me, and even if, on the other hand, he believes that, taking into account the global evidence, this is the reading that would be most reasonable to hold, I do not intend to suggest by saying this that this would be the most reasonable interpretation that one could make of [2] and [4] if one met these passages in isolation, regardless of both their immediate context and the other relevant texts. But, anyway, it seems clear to me that this reading does not imply a very important forcing of the letter of the texts - and, in any case, that it can be said quite safely that it implies a much lesser forcing, at least, than the one that, as we saw,

Wilson was forced to operate on other Cartesian texts. It could also be assumed, finally, that there would be other considerations that would support, prima facie, a metaphysical interpretation. One of these, mentioned by Alanen (1994, 239), consists of drawing attention to the fact that the notions of truth and falsehood are neither gradual nor epistemic, so, presumably, if material falsehood is a particular case of falsehood, it would be assumed that this notion should not be either of these two things. However, the notion by which the defender of the epistemic conception intends to analyze it is both a gradual and epistemic notion. It would follow that the analysis in epistemic terms could not be an adequate analysis. The argument seems reasonable, but I think that ultimately it is set on a false premise (that material falsehood is a particular type of falsehood). In fact, the conception defended here understands material falsehood as a notion functionally (i.e., dispositionally) linked to the notion of formal falsehood (or falsehood, barely), not as a species within that genre (the genre of falsehood), which is the type of relationship between these notions that the objection seems to presuppose, or that in any case would have to be presupposed for it to be effective (while, on the other hand, that functional connection between the notions seems sufficient to justify the use of the expression 'falsehood' to refer to the one at hand). Now, if this is the case, from the fact that formal falsehood is a non-epistemic, or non-gradual notion, it is not followed that any functional notion defined in terms of falsehood also has to be non-gradual and non-epistemic. In particular, the functional notion of propensity to generate formal falsehood (that is, the notion by which the notion of material falsehood is analyzed in this proposal) does not have to inherit such properties from the notion of formal falsehood (one thing may well exhibit a greater tendency to generate falsehoods than another, even if none of those falsehoods is more false than the others).

5. Conclusions.

If the argument we unfold in the previous sections is correct, the epistemic interpretation of material falsehood is clearly the one that best suits Cartesian texts. I would like to finish this work by venturing a conjecture about what, in my opinion, could explain the pronounced preference that, in the history of Cartesian interpretation, commentators have had for metaphysical conceptions. I think this is nothing other than the very fact that Arnauld has understood the notion, when presenting his objections, in this way. In this sense, his intervention seems to have considerably influenced the subsequent commentators. And perhaps even more that this has also had an influence in the same sense the fact that Descartes himself discusses the questions about the representative properties of the ideas raised by Arnauld, even though it makes it clear that this is not particularly relevant to the notion that interests him. In any case, if we want to understand the notion of material falsehood, it seems that the most convenient thing would be to start leaving the path opened by Arnauld.

We have not discussed them in the previous discussion. A particularly interesting one is related to Descartes' comments regarding the cause of materially false ideas, which would have to be, either nothingness, or myself as long as I have certain defects. Defenders of metaphysical conception have problems with this thesis, since they have to explain, or how something positive (what the idea presents to me) can be caused by something that has null formal reality, or how something can represent, that is, having a certain (positive) degree of objective reality, even when its cause does not have such a positive degree of formal reality. According to an epistemic conception, on the contrary, those comments can be easily explained, since being materially false of ideas is an effect of their darkness and confusion, and those properties, as deprivations of ideas, can perfectly depend on my own deprivations.

REFERENCIAS

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Received: 10-2011; accepted: 12-2011