Descartes' contribution to the Revolution

DESCARTES DID NOT HIMSELF SUBSCRIBE TO THE WHOLE OF THE NEW PICTURE.

I am talking here of the revolution that was wrought in the 17th century, not all of which was the work of Descartes. In particular, Descartes' view of ideas does not quite give them the 'representational' role that came to be central.

DESCARTES DEFENDED THE IDEA OF THE MIND AS A UNITY, BUT DID NOT AGREE THAT IDEAS WERE NECESSARILY REPRESENTATIONAL.

There were in fact two prongs, to the revolutionary assault. One was to re-categorise what had previously been regarded as a variety of different kinds of one thing; and the other was to establish a representational model of generic activity - thinking - under which the variety had been subsumed.

These two thrusts were in fact sequential.

Descartes mounted the first, but did not himself agree (eg with Hobbes) that thinking was an operation upon representations.

(See Descartes, 3rd set of objections and reply, 4th Objection and reply, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes ed. Cottingham et al. Cambridge, CUP, 1984, pp. 125, 126.)

It was John Locke who established the representational point very firmly, by articulating his notion of 'idea' with forthright bluntness ('an idea is whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks'), by working the concept into a comprehensive 'philosophy', and by getting his work so widely read.

With Locke, the notion of the 'idea' became the new fundamental concept.

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		from The History of Philosophy in the 17th & 18th Centuries: The Understructure of the Enlightenment
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