: Descartes provides an original and puzzling argument for the traditional theological doctrine that the world is continuously created by God. His key premise is that the parts of the duration of anything are "completely independent" of one another. I argue that Descartes derives this temporal independence thesis simply from the principle that causes are necessarily simultaneous with their effects. I argue further that it follows from Descartes's version of the continuous creation doctrine that God is the instantaneous and total (...) cause of everything that happens, and that this is just what his physics demands. But although God is the total cause of everything, he is not the only cause, since Descartes considers it obvious that finite minds have the power to move bodies. In the face of this apparent paradox, several recent commentators have suggested that Descartes accepted the late scholastic view that God and finite causes somehow collaborate or concur in the production of numerically identical effects. But close examination reveals that the case for Cartesian concurrentism is weak. Fortunately, there is a simpler and more fruitful solution to the problem of reconciling divine and human action. I argue that that in Descartes's world certain motions, such as voluntary movements of our bodies, are causally overdetermined This account allows Descartes to avoid occasionalism without embracing an elaborate metaphysics of secondary causality. Finally, I argue that the overdeterminist interpretation sheds new light on two longstanding problems of Cartesian metaphysics. First, it resolves a serious difficulty with a standard reading of Descartes's conception of human freedom. Second, it offers a novel approach to the old problem of reconciling genuine human action with the principle of the conservation of total quantity of motion. (shrink)

HOME . ABOUT US . CONTACT US HELP . PUBLISH WITH US . LIBRARIANS Search in or Explore Browse Publications A-Z Browse Subjects A-Z Advanced Search University of Cambridge SIGN IN Register | Why Register? | Sign Out | Got a Voucher? prev abstract next Two Approaches to Reading the Historical Descartes A Devout Catholic? Knowledge of The Mental Thought and Language Descartes as A Natural Philosopher Substance Dualism Notes Two Approaches to Reading the Historical Descartes Author: Desmond M. Clarke (...) DOI: 10.1080/09608780902986680 Publication Frequency: 5 issues per year Published in: British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 17, Issue 3 June 2009 , pages 601 - 616 John Cottingham: Cartesian Reflections: Essays on Descartes's Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 40.00 (hb.). ISBN 978-0-19-922697-9 John Cottingham, in a new collection of essays, asks the question: 'what exactly did Descartes himself chiefly take himself to be doing?' (254). 1 While the question is relatively clear, and while it acknowledges implicitly that Descartes was probably doing a range of different things, the answer that is apparently proposed here emerges only on reading the whole collection. Cottingham distinguishes in Chapter 1 - which is a new, synoptic overview of what is discussed in the other chapters, all of which were previously published - between two approaches to reading Descartes. One is to see him as 'a dummy on which to drape various suspect doctrines (such as “Cartesian dualism”)' (3), which contemporary analytic philosophers have shown to be radically mistaken. Another approach is adopted by historians of ideas 'who make it their life's work to pay meticulous scholarly attention to the philosophical works of past ages' (3). Cottingham does not explicitly criticize either of these approaches, but he hints at situating his own as some kind of Aristotelian middle course between the two. Since the two reference points are dangerously close to straw men or what Cottingham calls 'extreme positions', the proposed middle way may simply combine elements of two approaches, each of which is entirely legitimate. I return to this question at the conclusion. In fact, many of these essays were intended to show (rightly!) that Descartes never held the philosophical positions that are often attributed to him. The interpretation of Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, provides a good example of how mistaken one can be: The Cogito ergo sum radically changed the way of doing philosophy … After Descartes, philosophy became a science of pure thought: all that is being- the created world, and even the Creator, is situated within the ambit of the Cogito, as contents of human consciousness. Philosophy is concerned with beings as contained in consciousness, and not as existing independently of it. (257) The only way to address such a caricature is to refer back to what Descartes actually wrote. Cottingham does precisely that, often quoting the original Latin or French texts. However, having shown successfully, by a close reading of the texts, that Descartes did not hold many of the views that are attributed to him, it still remains to say what Descartes did hold or teach about various philosophical problems that retain their perennial interest for us. This is how the question arises, intermittently, about what Descartes thought he was 'chiefly' doing, or what was his primary objective, in the course of an intellectual career that spanned three decades. However, the apparently legitimate desire to bring Descartes' intellectual endeavours into sharp focus may be frustrated by the evidence. His life and work manifestly lack the coherence or unity of purpose that one finds, for example, among many of his French or Dutch contemporaries. It is comparatively easy to 'read' the life of Gisbertus Voetius as that of an unwavering Calvinist theologian, to see Antoine Arnauld as a staunch and consistent theological defender of Port Royal, and even to interpret the obviously fragmentary contents of Pascal's unpublished notebooks (subsequently, the Penses) as an extended search for authentic religious faith, in opposition to what he perceived as the corruption of ecclesial structures. In contrast, Descartes' life reveals features that are difficult to integrate into a coherent pattern. He lived and published during a critical juncture in the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Although baptized into the Catholic Church soon after his birth in the Loire district of France, he chose to live most of his life in the aggressively Calvinist United Provinces, in which other religious practices were officially (though often ineffectively) banned. Descartes may have adopted the motto from Ovid, at least early in his career: 'bene vixit qui bene latuit' (he lives well who conceals himself well), and he seems genuinely to have wished to avoid theological controversies. However, he engaged in very public controversies with so many of his contemporaries - including Hobbes, Gassendi, the French Jesuits (collectively) and Father Dinet (in particular), Voetius and the University of Utrecht, Regius, Fermat, Roberval, Revius and other theologians at Leiden - that one might conclude that his claimed preference for a quiet life was a disingenuous mask. 2 Descartes published four books during his lifetime, and wrote at least one other that he had intended to publish. The latter was his first major composition, Le Monde, which he suppressed when he heard about Galileo's condemnation by Rome in 1633. This was followed, in 1637, by Descartes' first book (also written in French), which he tried to publish anonymously by withholding his name from the title page: the Discours de la methode pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la verit dans les sciences. Plus la dioptrique, les meteors, et la geometrie, qui sont des essais de cete methode. Four years later Descartes published the first edition (in Latin) of Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia et animae immortalitas demonstrator, which also included six sets of objections and replies. The Principia philosophiae appeared (in Latin) in Amsterdam in 1644, and was followed five years later by Les Passions de l'Ame (in French). 3 In parallel with these publications, Descartes carried on a very extensive correspondence over a thirty-year period (in both Latin and French), and preserved copies or drafts of his letters with a view to future publication. Given the range and variety of his interests, and the sheer volume of writings, published or otherwise, that have survived from his pen, one may be tempted to engage in a comparative evaluation, as Cottingham does, by selecting one of Descartes' books as his primary contribution to philosophy. Cottingham claims that the Meditations was Descartes''masterpiece' (44), 'the definitive statement of Descartes's philosophy' (45) and the 'definitive statement of his metaphysics' (68). He also describes the Meditations more narrowly as 'his metaphysical masterpiece' (259, 303) and, more broadly, as 'his philosophical masterpiece' (289), and he lists it with the Discours as one of Descartes' two 'masterworks' (280). The Principia offers some competition in this comparative judgement when it is described as 'the canonical presentation of his metaphysical views' (114), while 'the construction of a moral system … was the crowning aim of his philosophy' (231). Having pitched repeatedly for the Meditations as Descartes' primary text, Cottingham claims that its author was 'a devout Catholic' (215), that he was 'a devoutly religious philosopher' (256), and that he could not free himself 'from the influence of the long years of theological study he had dutifully completed at La Flche' (62). Accordingly, the Meditations should be read as 'in essence a work of theodicy' (220); 'what has pride of place in the construction of his philosophical system is … an appeal to God … the nature and existence of the Deity is something that lies at the very heart of his entire philosophical system' (255). Without quite saying so, there are hints here that Descartes was a devout Christian whose primary intellectual contribution was to write a work of metaphysics, in which God is central and in the course of which the author alternates between proving God's existence and contemplating God - the latter a seventeenth-century version of Bonaventure's Journey of the Soul to God. 'Descartes's attraction to a contemplative mode of philosophizing' (305) is reflected, in the Meditations, in 'the language of the soul's coming to rest in adoring contemplation of the light' (306). Cottingham also accepts the overwhelming evidence from Descartes' correspondence that he 'devoted most of his career not to metaphysics but to science' (108), although he quibbles elsewhere with those who adopt the shorthand term 'science' to describe part of what was called 'natural philosophy' in the seventeenth century (282). He also refers to the '(notoriously lame) argument for the essential incorporeality of the thinking self' in one of Descartes' masterworks (60), and he describes the 'strange, seemingly isolated world of his metaphysical meditations' (139), with its 'creaking ontology' (147), when read in isolation from the rest of his work as a natural philosopher. How should we read him, then, in the twenty-first century? A Devout Catholic? That Descartes was a devout Catholic is possible, unlikely and undecidable. He seems not to have studied theology at all while at school at La Flche, although he completed the pre-theology college cycle in the company of Jesuit students who then continued their studies in theology. Descartes consistently attempted to avoid public entanglement with religious and theological controversies, and said so frequently. 4 Given the alignments that prevailed at the time, both in France. (shrink)

Johannes Clauberg has always been recognized as an important figure between the new and the antique philosophy, but little has been done to assess his significance. The volume edited by Theo Verbeek is the first aimed at exploring Clauberg’s position with respect to Cartesianism and the ramifications of his own arguments. It contains the papers delivered at a colloquium in Groningen in 1995. A first group of articles deals with Clauberg’s first metaphysical construction, his Ontosophia. Ulrich Gottfried Leinsle (...) examines the sources of the Ontosophia in the Pansophia of Comenius, V. Carraud investigates the variants of the various editions of the Ontosophia until 1664 outlining the difficulties of conciliating ontology and theory of subjectivity, Jean-Christophe Bardout its impact on Malebranche, and Jean École on Wolff. A second group of articles deals with problems of knowledge. Aza Goudriaan writes about Clauberg’s position on the knowledge of God, L. Spruit on perceptual knowledge, and Detlev Pätzold on causality. Claude Weber delves into Clauberg’s attempt of providing a systematic description of the etymology of the German language, Theo Verbeek into Clauberg’s activity as a teacher of Descartes’s Principia philosophiae, and Christia Mercer into Clauberg’s notion of corporeal substance. Michael Albrecht, finally, considers the impact of Clauberg’s work from the peculiar and nonetheless very proper standpoint of “eclectic philosophy.” A biographical and bibliographical sketch by Theo Verbeek concludes the volume. (shrink)

The modal argument for the existence of a Cartesian human soul proposed by Richard Swinburne more than thirty years ago, if slightly adjusted and interpreted correctly, becomes a plausible argument for anyone who accepts modal arguments. The difficulty consists in a relatively weak justification of the second premise, of the real possibility of a disembodied existence, as a result of which the argument does not provide a real proof. The argument is best understood in the following terms: Special divine (...) action is excluded from the metaphysical possibilities and only the natural possibilities are considered; the “conceivable” possibility of the existence of a person without a body is interpreted as a metaphysical possibility, and inductive support for its reality is provided by apparent first-person-conceivability of a disembodied existence, detailed descriptions of out-of-body and near-death experiences, a priori trust in introspection in psychology and the cognitive sciences, and by the unity of consciousness and the possibility of its extension to peripersonal space; statements about having a soul or being a material substance are excluded from the domain of the premises; and finally, one accepts the Kripkean principle that having a body or a soul is an essential component of a person. If these conditions are met, the argument is valid, and the conclusion is made more plausible by Swinburne’s modal argument than it would be without it.Argumentum modale pro animae humanae “Cartesianae” existentia, quod R. Swinburne ante plures quam 30 annos proposuit, acceptabile reddi potest cuicumque argumenta modalia non generatim respuenti, si paululum emendetur recteque intelligatur. Omnis huius argumenti diffi cultas consistit in iustifi catione debiliore secundae eius praemissae, quo pacto argumentum ineffi cax redditur. Argumentum vero optime intelligetur his quattuor punctis animadversis: Primo, possibilitas metaphysica non nisi possibilitates naturales comprehendere intelligatur, omni speciali Dei ingerentia exclusa. Secundo, personae possibilitas “conceptibilis” sine corpore existendi intelligatur ut realis possibilitas metaphysica. Cui realitati argumenta favent inductiva tum ex possibilitate imaginandi existentiam sine corpore; tum ex minutatim enarratis testimoniis experiendi status “extra corpus” et “prope mortem”; tum ex fi de fundamentali veritatis introspectionis in psychologia scientiis que cognitivis; tum ex unitate conscientiae ac possibilitate eam in spatium extra corpus extendendi. Tertio, e praemissarum congerie assertiones excludantur quibus homo animam habere vel substantiam materialem esse assumeretur. Quarto, principium S. Kripkii accipiatur, scil. corporis vel animae habitum personae essentialem esse debere. His omnibus servatis argumentum Swinburnii validum evadit, conclusionem suam plus credibilem reddens quam secus esset. (shrink)

In chapter 7 of The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans claimed to have an argument that would present "an antidote" to the Cartesian conception of the self as a purely mental entity. On the basis of considerations drawn from philosophy of language and thought, Evans claimed to be able to show that bodily awareness is a form of self-awareness. The apparent basis for this claim is the datum that sometimes judgements about one’s position based on body sense are (...) immune to errors of misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun 'I'. However, Evans’s argument suffers from a crucial ambiguity. 'I' sometimes refers to the subject's mind, sometimes to the person, and sometimes to the subject's body. Once disambiguated, it turns out that Evans’s argument either begs the question against the Cartesian or fails to be plausible at all. Nonetheless, the argument is important for drawing our attention to the idea that bodily modes of awareness should be taken seriously as possible forms of self-awareness. (shrink)

Descartes is often identified as having fired one of the opening shots of the scientific revolution: rejecting the four Aristotelian causes in favor of the efficient causes characteristic of mechanistic science. Scholars often write as if Cartesian science and corporeal metaphysics is best understood as a rejection of all causal notions other than the efficient. I argue that this is a mistake. On the contrary, Descartes endorses an avowedly Aristotelian notion of formal causality, inherited from Suárez, and this notion (...) is central to his physics and corporeal metaphysics. -/- I begin by tracing the history of the formal cause from Aristotle to Aquinas and Suárez. My main thesis here is that the Aristotelian notion of formal causation picks out two distinct explanatory modes. The first is linked to hylomorphic ontology, and so by rejecting hylomorphism Descartes rejects one sort of formal causation. Crucially, however, the Aristotelians also identify explanations from essence as a species of formal causality. Now, Descartes’s entire philosophical project is built upon the intellectual perception of the essences of God, mind, and matter; the uncovering and exercise of this broadly Platonic intellectual capacity is, as Descartes explained to Hobbes, a key raison d’être for project of the Meditations. So we might expect Descartes to embrace formal causal explanations from essence, which harmonize so thoroughly with his philosophical project. And indeed, this is what we find. This is most obvious in the case of the ontological argument. In the course of defending the claim that God is causa sui, Descartes explicitly appeals to formal causation and claims to be only be “following in the footsteps” of Aristotle. Thus, there is a Cartesian notion of formal causation that is both continuous with and distinct from its Aristotelian predecessors. -/- Other cases are less obvious, but no less important. For example, one of the most strikingly “modern” aspects of Cartesian physics is its emphasis on quantitative laws. Yet Descartes’s official account of how these laws explain particular phenomena is puzzling: He claims that the laws are causes. This, however, is prima facie absurd; Descartes seems to claim that the law of inertia is literally pushing the moon forward along its orbital path. I argue that this is not and cannot be what Descartes means. On the contrary, he clearly takes the laws of physics to follow from the divine essence, especially immutability and simplicity. The laws are true and epistemically accessible to us because they follow from the divine essence. In other words, Descartes thinks nomological explanation in physics is formal causal explanation from (the divine) essence. -/- Another central issue is the impenetrability, or solidity, of matter. I offer a close reading and reconstruction of Descartes’s argument that matter is necessarily but not essentially impenetrable, and I show how Descartes accounts for impenetrability without compromising his mathematical conception of the corporeal. Descartes argues that impenetrability follows from the nature of matter as geometrical extension, thereby reducing a paradigmatic quality of matter (its solidity) to quantity (extension). Note that the explanatory bite throughout is from essence. Thus, while solidity is not a genuine corporeal causal power, it does give bodies an ineliminable causal role in Cartesian physics and corporeal metaphysics. This role is as a formal cause, since every explanation from impenetrability is ipso facto an explanation from the corporeal essence, geometrical extension. This, in turn, shows that Descartes has a principled response to idealists, like Berkeley, who claim that matter’s lack of efficient causal power implies idealism; Berkeley’s mistake, Descartes would argue, lies in equating efficient causality with causality simpliciter. -/- Thus, I argue that formal causal explanation from essence is both well-attested textually in Descartes and is consonant with some of his deepest projects and commitments, including his Platonic intellectualism and mathematization of the corporeal. All this in mind, it is shocking how little attention has been paid to formal causation in Descartes’s metaphysics. If I am right, a thorough re-thinking of Descartes’s physics and metaphysics is long overdue. (shrink)

In his Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, Paul Guyer offers an influential reading of Kant’s famous “Refutation of Idealism.” Guyer’s reading has been widely praised as Kantian exegesis but less favorably received as an anti-skeptical line of argument worthy of contemporary interest. In this paper, I focus on defending the general thrust of Guyer’s reading as a response to Cartesian skepticism. The paper falls into two sections. The first section constructs Guyer’s central argument in three steps and gives (...) it a quasi-formal presentation. That presentation reveals the principal obstacle to the argument’s being convincing to a contemporary audience, namely, its apparent reliance on Kant’s prohibition against psychological laws governing mental states. The second section constructs a lemma in defense of Guyer’s general line of attack. In effect, it suggests that that line does not depend on a metaphysical ban on psychological laws, but only on the modest premise that according to the Cartesian’s concept of knowledge such laws cannot justify claims about the temporal order of the self. (shrink)

How are we to account for the authority granted to first-person reports of mental states? What accounts for the immediacy of these self-ascriptions; the fact that they can be ascribed without appeal to evidence and without the need for justification? A traditional, Cartesian conception of the mind, which says that our thoughts are presented to us directly, completely, and without distortion upon mere internal inspection, would account for these facts, but there is good reason to doubt the cogency of (...) the Cartesian view. Wittgenstein, in his later writings, offered some of the most potent considerations against the traditional view, and contemporary philosophy of mind is practically unanimous in rejecting some of the metaphysical aspects of Cartesianism. But anyone who repudiates Cartesianism shoulders the burden of finding another way to accommodate its apparent epistemological strengths. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 292-294 [Access article in PDF] Secada, Jorge. Cartesian Metaphysics: The Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 333. Cloth, $59.95. Descartes scholars can welcome this book. Secada supports trends in scholarship that criticize seeing Descartes as merely an anti-skeptical foundationalist, and he challenges many prominent interpretations of Descartes's metaphysics. In addition, Secada helpfully (...) references Scholastic sources to provide context for Descartes's views. This book is also valuable for philosophers in contemporary metaphysics and epistemology. Secada uses the tools and idiom of analytic philosophy to explain and defend Descartes, and he is sympathetic to Descartes's project, even if he grants that aspects of it "are difficult to articulate clearly and convincingly" (174).The book's central theme is the contrast between Descartes's "essentialism" and the "existentialism" of Scholastics. Secada explains the distinction as follows: "Essentialism (existentialism) is the doctrine, first, that one cannot know the existence (essence) of any substance without first knowing its essence (existence), and, secondly, that one can know the essence (existence) of some substance without knowing its existence (essence)" (8). Cartesian Metaphysics interprets Descartes's corpus as a defense of essentialism in the light of Scholastic existentialism.The first three chapters set the stage. Chapter One distinguishes essentialism from existentialism. Chapter Two provides historical background necessary to understand the role of Scholasticism in Descartes's thought. Chapter Three discusses the role of Christian Platonism in both Descartes and the Scholastics, especially their shared Augustinian presupposition that knowledge of essences is of "how things are in themselves" (56).The next three chapters discuss the metaphysical status of ideas. In Chapter Four, Secada contrasts Descartes's "immanent" theory according to which "the immediate objects of ideas must exist in the mind" (85) with the "realist Scholastic" theory that "takes mental acts to be immediately directed towards things" (83). In Chapter Five, this account is applied to an interpretation of the Second Meditation as a defense of intellectualist essentialism against Scholastics and empiricists. "Contrary to the Scholastics and other empiricists, Descartes attributed to the intellect and not to the senses the power to reach the world of substances existing outside of the inner theatre of the mind" (116). Through comparing Descartes with Suarez and Gassendi, Secada argues that all the proofs of existence in the Meditations, including for the cogito, argue from [End Page 292] knowledge of essence to knowledge of existence. Chapter Six turns to Descartes's proofs for the existence of God. According to Secada, even for a posteriori proofs, knowledge of God's existence depends on knowledge of his essence.The last three chapters examine Descartes's theory of substance. Chapter Seven reconstructs Descartes's distinction between substances and properties. A substance is something that "exists without inhering" and "exists uncaused" (185). Secada discusses the nature of substance, how substances other than God can be "uncaused," and the plausibility of Descartes's sharp distinction between substances and properties. The chapter ends by arguing that Descartes's doctrine about the relationship between substances and properties inadvertently "heralds Spinoza's pantheism" (185). Chapter Eight examines real and essential properties in Cartesian metaphysics in contrast to Suarez and Fonseca, and ends with a partial defense of Descartes's ontological argument. Chapter Nine offers a detailed discussion of two fundamental substances in Descartes's metaphysics: body and mind. Secada argues that Descartes offers no satisfactory explanations of body, mind, or the relationship between the two.As is clear from this brief summary, Cartesian Metaphysics is a rich book. It presents important historical details without endless irrelevant details (see especially the sketch of Descartes's Scholastic background on 27-33). The exegetical arguments make strong cases for new interpretations of Descartes. Secada effectively shows that Descartes is more concerned with metaphysics than with refuting skepticism. Comparisons with Suarez and Fonseca shed new light on Cartesian arguments. Reconstructions of Cartesian arguments even tempt one to take Descartes seriously in contemporary metaphysics. And the criticisms of Descartes are thought-provoking.Unfortunately, the... (shrink)

Leibniz’s Law (or as it sometimes called, ‘the Indiscerniblity of Identicals’) is a widely accepted principle governing the notion of numerical identity. The principle states that if a is identical to b, then any property had by a is also had by b. Leibniz’s Law may seem like a trivial principle, but its apparent consequences are far from trivial. The law has been utilised in a wide range of arguments in metaphysics, many leading to substantive and controversial conclusions. This (...) article discusses the applications of Leibniz’s Law to arguments in metaphysics. It begins by presenting a variety of central arguments in metaphysics which appeal to the law. The article then proceeds to discuss a range of strategies that can be drawn upon in resisting an argument by Leibniz’s Law. These strategies divide into three categories: (i) denying Leibniz’s Law; (ii) denying that the argument in question involves a genuine application of the law; and (iii) denying that the argument’s premises are true. Strategies falling under each of these three categories are discussed in turn. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show to what extent Descartes can be situated within the Augustinian metaphysical tradition and to what extent he has departed from it. To this end, we will argue that Descartes has borrowed his main Meditations’ arguments from Augustine’s philosophy. However, in spite of all factual and textual evidence we will provide against the originality of Descartes’ metaphysical discussions, it will be stressed, on the other hand, that in borrowing not only the (...) cogito argument, but also some general features of his philosophy from Augustine’s works, Descartes intends to frame a metaphysics which will be the ground on his new mechanistic physics. Having this in mind, we will hold that no claim can be put forward against the originality and far-reaching scope of Descartes’ philosophical intentions. Indeed, Descartes’ purpose is to build a new science under a metaphysics, even though this metaphysics is the Augustianian one. (shrink)

The most frequently discussed skeptical arguments in the history of philosophy are to be found in the tightly argued twelve paragraphs of Descartes’ Meditation One. There is considerable controversy about how to interpret the skeptical arguments that Descartes offers; the extent to which those arguments rest upon implicit epistemological and/or metaphysical presuppositions; their originality within the history of skepticism; and the role they play within Cartesian philosophy and natural science. This chapter begins by tracing the complex argumentation of (...) Meditation One. The second section explores the differences between Cartesian skeptical arguments and the skeptical arguments discussed in the ancient world, while the third section considers whether there might be medieval antecedents for the radical doubts that end Meditation One. The final section suggests that the radical nature of the doubts raised in Meditation One has its sources in two fundamental characteristics of Cartesian science: the radical error that Cartesian science posits in our everyday experience of the world, and the hypothetical and (only) morally certain nature of the scientific edifice that is proposed to replace the commonsense view of the world enshrined in Aristotelian science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Substance Being the Same As Its Essence in Metaphysics Z 6: The Pale Man ArgumentNorman O. Dahlin general Aristotle’s account of substance in the Categories is clear. Primary substances, the basic constitutents of the world, are independently existing individuals, paradigm examples of which are particular living organisms. However, the later use to which Aristotle puts matter and form provides him with two new candidates for primary substance.1 A (...) reconsideration of substance is in order, and Aristotle begins it in Metaphysics Z. The status of matter soon becomes clear. It can’t be substance because it isn’t a “this” and separate (Z 3, 1029a26–28). The status of form, however, is another story. Aristotle argues in Z 6 that substances are the same as their essences. While the evidence isn’t unequivocal, Z 4, 10, 11, and 15 take essence to be form, where form is universal. Z 13, however, argues that no universal is substance. Aristotle thus appears caught in an inconsistency. Substance is universal form because it is the same as universal form; however, no universal is substance. This and other problems have led to as wide a variety of interpretations of Metaphysics Z as one will find of any philosophical text. Virtually all of them end up attributing to Aristotle one of [End Page 1] three views about substance—substances are universal forms, particular forms, or composites of matter and form.2This paper takes a first step in a project that promises to remove the above inconsistency while allowing but not requiring Aristotle to take concrete particular substances (composite substances involving both matter and form) to be substances. The project looks at the first of the three claims that lead to the above apparent inconsistency and asks whether the sameness relation in it should be understood as identity or a weaker relation that could hold between concrete particular substances and their universal essences. It is the latter possibility that promises to avoid the above contradiction. If concrete particular substances can be the same as their universal essences, then the essences of substances can be universals without necessarily turning substances into universals. Nevertheless, granting this possibility wouldn’t require Aristotle to take concrete particular substances to be substances. Forms of concrete particular substances will also be the same as their essences in this weaker sameness relation, and considerations other than those at work in Z 6 could still lead Aristotle to rule out concrete individuals as substances.1Although Aristotle has standardly been interpreted as arguing in Z 6 that substances are identical with their essences,3 two considerations allow the question of this paper to be raised. [End Page 2]The first is the variety of uses to which Aristotle puts such notions as the same (tauto) or one (hen). Aristotle’s concern in Z 6 is with whether certain things are or are not the same (tauto), one (hen), or one and the same (hen kai auto and to auto kai hen) as their essences.4 He argues that kata sumbebēkos legomena (things said to be what they are with respect to an accident) are not the same as their essences, but that kath’ hauta legomena (things said to be what they are with respect to themselves), a class of things that includes substances,5 are the same as their essences. However, when Aristotle says that one thing and another are the same or one, there is more than one kind of claim he can be making. Some of them apply to things that are identical; others do not.For example, things can be the same in number, species, and genus. A doublet and a cloak are the same in number, a man and another man are the same in species, and a man and a horse are the same in genus.6 Although a doublet and a cloak are identical, a man and another man, and a man and a horse, are not.Things can also be accidentally the same, or the same in definition, substance, or essence,7 where these two ways of being the same cut across the previous ways of being the same. For example... (shrink)

Rene Descartes's argument begins from one obviously true premise that (at the time when he was considering this argument) Descartes is thinking. It then proceeds by means of two principles about what is “conceivable” to the conclusion that Descartes is essentially “a thinking substance distinct from his body, which he calls his 'soul'”. This chapter looks in more detail at Descartes's argument. It explains some of the terminology which Descartes uses. Descartes consists of two parts ‐ an essential part (his (...) soul) and an inessential part (his body). And, Descartes would add, what applies to Descartes, applies to all other humans. Hence substance dualism ‐ humans consist of two substances, a soul (the essential part) and a body (the inessential part). The chapter illustrates how there can be Descartes's propositions whose metaphysical modality differs from their logical modality. (shrink)

The problem of the Cartesian circle, as it is called, has sparked ongoing debate, which intersects several important themes of the Meditations. Discussions of the circle must address questions about the force and scope of the famous method of doubt introduced in Meditation I, and they must examine the intricate arguments for the existence of God and the avoidance of error in Meditations III to V. These discussions raise questions about the possibility of overturning skepticism, once a skeptical doubt (...) has been introduced. More generally, the problem of the circle resonates with recent questions about the foundations of knowledge: Must we be able to validate our methods of reasoning or of knowing before using them? If we must, wouldn't we be forever stuck at the beginning, unable to use our methods of reasoning or of knowing in their own validation? The problem of the Cartesian circle raises general questions about the validation of reason and the possibility of knowledge. This chapter examines the Cartesian circle in the context of Descartes' central project in the Meditations, to secure the foundations of metaphysics. In carrying out this project, Descartes felt the need, or adopted the strategy, of examining the possibility of human knowledge more generally. Such an examination can be interpreted in various ways. Depending on the interpretation given, the roles assigned to the method of doubt and the proofs about God may differ, thereby altering how we see the problem of the circle. We therefore need first to consider Descartes' metaphysical project along with the methods and strategies he adopted in carrying it out. Subsequently, I explain and evaluate several main approaches to the problem of the circle. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the relation of Descartes' metaphysics of knowledge to other prominent positions in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Given the difficulties of Pierre Bayle’s writing—its occasional nature, its digressive and wandering style, and its sheer size—it is no small task to present him as an author of a coherent metaphysical doctrine. But Todd Ryan does just that in this cogently-argued analysis of Bayle’s encounters with, among others, Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Leibniz, and Spinoza. We are thus invited, as the subtitle indicates, to “rediscover early modern philosophy” by way of Bayle’s philosophical engagements.The main fault line in Bayle scholarship (...) concerns the sincerity of the philosopher’s religious and philosophical commitments, and scholars have had recourse to biographical and contextual scholarship to solve some of these problems. Ryan sidesteps context, simply approaching Bayle’s texts as coherent arguments and analyzing them philosophically—a fruitful approach generally. That said, he periodically finds himself drawn into the debates about Bayle’s intentions, since he wishes to insist upon a single coherent interpretation of the philosopher as a Cartesian, something that requires one to confront instances where Bayle expresses doubts about Cartesian principles. Ryan’s strategy is to insist that Bayle takes evidence to be “a matter of degree. (shrink)

The frame problem is a fundamental challenge in AI, and the Lucas-Penrose argument is supposed to show a limitation of AI if it is successful at all. Here we discuss both of them from a unified Gödelian point of view. We give an informational reformulation of the frame problem, which turns out to be tightly intertwined with the nature of Gödelian incompleteness in the sense that they both hinge upon the finitarity condition of agents or systems, without which their alleged (...) limitations can readily be overcome, and that they can both be seen as instances of the fundamental discrepancy between finitary beings and infinitary reality. We then revisit the Lucas-Penrose argument, elaborating a version of it which indicates the impossibility of information physics or the computational theory of the universe. It turns out through a finer analysis that if the Lucas-Penrose argument is accepted then information physics is impossible too; the possibility of AI or the computational theory of the mind is thus linked with the possibility of information physics or the computational theory of the universe. We finally reconsider the Penrose’s Quantum Mind Thesis in light of recent advances in quantum modelling of cognition, giving a structural reformulation of it and thereby shedding new light on what is problematic in the Quantum Mind Thesis. Overall, we consider it promising to link the computational theory of the mind with the computational theory of the universe; their integration would allow us to go beyond the Cartesian dualism, giving, in particular, an incarnation of Chalmers’ double-aspect theory of information. (shrink)

In this dissertation we discuss infinite regress arguments from both a historical and a logical perspective. Throughout we deal with arguments drawn from various areas of philosophy. ;We first consider the regress generating portion of the argument. We find two main ways in which infinite regresses can be developed. The first generates a regress by defining a relation that holds between objects of some kind. An example of such a regress is the causal regress used in some versions of the (...) Cosmological Argument. The second sort of regress is generated by defining a certain procedure that can be repeated indefinitely many times. This will often be a procedure of analysis or of explanation. ;We then argue that for purposes of discussing regressive viciousness it is helpful to divide regresses into two main types. One type raises primarily epistemological issues. In this class we find the regress of justification often used in foundational arguments in epistemology. We also discuss certain arguments that treat theories of predication as attempts to explain predication. Our other class contains those regresses that raise primarily metaphysical problems. This class includes the causal regress as well as those arguments concerned with predication as an ontological problem. ;We agree with some philosophers that one problem that arises in the case of vicious regression is circularity. We show how this problem can be generalized to include other apparently non-circular regresses. The other main problem in epistemological regresses arises as a result of certain conditions that are placed on the relation involved. We look in detail at the epistemological justification regress to illustrate this last point. ;With respect to metaphysical regresses we again find several types of viciousness arguments. One problem is whether the infinite collection required for the regress is even possible. Another problem is whether an infinite number of events can occur in a finite time. These we deal with only briefly. The main difficulty with these regresses, considered as regresses and not just as infinite sets, again turns out to be certain conditions built into the relation involved. We focus on some arguments about causal regression to illustrate this point. ;Finally, we find no absolutely general conditions for regressive viciousness. There is, however, a certain limited range of ways in which a regress may be vicious. We make these ways explicit. (shrink)

The apparently circular arguments in Descartes’s Meditations should be read as analytic arguments, as Descartes himself suggested. This both explains and excuses the appearance of circularity. Analysis “digs out” what is already present in the meditator’s mind but not yet “expressly known”. Once this is achieved, the meditator may take the result of analysis as an epistemic starting point independent of the original argument. That is, analytic arguments may be reversed to yield demonstrative proofs that follow an already worked-out order (...) of ideas. The “Cartesian Circle,” for example, is circular only when Descartes’s original analytic argument is mistaken for the demonstration that it enables. This approach to Cartesian Circles is unlike the standard approach, which attempts to show that Descartes’s original arguments do work as demonstrations after all. (shrink)

Skepticism is one of the perennial problems of philosophy: from antiquity, to the early modern period of Descartes and Hume, and right through to the present day. It remains a fundamental and widely studied topic and, as Annalisa Coliva and Duncan Pritchard show in this book, it presents us with a paradox with important ramifications not only for epistemology but also for many other core areas of philosophy. In this book they provide a thorough grounding in contemporary debates about (...) skepticism, exploring the following key topics: the core skeptical arguments, with a particular focus on Cartesian and Humean radical skepticism. the epistemic principles that are held to underlie skeptical arguments, such as the closure and underdetermination principles. the content externalism of Putnam, Davidson and Chalmers, and how it might help us respond to radical skepticism. the epistemic externalism/internalism distinction and how it relates to the skeptical problematic. contextualism in epistemology and its anti-skeptical import. the various interpretations of a Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology. the viability of epistemological disjunctivism, including whether it can be combined with hinge epistemology as part of a dual response to radical skepticism. liberal and conservative responses to the Humean skeptical paradox. Both authors are themselves prominent figures who work on skepticism, and so one novelty of the book is that it provides an insight into their own contrasting responses to this philosophical difficulty. With the addition of annotated further reading and a glossary this is an ideal starting point for anyone studying the philosophy of skepticism, along with students of epistemology, metaphysics and contemporary analytic philosophy. (shrink)

I argue against a growing radical trend in current theoretical cognitive science that moves from the premises of embedded cognition, embodied cognition, dynamical systems theory and/or situated robotics to conclusions either to the effect that the mind is not in the brain or that cognition does not require representation, or both. I unearth the considerations at the foundation of this view: Haugeland's bandwidth-component argument to the effect that the brain is not a component in cognitive activity, and arguments inspired by (...) dynamical systems theory and situated robotics to the effect that cognitive activity does not involve representations. Both of these strands depend not only on a shift of emphasis from higher cognitive functions to things like sensorimotor processes, but also depend on a certain understanding of how sensorimotor processes are implemented - as closed-loop control systems. I describe a much more sophisticated model of sensorimotor processing that is not only more powerful and robust than simple closed-loop control, but for which there is great evidence that it is implemented in the nervous system. The is the emulation theory of representation, according to which the brain constructs inner dynamical models, or emulators, of the body and environment which are used in parallel with the body and environment to enhance motor control and perception and to provide faster feedback during motor processes, and can be run off-line to produce imagery and evaluate sensorimotor counterfactuals. I then show that the emulation framework is immune to the radical arguments, and makes apparent why the brain is a component in the cognitive activity, and exactly what the representations are in sensorimotor control. (shrink)

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (1997) has refined an argument due to Thomas Baldwin (1996), which claims to prove nihilism, the thesis that there could have been no concrete objects, and which apparently does so without reliance on any heavy-duty metaphysics of modality. This note will show that on either reading of its key premiss, the subtraction argument Rodriguez-Pereyra proposes is invalid. [A sequel to this paper, 'The Subtraction Argument(s)', was published in Dialectica in 2006.].

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 442-443 [Access article in PDF] Steven Nadler, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche. Cambridge Companions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 319. Cloth, $54.95. With his own Cambridge Companion, the seventeenth-century French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche has at last arrived in the English speaking world. As editor Nadler puts it, "Malebranche was widely recognized by his philosophical and theological (...) contemporaries... as an intellectual force to be reckoned with, a bold... synthesizer of... St. Augustine and Descartes and a systematic thinker of the first rank" (1). Yet until the relatively recent arrival of books or translations by scholars such as Nadler, McCracken, Jolley, Schmaltz, and Riley, Malebranche has largely been treated by Anglo-American scholars as merely the solitary proponent of the allegedly rather silly doctrine of occasionalism. The tide is now turning, and we may expect that over the next few years Malebranche's wide-ranging sophistication and significance will be more widely appreciated. Invaluable to that end will be Nadler's volume, which is of great interest both to those new to Malebranche and to seasoned scholars, for it presents accessible yet thorough introductions to Malebranche's many interesting doctrines—concerning self-knowledge, vision in God, continuous creation, occasionalism, theodicy, grace, freedom, morality, etc.—as well as raises important questions for future research. All of the essays Nadler has assembled are by well-known scholars, and all are worthwhile.The first point to make is that occasionalism—the view that God is the only true cause, and that finite substances lack all true causal power—was neither silly, nor was Malebranche its only proponent. As Nadler's own essay makes clear, the doctrine (or variations thereof) has roots in medieval philosophy as well as in Descartes, and was favored by other Cartesians preceding Malebranche, such as Cordemoy, la Forge, Geulincx, and Clauberg; further, Malebranche offered numerous distinct arguments for it, and, as evidenced in essays by Schmaltz, Rutherford, Kremer, and Riley, intended it to fit with his other metaphysical views in a complete and coherent system. Even if, as some of these same authors suggest, Malebranche failed to get everything to fit quite right, it's at least clear that the oft-raised charge that occasionalism was merely an ad hoc solution to the Cartesian mind-body problem is unjustified. There is of course room to disagree with certain details here: I've argued elsewhere, for example against Nadler, that despite evidence to the contrary Malebranche does not invoke continuous creation as an argument for occasionalism, and, in effect, against Kremer, that Malebranche can succeed in reconciling occasionalism and his conception of free will. But then the fact that scholars can disagree on points such as these is precisely evidence that Malebranche is a rich subject of study.Different essays have different virtues. Some are especially strong in philosophical analysis. Schmaltz provides penetrating analyses of Malebranche's doctrine that we see [End Page 442] all things "in God" as well as of related issues (such as the distinction between the intellectual and the sensible), and also traces their roots in or ramifications for thinkers such as Augustine, Descartes, Arnauld, and Regis; Kremer, too, does an impressive job disentangling the many discrete threads in Malebranche's theory of free will. Essays by Moreau and Riley are particularly useful for their overview or synthetic nature: Moreau presents the many points of contention in the decades-long dispute between Malebranche and Arnauld, while Riley makes explicit the implications that many of the doctrines discussed by other contributors have for Malebranche's moral theory (in the process perhaps implicitly supporting the claim that Malebranche's moral theory may be essential for understanding his metaphysics). Brown's and Robinet's contributions, the former detailing Malebranche's positive influence on or critical reception by figures such as Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, the latter focusing on disputes between Malebranche, Arnauld, and Leibniz, are essential for those interested (as all should be) in working Malebranche into standard undergraduate courses on modern philosophy, and will also be... (shrink)

In his influential “Naming and Necessity,” Saul Kripke has deployed a new sort of analytical apparatus in support of the classical Cartesian argument that minds and bodies must be distinct because they can be imagined separately. In the initial section of this paper, I shall first paraphrase Kripke's version of that argument, and then suggest a way in which even one who accepts all of its philosophical presuppositions may avoid its conclusion. In the second section, I shall defend this (...) suggestion against some of the possible objections to it.Recent materialists have not been overly impressed by the Cartesian claim that minds and bodies can be imagined or conceived separately from each other. Their usual reply is that this is only to be expected, given the contingent nature of the identify involved. Kripke, however, has argued persuasively that such a reply is unacceptable because it overlooks a crucial fact about the terms in which the identity theory is couched. (shrink)

This book evaluates the widespread preference in philosophy of mind for varieties of property dualism over other alternatives to physicalism. It takes the standard motivations for property dualism as a starting point and argues that these lead directly to nonphysical substances resembling the soul of traditional metaphysics. In the first half of the book, the author clarifies what is at issue in the choice between theories that posit nonphysical properties only and those that posit nonphysical substances. The crucial question, he (...) argues, is whether one posits nonphysical things that satisfy an Aristotelian-Cartesian independence definition of substance: nonphysical things that could exist in the absence of anything else. In the second half, the author argues that standard and Russellian monist forms of property dualism are far less plausible than we usually suppose. Most significantly, the presuppositions of one of the leading arguments for property dualism, the conceivability argument, lead by parity of reasoning to the view that conscious subjects are nonphysical substances. He concludes that if you posit nonphysical properties in response to the mind-body problem then you should be prepared to posit nonphysical substances as well. Mainstream philosophy of mind must take nonphysical substances far more seriously than it has done for the best part of a century. The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Cartesian Views is a fitting tribute to a man of many parts, to use Alison Wylie’s apt description . Richard A. Watson has provoked, evoked, and invoked new directions in Cartesian scholarship—both methodologically and substantively. Watson’s Downfall of Cartesianism and its sequel, The Breakdown of Metaphysics , have become required reading for students of early modern philosophy and are largely responsible for the revival of many “minor” Cartesians, while serving as sourcebook for methodological attention to history and rational (...) reconstruction. Cartesian Views is an important collection that hearkens a forty-year retrospective of Cartesian studies while simultaneously turning our sights to what lies in the future.Although an eclectic collection, each paper in the volume reflects some counterpoint to, advancement of, or commentary upon some aspect, claim, argument, or theme found in Watson’s philosophical works. The opening paper by Nadler questions Watson’s view that dualism and the problem of mind-body interaction was the central issue that stimulated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cartesian Skepticism from Bare PossibilityRobert WachbritIn making his case for skepticism, Peter Unger offers the following exotic case as one which “conforms to a familiar, if not often explicitly artic-ulated pattern or form” of skeptical reasoning: 1 imagine that there is an evil scientist who deceives subjects into falsely believing that there are rocks. Living in a world bereft of rocks, he induces belief in their existence using (...) electrodes implanted into the appropriate parts of the subjects’ brai ns, protoplasm, or systems through which he sends patterns of electrical impulses in accord with his deceptive designs. Unger then offers the following argument, which is supposed to instantiate the pattern or form of this kind of skeptical reasoning:If you know that there are rocks, then you can know that there is no such scientist doing this to you. But no one can ever know that there is no evil scientist who is, by means of electrodes, deceiving him into falsely believing there to be rocks. So... you never know that there are rocks. But of course we have chosen our person, and the matter of there being rocks, quite arbitrarily, and this argument... may be generalized to cover any external matter at all. From this, we may conclude... that nobody knows anything about the external world. 2After presenting this case and articulating its form, Unger claims that “this argument is the same in form as the ‘evil demon’ argument in Descartes’s [End Page 109] Meditations; it is but a more modern, scientific counter-part, with its domain of application confined to matters concerning the external world.” He then proceeds to describe Descartes’s argument as “the most compelling sceptical argument the phil osophical literature has to offer,” calling it in fact “the classical argument for scepticism.” 3These claims may seem a little bit surprising; for it is not obvious, even from the most careful attention to the text, that what is written about the evil demon in the First Meditation constitutes a skeptical argument at all, and the scholarly literature is generally, and perhaps surprisingly, quite confusing about just what is going on at the end of the First Meditation. Further, rather than being exceedingly compelling as Unger thinks, arguments of this form are not only assiduously avoided by Descarte s during his descent into skepticism but are in fact, as I shall argue with some help from Descartes, weak and considerably less compelling than the kind of skeptical challenges Descartes actually offers.My purpose in this paper, then, is to make two related points, one historical and the other philosophical. First, I will try to demonstrate, on the basis of both textual and critical evidence, that Descartes was not offering a (further and final) skeptica l argument when he invented his demon. I will try to exhibit some of the confusions in the scholarly literature about the text of the last three paragraphs of the First Meditation and, by so doing, support Gouhier’s position that the idea of the demon “ha s no metaphysical significance; it is purely a methodological artifice which permits doubt to continue....” 4 Second, I will show that embodied in Descartes’s rejection of this kind of skeptical reasoning is the very reason for its weakness, a weakness that should prevent it from being considered, as Unger considers it, the classical form of skeptical argument. The inventions of the First Meditation still exercise considerable hold on our philosophical imaginations. I hope to show that, at least as far as the demon is concerned, Descartes would have been surprised at some of the most conventional and entrenched scholarly interpretations given his use of it and not at all sympathetic to its employment in a skeptical argument. Lest the demon seem an old and tired subject of philosophical scrutiny, let me beg the reader’s indulgence by promising both a deeper than usual look into the text of the end of the First Meditation and some significant conclusions about Cartesian skepticism that are hardly commonplace and thus neither old nor tired. [End Page 110]I. The Textual EvidenceThe demon makes its first appearance in the last paragraph of the... (shrink)

That there is an epistemological difference between the mental and the physical is well- known. Introspection readily generates knowledge of one’s own conscious experience, but fails to yield evidence for the existence of anything physical. Conversely, empirical investigation delivers knowledge of physical properties, but neither finds nor requires us to posit conscious experience. In recent decades, a series of neo-Cartesian arguments have emerged that rest on this epistemological difference and purport to demonstrate that mind-brain identity is false and that (...) consciousness is not even realized by or supervenient on physical properties. Where Descartes argued he could clearly and distinctly conceive mind and body as existing separately, contemporary anti-physicalists hold that the conceivability of worlds in which actual world correlations between physical and phenomenological properties fail shows that these correlations are contingent rather than logically or metaphysically necessary. Together with Descartes, they conclude from conceivability that identity, as well as strong supervenience, is false. 1 If the argument of this paper is correct, however, then there is an argument for dualism that arises from the epistemological distinction, is grounded in the Meditations, and is yet distinct from the " 1 " conceivability arguments pursued both by Descartes and contemporary anti-physicalists. Furthermore, the argument is immune to the standard objections to conceivability arguments: its conclusion follows even if there are a posteriori identities between physical and phenomenal properties. (shrink)

Cartesian Views is a fitting tribute to a man of many parts, to use Alison Wylie’s apt description . Richard A. Watson has provoked, evoked, and invoked new directions in Cartesian scholarship—both methodologically and substantively. Watson’s Downfall of Cartesianism and its sequel, The Breakdown of Metaphysics , have become required reading for students of early modern philosophy and are largely responsible for the revival of many “minor” Cartesians, while serving as sourcebook for methodological attention to history and rational (...) reconstruction. Cartesian Views is an important collection that hearkens a forty-year retrospective of Cartesian studies while simultaneously turning our sights to what lies in the future.Although an eclectic collection, each paper in the volume reflects some counterpoint to, advancement of, or commentary upon some aspect, claim, argument, or theme found in Watson’s philosophical works. The opening paper by Nadler questions Watson’s view that dualism and the problem of mind-body interaction was the central issue that stimulated. (shrink)

Kenny, A. Descartes on the will.--McRae, R. Innate ideas.--McRae, R. Descartes' definition of thought.--Gombay, A. Cogito ergo sum: inference or argument?--Ashworth, E. J. Descartes' theory of clear and distinct ideas.--Alexander, R. E. The problem of metaphysical doubt and its removal.--Tweyman, S. The reliability of reason.--Percival, W. K. On the non-existence of Cartesian linguistics.

The determination argument is supposed to show that a sentence's meaning is at least a truth-condition. This argument is supposed to rest on innocent premises that even a deflationist about truth can accept. The argument comes in two versions: one is metaphysical and the other is epistemological. In this paper we will focus on the epistemological version. We will argue that the apparently innocent first premise of that version of the argument is not as innocent as it seems. If (...) the premise is understood in the sense required for the argument to go through then it should be rejected by a deflationist. (shrink)

The determination argument is supposed to show that a sentence's meaning is at least a truth‐condition. This argument is supposed to rest on innocent premises that even a deflationist about truth can accept. The argument comes in two versions: one is metaphysical and the other is epistemological. In this paper we will focus on the epistemological version. We will argue that the apparently innocent first premise of that version of the argument is not as innocent as it seems. If (...) the premise is understood in the sense required for the argument to go through then it should be rejected by a deflationist. (shrink)

In the early modern period one can find unity of consciousness arguments in the writings of Rene Descartes and G. W. Leibniz, and in the recent literature they have been defended by David Barnett, William Hasker, and Richard Swinburne (among others). Descartes's unity of consciousness argument for dualism is to be found in the sixth of his Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes claims that his unity of consciousness argument was itself sufficient to establish substance dualism. Swinburne's central line of argument (...) involves deploying a number of puzzle cases. He argues that our intuitions about these cases can be accommodated only by adopting a “further fact” view of the self, according to which the continued existence of a person over time consists in the continued existence of a mental substance, and “it is metaphysically possible that the substance acquires a totally new body, totally new apparent memories, and character”. (shrink)

Any study of the 'Scientific Revolution' and particularly Descartes' role in the debates surrounding the conception of nature (atoms and the void v. plenum theory, the role of mathematics and experiment in natural knowledge, the status and derivation of the laws of nature, the eternality and necessity of eternal truths, etc.) should be placed in the philosophical, scientific, theological, and sociological context of its time. Seventeenth-century debates concerning the nature of the eternal truths such as '2 + 2 = 4' (...) or the law of inertia turn on the question of whether these truths were created along with nature, or were uncreated and subsisting in God's mind. One's answer to that question has direct consequences for conceptions of the necessity/contingency of mathematical and natural knowledge, how knowledge of such truths is accomplished by humans, and what grounds these truths. In this paper, I review the positions of four successors to Descartes' philosophy on the question of the eternal truths to illustrate how in specific ways that question with its theological, metaphysical, modal, and epistemological dimensions concerned the objectivity and certainty of the discoveries of the new science. Author Recommends: Clarke, Desmond. Descartes' Philosophy of Science . University Park, Penn State Press, 1982. This work provides an account of Descartes as a practicing scientist whose rationalism is mitigated by reliance on experiment and experience. Author re-examines Descartes' philosophical and scientific works in this new light. Dear, Peter. Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500–1700 . Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001. This work provides a useful overview of the issues and thinkers of the Scientific Revolution. Of particular relevance is chapter 8 on Cartesian and Newtonian science. Funkenstein, Amos. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century . Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986. This work is an advanced study of the theological and metaphysical foundations of early modern science. Discussions include questions of God's nature, God's knowledge in relation to human knowledge, providence, the laws of nature, and the truths of mathematics. In particular, chapter 3 discusses Descartes' account of the eternal truths and divine omnipotence. Garber, Daniel. Descartes' Metaphysical Physics . Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992. This work examines how Descartes' metaphysical doctrines of God, soul, and body set the groundwork for his physics. It includes a study of God and the grounds for the laws of physics (chapter 9). Henry, John. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . 3rd ed. New York, Palgrave, Macmillan Press, 2008. This work provides a brief, general, and informative overview of the Scientific Revolution, including the themes of method, magic, religion, and culture. Osler, Margaret J. Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. This work is an examination and comparison of the mechanical philosophies of Gassendi and Descartes. It offers in-depth discussion of the issue of voluntarism and intellectualism in the period and how that related to conceptions of laws of nature and the eternal truths. Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution . Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996. This work provides a critical synthesis of as well as a guide to recent scholarship in the history of science for a general readership. Online Materials Dr. Robert A. Hatch's Scientific Revolution Website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/ A compendium of resources for the study of Scientific Revolution. Early English Books Online: http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473 to 1700. Early Modern Resources: http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emr/ Early Modern Resources is a gateway for all those interested in finding electronic resources relating to the early modern period in history. Gallica, the Digital Library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ An ever-growing digital library which includes numerous primary and secondary texts of relevance to Descartes and his role in Scientific Revolution. Hatfield, Gary, 'René Descartes', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2009 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/descartes/ Slowik, Edward, 'Descartes' Physics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2008 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/descartes-physics/ Syllabus Sample Syllabus: Cartesian Science The following is five weeks covering Cartesian Science in a course on Descartes or the Scientific Revolution, or 17th-century theories of matter, or related themes on early modern truth and method, especially on the continent. This material is best suited to a graduate level audience, but it could be modified to suit an upper-division undergraduate course, as the readings are basically primary texts whose context and background can be explained in lectures. Week 1: Cartesian Revolution in France • Scientific method • Role of mathematics and experiment • Certainty of scientific knowledge Readings: Hatfield, Gary, 'René Descartes', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2009 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/descartes/ Descartes, Discourse on Method , Parts 1–3 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy , First Meditation. Week 2: Descartes' Scientific Treatises • Mechanization and mathematization of nature • Primary–secondary quality distinction Readings: Discourse on Method, Parts 4–6 Selections from Descartes' Scientific Essays: The World or Treatise on Light (ATXI 3–48); Treatise on Man (ATXI 119–202); Optics (ATVI 82–147). Slowik, Edward, 'Descartes' Physics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2008 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/descartes-physics/ Henry, John, 'The Mechanical Philosophy,' chapter 5. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . 3rd ed. Macmillan, 2008. Week 3: Descartes' Theory of Nature • Descartes' derivation of the law of conservation and the three laws of motion • God's role in the metaphysics and physics of nature Readings: Selections from Principles of Philosophy, Preface (all); Letter to Elizabeth; Part I: 1–8; Part II: 1–45, 55, 64; Part III: 1–4, 15–19, 45–47; Part IV: 187–207. John Henry, 'Religion and Science,' chapter 6. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . 3rd ed. Macmillan, 2008. Week 4: Post-1650 Cartesian Science: Necessity and Contingency in Nature • Debates on God, Creation, and Causes Readings: Easton, Patricia, 'What is at Stake in the Cartesian Debates on the Eternal Truths?' Philosophy Compass 4.2 (2009): 348–62. Malebranche, Nicolas, 'Elucidation 10', from The Search after Truth (1674). Note: All selections available in Nicolas Malebranche (1992). Philosophical Selections , edited by S. Nadler, Hackett. Gottfried Leibniz (1714) Monadology . Week 5: Causes in Nature and Morals • Theodicy as an explanation of defect and evil in a lawful universe: Malebranche v. Leibniz Readings: Nicolas Malebranche, Elucidation XVI (on occasionalism), and Treatise on Nature and Grace, Discourse One, Part 1. Gottfried Leibniz (1706), Theodicy. Focus Questions Weekly questions can be used to focus the readings. This can be done in a web or e-mail discussion thread, as a weekly assignment, or for in class discussion. I require students to post a short paragraph in response to the question or some posting by a classmate on the question. Students are required to post by 10 a.m. the day before we meet for class on a course website. Week 1: According to Descartes, what role does skepticism play in scientific reasoning? Week 2: Comment on the following: 'But I am supposing this machine to be made by the hands of God, and so I think you may reasonably think it capable of a greater variety of movements than I could possibly imagine in it, and of exhibiting more artistry than I could possibly ascribe to it' [ Treatise on Man ; ATXI 120]. Week 3: What is Descartes' conception of the relation between the metaphysics and physics of nature? Week 4: Critically discuss the positions of Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz on what provides the foundation for the certitude of natural knowledge? Week 5: Explain why both Malebranche and Leibniz consider moral sin to be analogous to natural defect? Seminar/Project Idea Hold a debate on the question of the status of the eternal truths. The proposition will be Descartes' position: 'Eternal truths must be both created and necessary if certainty in science is to be possible'. Format: 1. At the beginning of the 5-week module, students will be assigned to one of three roles: Team A, Team B, and judge's panel. Students will be given the debate proposition, but will not be told which team will take the affirmative and which team the negative until the time of the debate. 2. Recommend a variation on the Classic Debate Format to encourage the development of argument: sequence begins with affirmative construction (8 minutes), negative construction (8 minutes), second affirmative construction (8 minutes), second negative construction (8 minutes), first negative rebuttal (4 minutes), first affirmative rebuttal (4 minutes), final negative rebuttal (4 minutes) and final affirmative rebuttal (4 minutes). 3. Judges Panel: will consist of 3–4 judges who will assess the performance of Teams A and B. Judgment should be based on the persuasiveness of the team position. 4. Debate will be held at the end of the fifth week, or semester, whichever makes most sense given the course length and structure. Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the immensely helpful comments and suggestions by the participants in her graduate seminar on the Scientific Revolution: Benjamin Chicka, Sarah Jacques-Ross, Richard Ross, Marcella Stockstill, and Zohra Wolters. (shrink)

Although Descartes’ natural philosophy marked an important advance in the development of modern science, many of his specific concepts of science have been largely discarded, and consequently neglected, since their introduction in the seventeenth century. Many critics over the years, such as Newton (in his early paper De gravitatione), have presented a series of apparently devastating arguments against Descartes' theory of space and motion; a generally negative historical verdict which, moreover, most contemporary scholars accept. Nevertheless, it is also true that (...) most historians and philosophers of science have not sufficiently investigated the viability and effectiveness of the case against Cartesian space and motion. This book explores the success of the arguments against Descartes’ theory of space and motion by determining if it is possible to formulate a Cartesian theory of science that can avoid the problems raised by Newton, as well as by a host of other past and contemporary philosophers either sympathetic or hostile to the overall design of Cartesian science. In particular, if Descartes' theory of motion can be reconciled with his hypotheses on dynamics, then a Cartesian can successfully resolve the difficulties imposed by his critics. This book comprises, therefore, a sustained attempt to construct a consistent “Cartesian” spacetime theory: i.e., a theory of space and time that incorporates Descartes’ various theories of physics and nature without falling into the kinds of problems and contradictions as charged by, for example, Newton. (shrink)

Descartes’ Meditations raised a serious question about whether he committed a logical fallacy while proving God’s existence and veracity. The crux of the allegation is him saying the truth of the clear and distinct perceptions depend on God’s veracity while its validity rests on some clear and distinct perceptions such as Cogito. At first glance Meditations justify this charge if not been attentively read. Disposal of the Cartesian circle claim depends on showing at least some clear and distinct perceptions (...) are spared from evil demon hypothesis. In this article I will argue that Cogito argument, truth rule and principles of reason specifically causality don’t need divine guarantee to grant their truth. Hence, I will defend that his arguments on proving God’s existence and veracity are circularity-proof. But still metaphysic foundations of Descartes’ epistemology rely substantially on God because without his veracity we are doomed to accept a fatal solipsism and never attain a solid ground for science, especially for physics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 275-276 [Access article in PDF] Zbigniew Janowski. Cartesian Theodicy: Descartes' Quest for Certitude. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002. Pp. 181. Cloth, $30.00. Janowski begins this original and erudite work by saying that although "the Meditations have never [before] been interpreted as a theodicy... insofar as theodicy is concerned with examining the relationship between the existence of evil on the one hand and (...) God's omnipotence and benevolence on the other, Descartes's question 'How would the goodness of God not preclude the possibility that nature is deceptive?' is in perfect conformity with, and continues the long tradition of, Christian apologetics" (13). This is not to deny Descartes's primary role in replacing God's causal role in nature with mechanistic science, and his separating religious truth from that of reason. But Descartes also is profoundly concerned with problems of error, evil, God's role in our sins, and Absolute Truth. Janowski is concerned "to show how Descartes' philosophy is derived from the early-seventeenth-century debates over divine and human freedom" by concentrating on the "incongruity between the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent Creator and man's imperfect nature [and] the nature and scope of human freedom" (19). He presents "the problem of error... as the problem of evil; the problem of human will... as the problem of human freedom, and the quest for Certitude... as theodicy, that is, as the vindication of God's goodness and omnipotence" (19-20). His ground for this is his interpretation of Cartesianism as "a kind of epistemological Augustinianism" (20).The view of basic Christian theology is that God is omnipotent and benevolent, and that all his creations are good, so evil is merely the absence of good. According to Descartes, free will makes both error and evil possible. But Augustine says that after the Fall of Man, free will is corrupt and can incline only to evil. So the only good man can do is by way of God's grace, which man cannot resist, for man is not really free to choose between good and evil. But here, Descartes is in disagreement with Augustine. Again, theodicy concerns the problem of the apparent discrepancy between the power of the creator and the imperfections of creation. And the problem is that Descartes's God is an all-powerful being that is absolutely unlimited and creates everything including logical, moral, and legal principles. Descartes's God is not constrained by the principles of non-contradiction (as opposed to St. Thomas's God, who is so constrained). Descartes's argument is that only God is immutable, nothing created is immutable, so no principle created by God, not the Ten Commandments, not the principle of non-contradiction, is immutable.This doctrine of indifferently created eternal truths allies Descartes with the Molinists who argue that God is indifferent in the sense of all powerful, and that humans have a freedom of indifference in that even given grace, they can decide to do either good or evil. This is in opposition to Augustinians and Jansenists who believe that human will corrupted by the Fall of Man can choose only evil until God gives one grace, after which one can choose only good—which, in either case, rules out any notion of freedom of choice between good and evil by an indifferent free will. Descartes believes that we can choose evil even when God gives us grace to choose good. Descartes does follow Augustine in asserting that for God, knowing and willing are the same, in opposition to St. Thomas. But for humans, knowing and willing are separate, and so humans can both err and sin.Descartes's theodicy is that everything depends on God—physics, mathematics, morals, and law. Without God there would be only nihilism. A great difficulty with this doctrine of eternal truths, however, is that it "makes the nature of God completely incomprehensible to man" (102). This is the doctrine of the Hidden God. But in a backhanded way, it saves Descartes's position. He argues that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Barrow and Newton E. W. STRONG As E. A. Buxrr HAS ADDUCED,Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) in his philosophy of space, time, and mathematical method strongly influenced the thinking of Newton: The recent publication of an early paper written by Newton (his De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum)2 affords evidence not known to Burtt of Newton's indebtedness in philosophy to Barrow, his teacher. Prior to its publication in 1962, this paper was (...) utilized by Alexandre Koyrd in his essay, "Newton and Descartes," 3 a study based on the third Horblit Lecture in the History of Science which he gave at Harvard University, March 8, 1961. Koyr8 maintains that there is a radical opposition in Newton's Principia not only to Descartes' purely scientific theories but also to the Cartesian philosophy. Yet, as he remarks, "we do not find in the Principia an open criticism of the philosophy of Descartes.... " He attributes this fact principally "to the very structure of the Principia: it is essentially a book on rational mechanics, which provides principles for physics and astronomy. In such a book there is a normal place for the discussion of Cartesian optics, but not of the conception of the relations of mind and body, and other such things." Koyrd asserts, nonetheless, that the criticism is not absent. It lurks in Newton's carefully worded definitions of fundamental concepts--those of space, time, motion, and matter--and becomes more apparent in the Optice of 1706 and in the second odition of the Principia. In support of this argument, he makes much of young Newton's unfini.~hed paper. He holds that this essay is of exceptional value "as it enables us to get some insight into the formation of Newton's thought, and to recognize that preoccupation with philosophic problems was not an external additatmentum but an integral dement of his thinking." 4 As concerns "young Newton's conception of space in its being and in its relation to God and time," Koyrd remarks that we learn from this essay The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (New York, 1927), p. 144. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1962), Introduction, pp. 75-88; Latin text, pp. 90-121; English translation, pp. 121156. " Newtonian Studies (Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 53-114. " Newtonian Studies, pp. 82-83. In his De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum, Newton is indeed engrossed with philosophic problems. With regard, however, to the announced purpose of his paper, namely, "to treat of the science of gravity and solid bodies in fluids by two methods," does Newton represent kis metaphysical "explanation of the nature of body" as an element of his science essential to its completeness7 He does not do so. At the end of his explanation he remarks: "I have already digressed enough; let us return to the main theme." He proceeds to set forth fifteen more definitions and then turns to the demonstration of two "Propositions on Non-Elastic Fluids." [155] 156 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY "that space is necessary, eternal, immutz~ble, and unmovable, that though we can imagine that there is nothing in space we cannot think space is not.., and that if there is no space, God would be nowhere. We learn also that all points of space are simultaneous and that, therefore, the divine omnipresence does not introduce composition in God.... " What we here learn from Newton about space in confutation of Descartes is to be found in Barrow's tenth mathematical lecture, "'Of Space, and Impenetrability." 5 In this lecture, Barrow opposes both Descartes and Hobbes. He objects, as does Newton, to the position taken by Descartes in his Principia Philosophiae, namely, "it is necessary.forMatter to be infinitely extended." He proceeds, as does Newton, to show how "very much Cartesius's great Subtility has failed him in this Case" to conclude that there is space empty of matter and distinct from magnitude from which an infinity of matter cannot be deduced. The correspondence of arguments tendered by Barrow and Newton indicates that the tenth lecture constituted a source from which Newton gleaned principal objections to Descartes' Principia Philosophiae. Although Koyr~ makes reference to Burtt's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’s Theory of MindEnrique Chávez-ArvizoDesmond M. Clarke. Descartes’s Theory of Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 267. Cloth, $49.95.Desmond Clarke, commentator on Cartesian natural philosophy, has now published an interpretation of Descartes's dualism, a theme which can hardly be said to be underrepresented in the literature. The monograph is divided into nine chapters concerned with explanation, sensation, imagination and memory, the passions, the will, language, (...) thought, substance, and property dualism—yes, property dualism.The book pushes forward a reading of Descartes's theory of mind, made from a perspective which Clarke has adopted over the last three decades or so, that maintains that Descartes was primarily (and willingly) a scientist and incidentally (and reluctantly) a philosopher. From this viewpoint, according to Clarke, natural philosophy provides the paradigm for genuine explanation in Descartes's metaphysics. Furthermore, given that Descartes rejects Scholastic substantial forms and real qualities as explanatorily infertile and since substances are equally unfruitful, substances play no explanatory role in his system of philosophy. Substance dualism is not at the center of Descartes's philosophy of mind; his account of explanation is. This makes Descartes not a substance dualist; but a property dualist. So argues, in very broad strokes, Clarke. [End Page 116]Unlike us, Descartes did not draw a sharp distinction between philosophy and science. For him, these two realms of enquiry were part of a unified realm of knowledge, what he deemed scientia or philosophy in the wider sense. Hence his use of the instructive metaphor of philosophy as a tree, whose roots are metaphysics, the trunk physics, and the branches the other sciences which he reduces to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics, and morals (Letter Preface to Picot, French translation of the Principles of Philosophy, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery [Paris: Vrin, 1989], 14). However, Descartes did distinguish the roots from the trunk, that is, metaphysics (or "first philosophy") from physics (or "natural philosophy"). Commentators on Descartes's system of philosophy ignore his natural philosophy at their peril, for it does shed considerable light on his metaphysics. But, likewise, Descartes's philosophy greatly illuminates his science. It is for this reason that I want to cast doubt on Clarke's apparent scientific imperialism in which Descartes's methodological, epistemological, and metaphysical concerns are forced to play second fiddle to his scientific views. We cannot neatly fit Descartes's metaphysical views into Clarke's scientific mold, nor can we force them in, without incurring serious error. I do not think that one has to choose between one and the other as being primary, between the tree of knowledge and the inverted tree of knowledge. We need to keep in mind that in Descartes's system of philosophy, both science and philosophy are interconnected and that both parts elucidate each other.Clarke's attempt to eliminate substance from Descartes's account of mind is problematic. True, the term 'substance' is an extremely ambiguous one and Descartes's comments about it are often blurred and puzzling. On the one hand, one must concede that the concept of substance plays a small role in Descartes's natural philosophy, in which although the material universe is depicted in terms of extended substance or res extensa, physics is ultimately unwrapped by way of laws describing the behavior of particles in virtue of their size, shape, and motion. But, in contrast, substance plays a far more prominent role in his metaphysics, not to mention in his theology. This leads to a related point. Clarke overlooks the importance of theology for Descartes's philosophical project and the role of God in Cartesian natural philosophy.The level of argument drops considerably in the final chapter, where Clarke offers an uncritical and not very clear survey of naming and necessity, the identity theory, anomalous monism, and property dualism. This chapter seems in tension with his disapproval of anachronistic readings of Descartes (8-9) and contains some serious slips. Clarke's answer to his own question "Was Descartes, then, a substance dualist" is a mind boggling "Yes and no" (258), and his claim that Descartes was a property dualist, collapses under... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and GalileoBlake D. Duttonin his classic biography of Descartes, Charles Adam passes this judgment on the influence of Galileo’s condemnation on the development of Cartesian metaphysics:Sans la condemnation de Galilée, nous aurions eu tout de même la métaphysique de Descartes. Mais nous ne l’aurions problement pas eue sous la forme volumineuse qu’elle a prise avec toutes ces Objections et Reponses, qui font plus (...) que quintupler les Méditations primitives.1(AT XII, 306)While not charging Descartes with dissimulation, Adam argues that the metaphysics was developed to deflect attention from the heart of the Cartesian system—its mechanistic physics—which posed a direct challenge to the reigning Aristotelianism. In his words, it served primarily as a “tent... to cover the merchandise (le pavilion... couvrir la marchandise)”(AT XII, 306).2Adam is certainly not alone in pointing to the Galileo affair as grounds for raising suspicions about the role of the metaphysics in Descartes’ larger work. In a recent biography, itself destined to become a classic, Stephen Gaukroger takes a similar line, arguing that it was Galileo’s failure to convince his opponents through arguments drawn from natural philosophy that prompted Descartes to seek acceptance of his own natural philosophy though metaphysical legitimation. Had Galileo not been silenced there would have been no impetus for Descartes to have developed a metaphysical argument; natural-philosophical [End Page 49] arguments would have sufficed.3 Thus, in the words of Gaukroger, Descartes’ project of metaphysical legitimation was “a task which he never even contemplated before the condemnation of Galileo in 1633, and... was a direct response to that condemnation.”4 If we are to believe Adam and Gaukroger, then, Descartes was first and foremost a natural philosopher whose extended venture into metaphysics was primarily a strategic response to the events of 1633.Despite the many merits of this line of interpretation, I believe it is trouble-some insofar as it isolates Descartes’ reaction to the condemnation from both his criticisms of Galileo’s science and his views on the relation between science and theology. In doing so, it overstates the degree to which Cartesian science can itself be isolated from Cartesian metaphysics. In what follows, then, I will contextualize Descartes’ reaction to the Galileo affair by examining his comments on Galileo’s scientific work and the relation of his own views on science and theology to those of Galileo. Two results will emerge. First, we will see that if we fail to take Descartes’ search for metaphysical foundations as having a genuinely scientific motivation, not only will we render his criticisms of Galileo’s science unintelligible, but we will fail to understand the distinctive nature of his science vis-à-vis Galileo’s. This will become clear as we examine the work of each on motion and the fall of bodies. Second, we will see that it is only by taking Descartes’ metaphysical commitments as integral to his science that we can make sense of the divergent ways in which he and Galileo resolved the question of the relation of science to theology. Both, it is clear, sought to guarantee the autonomy of science, yet each did so in a way which mirrored his unique conception of science and its relation to metaphysics. All of this, I conclude, deflates the utility of appealing to Descartes’ concern over the Galileo affair as a means of assigning a primarily strategic or extra-scientific role to his metaphysics. [End Page 50]1. descartes on galilean scienceAlthough they were contemporaries, there is no evidence that Descartes and Galileo ever met or corresponded. There is also no strong evidence that the work of either had any significant influence on the work of the other, despite the fact that Descartes reports having leafed through the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and having obtained a copy of the Two New Sciences.5 However, we do find several references to Galileo in Descartes’ correspondence from which a general attitude toward the Italian scientist becomes reasonably clear. While occasionally being complimentary, Descartes appears to have been largely unimpressed and even claims to have arrived at several... (shrink)

This study is the first work ever to interpret the Meditations as theodicy. I show that Descartes' attempt to define the role of God for man's cognitive fallibility in so far as God is the creator of man's nature, is a reiteration of an old Epicurean argument pointing out the incongruity between the existence of God and evil. The question of the nature and origin of error which Descartes addresses in the First Meditation is reformulated in the Fourth Meditation into (...) broader considerations about the nature and scope of human freedom. ;The point of gravity of my thesis is Descartes' conceptions of human freedom and divine liberty. Since the conception of human freedom is the reversal of the doctrine of divine liberty, I analyze the two conceptions as two sides of the same problem--the problem of man's relation to God, or the problem of the relation of finitude to Infinity. I show that Descartes' quest for Certitude--which runs parallel to his attempt to overcome the problem of an evil deity--can be reformulated into the problem of creation. I present the problem of error as the problem of evil, and the problem of human will I present as the problem of human freedom, and the search for Certitude I interpret as the vindication of God's goodness and omnipotence, that is, theodicy. ;There are several points which are essential for Cartesian metaphysics, and which, as I demonstrate, Descartes borrowed from St. Augustine: the doctrine of the eternal truths , the conception of human freedom, the theory of error and the explanation of the will's propensity towards error , and the account of human nature. It is my contention that as much as Descartes insisted on the timelessness of his philosophy, what he had to say on the relationship between God and man is a reflection of the 17th c. theological debates which were fought by the Augustinians and the Molinists and were expressed by Descartes in the language and categories created by St. Augustine. (shrink)

I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I also suggest a reason to (...) doubt that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility, and thus to doubt the underdetermination argument. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cartesian Truth by Thomas C. VinciTad M. SchmaltzThomas C. Vinci. Cartesian Truth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 270. Cloth, $45.00.The book jacket copy claims that Cartesian Truth merits “serious consideration by both contemporary analytic philosophers and postmodern thinkers.” Yet the work is written in a decidedly analytic idiom, and it is keyed primarily to recent analytic discussions of [End Page 531] (...) epistemological foundationalism. Moreover, what is most valuable is not its comments concerning the relevance of Descartes to these discussions, but rather its admirably clear rational reconstruction of Descartes’ own epistemology. In fact, this study usefully distinguishes two different but interrelated epistemological theories in Descartes. The first is connected to Descartes’ “project of pure inquiry” (to borrow Bernard Williams’ phrase), a project involving the attempt to derive truths a priori from the “rule of truth,” that is, the rule that whatever one clearly and distinctly perceives is true. The first three chapters of Vinci’s work consider this aprioristic project. The last four chapters focus on the project in Descartes of providing an epistemology of sense experience that allows for nonintellectual knowledge of the material world. Vinci makes some original and insightful claims about these projects and their interconnections.Vinci begins by defending a reading of the rule of truth which requires (roughly) that clearly and distinctly perceived properties exist in a substance either eminently or formally. One may doubt whether Vinci has succeeded in his stated goal of providing a “defense” of this rule (208), especially since he makes no attempt, as far as I can tell, to offer a transcendental argument for the substance/property metaphysic that the rule presupposes on his reading of it. However, this reading does reveal how that rule could provide a foundation for the causal principles that are essential to the argument for the existence of God in the Third Meditation. This discussion thus has the virtue of yielding a solution to the puzzle of why Descartes was so confident that these principles are revealed by the “light of nature.”At the end of chapter 3, Vinci notes a well-known difference between the proof of the existence of the material world in the Sixth Meditation, which appeals to our “natural inclination” to believe that sensations come from bodies, and the version of that proof in the second part of the Principles of Philosophy, which appeals rather to a clear and distinct perception of material properties that is “stimulated by sense.” What is new and interesting in Vinci, however, is an explanation of this difference that appeals to Descartes’ commitment in the latter text to the view that nonintellectual “concrete intuitions” warrant claims concerning the existence of material substance and its properties. Vinci proposes that Descartes came to accept such a view because he adopted a revised version of the rule of truth that dictates that the properties we concretely intuit formally exist in a substance.The second part of his study considers various issues connected to the notion of concrete intuition. There Vinci defends in particular the thesis that Descartes took such intuitions to pertain only to the imagination, and thus to differ in kind from sensations of secondary qualities such as color, temperature, and taste. At times he makes the stronger claim that Descartes “never speaks of sensations” of primary qualities such as “size, shape, and so on” (102). There is, however, a notable counterexample to such a claim in the Comments on a Certain Broadsheet, which lists as innate sensory ideas not only those of pains, colors and sounds but also those of shapes and motions. I found Vinci’s own discussion of this passage (148–51) to be uncharacteristically confused. Nonetheless, one could distinguish between the sensory perception of the extension of, say, a particular colored patch, on the one hand, and the imaginative perception of extension as a common sensible, on the other. One could then conclude, in line with Vinci’s own [End Page 532] position, that Descartes took only the latter sort of perception to count as a concrete intuition, and thus to fall under the revised version of the rule of truth.I have mentioned only... (shrink)

Context: Metaphysics of perception explores fundamental questions regarding the structure and status of the perceived world or appearance(s. By virtue of perception, the apparent world comes to existence. This, however, does not mean that the apparent world is a projection of mind, that it exists “in the head.” Implications: PL-metaphysics reconciles realism with constructivism. As such, it might be considered either an alternative to constructivism or an improvement and completion of this position. Constructivist content: The article refers to (...) non-Cartesian movements in contemporary philosophy, including radical constructivism, enactive and embodied cognition. Keywords: Perception, metaphysics, radical constructivism, realism, appearance, Jerzy Perzanowski, Plato, Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, Ernst von Glasersfeld. (shrink)

The seventh chapter focuses on the aftermath of the decline of Cartesianism as a leading force in the Dutch academic context. After De Volder and De Raey, indeed, only Ruardus Andala in Franeker carried on the teaching of Cartesian physics (which he taught by commenting upon Descartes’s Principia) and metaphysics, mainly for the sake of contrasting Spinozism and other forms of radical Cartesianism. Thus, Descartes’s philosophy came a dead end on the eve of the eighteenth century. Yet, Leiden Cartesianism (...) and the Leiden experimental tradition (which could include, after De Volder and Senguerd, the activities of Herman Boerhaave), favoured the introduction of Newtonianism as the standard in teaching natural philosophy. This was carried out by ’s Gravesande, who used logic and metaphysics (including rational theology), that is, the chief foundational disciplines in the Cartesian tradition, to introduce students to and justify the assumptions (methodological and ontological) of a Newtonian approach in natural philosophy. This had two outcomes. On the one hand, his arguments in metaphysics (i.e. ontology) have the function of clarifying which objects natural philosophy can investigate. These are natural laws, whose ultimate source in substances or modes cannot be ascertained by intellect alone, as they depend on the power of God. On the other, given the fact that experience is our only means of grasping such laws (which are then mathematically handled) he provides a rational-theological justification of experiential evidence, as capable of providing us with a degree of certainty equal to mathematical evidence. As for the Cartesians, this is still the paradigm of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, with the introduction of Newtonianism foundational disciplines such as logic and metaphysics (including rational theology) served as a justification for and a reflection on a given scientific methodology. Thus, philosophy started to be actually detached from the natural sciences, and to assume a subservient role with respect to them, as once it was the ancilla theologiae. (shrink)

The author indicates some ways in which cartesian dualists can counter strawson's argument that no cartesian mind can be identified either by itself or by other such minds. Judging the identification argument inconclusive, The author formulates what he regards as a more effective argument against cartesian dualism. The argument is to the effect that cartesian dualism promises no satisfactory account of the unity of a mind. Noting that a cartesian mind is presumed to be the (...) subject of a multiplicity of simultaneous and successive experiences, The author thinks it legitimate to ask how the attribution of many experiences to the same subject is possible. He considers and rejects some answers that could be given in the framework of cartesian dualism. (shrink)

The excitement generated among philosophers by Chomsky's work arises not only from his contributions to the study of language but also from the ramifications of his work for general issues of epistemology and the philosophy of science. Chomsky has been attacking cherished dogmas of empiricism and its ally, behaviorism. He has suggested that Descartes—the favorite whipping boy of contemporary philosophers—and his theory of innate ideas provide a fruitful starting point for understanding and appreciating recent work in transformational linguistics. In (...) this brief historical essay, he sets forth what he takes to be the chief doctrines of Cartesian linguistics and traces their development through the nineteenth century. The essay is self-consciously written from a contemporary perspective and the topics selected for discussion are those which anticipate and are related to contemporary empirical linguistics. The importance of the creative aspect of language use, the distinction between deep and surface structure in language, the belief in a universal grammar are the key themes of this stimulating study in the history of ideas.—R. J. B. (shrink)

A traditional diagnosis of the error in the Cartesian skeptical arguments holds that they exploit our tendencies to take a representationalist view of perception. Thinking (perhaps not too clearly) that we perceive only our own sensory states, it seems to us that our perceptual beliefs about physical objects must be justified qua explanations of those sensory states. Such justification requires us to have reasons to reject rival explanations, such as the skeptical hypotheses, which we lack. However, those who adopt (...) the direct realist view of perception still find these arguments plausible, although, according to this diagnosis, they shouldn't. To avoid this objection, I argue that the Cartesian skeptical arguments exploit, not our representationalist tendencies, but our habits for evaluating causal explanatory justifications. (shrink)

Despite their apparent proximity, Spinoza and Descartes are crucially separated on the most important issues. This paper analyzes Spinoza's major anti-Cartesian positions under four headings: the nature of being; the universe and its laws; the human being; and the method and tasks of philosophy. Issues in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, the philosophical endeavor etc. are analyzed both in themselves and in their implications for the wider culture and the individual's sense of life. The analysis also brings out (as a (...) target of Spinoza's critique) some of the theology implicit in Descartes' doctrines of substance, the will, the mind, the natural light, and the ethical way. (shrink)