PHIL 202, Modern philosophy, Fall 2026
Baumgarten (1714–1762) was a German philosopher.
Leibniz, “Meditations on knowledge, truth, and ideas”
Knowledge is vivid if it gives me the means for recognizing the thing that is represented. Vivid knowledge is either confused or clear. It is confused when I can’t list, one by one, the marks that enable me to differentiate the represented thing from other things, even though the thing has such marks into which its notion can be resolved. And so we recognize colours, smells, tastes, and other particular objects of the senses vividly enough to be able to distinguish them from one another, but only through the simple testimony of the senses, not by way of marks that we could list.
Leibniz, “Meditations on knowledge, truth, and ideas”
Thus we can’t explain what red is to a blind man; and we can’t give anyone a vivid notion of things like red except by leading him into the presence of the thing and getting him to see, smell, or taste the same thing we do, or by reminding him of some past perception of his that is similar. This is so even though the notions of these qualities are certainly composite and can be resolved—after all, they do have causes. Similarly, we see that painters and other skilled craftsmen can accurately tell well-done work from what is poorly done, though often they can’t explain their judgments, and when asked about them all they can say is that the works that displease them lack a certain je-ne-sais-quoi.
Leibniz, “Meditations on knowledge, truth, and ideas”
But a clear notion is like the one an assayer has of gold—that is, a notion connected with listable marks and tests that are sufficient to distinguish the represented thing from all other similar bodies.
Baumgarten’s wager: