Lucinda Nicolls

Descartes acknowledges a substantive difference between infant and adult cognitive experience. While infants are always thinking, they cannot ‘meditate upon metaphysics’ and cannot entertain ‘pure intellections’. But if infants and adults are on a par in possessing minds and therefore thought, what explains this difference? I maintain that Descartes’ account is surprisingly nuanced given the elliptical nature of these discussions. The difference between infant and adult cognitive experience rests primarily on a difference in attentional capacity. This arises both from the undeveloped nature of the infant body, which exerts a distracting influence on the infant mind, and the inexperienced infant mind, which is less accustomed to responding to the body and performing its various intellectual operations. My examination of the difference between infant and adult cognitive experience supports two overarching theses. First, that Descartes presents us with a rudimentary implicit theory of attention. This encompasses both a descriptive account of how attention operates and a normative account of how attention should ideally be directed in order to successfully engage in the ‘search for truth’. Second, that Descartes presents an implicit developmental theory of mind with two main aspects: the transition from infancy to adulthood, and the cultivation of reason and reflective attention in adulthood. Through exercising our minds in accordance with his method, Descartes maintains that we can develop our powers of reasoning and, moreover, cultivate a ‘clear and attentive mind’.

This essay reconstructs Descartes’s account of infant thought from his published writings and correspondence. It argues that these discussions present us with a developmental account of infant thought which rests on attention. While attention is primarily under exogenous control in early infancy, later infancy is characterised by increased endogenous control over attention. Nonetheless, infants remain unable to exercise reflective attention, which explains why they cannot reflect on or form reliable judgements about their experience. In adulthood, the capacity for reflective attention can be cultivated to establish well-founded knowledge. This reveals the centrality of Descartes’s account of infant thought to his broader epistemic project.