In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 101-116 [Access article in PDF] Persons and Awareness Tyson Anderson Saint Leo University The aim of this essay is to relate Christianity and Buddhism through a consideration of two key terms, "persons" and "awareness," the first being central for Christianity and the second being central for Buddhism.The first thing that needs to be noticed is the relatively indefinable character of these words. I of (...) course intend to give as clear an indication as is possible concerning their meaning, but as I considered some of the important concepts that are involved in the topic—language, world, love, understanding—I began to realize that we are surely in the realm of mystery here. By "mystery" I mean something that we can understand somewhat but cannot comprehend, much as Saint Thomas Aquinas thought of God. 1 As is well known, LudwigWittgenstein believed that there is something mysterious even about language itself, that basically what it is can be "shown" but not "said." 2 A certain tentativeness here in regard to propositional adequacy, I might add, is perfectly compatible with strong confidence in one's relation to what Wittgenstein called "the higher." 3 In regard to the truth to be found in the beliefs of others, even a megapandit such as Ken Wilber—not noted for his modesty and circumspection—observes that "the human mind is incapable of producing 100% error." 4 Perhaps some misunderstandings among those engaging in dialogue can be avoided if we remain mindful of the mysterious character of the subject matter and are less confident about the sufficiency of our own articulation of the truth.As to dialogue itself, it is perhaps well to remember when the issues of "fruit salad" and syncretism arise, 5 that thinking itself has typically a dialogical structure, with the result that "fruit salad" is actually the normal condition of persons as they develop in understanding themselves and their world. 6 In conversation with Laurence Freeman, O.S.B., the Dalai Lama appears to disapprove of mixing traditions—"Do not try to put a yak's head on a sheep's body" 7 —but it would be difficult to conceive of a more syncretistic religion than Tibetan Buddhism or Catholicism. Indeed, if we compare the early Jesus movement to the medieval church, the development of Catholicism might well be described by Luther or Calvin, had they thought of it, as an operation that put a yak's head on a sheep's body. The dialogical and finite structure of thinking is in fact one of the reasons why it is possible to conceive of a "universal religion," contrary to what the Dalai Lama thinks. 8 This is so because, since human understanding is never absolute and completed, there is always the possibility that future [End Page 101] understanding will yield a vision that embraces a multiplicity and diversity of religious insights in a way that is impossible for us to foresee at this time. Moreover, part of the point of American culture, I would think, is the benefits of mongrelization, and so perhaps Americans ought to be less suspicious than some at the thought of having "strange bedfellows." Looking for historical examples of conscious syncretism, one thinks of Mani and Jesuit syncretism exemplified in Matteo Ricci (outfitted first as a Buddhist monk and then later as a Confucian scholar) and the evangelization of New Spain, 9 and more recently, Hazrat Inayat Khan and his son, Pir Vilayat Khan. Also, there is Jesaiah Ben-Aharon, a Jewish thinker who interprets the Holocaust in terms of the Christ. 10 I find such efforts to be commendable, and so although doctrinal and cultural immaculacy has its charms, I believe it to be the call of maya. I will proceed, then, in constructing a mysterious and miscegenational fruit salad, my only justification being that this seems to reflect accurately the truth of the matter and that we really have no other peaceable choice. 11 Persons "Person" is often used in the same sense as "human being." By "person" I mean a being who can love and who, as a human being, is the... (shrink)

This article outlines three interlocking and mutually reinforcing registers in Giorgio Agamben’s work: the law, the apparatus, and the anthropological machine. While Agamben is clear that rules render inoperative laws and counter-apparatuses suspend the functioning of apparatuses, that which neutralizes the anthropological machine remains undisclosed. To explore this messianic opening, the author moves beyond Agamben and posits the possibility of a shift from an anthropological machine to a phytological machine. Whereas the former functions through the production of binary oppositions that (...) divide life from its form, the latter yields to the internally generative potentiality of lifeforms. In conclusion, the article proposes an alternative reading of several of Agamben’s key examples, including his references to Tiananmen Square, as manifestations of a phytological machine emerging from within the composting of anthropological divisions. (shrink)

This remarkable book is about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrodinger's cat. Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective. He asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? Sand Talk provides a template for living. It's about how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It's about how we (...) learn and how we remember. It's about talking to everybody and listening carefully. It's about finding different ways to look at things. Most of all it's about Indigenous thinking, and how it can save the world. (shrink)

This book considers the efficacy of the common regulatory model of the licensing regime as a means of regulating animal use in England, with a particular focus on wild animals and the regime’s ability to ensure animal welfare needs are met. Using information gleaned from over 550 inspection reports relating to the period 2008 through 2019, obtained using FOI Act requests, the book analyses the extent to which animals used by these industries are protected by law. Tyson analyses the (...) limitations present in the practical application of English legislation responsible for creating a number of relevant licensing regimes.The regimes discussed include: The Zoo Licensing Act 1981, the now repealed Welfare of Wild Animals in Travelling Circuses Regulations 2012, and the Animal Welfare Regulations 2018, introduced under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Exploring the weakness in the use of this type of regulatory model, Tyson proposes compelling recommendations for change in future policy development. Making an important contribution to the question of enforcement of animal welfare laws, this book provides useful and original insights into the implementation of licensing regimes, and will be of particular interest to scholars of animal welfare law, animal ethics, and critical animal studies. (shrink)

The pressure for results applied by some research funders concerns some academicians. Sometimes, for example, a sponsor requests preliminary data that the researcher is not ready to release. This paper presents three interviews — two with researchers and one with a representative from industry — dealing with these issues and makes recommendations on the basis of those interviews. It also looks briefly at the different norms that exist in industry and academia for research and communication and the tensions these can (...) cause for a scientist working simultaneously in both realms. (shrink)

Descartes's concept of the mind, as distinct from the body with which it forms a union, set the agenda for much of Western philosophy's subsequent reflection on human nature and thought. This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. Focusing on Descartes's view of the mind as intimately united to and intermingled with the body, (...) and exploring its implications for his philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Lilli Alanen argues that the epistemological and methodological consequences of this view have been largely misconstrued in the modern debate. Informed by both the French tradition of Descartes scholarship and recent Anglo-American research, Alanen's book combines historical-contextual analysis with a philosophical problem-oriented approach. It seeks to relate Descartes's views on mind and intentionality both to contemporary debates and to the problems Descartes confronted in their historical context. By drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes's thinking about the mind, the book shows how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account suggests. (shrink)

Mentoring Away the Glass Ceiling in Academia: A Cultured Critique describes how women of diverse backgrounds perceive their mentoring experiences or the lack of mentoring experiences in the academy. This book provides a space for envisioning strategies and practices to improve mentoring practices and the collegiate environment.

Cinema Derrida charts Jacques Derrida's collaborations and appearances in film, video, and television beginning with 1983's Ghost Dance (dir. Ken McMullen, West Germany/UK) and ending with 2002's biographical documentary Derrida (dir. Dick and Ziering, USA). In the last half of his working life, Derrida embraced popular art forms and media in more ways than one: not only did he start making more media appearances after years of refusing to have his photo taken in the 1960s and 1970s, but his philosophy (...) started to draw more explicitly from visual culture and artistic endeavours. While this book offers explanations of this transition, it contends the image of "Jacques Derrida" that emerges from film and TV appearances remains spectral, constantly deferring a complete grasp of him. Tyson Stewart draws out the main tenets of spectrality from Derrida's seminal texts Of Grammatology and Specters of Marx and other writings, like Echographies of Television, in order to fill a gap in studies of Derrida and film. Throughout the book, he explains how various techniques and spectral effects such as slow motion, stillness, repetition, mise-en-abîme, direct address, and focus on body parts/bodily presence bring about a structure of spectrality wherein the past other returns to make impressions and ethical demands on the viewer. Drawing on communication theory and film and media studies, Cinema Derrida makes a major intervention in classical communication thought. (shrink)

One seldom-noted consequence of most recent arguments for “animal rights” or against “speciesism” is their inability to provide a justification for differential treatment on the basis of species membership, even in cases of rare or endangered species. I defend the claim that arguments about the moral status of individual animals inadequately deal with this issue, and go on, with the help of several test cases, to reject three traditional analyses of our alleged obligation to protect endangered species. I conclude that (...) these traditional analyses fail, that there is an important conceptual confusion in any attempt to ascribe value to a species, and that our obligation must ultimately rest on the value---often aesthetic-of individual members of certain species. (shrink)

In an educational landscape dominated by discourses and practices of learning, standardized testing, and the pressure to succeed, what space and time remain for studying? In this book, Tyson E. Lewis argues that studying is a distinctive educational experience with its own temporal, spatial, methodological, aesthetic, and phenomenological dimensions. Unlike learning, which presents the actualization of a student’s "potential" in recognizable and measurable forms, study emphasizes the experience of potentiality, freed from predetermined outcomes. Studying suspends and interrupts the conventional (...) logic of learning, opening up a new space and time for educational freedom to emerge. Drawing upon the work of Italian philosopher and critical theorist Giorgio Agamben, Lewis provides a conceptually and poetically rich account of the interconnections between potentiality, freedom, and study. Through a mixture of educational critique, phenomenological description, and ontological analysis, Lewis redeems study as an invaluable and urgent educational experience that provides alternatives to the economization of education and the cooptation of potentiality in the name of efficiency. The resulting discussion uncovers multiple forms of study in a variety of unexpected places: from the political poetry of Adrienne Rich, to tinkering classrooms, to abandoned manifestos, and, finally, to Occupy Wall Street. By reconnecting education with potentiality this book provides an educational philosophy that undermines the logic of learning and assessment, and turns our attention to the interminable paradoxes of studying. The book will be key reading for scholars in the fields of educational philosophy, critical pedagogy, foundations of education, composition and rhetoric, and critical thinking and literacy studies. (shrink)

The concept of empathy in history education involves students in the attempt to think within the context of historical agents’ particular predicaments. Tracing the concept’s philosophical heritage to R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history and ‘re-enactment doctrine’, this article argues that our efforts in history classrooms to understand historical agents by their own standards are constrained by a tension that arises out of the need to disconnect ourselves from a present that provides the very means for understanding the past. Though (...) rather than serving to undermine the concept, it is proposed that the moderate hermeneutics of H.-G. Gadamer, through a positive conception of prejudice, tradition and temporal distance, transforms the factors typically seen as inhibitors to empathy’s operation into those that potentially enable it. The article aspires to shed new light on what is at play when history students engage in the intellectually demanding task of empathizing in history. (shrink)

Today the halls of Technology, Entertainment, and Design and Davos reverberate with optimism that hacking, brainstorming, and crowdsourcing can transform citizenship, development, and education alike. This article examines these claims ethnographically and historically with an eye toward the kinds of social orders such practices produce. This article focuses on a hackathon, one emblematic site of social practice where techniques from information technology production become ways of remaking culture. Hackathons sometimes produce technologies, and they always, however, produce subjects. This article argues (...) that the hackathon rehearses an entrepreneurial citizenship celebrated in transnational cultures that orient toward Silicon Valley for models of social change. Such optimistic, high-velocity practice aligns, in India, with middle-class politics that favor quick and forceful action with socially similar collaborators over the contestations of mass democracy or the slow construction of coalition across difference. (shrink)

Cet article relève une impasse qui apparaît quand les travaux récents sur la suspension du jugement sont intégrés aux solutions évidentialistes au problème de la «mauvaise sorte de raison» : il semble qu’il n’existe aucune raison pour suspendre le jugement. Deux réponses possibles à cette impasse sont considérées ici : l’une redéfinit la suspension du jugement comme une action mentale, l’autre la redéfinit comme une attitude de second ordre. L’article fait valoir que ces réponses n’évitent l’impasse qu’en compromettant de manière (...) inacceptable la notion de suspension du jugement. (shrink)

This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, ...

The quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is important for children’s development. One instrument that was developed to assess an aspect of ECEC quality is the Classroom Assessment Scoring System for pre-kindergarten children (CLASS Pre-K). We examined the factorial validity of the instrument using data from 177 German preschool classrooms. The three-factor teaching through interaction model (Hamre et al., 2013) was contrasted to a one-factor, a two-factor, and a bifactor model as proposed by Hamre et al. (2014). Our (...) results indicated that the three-factor structure with the domains of emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support fit the data best. The fit of the teaching through interaction model was satisfying after adding a cross-loading of the dimension language modeling on emotional support, and two correlated residuals. Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity are provided. In terms of factor structure and pattern score comparisons, the results were similar to previous U.S. and German studies. The discussion concerns the justifiability of the factor model revisions and draws directions for further research. We concluded that our study offers further evidence of the applicability of the CLASS Pre-K for the assessment of teacher-child interaction quality in the German context. (shrink)

Originally published in 1914, this book contains an illustrated story of life in a provincial French town in the early twentieth century. The French of the story is accessible for a young audience, and provides an entertaining as well as educational story for readers. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in French life or the history of French education in Britain.

(2003). Transiting the familiar and the strange. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 117-122.

In this paper I shift the center of utopian debates away from questions of ideology towards the question of power. As a new point of departure, I analyze Foucault's notion of biopower as well as Hardt and Negri's theory of biopolitics. Arguing for a new hermeneutic of biopolitics in education, I then apply this lens to evaluate the educational philosophy of John Dewey. In conclusion, the paper suggests that while Hardt and Negri are missing an educational theory, John Dewey is (...) missing a concept of democracy adequate to the biopolitical struggles of the multitude. Thus, I call for a synthesis of Dewey and Hardt and Negri in order to generate a biopedagogical practice beyond both traditional models of education as well as current standardization. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introductory Remarks The Cartesian Background Impressions and Ideas Passions as Reflective Impressions Direct and Indirect Passions Association and the Individuation of Passions Perception and Perceiving Passions and Moral Sentiments Notes References Further reading.

In this paper, Tyson E. Lewis challenges the dominant theoretical and practical educational responses to globalization. On the level of public policy, Lewis demonstrates the limitations of both neoliberal privatization and liberal calls for rehabilitating public schooling. On the level of pedagogy, Lewis breaks with the dominant liberal democratic tradition which focuses on the cultivation of democratic dispositions for cosmopolitan citizenship. Shifting focus, Lewis posits a new location for education out of bounds of the common sense of public versus (...) private, nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, inclusion versus exclusion, human versus civil rights. This is the space of the commonwealth whose actors cannot be identified as ‘citizens’ but are rather the anonymous multitude. In conclusion, Lewis finds a model for organizing this commonwealth in the work of Ivan Illich, whose learning networks speak to the urgent political and pedagogical need for exodus from the conceptual vocabulary that defines much of the contemporary field of educational theory. (shrink)

One seldom-noted consequence of most recent arguments for “animal rights” or against “speciesism” is their inability to provide a justification for differential treatment on the basis of species membership, even in cases of rare or endangered species. I defend the claim that arguments about the moral status of individual animals inadequately deal with this issue, and go on, with the help of several test cases, to reject three traditional analyses of our alleged obligation to protect endangered species. I conclude (a) (...) that these traditional analyses fail, (b) that there is an important conceptual confusion in any attempt to ascribe value to a species, and (c) that our obligation must ultimately rest on the value---often aesthetic-of individual members of certain species. (shrink)

This paper explores Spinoza’s therapy of passions and method of salvation through knowledge and love of God. His optimism about this method is perplexing: it is not even clear how his God, who is unlike any traditional notion of divinity, can be loved. Sorting out Spinoza’s view involves distinguishing an ethics of bondage from another of freedom, and two corresponding notions of love of God. The paper argues that the highest kind of love—‘pure intellectual love of God’—should not be understood (...) as an affect at all, but instead as unimpeded intellectual activity. This suggestion requires reconsidering Spinoza’s account of cognition, particularly his use of the Cartesian notions of objective and formal reality which are not only central to his theory of ideas but constitute the foundations of his salvation project. (shrink)

In response to the growing emphasis on learning outcomes, life-long learning, and what could be called the learning society, scholars are turning to alternative educational logics that problematize the reduction of education to learning. In this article, we draw on these critics but also extend their thinking in two ways. First, we use Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze to posit two educational logics—tinkering and hacking, respectively—that suspend and render inoperative learning logics, expectations, and evaluative metrics. Second, we argue that contemporary (...) artists and designers such as Katerina Kamprani and Grupo de Arte Callejero have much to offer educational philosophers and theorists interested in practices of suspension. In conclusion, we suggest ways in which educators can tinker with and hack into the curriculum by playing with the quintessential embodiment of learning: the test. (shrink)

The history of the idea of progress and the history of the concept of progress are two different things, not least because they emanate from considerably different intellectual traditions. In anglophone history of ideas, progress has typically been viewed as a belief. Historians of ideas explore the past evaluating the extent to which a given society met certain conditions of belief. By contrast, in the history of concepts as developed by Reinhart Koselleck, progress has occupied the dual role of a (...) ‘basic concept’ that grasps modern sociopolitical reality and a ‘collective singular’ that aggregates previous and adjacent meanings in the one linguistic unit. This article compares these two historical research programmes, highlights their merits and deficiencies, and concludes by offering a new approach to the history of concepts as suggested by R.G. Collingwood’s theory of a scale of forms. In each of the approaches to the history of ideas and concepts addressed, particular attention is given to the problem of what qualifies as progress, and thus to a longstanding problem concerning the attribution of progress to past societies routinely excluded from its history, including those left out by Koselleck’s conventional secular-modern thesis. (shrink)

In a recent articles David Mouton has argued that immortality is compatible with one sort of physicalism. I believe that he fails to establish this thesis and that, moreover, this article contains several misconceptions having to do with the topic of immortality.

Hume is famous for his criticism of substantial minds, free will, and self-consciousness—central elements in traditional philosophical accounts of persons. His empiricism dissolves self-inspecting minds into heaps of distinct perceptions and turns cognitive faculties into successions of causally related, discrete impressions and ideas. Whatever regularities the complex ideas and their bundles or heaps display are explained by laws of association of ideas, which are supposed to play the same role in the mental world as Newton’s laws of gravitation play in (...) physical nature. This paper explores some strands of the new science of man proposed in Hume’s Treatise, in particular his account of personal identity.. (shrink)

Inoperative Learning draws upon the movement towards a weak philosophy that is currently gaining ground in educational philosophy: this weak philosophy does not offer a set of solutions or guidelines for improving educational outcomes, but rather renders assumptions about the theory-practice coupling that is so popular in contemporary education inoperative. By arguing that such logic reduces education to merely instrumental ends, which can only be assessed in terms of predefined measurement tools, this book presents a challenge to contemporary notions of (...) education as learning. There are various forms of inoperative education that temporarily suspend the goal-directedness of learning. From the perspective of learning, the neutralization of progress, growth, and maturity would usually be seen as obstacles needing to be overcome on the path toward set goals. Yet Lewis argues that a serious investigation of inoperativity opens up possibilities that would be otherwise unavailable in a world fixated on the question of learning. In dialogue with philosophers (Agamben, Benjamin, and Esposito), as well as authors (Kafka and Walser), and qualitative researchers (Lather), Lewis turns our collective attention to what remains when concepts such as learning, child development, teacher effectivity, and personal growth are left idle. Inoperative Learning presents a radical rewriting of educational possibilities. It should therefore be of great interest to educational researchers and educational philosophers concerned with the question of alternative logics of education beyond learning. The book may also be of interest to educational policy specialists who are looking for new and innovative forms of critique and analysis. (shrink)

History educators find themselves in the peculiar situation of wishing to introduce students to the history discipline while lacking a clear conception of the features intrinsic to historical inquiry across its various specialisations and subject matters. In affirming that no one methodological charter hangs in the corridors of academic history departments, we fail to provide an adequate justification for an education in history. The doctrine that history is an exercise in disciplined knowledge, a specific way of knowing, is weakened by (...) disciplinary disquietude and dissimilitude. Three features impress themselves upon all who inquire into the past. In the learning and teaching of history, these three features assume a distinct structural shape. First, colligation consists in grouping the events and concepts to be studied according to their shared purposes. Second, historical distance, intimately tied up with tradition and collective memory, provides the means for identifying a past separate from the present to be studied in its own right. Third, reconstruction describes the process of supplying individual content to the general categories illuminated by the earlier stages. To work knowingly in this structure of historical inquiry offers no solutions to the problems of historical thinking, it is to work productively within these problems. (shrink)

Investors with a pro-social or sustainability agenda increasingly attempt to influence firm managers to adopt socially responsible behavior, either through positive/reward tactics or negative/punishment tactics. This paper considers how investors can use each approach to differentially influence managers to make more CSR investments. The paper uses game theory with an all-pay contest structure to model how a large institutional investor could reward firms for CSR activities by creating a socially responsible investment fund (reward contest) or punish firms via shareholder activism (...) (punishment contest). We identify conditions under which the punishment contest induces a higher level of CSR activity among firms compared to the reward contest. Managers bearing substantial private costs stemming from the activism is one such condition. Spillover effects are seen as the other managers in the economy engage in CSR to avoid being punished by the investor’s activism. This level of engagement is not the case when rewards are used—only those managers with an expectation of being rewarded increase their CSR activity in that scenario. This suggests, for example, that incorporating thresholds or tiers (e.g. gold, silver, and bronze-level winners) can increase the effectiveness of reward contests. Implications for designing both positive and negative CSR inducements are explored. We also identify the ethical dilemmas that relate to such influence attempts. (shrink)

There are two main strands in the afterlife of Descartes’s famous redefinition of mind in terms of thinking likely to color one’s reading of his notion of mind or self. The one stressed most by his posterity and developed from early on in the empiricist tradition sees consciousness as its main characteristic. The other focuses on reason and rationality. This paper discusses the textual support for the first reading promoted by Ryle and his followers and aligns itself with the second (...) arguing that it is the exercise of its rational, cognitive capacities that are essential to the Cartesian mind and not consciousness, which is merely a presupposition for its rational activity. It examines the interrelation and respective roles of awareness on the one hand, and reason on the other in Descartes’s account of mind or self. But it also suggests that the role given by Descartes to the will in judgment and his separation of will and intellect into two distinct powers may be seen as contributing to a transformation of the very notion of reason and of self as a cognitive and moral agent. (shrink)

In this paper I shift the center of utopian debates away from questions of ideology towards the question of power. As a new point of departure, I analyze Foucault's notion of biopower as well as Hardt and Negri's theory of biopolitics. Arguing for a new hermeneutic of biopolitics in education, I then apply this lens to evaluate the educational philosophy of John Dewey. In conclusion, the paper suggests that while Hardt and Negri are missing an educational theory, John Dewey is (...) missing a concept of democracy adequate to the biopolitical struggles of the multitude. Thus, I call for a synthesis of Dewey and Hardt and Negri in order to generate a biopedagogical practice beyond both traditional models of education as well as current standardization. (shrink)

In an effort to disrupt the hegemonic dominance of learning theory, in this article Tyson Lewis explores the unique educational logic of studying. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, we can understand the operation of study as one of suspension through three modes: preferring not; no longer, not yet; and as not. But the relationship between the operation of suspension and the everyday mode of learning remains an open question requiring further analysis. In order to accomplish this task, (...) it is important to remember that for Agamben, study is a kind of profanation or improper life. Through examining Heidegger's analytic of Dasein's everyday being, Lewis demonstrates that the nature of study is always already saturated with the everyday, and is itself a contaminated process that is neither simply everyday living nor “authentic” existence. To be absolutely precise, the studier engages in idle talk, is curious, and is caught up in ambiguity in order to explore the seemingly uninhabitable zone that rests between everyday falling and authentically standing. Lewis concludes by offering Agamben's own work as a paradigm of study, illustrating how the smallest of freedoms opens to the studier: the freedom to dwell in potentiality. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the status of Descartes' notion of the mind-body union as an object of knowledge in the framework of his new philosophy of nature, and argues that it should be taken seriously as representing a third kind of real thing or reality—that of human nature. Because it does not meet the criteria of distinctness that the two natures composing it—those of thinking minds and extended bodies— meet, the phenomena referred to it, which are objects of psychology as (...) traditionally understood, fall outside the scope of clear and distinct perception required for knowledge. The prospects for rationalist psychology are bleak, since because of the mind-body union so little of the contents of the human mind are accessible to rational inspection or introspection. Mechanistic natural philosophy on the other hand gives us knowledge only of the physiological and corporeal aspects of the phenomena Descartes classifies as mental. What pertains to the mind-body union can only be known through the senses, moreover, we learn to conceive the mind-body union only through daily experience (“usant seulement de la vie et des conversations ordinaries”, AT 3, 695). I discuss the nature of this experience, and the sense in which Cartesian psychology without being part of his philosophy of nature in the strict sense of the term, can still be seen as a naturalist undertaking in a more traditional sense of nature where life, sentience, reasoning and rational action are all seen as natural phenomena. (shrink)