Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought 9781487579777

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ROBERT McRAE

Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto and Buffalo

© University of Toronto Press 1976 Toronto and Buffalo Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

McRae, Robert. Leibniz: perception, apperception, and thought. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716 - Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Perception. B2599.K7M3 121 76-6084 ISBN 0-8020-5349-1 ISBN 978-1-4875-8086-5 (paper)

This book has been published with the help of grants from the Humanities Research Council of Canada, using funds provided by the Canada Council, and the Publications Fund of the University of Toronto Press.

Contents

ABBREVIATIONS vii 1 INTRODUCTION 3 2 DESCARTES AND LOCKE 8 3 PERCEPTION 19 Perception as Expression 20; Sensation 26 Apperception 30 Distinct Perceptions 36 Memory 43 The Cause of Perceptions 46 Perception, or Expression, as Action 63 4 THOUGHT 69 The Primary Classification of Concepts 71 Leibniz's Terminology 72 Clear Ideas 7 4 Distinct Ideas 77 Complete Concepts 78 Incomplete or Abstract Concepts 83 Metaphysical Concepts 89 The Innateness of Metaphysical Concepts 93 The Innateness of Mathematical Concepts 97 The Two Great Principles 103 Axioms or Principles Grounded on the Principle of Contradiction 110 Architectonic Principles and Other Teleological Principles Grounded on the Principle of Sufficient Reason 111

vi Contents Innate Principles and Truths 117 5 UNDERSTANDING AND SENSIBILITY 126 Difference of Degree or of Kind? 126 The Necessity of the Senses to Thought 129 Phenomena 131

INDEX 146

Abbreviations

WORKS OF LEIBNIZ A

BC Bodemann C

DM Fde C G

GM Grua Jag. L

Lang.

Latta

Siimtliche Schriften und Briefe, Academy Edition, Darmstadt and Berlin 1923 G. W. Leibniz Philosophische Werke , ed. A. Buchenau and Ernst Cassirer, Leipzig 1924 Die Leibniz-Handschriften der Koniglichen Offentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover, ed. E. Bodemann, Hannover and Leipzig 1895 Opuscules et fragments inedits de Leibniz, ed. L. Couturat, Paris 1903 Discours de metaphysique, ed. and trans. P.G. Lucas and L. Grint, Manchester 1953 Nouuelles Lettres et opuscules inedits de Leibniz, ed. Foucher de Careil, Paris 1857 Die philosophischen Schriften uon Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed. C.I. Gerhardt, 7 vols., Berlin 1875-90 Leibnizens mathematische Schriften, ed. CJ. Gerhardt, Berlin and· Halle 1849-63 Textes inedits, ed. G. Grua, Paris 1948 Leibnitiana Elementa Philosophiae arcanae de summa rerum, ed. I. Jagodinski, Kazan 1913 Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. and trans. L.E. Loemker, Chicago 1956 New Essays Concerning Human Understanding by G. W. Leibniz Together with an Appendix Consisting of Some of his Shorter Pieces, ed. and trans. A.G. Langley, 3rd ed., Lasalle 1949 The Monadology and other Philosophical Writings, trans. Robert Latta, Oxford 1898

viii Abbreviations Mon. NE Nature p PNG R

Schrecker Theod.

To Arnauld

To Clarke

w

Monadologie Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain De ipsa natura Logical Papers , ed. and trans. G.H.R. Parkinson, Oxford 1966 Principes de la Nature et de la Grace Malebranche et Leibniz : Relations personnel/es avec les textes complets des auteurs et de leurs correspondants revus, corriges et inedits , par Andre Robinet, Paris 1955 Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays, ed. and trans. P. and A.M. Schrecker, Indianapolis 1965 Essais de Theodicee , trans. E.M. Huggard, New Haven 1952. References to the three main parts are by paragraph number only, to the preface by 'pref.,' to the preliminary discourse by 'prelim.' followed by paragraph number, to the appendices by appendix number and paragraph number. The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence, ed. and trans. H.T. Mason, Manchester 1967. This edition provides Gerhardt's pagination in the margin and hence references are given to Gerhardt only. The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence , ed. H.G. Alexander, Manchester 1956 Leibniz, Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener, New York 1951

OTHER WORKS Al-Azm Alexander AT Belaval Couturat

E

Furth

Gueroult

The Origin of Kant 's Arguments in the Antinomies, by Sadik J. Al-Azm, Oxford 1972 Introduction to The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. H.G. Alexander, Manchester 1956 C. Adam and P. Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, Paris 1897-1913 Leibniz: Critique de Descartes, by Yvon Belaval, Paris 1960 'Sur la Metaphysique de Leibniz' by Louis Couturat, Revue de metaphysique et de morale 10 (1902) , trans. R. Allison Ryan for Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays , ed. Harry G. Frankfurt, New York 1972. Reference is to the translation. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 'Monadology' by Montgomery Furth, Philosophical Review 76 (1967), reprinted in Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Harry G. Frankfurt, New York 1972. Reference is to the reprint. Leibniz, dynamique et metaphysique, by Martial Gueroult, 2nd ed., Paris 1967

ix Abbreviations Hegel HR Ishiguro (1)

Ishiguro (2) Jalabert Johnson K Kant (1) Kant (2) Kant (3)

Laplace Lovejoy M. Kneale

McRae (1) McRae (2) Owens Parkinson Peirce Principles Rescher Russell (1) Russell (2)

The History of Philosophy, by G.W.F. Hegel, trans. E.S. Haldane, London 1892 The Philosophical Works of Descartes, rendered into English, by E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, Cambridge 1931 'Leibniz's Theory of the ldeality of Relations' by Hide Ishiguro, Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Harry G. Frankfurt, New York 1972 Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic and Language, London 1972 'La Psychologie de Leibniz' by J. Jalabert, Revue Philosophique 136 (1946) Logic, by W.E. Johnson, Cambridge 1921-4 Descartes, Philosophical Letters, trans. and ed. Anthony Kenny, Oxford 1970 Inaugural Dissertation of Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London 1933 On a Discovery According to which Any New Critique of Pure Reason has been made Superfluous by an Earlier One, trans. Henry E. Allison, Baltimore 1973 Introduction d la theorie analytique des probabilites, Oeuvres completes of Pierre-Simon Laplace, vol. VII, Paris 1886 The Great Chain of Being, by Arthur 0. Lovejoy, New York 1960 'Leibniz and Spinoza on Activity,' by Martha Kneale, Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Harry G. Frankfurt, New York 1972 'Descartes' Definition of Thought,' by Robert McRae, Cartesian Studies, ed. R.J. Butler, Oxford 1972 'Innate Ideas,' ibid. An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, by Joseph Owens, Milwaukee 1963 Logic and Reality in Leibniz's Metaphysics, by G.H.R. Parkinson, Oxford 1965 Philosophical Writings of Peirce,ed. Justus Buchler, New York 1955 R. Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy The Philosophy of Leibniz, by Nicholas Rescher, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1967 A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, by Bertrand Russell, 2nd ed., London 1937 'Recent work on the Philosophy of Leibniz,' Mind XII (1903). Reprinted in Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Harry G. Frankfurt, New York 1972. Reference is to the reprint.

x Abbreviations Ryle The Concept of Mind, by Gilbert Ryle, London 1949 Short Treatise A Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, by B. Spinoza in Spinoza, Selections, ed. John Wild, New York 1930 W. Kneale 'Leibniz and the Picture Theory of Language,' by William Kneale, Revue internationale de philosophie 20 (1966) Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, London 1922

LEIBNIZ: PERCEPTION, APPERCEPTION, AND THOUGHT

1 Introduction

This study might be subtitled 'Leibniz's Theory of Knowledge,' but with some reservations. Leibniz's main philosophical interests were in natural theology, in logic, and in the metaphysical foundations of natural science. His concern with the nature of knowledge is manifested for the most part within the context of a dogmatic metaphysics or of the logic and methodology of the sciences. There is nothing within the huge bulk of his writings that can be pointed at as constituting a theory of knowledge. Nowhere does Leibniz address himself to some fundamental question about knowledge of the sort capable of generating a systematic body of theory on the subject, as did, for example, Descartes, Locke, or Kant. What Leibniz regarded as his definitive statement on knowledge, in the short journal article entitled Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (1684), is much too limited in its scope to be identified as a theory of knowledge. It distinguishes clear and obscure, distinct and confused, adequate and inadequate ideas, intuitive and symbolic knowleqge, and real and nominal definitions. At the end there is a brief reference to the view that we see all things in God, and a bare allusion to innate ideas. In the Discourse on Metaphysics, which was written two years later, the material of the Meditations was used again, in paragraphs 23-9, but this time with a fuller discussion of innate ideas and of the vision in God; each of these subjects receiving two full paragraphs out of the seven devoted to knowledge. The purpose of the whole section on knowledge within this treatise is 'to explain how God acts upon the understanding of spirits' (par. 23). Leibniz did not publish the Discourse on Metaphysics . In the correspondence with Arnauld which ensued on the basis of a summary statement of the contents of each paragraph of the Discourse , the sections on knowledge evoked, unfortunately, no response from Arnauld. The last document of major importance, apart from the materials referring to Locke, is a letter to Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia in 1702, 'On What is Independent of Sense and Matter.' This expands on the theme of innate ideas, but appropriate-

4 Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought ly to the discussion of innateness, it introduces a classification of ideas distinct from that in the Meditations and the Discourse. Instead of one based on degrees of logical analysability, Leibniz here gives a division of ideas in terms of their origin. In the meantime, however, we have Leibniz's responses to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. These comprise the whole of Volume V of Gerhardt's Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz. Contained in it are Sur /'Essay de l'entendement humain de Monsieur Locke (1696), Echantillon de reflexions sur le I livre de /'Essay de l'entendement de l'homme, Echantillons de reflexions sur le II livre (1698). When Coste's translation of Locke's Essay appeared in 1700, Leibniz wrote an abstract of it for the Monatliche Auszug of the same year, and an additional piece for this journal in the next year. There comes, finally, the massive Nouveaux Essais·sur l'entendement humain, written between 1700 and 1704, and never published by Leibniz. Surely this work, matching as it does, almost paragraph by paragraph, Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, must constitute, like the latter, a comprehensive theory of knowledge. Let us see. In the introduction to the Essay, Locke begins with a clear statement of his purpose, namely 'to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent' (E, 1, 1, 2). The entire introduction, concerned as it is with amplifying this statement of intention, is, surprisingly, wholly ignored by Leibniz, and it has no counterpart section in the New Essays. Seemingly, it holds no interest for Leibniz. In any case, it provokes no reaction. In Book 4, Chapter 3, of the Essay, entitled 'Of the Extent of Human Knowledge,' Locke carries out one of the main intentions announced in the introduction. In the corresponding chapter of the New Essays, however, Leibniz finds occasions for writing about anything but the subject in hand. The latter he just ignores. What takes the place of Locke's introduction is a preface in the New Essays, in which Leibniz indicates the nature of his principal differences with Locke. First there is Locke's denial that there are any innate ideas or principles. Second, there are two related theses about the nature of the mind: Locke denied the Cartesian doctrine that the mind always thinks, but accepted the Cartesian doctrine that there are no thoughts or perceptions in the mind of which we are not conscious; Leibniz, on the other side, claims to accept the first of these (although in fact he maintained only that the soul always perceives, not thinks), and rejected the second, there being many perceptions for Leibniz of which the mind is not conscious. Third, Locke accepts the existence of a vacuum, which Leibniz rejects. Finally, there is the materialism contained in Locke's suggestion, not made in the Essay, but in his subsequent dispute with Stillingfleet, that God might have endowed matter with a power of thinking. This seems to alarm Leibniz more than any of the other three differences because of

5 Introduction its implications, as he says, for 'religion and morality.' The preface shows, then, that Leibniz viewed his contest with Locke mainly in terms of metaphysics. Of the four principal differences, only the first is clearly epistemological. On examination, the New Essays themselves turn out to be not a systematic treatise in theory of knowledge, but a miscellany of essays and remarks on an encyclopaedic range of topics. Some of these are, to be sure, epistemological, but if extracted and put together, they would form at best a pastiche. The principal epistemological subjects discussed are as follows: First, there are those in the sections having to do with the issue of innateness. Then there are Locke's chapters in Book 2 'Of Clear and Obscure, Distinct and Confused Ideas,' 'Of Real and Fantastical Ideas,' and 'Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas.' These give Leibniz the opportunity to draw attention to his own Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas and to say again what he had said there on this important topic. Book 3 of Locke's Essay, 'Of Words,' brings to the fore Leibniz the philologist and philosophical grammarian, until at last the point is reached in which Locke's discussion of real and nominal essences allows Leibniz the opportunity to reaffirm the important doctrine contained in his Meditations on the distinction between real and nominal definitions. In Book 4, 'Of Knowledge,' Leibniz in treating of this subject moves outside the circumscribed sphere of his earlier Meditations. Apart from the treatment of the knowledge of existence - our own, God's, and that of other things, and such subjects as the relation of faith and reason, and enthusiasm - the rest of the discussion of knowledge belongs for the most part to logic and to scientific method. But even though there is not a developed and systematic theory of knowledge in the New Essays, there are, nevertheless, in that work and elsewhere in Leibniz's writings the elements of a theory. To give some unity to these, I propose to try to work out what Leibniz means by the following three statements, which, with some variation of terminology and detail, maintain the same thesis. An examination of this thesis constitutes the subject matter of this book, and the result is what I shall, with appropriate caution, call Leibniz's theory of knowledge, inasmuch as his thesis asserts, in effect, that the conjoining of apperception with perception provides the necessary and sufficient conditions of thought and understanding. In natural perception and in sensation, it is enough for what is divisible and material and dispersed into many entities to be expressed or represented in a single indivisible entity or in substance which is endowed with genuine unity . One cannot doubt the possibility of a noble representation of many things in a single one, since our soul provides us with an example of it. But this representation is accompanied by consciousness in the rational soul, and then it is called thought (to Arnauld, 9 October 1687, G II, 112).

6 Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought Perception is the expression of many things in one, or in simple substance; if it is combined with the reflection of the percipient, it is called thought. We judge perception to apply not only to us but also to other living or organic beings, and thought to be not only in us but also (and, indeed, most perfectly) in God. This quality of the percipient is treated in logic .. . (revision note of 1697-1700 to A New Method for Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence A VI, 1, 286, L 557, n37 ).

In my view the understanding corresponds to what among the Latins is called intellectus, and the exercise of this faculty is called intellection, which is a distinct perception united with the faculty of reflection, which is not in animals. Every perception united with this faculty is a thought, which I do not accord to animals any more than understanding ... (NE, 2, 21, 5). The first statement refers to consciousness and the other two to reflection as that which, when united with perception, gives rise to thought. Leibniz has other synonyms for this faculty, of which the most important is apperception. Thus, he says, 'It is well to make a distinction between Perception which is the internal state of the Monad representing external things, and Apperception which is Consciousness, or the reflexive knowledge of this internal state, which is not given to all souls, nor always to the same soul' (PNG, par. 4). 1 Each of these statements is plainly a summary of a complex doctrine, for each contains a reference to two of the most original and elaborate of Leibniz's conceptions, that of perception, which he conceives as expression, and that of apperception to which he assigns a role of the greatest importance among those conditions which make knowledge possible, whether at the level of the merest sensation or at that of the knowledge of God and of eternal truths. How does Leibniz conceive this relation among the three separately nameable things: perception, apperception (or consciousness), and thought? That the first two in conjunction give rise to the third is not explained by Leibniz when he makes the claim that they do, and it can only be understood, if at all, to the extent that elsewhere in his writings statements can be found which bear on the subject. Because the material is so scattered, any attempted answer will be a work of reconstruction and to some degree speculative. There is the danger of misunderstanding Leibniz at the outset if it is assumed that he used the expressions perception and consciousness in ways in which they are familiarly used by more recent philosophers. Russell, for example, says: 'He 1 Other expressions which Leibniz uses are 'le sens interne qu'on peut appeller reflexion' (G V, 23), 'le sentiment du moi' (NE, 2, 27, 9), 'Jes experiences internes immediates' (NE, 2, 27, 13).

7 Introduction (Leibniz) distinguished between perception, which consists merely in being conscious of something, and apperception, which consists in self-consciousness, i.e. in being aware of perception. An unconscious perception is a state of consciousness, but is unconscious in the sense that we are not aware of it, though in it we are aware of something else' (Russell [l], 156). Russell knows that Leibniz denied 'consciousness' to animals, although attributing perception to them. But since Russell himself regards perception as a state of 'consciousness' he supposes that Leibniz of course did so too, that is, that he regarded perception as a kind of awareness. But did he? When Leibniz denied that animals, not to mention plants or even bare monads, although endowed with perception, are conscious, was he, or was he not, denying that they are aware of anything? Perception is the subject of the first of the main parts of this study, thought of the second, and the relation between the understanding and sense is the subject of the third. The consideration of apperception is involved throughout the whole. Because Leibniz formulated some of his views on the relations of perception, consciousness, and thought in explicit opposition to the Cartesians and to Locke, I begin with a consideration of their conceptions of how these terms are related.

2

Descartes and Locke

For Descartes thought belongs among the 'things which we render more obscure by trying to define them, because, since they are very simple and clear, we cannot know and perceive them better than by themselves' (AT X, 523-4, HR I, 324; also Principles I, 9). With reference to the certainty of the cogito ergo sum he says: 'I do not think anyone has ever existed who is stupid enough to have required to learn what existence is before being able to conclude and affirm that he is; the same holds true of thought and doubt. Indeed I add that one learns those things in no other way than by one's self and that nothing else persuades us of them except our own experiences and that consciousness or internal testimony (eaque conscientia vet interno testimonio) that each finds within himself when he examines things ... In order to know what doubt is, or thought, it is only requisite to doubt and to think' (AT X, 524, HR I, 324-5). However, Descartes does elsewhere provide a definition of thought, but of a different kind from that which he is condemning here and which proceeds according to scholastic rule by proximate species and essential difference. Descartes' own definition of thought is in terms of 'that consciousness or internal testimony' by which, as he says, thought is known. It comprises all that is given immediately for consciousness. 'Thought is a word that covers everything that exists in us in such a way that we are immediately conscious of it. Thus all the operations of the will, intellect, imagination, and of the senses are thoughts' (AT VII, 160, HR II, 52), or again, 'By the word thought I understand all that of which we are conscious as operating in us. And that is why not alone understanding, willing, imagining, but also feeling, are here the same thing as thought' (Principles I, 9). Some French scholars have interpreted this definition to be an assertion that thought is simply a synonym for consciousness. 1 Others have concluded that Des1 E. Gilson, Discours de la Methode, commentaire (Paris 1947) 293; J . Laporte, Le Rationalisme de Descartes (Paris 1950) 7 8; Descartes, Oeuvres philosophiques ed. F. Alquie (Paris 1963, 1967), Vol. II, 586n

9 Descartes and Locke cartes means by thought what we in the twentieth century would call consciousness, and what is decisive for them is not his definition of thought but the wide range of things, including perception, which he calls thought. These, it would be said, are more appropriately called by us forms of consciousness. Thus, for example, in Meditation II Descartes says that included in what he means when he says that he is a thinking thing is this: 'Finally I am the same who feels, that is to say, who perceives certain things, as by the organs of sense, since in truth I see light, I hear noise, I feel heat. But it will be said that these phenomena are false and that I am dreaming. Let it be so; still it is at least quite certain that it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling; and used in this precise sense that is no other thing than thought' (AT IX, 23, HR I, 153). To make Descartes' conception of thought clearer to twentieth-century readers Anscombe and Geach have generally translated Descartes' pensee and cogitatio by 'consciousness.' It cannot be gainsaid that this concession to modern usage is a valuable help toward the understanding of Descartes, for we do not speak of feeling warm as a kind of thinking, but it has the disadvantage of creating the problem of what to do with Descartes' own use of the word conscientia, in particular, how to translate Descartes' definition of thought without making it a definition of consciousness by consciousness, together with the loss of what Descartes means by consciousness. So far as Descartes' definition of thought is taken to be an assertion that thought is a synonym of consciousness, there are two objections to be made. The first is that in his definition Descartes was not concerned with the meanings of words, in spite of the fact that his definition begins, 'By the word thought I understand ... ' This can be seen by looking at one of the contexts within which he makes use of the definition of thought, namely in the 'Arguments for Demonstrating the Existence of God and the Distinction between Soul and the Body, drawn up in Geometrical Fashion.' This short treatise consists of definitions, postulates, axioms, and propositions. The definitions are used among the premises in the proofs of the propositions. The first proposition concerns the existence of God, and the proof for it is the famous ontological argument. The major premise in this proof is a definition. Now Descartes is explicit that if a definition expresses merely the meaning of a word nothing follows from it about any matter of fact. For this reason Descartes accepts what he takes to be Aquinas's refutation of Anselm's version of the ontological argument, one from which Descartes dissociated his own version. Descartes states what he calls 'the manifest error in the form of the argument' thus: 'the only conclusion to be drawn is hence, when we understand what the word God means, we understand what it means that God exists in fact as well as in the mind: but because a word implies something, there is no reason for this being true. My argument, however, was of the following kind ... ' The major premise of his own version of the ontological argument which now follows is given in Proposition I of the 'Arguments ... drawn

10 Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought up in Geometrical Fashion' as a definition. Cartesian definitions, like Aristotle's, state what things are, not the meaning of words. The second objection to the view that Descartes is asserting the synonymity of 'thought' and 'consciousness' is that they do not, as the definition shows, have the same objects. What I am conscious of is what exists in me. What I am thinking when I am doubting, affirming, perceiving 'the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound and all other external things' is not what exists in me. Nor do thought and consciousness coincide for Descartes even when I am thinking of what is in me. It might be said that besides the heavens, the earth, etc., there are also my doubting, affirming, feeling, etc., as themselves possible objects of thought. But even here Descartes makes the distinction between thought and consciousness. Polyander in The Search after Truth says: 'I can state for certain that I never doubted what doubt is, although I never began to know it, or rather to think of it, until the time when Epistemon desired to place it in doubt' (AT X, 524, HR I, 325). This distinction between being conscious of doing something and thinking about or reflecting on the doing of it, is a commonplace, but it none the less plays an important part in Descartes' defence of the cogito ergo sum against the charge that it cannot claim to be primitive knowledge. He says: 'It is indeed true that no one can be sure that he knows or that he exists unless he knows what thought is and what existence is. Not that this requires a cognition formed by reflection or one acquired by demonstration; much less does it require a cognition of this reflective knowledge by which we know that we know, and again know that we know that we know, and so ad infinitum. Such knowledge could never be obtained of anything. It is all together enough for one to know it by means of that internal cognition which always precedes reflective knowledge ... When, therefore, anyone perceived that he exists, although he chanced never previously to have asked what thought is, nor what existence, he cannot nevertheless fail to have a knowledge of each sufficient to give him an assurance on this score' (AT IX, 225-6, HR II, 241). For Descartes there are no thoughts within us of which we are not conscious (AT IX, 191, HR II, 115). On the other hand he allows that we can at will reflect upon, direct our attention toward, or think about our thought, ie, think about conceiving, doubting, denying, asserting, imagining, and feeling or perceiving, although few persons do. An important feature of consciousness for Descartes is the certainty which attaches to the data of consciousness when these are reflected on or attended to. It is, indeed, consciousness which provides him with those initial data which, as clearly and distinctly attended to, constitute the foundations of his metaphysics. Within any cogito as given immediately to consciousness, certainty attaches to three things, each of which, as reflected on or attended to, is exempted by Descartes from hyperbolical doubt. First, I cannot think, ie, doubt, deny, imagine,

11 Descartes and Locke feel, etc. , without being conscious that I am doubting, denying, imagining, feeling; hence 'It is so evident of itself that it is I who doubts, who understands, and who desires, that there is no reason here to add anything to explain it' (AT IX, 22, HR I, 153). 2 Secondly, if I attend to it no doubt can attach to the form which my thinking takes. If it consists in doubting it can be certain to me that what I am doing is doubting. Similarly if I am perceiving, no doubt attaches to the perceiving; 'I am the same who feels, that is to say perceives certain things, as by the organs of sense, since in truth I see light, I hear noise, I feel heat. But it will be said these phenomena are false and that I am dreaming. Let it be so ; still it is at least quite certain that it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false ... ' (ibid.) . Thirdly, included in the certainty of the data of consciousness is what I am thinking, or, as Descartes expresses it: 'Of my thoughts some are, so to speak, images of things, and to these alone is the title " idea" properly applied; examples are my thought of a man or of a chimera, of heaven, of an angel, or even of God ... Now as to what concerns ideas, if we consider them only in themselves, and do not relate them to anything beyond themselves, they cannot properly speaking be false ; for whether I imagine a she-goat or a chimera, it is not less true that I imagine one than the other' (AT IX, 29, HR I, 159). 3 Descartes' description in Meditation II of what a thinking thing is treats the I, its acts of thought, and the objects of its thought as given within thought, in such a way as to suggest that they are inseparable for consciousness. The unremitting obtrusion of the I in every sentence of the lengthy description is a reflection of the presence of the I in the cogito. The existence of that I, either as an inference from the cogito, or as something intuitively seen in the cogito, has been, however, the subject of criticism from a wide variety of sources, as wide as, for example, Russell and Sartre. A more recent and an interesting instance of such criticism is made by Montgomery Furth who, in commenting on this description in so far as it refers to seeing, hearing, and feeling, says: 'It is also worth noting that the use of the first person pronoun ("/ seem to see" ; "it is to me as if") ... intended to suggest my interior monologue, is quite dispensable and ought theoretically to be dispensed with. It is suggestive in the makeshift public translation, as evoking the flavour of an individual mind reporting how it is to him; but wi thin that mind, the basic form is not "it is to me as if(/)," but simply " it is as if