This paper attempts to resolve the apparent conflict between Descartes’ commitments to the creation doctrine and the necessity of eternal truths by elaborating different conceptions of necessity in Descartes’ framework. More specifically, I argue that the fact that Descartes concedes the necessity of eternal truths does not compel him to assert the impossibility of their negation. Necessity, for Descartes, rather means immutability. Descartes distinguishes two kinds of immutable truths. While truths about God’s essence are absolutely immutable, truths about the essences (...) of God’s creation are conditionally immutable, i.e., they can change if God’s will changes. Since there are different kinds of eternal truths, they express different kinds of necessity as well, namely conditional and absolute necessity. After I clarify these two kinds of necessity, I explain how Descartes coherently maintains both that eternal truths are necessary and that God could have created eternal truths otherwise without undermining their necessity. (shrink)

In the 1680s, Gottfried Leibniz and Antoine Arnauld engaged in a philosophically rich correspondence. One issue they discuss is modal metaphysics – questions concerning necessity, possibility, and essence. While Arnauld's contributions to the correspondence are considered generally astute, his contributions on this issue have not always received a warm treatment. I argue that Arnauld's criticisms of Leibniz are sophisticated and that Arnauld offers his own Cartesian account in its place. In particular, I argue that Arnauld offers an account of possibility (...) that is actualist, modal actualist and essence-based. (shrink)

In the latter half of the 17th century, Antoine Arnauld was a public and private defender of many of the central tenets of Cartesianism. Yet, one issue on which he is surprisingly silent is René Descartes’ claim that God freely created the eternal truths (the Creation Doctrine). Despite Arnauld’s evasion of the issue, whether he holds the Creation Doctrine is one of the most contested issues in Arnauld scholarship. In this paper I offer an interpretation of Arnauld’s position. I argue (...) that Arnauld does not hold what I call the metaphysical version of the Creation Doctrine according to which God in fact freely created the eternal truths. Rather, he holds what I call the epistemic version of the Creation Doctrine according to which we cannot know whether God freely created the eternal truths. (shrink)

It is a matter of continuing scholarly dispute whether Descartes offers a metaphysics of the material world that is “monist” or “pluralist.” One passage that has become crucial to this debate is from the Synopsis of the Meditations, in which Descartes argues that since “body taken in general” is a substance, and since all substances are “by their nature incorruptible,” this sort of body is incorruptible as well. In this article I defend a pluralist reading of this passage, according to (...) which there are indefinitely many bodies-taken-in-general, each of which counts as an incorruptible material substance. However, I also consider some surprising features of the argument in the Synopsis. One is that this argument conflicts with the implication in Descartes that any two “really distinct” substances can each exist without the other existing. Another is that the argument tends to undermine his suggestion that there is room at a fundamental metaphysical level for ordinary material objects. (shrink)

There is considerable debate among scholars over whether Descartes allowed for genuine body–body interaction. I begin by considering Michael Della Rocca’s recent claim that Descartes accepted such interaction, and that his doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths indicates how this interaction could be acceptable to him. Though I agree that Descartes was inclined to accept real bodily causes of motion, I differ from Della Rocca in emphasizing that his ontology ultimately does not allow for them. This is not (...) the end of the story, however, since two of Descartes’s successors offered incompatible ways of developing his conflicted account of motion. I contrast the occasionalist view of Nicolas Malebranche that changes in motion derive directly from divine volitions with the non-occasionalist claim of Pierre-Sylvain Regis that such changes derive from a nature distinct from God. In light of Della Rocca’s interpretation, it is noteworthy that the issue of eternal truths is relevant to both alternative accounts. Indeed, Regis took the doctrine that such truths are created to provide crucial support for his alternative to an occasionalist account of body–body interaction. What does not help Della Rocca, however, is that Regis’s view of motion requires a fundamental revision of Descartes’s ontology. Author Keywords: Descartes; Malebranche; Regis; Causation; Motion; Eternal Truths. (shrink)

In various arguments, Descartes relies on the principles that conceivability implies possibility and that inconceivability implies impossibility. Those principles are in tension with another Cartesian view about the source of modality, i.e. the doctrine of the free creation of eternal truths. In this paper, I develop a ‘two-modality’ interpretation of the doctrine of eternal truths which resolves the tension and I discuss how the resulting modal epistemology can still be relevant for the contemporary discussion.

My two principal aims in this essay are interconnected. One aim is to provide a new interpretation of the ‘infinite modes’ in Spinoza’s Ethics. I argue that for Spinoza, God, conceived as the one infinite and eternal substance, is not to be understood as causing two kinds of modes, some infinite and eternal and the rest finite and non-eternal. That there cannot be such a bifurcation of divine effects is what I take the ‘infinite mode’ propositions, E1p21–23, to establish; E1p21–23 (...) show that each and every one of the immanent effects of an infinite and eternal God is an infinite and eternal mode. The other aim is to show that these propositions can be understood as part of an extended critical response to Descartes’s infamous doctrine that God creates eternal truths and true and immutable natures. If we have the correct (Spinozan) conceptions of what God is and how God works, we see that an eternal and infinite God can only be understood to cause ‘eternal truths,’ and that these eternal truths are infinite and eternal modes of God. (shrink)

Descartes famously endorsed the view that (CD) God freely created the eternal truths, such that He could have done otherwise than He did. This controversial doctrine is much discussed in recent secondary literature, yet Descartes’s actual arguments for CD have received very little attention. In this paper I focus on what many take to be a key Cartesian argument for CD: that divine simplicity entails the dependence of the eternal truths on the divine will. What makes this argument both important (...) and interesting is that Descartes’s scholastic predecessors share the premise of divine simplicity but reject the CD conclusion. To properly understand Descartes, then, we must determine precisely where he diverges from his predecessors on the path from simplicity to CD. And when we do so we obtain a very surprising result: that despite many dramatic prima facie differences, there is no substantive difference between the relevant doctrines of Descartes and the scholastics . Or so I argue. (shrink)

1. If it is true that ‘an ethic is the propositional reflection of the dispositions and attitudes, policies and stances, of people,’ as Simon Blackburn says in summary of the quasi-realism that he champions in this excellent and wonderfully provocative book, then it seems to follow that different dispositions, attitudes, policies and stances—different conative states, for short—will issue in different ethics, each with an equal claim to truth; and this in turn seems to be one thing that could be reasonably (...) meant by that slippery polyseme ‘relativism’. If such relativism does follow, a good deal remains to be said about how much force it has. At the limit it might do no more than signal the abstract possibility of an ethic rivalling that of humans. More potently, it might somehow legitimize the different ethics of different groups of humans in actual conflict with one another. But without the possibility of some such variability of ethic to match a possible variability of conative state, the quasi-realist’s claim that an ethic ‘reflects’ a particular combination of conative states appears hollow. (shrink)

Some hold that if we can imagine God creating a world in which a particular proposition (p) is true, then we can conclude that p is possible. I argue that such appeals to God can’t provide us with a guide to possibility. For either God’s powers aren’t co-extensive with the possible or they are. And if they are, these appeals either beg the question or court a version of Euthyphro’s Dilemma. Some may argue that such appeals were only intended to (...) prompt us to think broadly about the modal claim at issue. I argue instead that these appeals must be understood as more than mere prompts. For it is these appeals that would, if successful, render the conceivability principle viable. (shrink)

(2013). Thomas Bradwardine on God and the Foundations of Modality. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 368-380. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.689754.

The paper provides an account of necessary truths in Berkeley based upon his divine language model. If the thesis of the paper is correct, not all Berkeleian necessary truths can be known a priori.

Descartes's claim that the eternal truths were freely created by God is fraught with interpretive difficulties. The main arguments in the literature are classified as concerning the ontological status or the modalities of possibility and necessity of the eternal truths. The views of the principal defenders of the Creation Doctrine – Robert Desgabets, Pierre Sylvain Régis, and Antoine Le Grand are contrasted with those of Nicolas Malebranche. In clarifying the theological, ontological, and logical terms of the debate we can see (...) that what was at stake was the objectivity and certainty of the truths of mathematics and physics. I conclude by suggesting that this issue might fruitfully be used to clarify the disparate discussions in the contemporary literature. (shrink)

The old and recent debates on Cartesian essences have focused on the question of whether Descartes is a Platonist or a conceptualist about essences. I argue that this is a false dichotomy. An adequate account of Cartesian essences must accommodate and reconcile two central doctrines and texts in Descartes' philosophy. I will argue that recent conceptualist and Platonist interpretations neither accommodate these doctrines nor reconcile these texts. Such failures are not accidental since Descartes' doctrines of divine creation and simplicity render (...) it impossible for Descartes to be either a conceptualist or a Platonist. Failure to notice this fact explains why there has been no progress on this exegetical issue. (shrink)

(2005). Learning From Descartes, Via Bennett. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 139-147. doi: 10.1080/0960878042000317636.

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

In Descartes theological writing, he promotes two jointly puzzling theses: T1) God freely creates the eternal truths (i.e. the Creation Doctrine) and T2) The eternal truths are necessarily true. According to T1 God freely chooses which propositions to make necessary, contingent and possible. However the Creation Doctrine makes the acceptance of T2 tenuous for the Creation Doctrine implies that God could have acted otherwise--instantiating an entirely different set of necessary truths. Jonathan Bennett seeks to reconcile T1 and T2 by relativizing (...) modality to human understanding. I argue that Bennett’s approach to Cartesian modality is misplaced: One does not have to resort to conceptualism about modality in order to explain the subjective language found in Descartes or to reconcile Descartes’ Creation Doctrine with the necessity of the eternal truths. After showing that Bennett’s argument implies that Descartes held the non-eternality of the eternal truths and the independence of the eternal truths from God, I show that if one understands Descartes’ use modal terms as indexed to God’s willing, then apparent contradictions vanish. In addition, I show that if one evaluates the truth value of modal propositions ‘non-bivalently’, then one can also unravel the apparent contradiction. One can reconcile Descartes’ Creation Doctrine (T1) and the necessity of the eternal truths (T2) without Bennett’s conceptualism. (shrink)

Much ado has been made regarding Descartes's understanding of the creation of what he called the "eternal truths" because he described them, paradoxically, as both the free creations of God, and necessary. While there are many varying interpretations of Cartesian modality, the issue has heretofore been treated in a vacuum, as a niche issue having little import beyond being an interesting puzzle for Descartes Scholars. I argue that this treatment is misguided, and that in order to properly understand Cartesian philosophy (...) at all, one must properly understand Descartes's theory of modality. This, however, is no small feat; in order to understand Descartes's seemingly peculiar view on modality, one must first make sense of what Descartes understood the nature of God to be. One reason for this, I argue, is the systematic nature of Cartesian philosophy; indeed when dealing with a dense inter-connection of philosophical issues, one must move from what is more known in itself to what is more known to us, and not the other way around. I argue that in the literature on Cartesian modality, insufficient attention has been paid to the influence of the French School of Spirituality on the Cartesian notion of the divine. I argue that this influence pushed Descartes to criticize traditional attempts to split the horns of Plato's Euthyphro dilemma as violating a proper understanding of the doctrine of divine simplicity. Descartes's commitment to a radical form of the doctrine of divine simplicity leads him to a version of divine voluntarism wherein all `things' depend on God for their existence, and God cannot have had antecedent reason to prefer the creation of anything over anything else. There is little doubt that Descartes embraced the voluntarist horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, but just what that means for Cartesian modality and philosophy generally remains a contentious issue. I argue that Descartes is best read as what I call an `agnostic quietist' regarding God given textual, historical, and systematic considerations. One virtue of an agnostic quietist reading is that I am able to square the passages where Descartes discusses the inconceivability of God's power with the conclusions reached regarding God's non-deceiving nature in the Meditations and elsewhere. Further virtues that I explore are the effects that a quietist reading has on the Cartesian scientific programme, the infamous mind-body problem, Descartes's seemingly inconsistent view regarding human free-will and Descartes's refusal to engage in "theology." Traditionally, Cartesian epistemology has been understood to be a purely a priori undertaking, which succumbs to deep and insurmountable problems. One of the greatest problems facing the Cartesian was the move from the mind to the world. Simon Blackburn, for example, says of the Cartesian epistemological project in the Meditations that Descartes "has put himself on a desert island from which there is no escape." This view is echoed by, and even motivates some of the contemporary views concerning Cartesian modality. I argue, however, that a proper understanding of the Cartesian doctrine of clear and distinct ideas circumvents this famous problem. By highlighting the proper understanding and application of the doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, I show that such ideas not only guarantee the existence of an external truth-maker, but also that such ideas do not do much more than show that there is a truth-maker. I argue that in instances of clear and distinct perception, the truth of the idea is normatively certain, but what makes it true is yet to be established. In this way, clear and distinct ideas are both powerful, in terms of guaranteeing truth, and relatively unhelpful, in that further work is required in order to determine to what the ideas conform. I argue that this is the case not only for actual truths, but for some clearly intuited truths about possibility. As an illustration of my overall thesis, I address the Cartesian argument for the separability of mind and body, and entertain the various interpretations of Descartes's view of human freedom. I argue that in order to understand Cartesian views on either of these issues, one must first make sense of his modal commitments. In both of these cases Descartes claims that finite minds can know that something is possible, even though what makes it possible is well beyond what they can understand. (shrink)