The famous Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) espoused the occasionalist doctrine that ‘there is only one true cause because there is only one true God; that the nature or power of each thing is nothing but the will of God; that all natural causes are not true causes but only occasional causes’ (LO, 448, original italics). One of Malebranche’s well-known arguments for occasionalism, known as, the ‘no necessary connection’ argument (or, NNC ) stems from the principle that ‘a true cause… is (...) one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effect’ (LO, 450). The outline of this paper is as follows. I explicitly layout NNC and articulate some of its prima facie strengths (§1). I then critically discuss, what I take to be, the two main arguments against NNC of the Lee-Pyle interpretation (§2). The main conclusion from (§2) is that Malebranche did not abandon NNC in his later works given textual evidence from the Dialogues, contrary to the Lee-Pyle interpretation. In (§3) I discuss in what ways Suárez, Leibniz, Régis and Spinoza all accepted the main premise of NNC. Then, I rebut Steven Nadler’s influential and unchallenged criticism that Malebranche conflated causal and logical necessity, and provide a more accurate interpretation of Malebranche that only commits him to a partial reduction of causal to logical necessity (§4). (shrink)

This dissertation examines Spinoza's position regarding the relationship of the individual to the community and to other individuals in the context of a particular reading of Spinoza's metaphysics as holistic. By the term "holistic metaphysics," I refer to a view of reality as a unified whole rather than as a collection of entirely separate parts. The latter I call a "reductionistic metaphysics." If a reductionistic metaphysics tends to see individuals as essentially separate and only secondarily relational, a holistic metaphysics pictures (...) individuals as primarily relational and only by means of their relations capable of any meaningful "separateness" from other individuals. The reading advanced here concludes that Spinoza holds that individuals cannot ultimately be separated from the larger environment and network of relationships of which they are always a part. This dissertation concludes with brief set of reflections on the potential implications of this "relational" understanding of individuals in the realms of morals and politics. How Spinoza might view the issue of "universal health care" in the context of his holistic metaphysics is singled out for specific consideration. (shrink)

My Cavellian argument is that the form or space of skeptical questioning -- regardless of whether we are asking about the veridicality of the appearance of another's pain, about the veridicality of the meaning of a word or phrase, about the veridicality of a perception, etc. -- leaves behind the ordinary, finite, and social activities and practices which make meaningful language use possible. But Cavell does not mean "left behind" in the sense that returning to these finite and social practices (...) of language use will defeat skepticism; Cavell thinks that the direct attempt to defeat skepticism has still not adequately understood what the appearance of a skeptical problem has deflected. Rather, in Cavell's philosophy, if we return to the everyday use of language after working through the threat of skepticism and after coming to terms with what led us into skeptical thinking, what we find is a renewed relation to the felt life of the ordinary mind, one which acknowledges those unhandsome elements of our condition which skepticism would seek to deny. In later work, Cavell will describe the proper response to skepticism as a transformation of the actual everyday into the eventual everyday. With respect to the question of how language corresponds to or represents the world, I suggest, throughout this dissertation, that this question is a confused response to the fact of our inheritance of language and culture, the fact that we are born into a social, already-made system of meanings over which in many ways we have astonishingly little freedom. And that conclusion, I argue -- the conclusion that a particular form of skepticism deflects -- is yet another starting point for Cavell's philosophy, an insight brought out only through an engagement with skepticism. (shrink)