It is argued in this article that Foucault’s most distinctive contribution to philosophical practice is to be found in his distinctive mode of taking up historiography, exploring critically the conditions and limits of knowledge through archival work. The focus on knowledge would seem to place him in the critical lineage of Kant; however, his appeal to history and archival explorations reconfigure the relation between sensibility and the understanding in a way that suggests a different concern with the conditions of “a (...) possible knowledge.” After discussing how Foucault’s archival work engages a distinct sensibility, I suggest that his concern with knowledge can best be understood not within a transcendental project, however historicized, but within the logical space of Hegel’s Doctrine of the Concept, specifically the discussion of the Idea of cognition where it is a question of the twin processes of unifying subjectivity and objectivity as expressive of cognition’s “urge to truth.” Understood within this conceptual context, Foucault’s distinctive archival approach to what he calls “subjectivation” and “objectivation” allows us to appreciate the distinction between knowledge and truth in a way that leaves open the possibility of transformation. (shrink)

It is argued in this article that Foucault’s most distinctive contribution to philosophical practice is to be found in his distinctive mode of taking up historiography, exploring critically the conditions and limits of knowledge through archival work. The focus on knowledge would seem to place him in the critical lineage of Kant; however, his appeal to history and archival explorations reconfigure the relation between sensibility and the understanding in a way that suggests a different concern with the conditions of “a (...) possible knowledge.” After discussing how Foucault’s archival work engages a distinct sensibility, I suggest that his concern with knowledge can best be understood not within a transcendental project, however historicized, but within the logical space of Hegel’s Doctrine of the Concept, specifically the discussion of the Idea of cognition where it is a question of the twin processes of unifying subjectivity and objectivity as expressive of cognition’s “urge to truth.” Understood within this conceptual context, Foucault’s distinctive archival approach to what he calls “subjectivation” and “objectivation” allows us to appreciate the distinction between knowledge and truth in a way that leaves open the possibility of transformation. (shrink)

It is universally acknowledged that, for St. Thomas, there is a distinction between human persons or supposits and their natures or essences. But it is usually thought that there is no parallel distinction between the angelic person or supposit and its nature. Yet, as this paper argues, Aquinas consistently puts forward just such a distinction. This paper surveys Aquinas’s arguments for the unique identity of God with his essence and the corresponding distinctions between created persons and their (...) essences, showing in the process how the distinction found in angels differs from that found in material substances. It is important to recognize the distinction between supposit and nature in angels not only for its own sake as it touches on his understanding of created persons—human or angelic—but also insofar as it sheds light on Aquinas’s understanding of divine simplicity and of other act-potency compositions in creatures. (shrink)

….it [is] wholly irrational to regard as doubtful matters that are perceived clearly and distinctly by the understanding in its purity, on account of mere prejudices of the senses and hypotheses in which there is an element of the unknown.Descartes, Geometrical Exposition of the MeditationsSubstance dualism, once a main preoccupation of Western metaphysics, has fallen strangely out of view; today’s mental/physical dualisms are dualisms of fact, property, or event. So if someone claims to find a difference between minds and bodies (...) per se, it is not initially clear what he is maintaining. Maybe this is because one no longer recognizes ‘minds’ as entities in their own right, or ‘substances.’ However, selves - the things we refer to by use of ‘I’ - are surely substances, and it does little violence to the intention behind mind/body dualism to interpret it as a dualism of bodies and selves. If the substance dualist’s meaning remains obscure, that is because it can mean several different things to say that selves are not bodies. (shrink)

Descartes's "conceivability argument" for substance-dualism is defended against Arnauld's criticism that, for all he knows, Descartes can conceive himself without a body only because he underestimates his true essence; one could suggest with equal plausibility that it is only for ignorance of his essential hairiness that Descartes can conceive himself as bald. Conceivability intuitions are defeasible but special reasons are required; a model for such defeat is offered, and various potential defeaters of Descartes's intuition are considered and rejected. At best (...) though Descartes shows the separability of mind from body, not (as he claims) their actual separateness. (shrink)

….it [is] wholly irrational to regard as doubtful matters that are perceived clearly and distinctly by the understanding in its purity, on account of mere prejudices of the senses and hypotheses in which there is an element of the unknown.Descartes, Geometrical Exposition of the MeditationsSubstance dualism, once a main preoccupation of Western metaphysics, has fallen strangely out of view; today’s mental/physical dualisms are dualisms of fact, property, or event. So if someone claims to find a difference between minds and bodies (...) per se, it is not initially clear what he is maintaining. Maybe this is because one no longer recognizes ‘minds’ as entities in their own right, or ‘substances.’ However, selves - the things we refer to by use of ‘I’ - are surely substances, and it does little violence to the intention behind mind/body dualism to interpret it as a dualism of bodies and selves. If the substance dualist’s meaning remains obscure, that is because it can mean several different things to say that selves are not bodies. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to analyze the writing of three neo-scholastic writers of the twentieth century -- Marcel Chossat, Pedro Descoqs, and Francis Cunningham -- who happen to dispute the prevailing view of Thomists that St. Thomas Aquinas does indeed hold a doctrine of thereal distinction of essence and existence in created being. The approach utilized will be basically historical: we start with the year 1910, the year in which Marcel Chossat rekindled the ever-smoldering embers of the (...) essence-existence controversy with his claim that Aquinas never held such a doctrine. In order to justify another treatment of what has been called “the endlessly rehashed question”, we try to show that the arguments put forth by the three thinkers in question an are based on considerable and weighty linguistic grounds which others in the debate have tended to dismiss. We conclude by saying that any discussion of the real distinction controversy must take a “linguistic turn” if it is to have any hope of being fruitful. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to analyze the writing of three neo-scholastic writers of the twentieth century -- Marcel Chossat, Pedro Descoqs, and Francis Cunningham -- who happen to dispute the prevailing view of Thomists that St. Thomas Aquinas does indeed hold a doctrine of thereal distinction of essence and existence in created being. The approach utilized will be basically historical: we start with the year 1910, the year in which Marcel Chossat rekindled the ever-smoldering embers of the (...) essence-existence controversy with his claim that Aquinas never held such a doctrine. In order to justify another treatment of what has been called “the endlessly rehashed question”, we try to show that the arguments put forth by the three thinkers in question an are based on considerable and weighty linguistic grounds which others in the debate have tended to dismiss. We conclude by saying that any discussion of the real distinction controversy must take a “linguistic turn” if it is to have any hope of being fruitful. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to analyze the writing of three neo-scholastic writers of the twentieth century -- Marcel Chossat, Pedro Descoqs, and Francis Cunningham -- who happen to dispute the prevailing view of Thomists that St. Thomas Aquinas does indeed hold a doctrine of thereal distinction of essence and existence in created being. The approach utilized will be basically historical: we start with the year 1910, the year in which Marcel Chossat rekindled the ever-smoldering embers of the (...) essence-existence controversy with his claim that Aquinas never held such a doctrine. In order to justify another treatment of what has been called “the endlessly rehashed question”, we try to show that the arguments put forth by the three thinkers in question an are based on considerable and weighty linguistic grounds which others in the debate have tended to dismiss. We conclude by saying that any discussion of the real distinction controversy must take a “linguistic turn” if it is to have any hope of being fruitful. (shrink)

Some contemporary semantic views defend an asymmetry thesis concerning defi-nite descriptions and indexicals. Semantically, indexicals are devices of singular refer-ence; they contribute objects to the contents of the speech acts made with utterances including them. Definite descriptions, on the other hand, are generalized quantifiers, behaving roughly the way Russell envisaged in “On Denoting”. The asymmetry thesis depends on the existence of a sufficiently clear-cut distinction between semantics and pragmatics, because indexicals and descriptions are often used in ways that apparently (...) contradict the asymmetry thesis; the semantics/pragmatics distinction is invoked to see behind the appearances. The paper critically examines arguments by Schiffer against the asymmetry thesis, based on referential uses of incomplete descriptions. (shrink)

Everyone allows that human and animal minds are distinctively (indeed, massively) different in their manifest effects. Humans have been able to colonize nearly every corner of the planet, from the artic, to deserts, to rainforests (and they did so in the absence of modern technological aids); they live together in large cooperative groups of unrelated individuals; they communicate with one another using the open-ended expressive resources of natural language; they are capable of cultural learning that accumulates over generations to result (...) in science, art, and agriculture; and they are remarkably thoughtful and inventive. There is much less agreement about how these manifest differences should be explained, however. (shrink)

How does Descartes justify his claim that conceiving of a mind as a thinking thing and a body as an extended thing show that mind and body are distinct substances? The paper attempts to answer that question by following a clue Descartes gave Arnauld that virtually everything in Meditations Three through Five is germane to the real distinction between mind and body. The paper develops the distinction between material truth and formal truth from Descartes’s discussions of falsity (...) in Meditation Three. In Meditation Three, clear and distinct ideas are materially true. They are consistent. They represent the possibility that there is something that corresponds to the idea (de dicto possibility). God is not a deceiver. Since it is psychologically impossible to doubt a clear and distinct idea, Descartes concludes Meditation Four by arguing that clear and distinct ideas are formally true (representative). Clear and distinct ideas represent true and immutable natures (essences). It is in virtue of true and immutable natures that it is possible that there are things of determinate kinds. Hence, in Meditation Five, clear and distinct ideas represent de re possibilities. Since the mind/body distinction is a distinction between true and immutable natures, Descartes takes clearly and distinctly conceiving a thinking thing as distinct from an extended thing to be sufficient for claiming a real distinction between mind and body. (shrink)

Descartes contends that he, or his mind, is really distinct from his body. Many philosophers have little patience with this claim. What could be more obvious than that the mind depends on the body? But their impatience often dissolves when they recognize that Descartes only asserts a de re modal statement. To say that one thing is really distinct from another is to say that each can exist apart from the other. But should we grant Descartes this de re modal (...) claim itself?Descartes's argument for the real distinction is based on the assumption that clear and distinct conception provides a reliable guide to possibility. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how Leibniz’s first correspondence with Malebranche from early 1676 can shed new light on the notorious “all-things-are-one”-passage (ATOP) found in the Quod ens perfectissimum sit possibile from late 1676—a passage that has been taken as an expression of monism or Spinozism in the young Leibniz. The correspondence with Malebranche provides a deeper understanding of Leibniz’s use of the notions of “real distinction” and “separability” in the ATOP. This forms the background for a discussion (...) of Leibniz’s commitment to the monist position expounded in the ATOP. Thus, on the basis of a close analysis of Leibniz’s use of these key terms in the Malebranche correspondence, I provide two possible, and contrary, interpretations of the ATOP, namely, a “non-commitment account” and a “commitment account.” Finally, I explain why I consider the commitment account to be the more compelling of the two. (shrink)

Arnauld raised the concern that Descartes’s real distinction argument proved too much, because it seemed to lead us back to the Platonic view according to which the mind uses the body as its vehicle. Descartes responds by pointing out that he argued against this account of mind-body union in the Sixth Meditation. Descartes believes he did not prove too much, because he offers an argument against this view whose premises and conclusion are consistent with the real (...) class='Hi'>distinction argument. In this paper, the union argument is reconstructed and evaluated in order to see if, through his rejection of the Platonic view, Descartes adequately addresses Arnauld’s concern. In the end, Descartes adequately addresses this concern only if God’s veracity provides a secure foundation for a crucial inference. Finally, these considerations show a way for those committed to the real distinction of mind and body to avoid the problem of their interaction. (shrink)

This paper is not going to offer any criticism of the way Gaven Kerr treats Aquinas’ argument. Instead, it offers an alternative way of reconstructing Aquinas’ argument, intending to strengthen especially those controversial aspects of it that Kerr’s reconstruction left untreated or in relative obscurity. Accordingly, although the paper’s treatment will have to have some overlaps with Kerr’s, it will deal with issues essential to adequate replies to certain competent criticisms of his argument untreated by Kerr. For the sake of (...) the “formally inclined” reader, the paper’s treatment will also include an Appendix offering a formal reconstruction of both the main argument and its sub-arguments to demonstrate the formal rigor of Aquinas’ original. (shrink)

The distinction between the mental operations of abstraction and exclusion is recognized as playing an important role in many of Descartes’ metaphysical arguments, at least after 1640. In this paper I first show that Descartes describes the distinction between abstraction and exclusion in the early Rules for the Direction of the Mind, in substantially the same way he does in the 1640s. Second, I show that Descartes makes the test for exclusion a major component of the method proposed (...) in the Rules. Third, I argue that in Rule 14 the exclusion-abstraction distinction is connected to a theory of distinctions, which includes a notion of real distinction as essentially tied to the imagination. This sheds light on Descartes’ development in and after the Rules. (shrink)

Quine himself relates these much-quoted remarks to his indeterminacy of translation thesis and his rejection of the attitudes (Quine 1960:221). But in this paper I try to show that the remarks are more fruitfully developed by exposing their suggestive links with a version of the _epistemological Real Distinction. This is the key idea of the _Verstehen tradition, to the effect that understanding others and their doings and productions as the manifestations of minds involves a methodology and a kind (...) of knowledge that is radically different from the methodology and knowledge involved in the physical sciences. (edited). (shrink)

Aquinas’ so-called “Intellectus essentiae Argument” for the distinction between being and essence is notoriously suspect, including among defenders of Aquinas’ distinction. For the paper in this volume, I take as my starting point the recent defense of the argument by Fr. Lawrence Dewan, O.P. Fr. Dewan’s project is unsuccessful. Pointing out some shortcomings in his readings allows me to take up his call to highlight the “formal” or “quidditative side” of Aquinas’ metaphysics, in this case in regards to (...) the proofs of the “real distinction.” Accordingly, the second half of this paper sets forth a way in which the famous “Intellectus essentiae Argument” of De Ente et Essentia 4 can succeed as a proof of the real distinction. Aquinas’ argument presupposes the prior real distinction between essence and supposit or individual substance. Esse is the ontological component that makes true our judgments that substances actually are: Obama exists. By contrast, this “truth-maker” cannot be predicated of humanity, although it is in Obama as really distinct from him. If Aquinas’ reasoning in this most contentious of his proofs can be saved, so, perhaps, can most of his other proofs. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how Leibniz’s first correspondence with Malebranche from early 1676 can shed new light on the notorious “all-things-are-one”-passage (ATOP) found in the Quod ens perfectissimum sit possibile from late 1676—a passage that has been taken as an expression of monism or Spinozism in the young Leibniz. The correspondence with Malebranche provides a deeper understanding of Leibniz’s use of the notions of “real distinction” and “separability” in the ATOP. This forms the background for a discussion (...) of Leibniz’s commitment to the monist position expounded in the ATOP. Thus, on the basis of a close analysis of Leibniz’s use of these key terms in the Malebranche correspondence, I provide two possible, and contrary, interpretations of the ATOP, namely, a “non-commitment account” and a “commitment account.” Finally, I explain why I consider the commitment account to be the more compelling of the two. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how Leibniz’s first correspondence with Malebranche from early 1676 can shed new light on the notorious “all-things-are-one”-passage (ATOP) found in the Quod ens perfectissimum sit possibile from late 1676—a passage that has been taken as an expression of monism or Spinozism in the young Leibniz. The correspondence with Malebranche provides a deeper understanding of Leibniz’s use of the notions of “real distinction” and “separability” in the ATOP. This forms the background for a discussion (...) of Leibniz’s commitment to the monist position expounded in the ATOP. Thus, on the basis of a close analysis of Leibniz’s use of these key terms in the Malebranche correspondence, I provide two possible, and contrary, interpretations of the ATOP, namely, a “non-commitment account” and a “commitment account.” Finally, I explain why I consider the commitment account to be the more compelling of the two. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how Leibniz’s first correspondence with Malebranche from early 1676 can shed new light on the notorious “all-things-are-one”-passage (ATOP) found in the Quod ens perfectissimum sit possibile from late 1676—a passage that has been taken as an expression of monism or Spinozism in the young Leibniz. The correspondence with Malebranche provides a deeper understanding of Leibniz’s use of the notions of “real distinction” and “separability” in the ATOP. This forms the background for a discussion (...) of Leibniz’s commitment to the monist position expounded in the ATOP. Thus, on the basis of a close analysis of Leibniz’s use of these key terms in the Malebranche correspondence, I provide two possible, and contrary, interpretations of the ATOP, namely, a “non-commitment account” and a “commitment account.” Finally, I explain why I consider the commitment account to be the more compelling of the two. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is an important distinction between the notion of consciousness as it is applied to creatures and, on the other hand, the notion of consciousness as it applies to mental states. McBride has recently argued in this journal that whilst there may be a grammatical distinction between state consciousness and creature consciousness, there is no parallel ontological distinction. It is argued here that whilst state consciousness and creature consciousness are indeed related, they (...) are distinct properties. Conscious creatures can have, at one time, both conscious and unconscious mental states. This raises the question of what distinguishes the conscious from unconscious mental states of a subject: a question about what state consciousness consists in. Whilst the state/creature distinction may not be of use in explaining every aspect of a subject's consciousness, it does provide a key part of the explanandum for theories of consciousness and mind. The state/creature consciousness distinction is a real one and should not be dropped from our psychological taxonomy. (shrink)

Focusing mainly on two passages from the Summa theologiae, the article first argues that, on Aquinas’s view, an individual substance, which is the proper subject of being, can and normally does have a certain multiplicity of acts of being . It is only “a certain” multiplicity because the substance has only one unqualified act of being, its substantial being, which belongs to it through its substantial form. The others are qualified acts of being, added on to the substantial being through (...) accidental forms. Having established this thesis, the rest of the article uses it as a basis for an approach to the so-called real distinction between act of being and essence or between act of being and substantial form. This approach is meant to be effective even in an Aristotelian setting where there may seem to be no place for a substantial act distinct from substantial form. (shrink)

Michele M. Moody Adams, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and PhilosophyBéatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental AnalyticAnnabel Patterson, Early Modern LiberalismAnthony O'Hear, Beyond Evolution: Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary ExplanationPatricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic ThoughtD.M. Armstrong, A World of States of AffairsJens Cavallin, Content and Object: Husserl, Twardowski, and Psychologism.