Descartes' Treatment of Innate Ideas

What is important to understand about Descartes's elaboration of innate concepts of the mind is that it is systematic, programmatic, and methodical. That is, his approach is built on the premise of seeking a method for arriving at a position from which one can consider ideas clearly, distinctly, and certainly. This appears attributable to the fact that Descartes was a philosopher-mathematician, or man of science. But equally, one may infer the systematic approach from the structure of the Meditations, which begins with a synopsis of the six segments that are to follow. In the introductory section, Descartes develops the premises from which he will explain the multivaried qualities of the human mind, as the basis for his system of rational philosophy. Thus the First Meditation deals with the quality of doubt; the Second with mind itself, which is equated with the soul (4); the Third with the capacity of the min

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st the truth or reality of all the things that the mind conceives or that the senses perceive. That is, the argument admits of the imperfections of the human mind while insisting that the experience of being and truth reposes in the mind. It follows that authentic knowledge of external things that are perceived depends on the supremacy of the mind, not the senses, even if the mind behaves in a faulty way. For it is only the mind that may make things both clear and distinct, and that can experience their truth or at any rate the perception of truth. Descartes acknowledges the dilemma that this poses for the seeker of clarity and understanding. First he notes that, as a practical matter, it makes more sense to doubt the reality of sense experience, it being easily demonstrated that one cannot trust one's senses. But then he notes that, as a matter of fact, one is more inclined to trust the reality sense experience precisely because it is palpable and as it were ready to hand. Meanwhile, the supposedly simpler abstractions of the mind and imagination, which are as it were closer to one's most basic experience, "which are known to me and which pertain to my real nature" (10) are, as a practical matter, much more elusive to human unde
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Approximate Word count = 3328
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)