In response to widespread doubts among professional philosophers (Russell, Horwich, Dietrich, McGinn, Chalmers), Stoljar argues for a ‘reasonable optimism’ about progress in philosophy. He defends the large and surprising claim that ‘there is progress on all or reasonably many of the big questions.’ However, Stoljar’s caveats and admitted avoidance of historical evidence permits overlooking persistent controversies in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that are essentially unchanged since the 17th Century. Stoljar suggests that his claims are commonplace in philosophy departments (...) and, indeed, the evidence I adduce constitutes an indictment of the widely shared view among professional analytic philosophers. (shrink)

The contemporary discussion of non-conceptual content inaugurated by Gareth Evans and John McDowell has generated a range of differing views as to Kant's position on the issues raised. I argue that for Kant perception is prior to thought and that it is as being prior that perception connects us to reality in outer intuition. I then argue that for Kant thought relates to perception by being the rule for perceptual procedures. This accounts for thought's extending in scope beyond what we (...) actually perceive to all that is manifest in space and time. As against Merleau-Ponty this Kantian understanding of thought beyond perception does not distort the nature of reality which remains essentially that which can be engaged. (shrink)

How does Descartes characterize the peculiar way in which each of us is aware of our bodies? I argue that Descartes recognizes a sense of bodily ownership, such that the body sensorily appears to be one's own in bodily awareness. This sensory appearance of ownership is ubiquitous, for Descartes, in that bodily awareness always confers a sense of ownership. This appearance is confused, in so far as bodily awareness simultaneously represents the subject as identical to, partially composed by, and united (...) to her body, without distinguishing these relations. Finally, the appearance of ownership is grounded in multiple other ways in which the body sensorily appears: namely, in the fact that the body appears to be inescapable, modified by bodily sensations, and an object of special concern. (shrink)

In the Optics, Descartes claims that telescopes and microscopes lead to morally certain knowledge. It is unclear, however, that Descartes’s expressed confidence in these instruments is warranted. In this article, I show how a limited range of telescope and microscope observations could lead to morally certain knowledge for Descartes, and how observations beyond this range admit of enough reasonable doubt to undermine moral certainty. I also explain moral certainty as a form of knowledge in Descartes’s scientific practices, his epistemic commitment (...) to optical instruments, and I offer an explanation for why Descartes never used optical instruments in his scientific endeavours. -/- ---- -/- Dans la Dioptrique, Descartes prétend que les télescopes et les microscopes donnent accès à des connaissances moralement certaines. Cependant, il n’est pas certain que la confiance accordée par Descartes à ces instruments soit justifiée. Dans cet article, je montre comment une gamme limitée d’observations effectuées à l’aide d’instruments d’optique pourraient mener aux connaissances moralement certaines pour Descartes, et comment d’autres observations allant au-delà de cette gamme introduisent suffisamment de doute raisonnable pour saper cette certitude morale. Enfin, j’interprète la certitude morale comme une forme de connaissance dans l’empirisme de Descartes, j’explique son engagement épistémique envers les instruments d’optique, et j’éclaire les raisons pour lesquelles il n’a jamais employé d’instruments d’optique dans ses propres recherches scientifiques. (shrink)

My dissertation has two main parts. In the first half, I draw out an underlying presupposition of Descartes' philosophy: what I term "atomism of thought." Descartes employs a radical procedure of doubt in order to show that the first principle of his philosophy, the cogito, is an unshakeable foundation of knowledge. In the dialogue that follows his dissemination of the Meditations, Descartes reveals that a whole set of concepts and rational principles innate in our minds are never doubted. These fundamental (...) units of thought are indivisible, distinct, and isolated, and enable the possibility of any rational demonstration. Atoms of thought are perfectly individuated because God has created them as such. Likewise, our minds have been fashioned such that we necessarily have a clear and distinct perception every time we alight upon these simple notions. In the second part of the dissertation, I take up critiques of Descartes' view given by Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the chapter on Nietzsche, I attempt to fill a lacuna in scholarship about Nietzsche's commentary on Descartes. More specifically, I argue that once the foundation of God is displaced, the basis for accepting atomism of thought dissolves. In the final chapter, I analyze Heidegger's critique of Cartesian atomism. I first look at Heidegger's critique of classical truth as correspondence from Being and Time, and show how it is relevant to a critique of atomism. Then I show how the early Heidegger's holistic philosophical framework can provide an alternative that avoids the pitfalls of atomism. While I limit the scope of my analysis to Descartes' particular formulation, atomism of thought was an influential doctrine throughout modern philosophy. This aspect of Cartesianism has persisted and continues to be a significant theoretical underpinning of many contemporary views. It is my contention that Nietzsche and Heidegger have important contributions to make to this area of thought, and the relative neglect of their work in recent scholarship is a detrimental oversight. (shrink)

Presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, April 2010. -/- René Descartes’ Discourse on Method is paradoxical in several respects: it was published anonymously, yet is rich in autobiographical detail; further, Descartes insists that “the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false…is naturally equal in all men,” and also that “the world consists almost exclusively of … minds for whom [his method of reasoning] (...) is not at all suitable” (1, 9). The Discourse indicates both that the identity of a particular reasoning subject (such as the author of the text itself) does not matter—because all rational beings could come to the same conclusion if using their reason correctly—and yet also that who one is does indeed matter to showing that one counts as one of the select group of subjects who possess knowledge. The method and its results do not speak for themselves; rather, the author must speak for them, and legitimize his authority in the process. If it were the case that Descartes’ plan did not go beyond “trying to reform [his] own thoughts and building upon a foundation which is completely [his] own” (9), then he might rest content with his own convictions regarding the truth of his conclusions, but if he wants to be recognized by others as possessing knowledge then he must either appeal to existing standards of authority to legitimize his method and its conclusions, or argue for the validity of new ones. Either way, the Discourse demonstrates Michel Foucault’s claims that knowledge production is bound up in a social context that determines what counts as true knowledge and who has the authority to speak about it. Descartes’s text shows an author both boldly presenting revolutionary arguments and methods and revealing his awareness of the difficulties and dangers of resisting the accepted standards of knowledge. It can be used to spark discussion amongst students about whether, even if we believe anyone’s reason might produce knowledge, it is still the case today that only some count as “knowers” according to criteria that are socially determined (e.g., institutional affiliation, status within an institution, the acceptability of certain sorts of projects and methods as legitimate for knowledge). (shrink)

In this paper, I join the so-called voluntarism debate on Descartes’s theory of will and judgment, arguing for an indirect doxastic voluntarism reading of Descartes, as opposed to a classic, or direct doxastic voluntarism. More specifically, I examine the question whether Descartes thinks the will can have a direct and full control over one’s suspension of judgment. Descartes was a doxastic voluntarist, maintaining that the will has some kind of control over one’s doxastic states, such as belief and doubt. According (...) to a long-held reading, the control that the will has over doxastic states in Descartes’s theory is direct; the doxastic states are affected by the mere act of will. This reading is called direct doxastic voluntarism (DDV), or direct voluntarism (DV) for short, and it states that we are capable of assenting, rejecting and suspending a judgment based only on our will to do so. Thus, these actions would be utterly and merely volitional. DV can be divided into two further positions, direct positive voluntarism (+DV) and direct negative voluntarism (-DV). Direct positive voluntarism deals with the act of forming judgments, maintaining that one can accept or deny a proposition wilfully and either merely believe or not believe something voluntarily. Direct negative voluntarism deals with the suspension of judgment, maintaining that it can likewise be accomplished by a simple act of will. However, I support an alternate account of Descartes’s voluntarism, which is called indirect doxastic voluntarism (IDV), or indirect voluntarism (IV) for short. By this account, the will is capable of affecting a doxastic state indirectly by making one concentrate on essential tasks for forming that state, such as gathering up and paying attention to strong reasons and evidence. IV is also possible to divide into indirect positive voluntarism (+IV) and indirect negative voluntarism (-IV). Per indirect positive voluntarism the will needs to pay attention to reasons for accepting or denying some proposition. Likewise, by indirect negative voluntarism, in order to suspend judgment the will needs to direct this attention to the reasons for doubt. By attending to these reasons, the will also comes face-to-face with its own freedom. This feeling of freedom can be described as affectivity of the reasons for belief (assent) and doubt (suspension). (shrink)