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View submission: Eminent Containment in Descartes
This is what Tad Schmaltz says on the matter,
Descartes’ definition of eminent containment indicates that this sort of containment is supposed to accommodate cases where the cause differs in nature from its effect, and so cannot contain this effect “such as we perceive it.” However, this definition does not fit very well his own example in the Sixth Meditation of this sort of containment. In this text, Descartes considers the containment of the objective reality of our sensory ideas either in God or in something “nobler than body,” namely, some finite thinking thing. With respect to this example, it is not the case that what is eminently contained in the object of our idea is something so great that it can take the place of what we perceive in the object. For one thing, the objects that contain the reality of our sensory ideas are neither God nor things nobler than body, but rather bodies themselves. Bodily qualities are supposed to be eminently contained in some object that differs from the objects of our sensory ideas insofar as that object has features that are “so great” that they can “take the place of” such qualities.
This example seems to indicate that eminent containment paradigmatically involves the ability of God’s infinite mind to contain creatures and of finite minds to contain bodily objects. One suggestion here is that though God cannot formally contain features of creatures, and finite minds cannot formally contain features of the material world, still they have the power to represent these features in thought. There is textual evidence for attributing this sort of view to Descartes in one of the rare texts outside of the Meditations in which he discusses eminent containment. This text is from an exchange with his pseudonymous critic Hyperaspistes. This critic objected that in Descartes’ view, “since a corporeal thing is not nobler than the idea that the mind has of it, and mind contains bodies eminently, it follows that all bodies, and thus the whole of this visible world, can be produced by the human mind”. Such an implication is said to be problematic insofar as it undermines our confidence that God alone created the visible world. In response, Descartes does not dispute that our mind eminently contains the visible world but only protests that we can produce “not, as objected, the whole of this visible world, but the idea of the whole of things that are in this visible world”. The indication here is that the whole visible world is eminently contained in our mind in the sense that we have the power to produce the idea of this world. In applying this suggestion to the example in the Sixth Meditation, we have the view that minds can eminently contain bodily qualities in virtue of the fact that they have the power to produce the reality present objectively in our sensory ideas of those qualities.
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