Descartes and Leibniz on Representation and Consciousness

According to a popular account René Descartes’ and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Theories of Mind are related as follows: Descartes considers consciousness and not representation or intentionality as the mark of the mental. The Cartesian mind is conscious of all of its acts. However, Descartes does not provide us with an account of consciousness or he only provides us with rudiments of such an account that do not yield a satisfying account. For Leibniz, in contrast, representation is the mark of the mental. Accordingly, Leibniz distinguishes between conscious und unconscious mental acts. In his explanation of this distinction he applies the concept of apperception, which refers to higher-order thoughts. For Leibniz mental acts are conscious in virtue of the fact that they are apperceived by the subject. Leibniz reduces consciousness to meta-representation. In this work, I argue that this common picture is wrong in several respects.

The project consists of three parts:

(a) In the first part, I reconstruct Descartes’s theses concerning representation and consciousness and of their relation to each other. Contrary to the common view that says that, for Descartes, consciousness is the mark of the mental, I argue maintain that representation is the mark of the mental for Descartes. Accordingly, the central concept of Descartes’s theory of the mind is the concept of representation rather than the concept of consciousness. In order to reconstruct Descartes’s concept of representation, I give a detailed analysis of his notion of objective reality. Moreover, Descartes scholars present very different and incompatible interpretation of Descartes’s account of consciousness. Some authors even say that Descartes did not have a coherent view of consciousness at all. In contrast to this position I argue that, for Descartes, consciousness possess a heterogeneous theoretical deep structure. This assumption allows for the ascription of a coherent view of consciousness to Descartes.

(b) In the second part , I explore Leibniz’s thoughts about representation and consciousness. Robert Brandom maintains that Leibniz (and Spinoza) initiated the tradition of inferentialist theories of representational contents (Tales of the Mighty Dead, Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). I reject this view and argue that Leibniz does not explain representation in terms of inference. For Leibniz, representation is a structure-preserving relation and not an inferential phenomenon. The standard view of Leibniz’s account of consciousness says that Leibniz either identifies consciousness with appercepiton and reflection or that consciousness is essentially connected to reflection and apperception. In contrast to this standard position, I arguet that at least in the Nouveaux Essais Leibniz notion of apperception is wider than his concepts of reflection and consciousness. Apperceptions are not essentially tied to acts of reflection, which represent perceptions.

(c) In the third part Descartes’s and Leibniz’s theories of the mind are compared and related to each other. In contrast to a common view, I argue that the Cartesian and Leibnizian view of the mind are more similar than usually assumed. Both take representation to bet he mark of the mental and both propose a similar view of representation that appeals to the idea of a structure-preserving relation even though the Leibnizian account is more elaborated than the Cartesian account. Nevertheless, there are also differences between the accounts of both authors, the most important one of which concerns the question as to whether or not the subject is conscious of all mental acts. Whereas Descartes answers this question in the affirmative, Leibniz denies it. However, I argue that the common picture of this divergence is inadequate. At least in the Nouveaux Essais, Leibniz does not simply distinguish between conscious and unconscious perceptions. Rather, he distinguishes between perceptions that are apperceptions and those that are not. According to Leibniz, subjects are only conscious (conscientia / conscience) of a subclass of the latter perceptions. The reason for this is that Leibniz understands conscientia / conscience as introspection and not as consciousness in the sense of being awake.