第三省察における観念の「質料的虚偽」

Abstract

In the third Meditation, as you know, Descartes tried to accomplish proofs of the existence of god. In these demonstrations, he used various concepts and logical reasoning, which we shall attempt to clarify. To do so, we must examine in particular the meaning of the technical term 'idea, ' which appears for the first time in the third Meditation. In this paper, we will deal with the problem of the 'material falsity' of ideas, one of the important issues concerning the word 'idea.' According to the description in the third Meditation, falsity itself originally can occur only in judgments. However, there is another falsity (material falsity), which occurs in ideas, if they represent non-things as things. Arnauld and Descartes argue the rightness or wrongness of this notion in the fourth Objections and Replies. In this argument, they specifically discuss ideas of heat and cold in order to clarify what 'material falsity' is (Descartes also refers to them in the third Meditation). These ideas are of sensations; the problem of what causes them in the mind is resolved in the sixth Meditation, where Descartes explains ideas caused by interaction between our bodies and external objects. In the third Meditation, however, the existence of the external world has not been determined. That is why it could become a problem whether it is appropriate to refer to the 'material falsity' of ideas in the context of the third Meditation. In the first half of this paper, I arrange complex arguments concerning the 'material falsity' of ideas, focusing especially on the ambiguous boundary line between 'judgments' and 'ideas, ' which line renders the concept of 'material falsity' unclear. In the latter half, I debate whether it is right or wrong for Descartes to have introduced the concept of 'material falsity' in the third Meditation.