Elliot Samuel Paul

@jichikawa In sum, D grants that we need sense-experience to confirm that the sun is 1.392 million km wide. But the ability to think of that quantity (or any quantity) in the first place is not acquired through experience; it’s “a notion born within me.” 7/7

a student asked me what's up with this passage in Descartes's Third Meditation and I'm stumped! Is... is he saying that knowledge about the size of the sun is innate??

@jichikawa This coheres with D's general view that we have innate ideas of quantities or numbers. Doesn't mean we're born with conscious explicit thoughts about quantities. Elsewhere he explains "innate ideas" are inborn capacities. Our capacity to think about quantities is innate. 6/

@jichikawa cf. Med. 6 where D says your mental images of a 1000-sided figure ("a chiliagon") and a 1001-sided figure are indiscernible. Nevertheless, you represent these different quantities distinctly. So your distinct representations are not sensory or imaginative. They're innate. 5/

@jichikawa D rejects the first two options. We cannot visualize 1.392 million km. The sun certainly doesn't LOOK like it's that big. Nor do we imagine it. Your mental images of 1.392 million km and 2 million km are indiscernible. 4/

@jichikawa Now for Q1: How did we come to have the idea of "1.392 million km" in the first place? Shortly before the passage you cite, D gives 3 options for how we come to have an idea: (a) directly through sense-experience ("adventitiously"), (b) by imagination, or (c) innately. 3/

@jichikawa Re Q2. We learned through "astronomical reasoning" that the sun is 1.392 million km in diameter (D didn't have this NASA measurement, but works for illustration). D certainly knew that “astr. reasoning” is based on empirical observations. 2/

@jichikawa I think I agree with @kristopherGphil and @smithnd. But in case this helps further, let's distinguish 2 questions: (Q1) How do we come to have an idea (mental representation)? (Q2) How do we confirm that an idea corresponds to something in reality? 1/

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