René Descartes

Enlightenment philosopher, René Descartes, set out to establish what could be known with certainty, untainted by a deceiving demon. With his method of doubt, he rejected all previous beliefs, allowing only those that survived rigorous scrutiny. In this essay, Leslie Allan examines whether Descartes's program of skeptical enquiry was successful in laying a firm foundation for our manifold beliefs. He subjects Descartes's conclusions to Descartes's own uncompromising methodology to determine whether Descartes escaped from a self-imposed radical skepticism.

Argues that Descartes's commitment to mind-body causation leads to a commitment to body-body causation.

In Meditation I, Descartes dismisses the possibility that he might be insane as a ground for doubting that the senses are a source of knowledge of the external world. In this paper, I argue that Descartes was justified in so doing, and draw some general epistemological conclusions from this result.

Descartes argues that, apart from the existence of a veracious God, we can have no reason to believe that we possess reliable cognitive faculties, with the result that, if atheism is true, not even our seemingly most certain beliefs can count as knowledge for us. Since the atheist denies the existence of God, he or she will be precisely in this position. I argue that Descartes' argument is sound, and that atheism is therefore self-refuting.

This paper contests a standard interpretation of how Descartes comes to the conclusion that he is not his body in the second meditation. I propose an alternative interpretation in its place.

Charles Larmore presents the central part of Descartes’ first meditation as a brief dialogue between a skeptic and a sensible empiricist. I point out a source of discontent about this innovative transformation.

I raise the question of whether there is a hidden source of doubt in Descartes’ first meditation, if one adopts the perspective of some people he describes as insane.

In this paper, I present the problem of the poor king, from combining Descartes and Rousseau.

Descartes’s First Meditation imposes a pressing, currently neglected problem of reconciling its sound central argument that concludes that all the meditator’s current and currently prospective results are doubtful with subsequent Meditations’ results that are not at all doubtful. The problem cannot be addressed by received interpretations that fail to credit the First Meditation with a sound extended central argument; it cannot be solved by interpretations reliant on standard translations that obscure the Second Meditation’s opening argument. This study credits the First (...) Meditation’s three-premise argument for its announced conclusion; the Second Meditation’s opening argument for its meditator’s announced “Archimedean” conclusion; and a contribution from the Meditations’ genre of dramatic monologue. The solution specifies the Meditations portrayal of its meditator’s epistemic conceptual transition. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to exhibit in detail the setting for the version of the Cogito Argument that appears in Descartes’s Meditations. I believe that a close reading of the text can shed new light on the nature and role of the “evil demon”, on the nature of God as he appears in the first few Meditations, and on the place of the Cogito Argument in Descartes’s overall scheme.

This paper argues that, contrary to what one might think, early modern rationalism displays an increasing and well-grounded sensitivity to certain metaphysical questions the substantial form was designed to answer – despite the fact that the notion itself was in such disrepute, and emphatically banished from natural philosophy. This main thesis is established by examining the thought of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz through the framework constituted by what have been designated as the two aspects, metaphysical and physical, of the substantial (...) form. This examination shows that Descartes ends up assigning the soul a notable metaphysical task formerly assigned to the substantial form, whereas Spinoza advances a theory of essences motivated by the philosophical concerns behind the two aspects of the substantial form. Leibniz finally makes a sharp distinction between natural philosophy and metaphysics as he develops a dynamistic theory that deliberately aims at understanding the substantial form in a new fashion. This line of development is designated as one major factor contributing to the separation of philosophy and natural science. -/- . (shrink)

This article is to analize the doctrines of two great philosophers, Descarets and Ibn-Sina on the soul.As he himself said, Descartes, while doubting on anything, was sure that " cogito ergo sum".He found this an unquestionable fact, therefore he took it as the first principle.After Descartes, some objections have been posed against his doctrine; for example the objection, posed by Ibn-Sina. Ibn-Sina believed that thinking is among the soul's acts, and the soul cannot be affirmed through one of its own (...) acts; for, by the thinking, either the thinking in the universal sense of the term is meant or the thinking of a particular individual is meant; and in the latter case, it is absurd to go to find "the unknown". (shrink)

El presente artículo trata de poner de manifiesto, tomando como hilo conductor la polémica Foucault-Derrida, las tensiones que recorren el proceso de la duda en Descartes. En dichas tensiones (entre un orden deductivo y otro demostrativo, así como entre un entendimiento racional y una voluntad razonable) hay un elemento que transita desde la locura hasta la divinidad; dicho elemento opera como un resto que, una y otra vez, reaparece para amenazar todo intento de fundamentación.

Cet article vise à souligner la centrante de Laf.308, Br.793 au sein des Pensées, tout en déterminant sa portée anti-cartésienne. Une confrontation avec d'autres fragments connexes permet de préciser ce que Pascal met sous le deuxième ordre : une science relayée par la pensée, non la métaphysique cartésienne. Il devient alors possible de discuter l'interprétation de Jean-Luc Marion et de montrer que, loin d'opérer une simple destitution de la métaphysique cartésienne au nom de la charité chrétienne, Laf.308, Br.793 résume bien (...) l'antagonisme de deux systèmes philosophiques. The object of this article is to point out the central place of Laf.308-Br.793 within the Pensées and to determine at the same time its anti-cartesian implications. By confronting it with connected fragments, we are allowed to state what exactly Pascal does include under the second order, that is, not the cartesian metaphysics, but a science whose relay is the thought. So it becomes possible to discuss Jean-Luc Marion's interpretation by showing that, far from simply producing a destitution of the cartesian metaphysics in the name of Christian charity, Laf.308-Br.793 concentrates well the antagonism between two philosophical systems. (shrink)

Despite his reputation for neglecting the body, Descartes develops a systematic account of bodily awareness. He holds that in bodily awareness each of us feels intimately connected to our body. We experience this body as inescapable, as infused with bodily sensations and volitions, and as a special object of concern. This multifaceted experience plays an ambivalent role in Descartes’s philosophy. Bodily awareness is epistemically dangerous. It tempts us to falsely judge that we cannot exist apart from our bodies. But bodily (...) awareness isn’t all bad for Descartes. It helps us stay alive. Bodily awareness also serves as a corrective to overly disembodied conceptions of the self. (shrink)

Did Descartes manage to overcome the skeptics? If we understand “overcome” in the sense of “refute,” the answer is no, since his hyperbolic doubt harbors several blind spots and is, therefore, not as radical as is commonly argued. In this way, the victory of the cogito is perhaps less decisive and fruitful than it is claimed. If we understand “overcome” in the sense of “remove” or “move beyond,” the answer is yes. Descartes has overcome skepticism, but at the cost of (...) a decision, a sort of bet made in favor of reason based on a confidence in the human mind that is never really subverted. This faith in reason, truth, and specific epistemological principles in Descartes’ philosophy constitute what Wittgenstein calls “hinges,” which are indispensable for doubting and searching for truth. In this sense, Descartes’ anti-skepticism is more a confidence in reason in order to save the possibility of science than the result of a logical refutation. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Mary Astell's contributions to the history of feminism, noting her grounding in and departure from Cartesianism and its relation to women.

In this chapter, I examine similarities and divergences between Du Châtelet and Descartes on their endorsement of the use of hypotheses in science, using the work of Condillac to locate them in his scheme of systematizers. I conclude that, while Du Châtelet is still clearly a natural philosopher, as opposed to modern scientist, her conception of hypotheses is considerably more modern than is Descartes’, a difference that finds its roots in their divergence on the nature of first principles.

This article develops some of the many ways in which Leonardo and Descartes, throughout the prolific period of human valuation from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, seem to have approached and anchored their seminal contributions on the Cartesian body and metaphysical mind. While Leonardo masterfully developed an iterative thinking system of visual design applied to nature and artifacts, Descartes laid the groundwork for methodical critical thinking in dimensions that ironically ranged from dreams to the controlled narrative, from a deceptive (...) body to a rational man. In an interdisciplinary articulation of historical and neurobiological leanings, contemporary concepts of the cognitive emotional brain, led by Damasio as the basis for his conclusions about the "Descartes Error", as well as a torrent of growing evidence that supports high cognitive abilities in associative processes mediated by action/body lead us to a re-evaluation today of the legacies of Leonardo and Descartes, rescuing a scientific mind/brain/body process that underlies the human mastering of a universal technology of discourse that would revolutionize science. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 46 René Descartes is neither a Conceptualist nor a Platonist when it comes to the ontological status of the eternal truths and essences of mathematics but articulates a view derived from Proclus. There are several advantages to interpreting Descartes’ texts in light of Proclus’ view of universals and philosophy of mathematics. Key passages that, on standard readings, are in conflict are reconciled if we read Descartes as appropriating Proclus’ threefold distinction among universals. Specifically, passages that appear (...) to commit Descartes to a Platonist view of mathematical objects and the truths that follow from them are no longer in tension with the Conceptualist view of universals implied by his treatment of the eternal truths in the _Principles of Philosophy_. This interpretation also fits the historical evidence and explains why Descartes ends up with seemingly inconsistent commitments to divine simplicity and God’s efficient creation of truths that are not merely conceptually distinct from the divine essence. (shrink)

In the Letter to the Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne, Descartes makes a reference to Leo's X's encyclical Apostolici Regiminis (1513), which supports the Aristotelian-Scholastic conception of the soul as anima corporis forma According to Descartes' doctrine of the eternal truths, God's power is absolutely unlimited. One of the consequences of this doctrine is that God could join a rational (human) soul to any body, which implies that the union of soul and the body in the Cartesian system is (...) not substantial in the Scholastic sense of the word. In bringing in Leo's X's encyclical to support his conception of the soul, Descartes used a papal document for purposes contrary to those for which it had been designed. Dans la Lettre à la Faculté de théologie de la Sorbonne, Descartes fait référence à l'encyclique Apostolici Regiminis (1513), qui soutient la conception aristotélico-scolastique de l'âme en tant qu'anima corporis forma Or, selon la doctrine de la création des vérités éternelles, le pouvoir de Dieu est sans limites : une de ses conséquences en est que Dieu eût pu unir l'âme rationnelle (humaine) à n'importe quel corps, ce qui implique que l'union de l'âme et du corps dans la philosophie cartésienne ne soit pas substantielle — du moins au sens scolastique du terme. En citant l'encyclique Apostolici Regiminis au commencement des Meditations, Descartes a en fait utilisé le document pontifical à l'opposé du but pour lequel il avait été conçu. (shrink)

Descartes claimed that the Cogito is ‘so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it’. This paper aims to demonstrate that this claim is false by presenting a sceptical scenario for the Cogito. It is argued that the story ‘The Circular Ruins’ by J. L. Borges illustrates that one can doubt one’s own existence and that pace Descartes (and many others) the claim ‘I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it (...) is put forward by me or conceived in my mind’ is false. (shrink)

The demise of the scholastic worldview and the rise of the mechanistic one may give the impression of a parallel demise of the scholastic explanatory framework. In this paper, I argue that this impression is wrong. To this end, I first outline Descartes’ representative and particularly sharp mechanistic criticism of the scholastic notion of explanation. Deploying conceptual machinery from contemporary philosophy of science, I then suggest a reconstruction of the scholastic notion that is immune to Descartes’ criticism. Based on this (...) reconstruction, I reinterpret the dispute between Descartes and the scholastics as one that concerns the extent of two legitimate conceptions of explanation. Finally, I outline a contemporary dispute within cognitive neuroscience that reflects the Cartesian-scholastic one as thus reinterpreted, thereby showing that aspects of the world may well require a scholastic-like approach for their explanation. The aim of this paper, then, is to shed light on a most important philosophical-cum-scientific historical controversy from a modern perspective, but also to highlight the deep historical roots of a related contemporary dispute. Based on this, the paper also seeks to draw a substantial philosophical conclusion concerning the issue under dispute in both controversies. (shrink)

The Dioptrique, often translated as the Optics or, more literally, as the Dioptrics is one of Descartes’ earliest works. Likely begun in the mid to late 1620’s, Descartes refers to it by name in a letter to Mersenne of 25 November 1630 III, 29). Its subject matter partially overlaps with Descartes’ more foundational project The World or Treatise on Light in which he offers a general mechanistic account of the universe including the formation, transmission, and reception of light. Although Galileo’s (...) condemnation by the Church prompted Descartes to abandon, in 1633, his plans for publishing The World, he continued in the ensuing years to vigorously pursue a number of scientific projects, including projects related to his work in optics. He was eventually persuaded to publish three essays highlighting some of his discoveries together with an introductory essay concerning “the method for rightly directing one’s reason and searching for truth in the sciences” . As one of those essays, Descartes’ Dioptrics finally appeared in print together with the Discourse on Method, the Meteorology and the Geometry in the summer of 1637 in a French language edition. It was republished in a Latin edition in 1644. The subject matter of the Dioptrics may be thought of as covering three main topics and is formally divided by Descartes into ten chapters or “discourses”. The first main topic concerns the nature of light and the laws of optics. In the first discourse, Descartes invites his readers to. (shrink)

Résumé La critique kantienne de la psychologie rationnelle est une expérience de pensée visant ni un individu ni une école, mais une tendance de la raison humaine à « hypostasier » la condition intellectuelle suprême d'une connaissance quelconque en connaissance du « moi ». Cette tendance implique une circularité qui est également la cible des critiques transcendantales bien plus familières qui visent Locke et Hume. De même qu'un nouveau type de cercle, cet article propose une conception des arguments transcendantaux différente (...) de celle présupposée dans la plupart des débats contemporains sur l'empirisme, le naturalisme et le fondationnalisme cartésien. (shrink)

This paper explicates Descartes’s theory of intuition (intuitus). Departing from certain commentators, I argue that intuition, for Descartes, is a form of clear and distinct intellectual perception. Because it is clear and distinct, it is indubitable, infallible, and provides a grade of certain knowledge he calls ‘cognitio’. I pay special attention to why he treats intuition as a form of perception, and what he means when he says it is “clear and distinct”. Finally, I situate Descartes in relation to his (...) Scholastic predecessors on one hand and current theories on the other. His view anticipates the contemporary “perceptual model of intuition”, though it is much bolder with its promise of certainty. (shrink)

In May 1643 Elisabeth of Bohemia addressed a question to Descartes which inaugurated a six-year Correspondence, until his death. He dedicates his mature metaphysical work to the Princess (Principles of First Philosophy, 1644) and writes Passions of the Soul (1649) as one of the results of the dialogue with the philosopher of Bohemia. The silencing of the last hundred years of historiography on Elisabeth of Bohemia's legacy in this epistolary exchange caused distortions and, in some cases, underpinned the bias as (...) a rule and as the history. One of the consequences of this distortion is the interpretation according to which her first question would consist of a critique of substantial dualism. In this study I suggest an interpretation of the nature of the first question, in order to clarify the philosopher's thinking and her role in dialogue, in a comprehensive way, without subscribing to the literary paradigm of the Cartesian soliloquy, and its bias. (shrink)

In this work I intend to explore the textual and conceptual roots of the moral view in the Early Modern Rationalism of Cartesian spectrum as detected by Elisabeth of Bohemia. To this intent, I will drive my analysis, first, to the remark Descartes adds to his own provisional morality of the Discourse in the Letter of August 4th, 1645 to Elisabeth. Second, I will approach the two aspects of her reply to Descartes, both in her Letter of September 13th 1645, (...) which I call a) the contextual aspect – with which she excludes the hypotheses of an infinite science at the service of assessing the good and b) the self-related aspect, with which the philosopher of Bohemia address the moral objectiveness as an intrinsic practical value, obtained by the passions that may lead to reasonable actions. The upshot is a practical and affective moral view, in which the normative trait of some passions of the soul can be taken as the explanation of an intentional infrastructure of the mind, without, however, a theory of ideas as such playing an explicit role. Instead of a representational endeavor, Elisabeth of Bohemia claims a kind of self-awareness from the discovery of a passionate function as an expression of the adequate measure between happiness and morality of actions. That kind of awareness, I shall demonstrate, is what objectiveness consists in. (shrink)

Aunque Descartes pretende hablar de cuestiones morales en general, y de las pasiones en particular, como si nadie hubiera escrito antes sobre ellas, lo cierto es que, en el caso de la admiración, es clara su referencia al mundo antiguo. En concreto, en este caso el pensador francés se sitúa críticamente en contra de la postura aristotélica, que entiende la admiración como el inicio de la filosofía. Frente a la propuesta clásica, que convierte dicha emoción en el motor permanente de (...) la investigación de las primeras causas, para Descartes la curiosidad excesiva y el estupor del asombro son rechazables. No obstante, algunos han señalado el carácter ambivalente de las declaraciones cartesianas. No en vano la admiración es no sólo la primera de las pasiones, sino también un componente fundamental de todas ellas. Y si bien en el campo del conocimiento debe superarse, en otros ámbitos, como el de la contemplación de la divinidad o en el goce de la libertad de la voluntad humana, tal desdén desaparece. En ese sentido, pretendemos explorar el modo en que Descartes separa admiración y conocimiento para luego reivindicar su importancia en el plano práctico. Palabras clave: Admiración, asombro, curiosidad, libre albedrío, pasión. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de mettre au jour l'influence occamienne de la critique que Caterus adresse, dans les Premières objections, à la notion cartésienne de réalité objective de l'idée. This article intends to point out the ockhamist inspiration of the arguments of Caterus against the cartesian notion of idea's objective reality in the First objections.