Descartes on Misrepresentation

Abstract

Abstract Any adequate theory of mental representation must include an account of how sensory experience is capable of misrepresenting the world. Misrepresentation occurs, for example, when we look at a straight stick in a glass of water and see it as bent. In order for our visual experience to misrepresent the stick, it must represent the stick, but it must represent the stick as other than it is, as bent rather than straight. To account for misrepresentation, an adequate theory of representation must therefore explain how our sensory experience can represent an object as other than it is. Many philosophers have offered accounts of representation according to which sense experience cannot or at least does not misrepresent the world in optimal conditions or even in normal conditions.1 Descartes, however, thinks otherwise. In optimal conditions, our visual experiences represent physical objects as colored. Descartes maintains that this, too, counts as misrepresentation, on the ground that color is not a property of physical objects.