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Language and Mind
This 'idea' idea is another legacy of Descartes, who presents it in virtually the same place where he offers a better idea of ideas. In the third Meditation, he says:
if I hear some sound, if I see the sun, or feel heat, I have hitherto judged that these sensations proceeded from cer- tain things that exist outside of m e . . . .
And my principal task in this place is to consider, in respect to those ideas which appear to me to proceed from certain objects that are outside of me, what are the reasons which cause me to think them similar to these objects.
(Descartes 1641)
Here, ideas are equated with representations, the con- scious having of which is indistinguishable from such things as the experience of seeing, or seeming to see, thus and so. That is the 'idea' idea which moved Locke and others. But immediately before that remark, Descartes says:
for, as I have the power of understanding what is called a thing, or a truth, or a thought, it appears to me that I hold this power from no other source than my own nature.
(Descartes 1641)
Here, Descartes equates having an idea, or concept, with a specific 'power' or capacity. That is Descartes's better idea. Leibniztook the better idea, rejecting the 'idea' idea, which is why he wrote, for example:
And, in effect, our soul always has within it the quality of representing to itself whatever form or nature, when the occasion arises for thinking about it. And I hold that this quality of our soul, inasmuch as it expresses some nature, form, or essence, is properly the idea of the thing.
(Leibniz 1686)
Such differing conceptions of having an idea or con- cept have often led to mutual incomprehension in 'innate ideas' debates.
4. From Particular to General: A Further Application
Locke's case against a Leibnizian account does not just rest on the 'idea' idea. Locke also had the plausible intuition that, for example, where inference or proof is concerned, we proceed from the particular to the general case. First, we learn that such-and-such a spec- ific argument is a good or a bad one. When we have learned many specific facts of this sort, acquiring along the way an ability to go on to novel cases in particular ways, the character of our final state may be described correctly by saying that we know such- and-such general principles. (This is to model knowl- edge of good argument on knowledge of furniture— we first see specific sofas, then later get the general idea.) The notion that an idea of great subtlety and complexity, about whose general features there is much to say (e.g., an idea of oneself, of a proposition, of knowledge) may arise out of many special-case, small-time rules and facts, all of which hold for one
and the same idea simply because they are to be taken to do just that, was developed in some detail by Wittgenstein in his later philosophy, which sug- gests something that might be made of the Lockean intuition.
One could never proceed very far along the Lockean path from particular to general without being innately constituted to go on in certain ways as opposed to others. Here, too, Wittgenstein has much to say. He recognizes that the intricate sorts of judgments we often make, e.g., a specific judgment that Pia knows where Hugo is tonight, rest on a background of shared 'natural reactions.' However, construing these reac- tions in terms of innate ideas often fails to serve the required purpose in describing our cognitive trans- actions.
The ideas of a progression from particular to general, and of systems of natural reactions, need not be incompatible with the idea of innate ideas. However, these Lockean ideas, given fresh life by Wittgenstein, run counter to some Leibnizian argu- ments for innate ideas. In Wittgensteinian terms, where we work out, say, that wormwood is not sugar- plums, Leibniz illegitimately sees us as 'operating with a calculus according to definite rules' (Wittgenstein 1958: Sect. 81). These ideas may harbor an alternative picture of logical competence, though this but gestures at as yet unexplored territory.
See also: A Priori; Chomsky, Noam; Concepts.
Bibliography
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