AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Descartes’ rejection of the resemblance between sensory ideas and extramental objects and the inferior status of the former in his epistemology makes researchers believe that Descartes takes resemblance as the principle for veridical representation of intellectual ideas. On top of that, they attempt to explicate the nature of resemblance through property-sharing and identity, which is upheld by the scholastic reading of Descartes’ distinction between formal being and objective being. I contend that resemblance as the principle of representation cannot be sustained as it is theoretically incompatible with Descartes’ substantial dualism and universal conceptualism, and it is textually ungrounded. On top of that, I propose my reading of the objective being according to which it only denotes ideas’ ontological status.