René Descartes (1596-1650) is well-known for his introspective turn away from sensible bodies and toward non-sensory ideas of mind, body, and God. Such a turn is appropriate, Descartes supposes, but only once in the course of life, and only to arrive at a more accurate picture of reality that we then incorporate in everyday embodied life. In this clear and engaging book David Cunning introduces and examines the full range of Descartes' philosophy. A central focus of the book is Descartes' (...) view that embodied human beings become more perfect to the degree that they move in the direction of finite approximations of independence, activity, immutability, and increased knowledge. Beginning with an introduction and a chapter on Descartes' life and works, Cunning also addresses the following key topics: Descartes on the wonders of the material universe skepticism as epistemic garbage, and the easy dissolution of hyperbolic doubt Descartes' three arguments for the existence of God the ontology of possibility and necessity freedom and embodiment arguments for the immateriality of mind sensible bodies and the pragmatic certainty by which to navigate them Descartes' stoic view on how best to live. Descartes is an outstanding introduction to one of the greatest of Western philosophers. Including a chronology, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary of key terms, it is essential reading for anyone studying Descartes and the history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, a fresh shear-displacement model is developed for the plastic deformation of the bulk metallic glasses. The multiscale behavior in the shear banding process and the dynamics transition with the parameters are investigated in analytical form. We present a theoretical support for the transition from unstable states to stable states in the experiment by multiscale analysis and the stability analysis. With the small parameter increasing from negative to positive, the stability of the shear slipping displacement system changes, and (...) there is a limit cycle at the transition stage. Meanwhile, the phase diagram and the power spectrum also suggest that there is dynamics transition with the parameter changing. Moreover, the complexity is analyzed for different disturbance parameters, and it is coincident with the fact that the solution is more irregular for larger disturbance. In addition, we find that the amplitude of solution decreases with the temperature decreasing, which is consistent with the experimental results that the amplitude of the serration is smaller and smaller as the temperature decreases. (shrink)

A generalization of a Burridge-Knopoff spring-block model is investigated to illustrate the dynamics of transform faults. The model can undergo Hopf bifurcation and fold bifurcation of limit cycles. Considering the cyclical nature of the spring stiffness, the model with periodic perturbation is further explored via a continuation technique and numerical bifurcation analysis. It is shown that the periodic perturbation induces abundant dynamics, the existence, the switch, and the coexistence of multiple attractors including periodic solutions with various periods, quasiperiodic solutions, chaotic (...) solutions through torus destruction, or cascade of period doublings. Throughout the results obtained, one can see that the system manifests complex dynamical behaviors such as chaos, self-organized criticality, and the transition of dynamical behaviors when it comes to periodic perturbations. Even very small variation of a parameter can result in radical changes of the dynamics, which provides a new insight into the fault dynamics. (shrink)

This paper considers the consensus control problem of nonlinear spatial-temporal hyperbolic partial difference multiagent systems and parabolic partial difference multiagent systems with time delay. Based on the system’s own fixed topology and the method of generating the desired trajectory by introducing virtual leader, using the consensus tracking error between the agent and the virtual leader agent and neighbor agents in the last iteration, an iterative learning algorithm is proposed. The sufficient condition for the system consensus error to converge along the (...) iterative axis is given. When the iterative learning number k approaches infinity, the consensus error in the sense of the L 2 norm between all agents in the system will converge to zero. Furthermore, simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. (shrink)

Margaret Cavendish was a philosopher, poet, scientist, novelist, and playwright of the seventeenth century. Her work is important for a number of reasons. It presents an early and compelling version of the naturalism that is found in current-day philosophy; it offers important insights that bear on recent discussions of the nature and characteristics of intelligence and the question of whether or not the bodies that surround us are intelligent or have an intelligent cause; it anticipates some of the central views (...) and arguments that are more commonly associated with figures like Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. This is the first full account of Cavendish’s philosophy and covers the whole span of her work. David Cunning begins with an overview of Cavendish’s life and work before assessing her contribution to a wide range of philosophical subjects, including her arguments concerning materialism, experimentation, the existence of God, social and political philosophy and free will and compatibilism. Setting Cavendish in both historical and philosophical context, he argues that like Spinoza she builds on central tenets of Descartes’ philosophy and develops them in a direction that Descartes himself would avoid. She defends a plenum metaphysics according to which all individuals are causally interdependent, and according to which the physical universe is a larger individual that constitutes all of reality. Cavendish is essential reading for students of seventeenth-century philosophy, early modern philosophy and seventeenth-century literature. (shrink)

The nature and existence of the external world -- Morality and value -- Material minds: a no-brainer? -- The meaning of life -- Uncaused eternal mind versus uncaused eternal matter -- Free will: mental energy that appears to poof into existence from scratch -- Agency, authority, and difference -- The individual and society.

This important volume will be of great interest to scholars of early modern philosophy.

Through metaphor, we gain distinctive perspectives on reality and communicate in new ways, especially when we use metaphor intentionally. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, causing sign...

This chapter examines the epistemologies of Margaret Cavendish, Mary Astell, and Mary Shepherd. Cavendish argues that minds come to have knowledge via two routes: sensory perception and reason. For Cavendish, these two faculties of knowledge differ not in kind but in degree: they work to produce ideas in the same way, but ideas that come from reason are less trustworthy than those from the senses. While Astell also acknowledges a distinction between sense perception and reason as faculties of cognition, she (...) claims that ideas that come from the senses cannot properly be called knowledge. In contrast, reason traffics in ideas that are wholly non-sensory and allow for a level of certainty that counts as knowledge in the strict sense. Shepherd locates a position that lies in between that of Cavendish and Astell. Like Astell, Shepherd argues that we have limited knowledge from sense perception, and we have absolutely certain knowledge of some things through a non-sensory faculty of reason – for example, that changes in a body cannot occur without a cause, and that things cannot be annihilated or come from nothing. However, for Shepherd, the scope of human knowledge is quite limited. (shrink)

: For Cudworth, God would be a drudge if He did each and every thing, and so the universe contains plastic natures. Malebranche argues that finite power is unintelligible and thus that God does do each and every thing. The supremacy of God is reflected in the range of His activity and also in the manner of His activity: He acts by general non-composite volitions. Malebranche (like Cudworth) is careful to adjust other aspects of his system to square with his (...) position on causality, but his view that we are free and accountable for what we do will not be revised. (shrink)

In a number a passages Descartes appears to insist that "I am, I exist" and its variants are wholly indubitable. These passages present an intractable problem of interpretation in the face of passages in which Descartes allows that any result is dubitable, "I am, I exist" included. Here I pull together a number of elements of Descartes' system to show how all of these passages hang together. If my analysis is correct, it tells us something about the perspective that Descartes (...) himself thinks we should take in reading the "Meditations". (shrink)

The Seventeenth-Century philosopher, scientist, poet, playwright, and novelist Margaret Cavendish took a creative and systematic stand on major questions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and political philosophy. This is the first volume to provide a cross-section of Cavendish's writings, views and arguments, along with introductory material. It excerpts the key portions of all her texts including annotated notes highlighting the interconnections between them. Including a general introduction by Cunning, the book will allow students to work toward a systematic picture (...) of Cavendish's metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy. (shrink)

(2008). Fifth meditation TINs revisited: A reply to criticisms of the epistemic interpretation. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 215-227.

In the _Fifth Meditation, Descartes introduces a being for which his system appears to leave no room. He clearly and distinctly perceives geometrical properties and concludes that, even though they may not actually exist, their _true and immutable natures exist nonetheless. Here I argue that the wedge that Descartes drives between an object and its true and immutable nature is only temporary and that, in the final analysis, a true and immutable nature of any X is just X itself. Given (...) the analytic method of the _Meditations, it is to be expected that the 'meditator' would not notice any of this in the _Fifth Meditation. He must wait until his epistemic position is more enhanced. (shrink)

Political cartoons make meaning by drawing on scenarios that must be immediately recognizable by their intended audience. Crucial meaning-making mechanisms in these scenarios are verbo-visual ensembles of metaphors and metonymies. In this paper we investigate 69 Chinese and 60 American political cartoons published in 2018 and 2019 that pertain to the two nations’ trade conflict. By examining the cross-cultural similarities and differences between metaphors and metonymies, we chart how Chinese and American cartoonists portray this trade conflict. We end by showing (...) how a complete interpretation of the cartoons requires enrichment with insights provided by yet other analytical instruments. (shrink)

In VI.ii.3 of The Search After Truth Malebranche offers an argument for the view that only God is a cause. Here I defend an interpretation of the argument according to which Malebranche is supposing (quite rightly) that if there is a necessary connection between a cause and its effect, then if creatures were real causes, God's volitions would not be sufficient to bring about their intended effects. I then consider the argument from constant creation that Malebranche offers in Dialogues on (...) Metaphysics and on Religion. If Malebranche holds that God is literally creating things in their entirety at each and every moment, it is difficult to understand how his system could make room for finite substances, and it is difficult to understand how he can allow that finite minds are to be held accountable for what they do. Here I defend a weakened version of the doctrine of constant creation according to which God is constantly creating the modifications of things but is not constantly creating things in their entirety. (shrink)

Descartes holds that God's will is immutable. It cannot be changed by God and, because He is supremely independent, it cannot be changed by anything else. Descartes' God acts by a single immutable will for all eternity, and there is no sense in which it is possible for Him to will or to have willed anything other than what He in fact wills. Passages in which Descartes might appear to be suggesting a different view are simply manifestations of his analytic (...) method. (shrink)

In his June 1643 letter to Princess Elizabeth, Descartes makes a claim that is a bit surprising given the hyper-intellectualism of the Meditations and other texts. He says that philosophy is something that we should do only rarely. Here I show how Descartes’ recommendation falls out of other components of his system—in particular his stoicism and his views on embodiment. A consequence of my reading is that to an important degree the reasoning of the Fourth Meditation is the imprecise reasoning (...) of a not-yet-Cartesian meditator. (shrink)

In his June 1643 letter to Princess Elizabeth, Descartes makes a claim that is a bit surprising given the hyper-intellectualism of the Meditations and other texts. He says that philosophy is something that we should do only rarely. Here I show how Descartes’ recommendation falls out of other components of his system—in particular his stoicism and his views on embodiment. A consequence of my reading is that to an important degree the reasoning of the Fourth Meditation is the imprecise reasoning (...) of a not-yet-Cartesian meditator. (shrink)

Bei Cun’s article is short and not written in an academic style but as a reflective essay. The essay is theological, discussing sin, authority, and resurrection, but it is also spiritually political, discussing how the Chinese people should choose its future path and what is true authority. It was originally published in the April 2011 issue of the lifestyle magazine Xinrui, not in a literary or philosophical journal.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought IIDavid Cunning and Seth JonesMichael Moriarty. Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xviii + 430. Cloth, $125.00.This book is the second of two volumes on a myriad of issues surrounding the early modern distinction between the embodied self and the immaterial self that is one of its components. One of (...) the theses of the book is that, although canonical philosophers like Descartes and Malebranche hold that it is in some sense the latter that is our true self, and although they expend a significant amount of their corpus trying to help us to touch base with it, they also offer well-developed and insightful views about our embodiment and about what we are to do as embodied beings. Another thesis of the book is that, even if early modern philosophers tend to think that we have unimpeded and transparent access to our psychological states after we have done enough reflection to keep our embodiment from restricting the view, a concomitant position in the period is that we otherwise have very little self-knowledge. A related thesis is that important elements of the psychoanalytic tradition of Freud and Lacan can be traced back to philosophers like Descartes and Malebranche and to the investigations that they inspire in their contemporaries and successors. The book is ambitious and is an extremely interesting and important contribution.Descartes holds that as a result of the bad habits of childhood we come to misrepresent external bodies as having qualities like color, smell, taste, and sound. Building on the work of volume one, Moriarty (5, 335–36, 372–73, 243–44) reminds us that Descartes also holds that we come to misrepresent our minds as in part tangible and corporeal (the Second Meditation, Second Replies) and that the Cartesian project of clarifying ideas is not restricted to the ideas of natural science. Indeed, Moriarty could also cite Descartes’s remark that there are circumstances in which we might report that we are thinking of our selves when in fact we are only thinking of our bodies (Principles of Philosophy I:12). Descartes seems to allow that if we are not sufficiently reflective and observant, our thinking is not transparent to us, and if so he is leaving open the view that we can mischaracterize our own psychological states. Descartes does not speak explicitly to this kind of mischaracterization, but in later writings (especially Passions of the Soul and the letters to Princess Elizabeth) he does speak to the importance of clearly defining the passions and distinguishing them, and to the importance of knowing the relationships between brain traces and particular passions so that we can understand our motivations and get a better handle on them (315). Moriarty then brings to the table a number of figures who develop these positions. In Nicole, we find the view that, from the first-person perspective, it can be very difficult to distinguish acting from charity and acting from self-love, and that we have a considerable interest in identifying ourselves as acting from the former (219–24). In La Rochefoucauld, we find the view that friendship is often a matter of wanting to see a certain image of ourselves reflected in and confirmed by others and that true friendship is very rare (243). We might focus on figures like Nicole insofar as they engage the more traditional questions of metaphysics and epistemology, but issues of embodiment and self-knowledge were also front and center in the early modern period, and the contributions of Nicole, Lamy, La Rochefoucauld, and Senault (just to name just a few) are enormous.Another strength of the book is that it highlights the systematic nature of early modern work on self-knowledge. For example, Moriarty not only considers the empirical psychology of thinkers like Nicole and Lamy, but also shows how their results are grounded in fully articulated views of habit, language, and imagination (361–63, 371–74). Of course, these views are Cartesian as well.The book also has some potential problems. Some philosophers might worry that it is a stretch... (shrink)

Margaret Cavendish was a philosopher, poet, scientist, novelist, and playwright of the seventeenth century. Her work is important for a number of reasons. It presents an early and compelling version of the naturalism that is found in current-day philosophy; it offers important insights that bear on recent discussions of the nature and characteristics of intelligence and the question of whether or not the bodies that surround us are intelligent or have an intelligent cause; it anticipates some of the central views (...) and arguments that are more commonly associated with figures like Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. This is the first full account of Cavendish’s philosophy and covers the whole span of her work. David Cunning begins with an overview of Cavendish’s life and work before assessing her contribution to a wide range of philosophical subjects, including her arguments concerning materialism, experimentation, the existence of God, social and political philosophy and free will and compatibilism. Setting Cavendish in both historical and philosophical context, he argues that like Spinoza she builds on central tenets of Descartes’ philosophy and develops them in a direction that Descartes himself would avoid. She defends a plenum metaphysics according to which all individuals are causally interdependent, and according to which the physical universe is a larger individual that constitutes all of reality. Cavendish is essential reading for students of seventeenth-century philosophy, early modern philosophy and seventeenth-century literature. (shrink)

In Intentionality and other works, John Searle establishes himself as a leading defender of the view that consciousness of what one is doing is always a component of one'€™s action. In this paper I focus on problems with Searle'€™s view to establish that there are actions in which the agent is not at all aware of what she is doing. I argue that any theory that misses this sort of action keeps us from important insights into autonomy, self-knowledge and responsibility.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 5, Page 997-1001, September 2011.

Descartes' enormously influential Meditations seeks to prove a number of theses: that God is a necessary existent; that our minds are equipped to track truth and avoid error; that the external world exists and provides us with information to preserve our embodiment; and that minds are immaterial substances. The work is a treasure-trove of views and arguments, but there are controversies about the details of the arguments and about how we are supposed to unpack the views themselves. This Companion offers (...) a rich collection of new perspectives on the Meditations, showing how the work is structured literally as a meditation and how it fits into Descartes' larger philosophical system. Topics include Descartes' views on philosophical method, knowledge, scepticism, God, the nature of mind, free will, and the differences between reflective and embodied life. The volume will be valuable to those studying Descartes and early modern philosophy more generally. (shrink)

Humanistic and ethical thought existed in China already in the ancient culture period, and was strongly enhanced during the Spring and Autumn era. Based on this background and foundation, Confucius is ‘a creator of the paradigm’ of Chinese philosophy, and Lao-Tzu is ‘an original metaphysician,’ both establishing the basic tendencies of Chinese philosophy. After that, the philosophies of pre- and post-Qin eras, all continued to develop along their thought. Chinese philosophy has several characteristics, including the unity of nature and man, (...) truth and goodness, cognition and behavior, ontology and cosmology, humanity and natural law, the theory of human nature and values and many others. Its theoretic framework and basic structure aims to enlighten what humans ought to be - a question at the core of Chinese culture, reflecting the national spirit. The Chinese spirit is paradigmatically expressed in two sayings, “as Heaven’s movement is ever vigorous, so must a gentleman ceaselessly strive,” and “as Earth is broad and profound, so must a gentleman be greatly virtuous and lenient.”. (shrink)

Background: It has been reported that type 2 diabetes is associated with olfactory identification impairments and cognitive decline. However, the relationship between OI impairments and cognitive decline is largely unknown in T2DM patients.Methods: Sixty-eight T2DM patients and 68 healthy controls underwent 3D-T1 MRI scans, olfactory and cognitive assessments. The cortical thickness of olfaction-related brain regions, olfactory and cognitive scores were compared between groups. Correlation analyses were carried out among cognition, olfaction, and cortical thickness of olfaction-related brain regions.Results: First, the cognitive (...) and olfactory test scores of T2DM patients were lower than healthy subjects. Second, higher olfactory scores were associated with increased cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus and bilateral insula in T2DM. Third, higher olfactory scores were associated with higher cognitive performance in T2DM. Fourth, some cognitive performances were related to cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus and left insula in T2DM.Conclusion: These findings indicated that olfactory dysfunction may be useful for future applications that attempt to predict cognitive decline or develop tailored therapies in T2DM patients. (shrink)