What is Wrong with Descartes' Representationalism?

Descartes thinks of the mind as representing reality. You have an idea -- say, the idea of a table -- and this idea is true if and only if it accurately represents reality. Our immediate awareness is only of the ideas, not of the table. It is well-known (and Descartes is the first to see it) that this leads to the Problem of the External World. For if we are only immediately aware of the ideas, and not of the world, how can we know that our representations are accurate? How can we even have any reason for believing that the external worlds exists? However, Kant and later thinkers inspired by Kant have argued that there is a much more serious problem with Descartes' representationalism: it makes it unintelligible how our thoughts can represent, and therefore undermines even the possibility that they are true or false, that they have any meaning at all. We look into this argument. Victor Gijsbers teaches philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. You can follow him on mastodon: @[email protected].