Malebranche versus Arnauld

Malebranche versus Arnauld MONTE COOK ACCORDING TO THE Old View of Antoine Arnauld advanced in the eighteenth century by Reid and early in this century by Lovejoy and Church, Arnauld is a representationalist.' Though admitting that sometimes in True and False Ideas Arnauld seems to be abandoning representationalism and also that in his criticisms of Malebranche's theory of ideas Arnauld seems to offer excellent grounds for abandoning not just Malebranchean representationalism but representationalism of any sort, proponents of the Old View nevertheless claim that Malebranche and Arnauld are disagreeing about a detail while agreeing about the structure of perception. The two disagree about the nature of ideas~--Malebranche taking them to be independent of our minds and in God, Arnauld taking them instead to be modifications of our minds-but agree in believing that we mediately see external objects only by immediately seeing ideas. Since on the Old View Arnauld is just as much a representationalist as Malebranche, Arnauld is deemed susceptible to all the old standard objections to representationalism. In particular, it is thought that Arnauld's view of perception falls prey to the Stock Objection to representationalism : if all we ever really see are ideas, then how do we know that there is an external world? The New View of Arnauld advanced by Lennon, Nadler, Yolton, and me denies that Arnauld is a representationalist, taking him to be a direct realist of Thomas Reid,Essays on the IntellectualPowersof Man, Essay 2, Chap. 13; A. O. Lovejoy, " 'Representative Ideas' in Malebranche and Arnauld," Mind 32 09e3): 449-61, and "Reply to Professor Laird," Mind 33 (1924): 18o-8t; Ralph Withington Church, A Study in thePhilosophyof Malebranche (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1930, 154-63. For discussionsof Reid on Arnauld see Steven M. Nadler's "Reid, Arnauld and the Objectsof Perception,"HistoryofPhilosophy Quarterly3 (1986): 165-74, and his book, Arnauld and the CartesianPhilosophyofIdeas(Princeton : Princeton UniversityPress, 1989),7-1o and 131-32. Fordiscussionsof Lovejoyand Church and of other advocates of this interpretation, see Nadler's book, 1o4-1o7; Monte Cook, "Arnauld's AllegedRepresentationalism,"Jourual oftheHistoryofPhilosophy 12(1974):53-64; and Thomas M. Lennon, "PhilosophicalCommentary," in The Searchafter Truth, tr. Thomas M. Lennon and PaulJ. Olscamp (Columbus: Ohio State UniversityPress, 198o),794-8o3. [i83] 184 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:2 APRIL 199~ some sort. 2Though admitting that sometimes in True and False Ideas Arnauld sounds representationalistic, we claim that the clash is between Malebranche's representationalism and Arnauld's direct realism.s We take Malebranche and Arnauld to be disagreeing not about a detail, but about the very structure of perception: the two disagree on whether we see external objects only by immediately seeing ideas. On the New View, Arnauld denies that we mediately see external objects only by immediately seeing ideas; for him, ideas simply are our seeings. This interpretation takes seriously, then, Arnauld's repeated statement that ideas and perceptions are the same thing: for Arnauld, ideas are acts of the mind rather than special objects of the mind; they do not mediate perception of the external world in the way that the representationalist thinks; they are (at least some of them) perceptions of the external world. Since on the New View Arnauld is a direct realist, one would expect proponents of the New View to trumpet the merits of Arnauld over Malebranche. In particular, one would at least expect the announcement that Arnauld escapes the Stock Objection to representationalism: if ideas are acts rather than objects of seeing, then ideas can hardly form a veil of perception that prevents our having knowledge of the external world. Surprisingly, however, the New Wisdom propounded by Lennon and Nadler is that Arnauld fares no better or worse with this objection than Malebranche. Just when it seemed that with the New View Arnauld's star might be on the rise, we are told that in this crucial respect there is no significant difference between Malebranche and Arnauld.4 I agree with this New Wisdom; but Lennon and Nadler have made claims that I disagree with, and I think that their case needs to be strengthened. They argue that Arnauld gets no points for escaping the Stock Objection because Malebranche...