In Descartes's Method of Doubt Janet Broughton examines in depth Descartes's well-known use of the method of doubt in the Meditations. This is a very stimulating book. The book is rich in subtle, interesting ideas, and the writing is engaging in perhaps the best sense for philosophy. It is not only extremely lucid, but in addition one senses Broughton think the issues through on the page in a way that strongly draws the reader in. Broughton pursues the historian's aim of (...) offering an interpretation of Descartes's method of doubt that accounts for the texts. She does so while pursuing the issues with philosophical intensity and depth and connecting her interpretation to contemporary investigations in skepticism. Her evaluation of Descartes's use of the method is mixed: she thinks his ambitions in using it are ‘splendid but doomed, and highly instructive’. After describing the contents of the chapters of the book, I will focus on two issues: Broughton's interpretation of Descartes's anti-skeptical strategy and her treatment of transparency of the mental. (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)

This paper defends an interpretation of Descartes according to which he sees us as having normative (and not merely psychological) certainty of all clear and distinct ideas during the period in which they are apprehended clearly and distinctly. However, on this view, a retrospective doubt about clear and distinct ideas is possible. This interpretation allows Descartes to avoid the Cartesian Circle in an effective way and also shows that Descartes is surprisingly, in some respects, an epistemological externalist. The paper goes (...) on to defend this interpretation against some powerful philosophical objections by Margaret Wilson and others by showing how Descartes' doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths can be brought in to support his epistemology. This doctrine and other analogous positions in Descartes can also reveal that Descartes, again surprisingly, takes important steps toward doing epistemology without direct appeal to God and God's veracity. (shrink)

Descartes has a Clarity First epistemology: (i) Clarity is a primitive (indefinable) phenomenal quality: the appearance of truth. (ii) Clarity is prior to other qualities: obscurity, confusion, distinctness – are defined in terms of clarity; epistemic goods – reason to assent, rational inclination to assent, reliability, and knowledge – are explained by clarity. (This is the first of two companion entries; the sequel is called, "Descartes's Method for Achieving Knowledge.").

There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers like Śrīgupta (seventh–eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an unfounded illusion. In this paper, I present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s "neither-one-nor-many argument" against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning (...) is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses. (shrink)

Discourse on Method part 3 offers une morale par provision, usually translated as ‘a provisional moral code’. Occasionally it has been questioned that this code is temporary and restricted to those engaged in pure inquiry. We argue that Descartes intends the moral code to be his final ethical position universally applicable. Since the moral code is ‘derived from’ the rules of method, it should have their permanence, holding for the time pure inquiry commences and when it completes the sciences. Moreover, (...) the four moral maxims replace the classical cardinal virtues. Thus they are meant to govern the lives of all persons. (shrink)

This article considers complications for the principle in Descartes that effects are similar to their causes that are connected to his own denial that terms apply "univocally" to God and the creatures He produces. Descartes suggested that there remains an "analogical" relation in virtue of which our mind can be said to be similar to God's. However, this suggestion is undermined by the implication of his doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths that God's will differs entirely from our (...) own. The disappearance of analogy is even more evident in Spinoza and Regis. Both linked Descartes's doctrine to the principle that an effect differs from its cause with respect to what it receives from that cause, and both argued from that principle to the conclusion that we differ from God in both essence and existence. (shrink)

Descartes maintained that sensations of color and the like misrepresent the material world in normal circumstances. Some prominent scholars have argued that, to explain this Cartesian view, we must attribute to Descartes a causal account of sensory representation. I contend that neither the arguments motivating this reading nor the textual evidence offered in its support is sufficient to justify such attribution. Both textual and theoretical reasons point in the direction of an (at least partial) internalist account of Descartes' views on (...) sensory representation. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Pour plusieurs, la troisième notion primitive, celle de l'union de l'esprit et du corps, est un ajout obscur et inexplicable dans la philosophie de Descartes, et qui est venu après coup. Je soutiens, pour ma part, que nous pouvons réconcilier la conception que se fait Descartes de cette troisième notion primitive avec l'approche dualiste des Méditations par le biais d'un modèle non représentationnaliste des passions. Je montre, pour y parvenir, que les passions, qui sont des manifestations de la troisième (...) notion primitive, sont autoréflexives et présentent ainsi la même structure que la conscience du cogito. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉPour plusieurs, la troisième notion primitive, celle de l'union de l'esprit et du corps, est un ajout obscur et inexplicable dans la philosophie de Descartes, et qui est venu après coup. Je soutiens, pour ma part, que nous pouvons réconcilier la conception que se fait Descartes de cette troisième notion primitive avec l'approche dualiste des Méditations par le biais d'un modèle non représentationnaliste des passions. Je montre, pour y parvenir, que les passions, qui sont des manifestations de la troisième notion (...) primitive, sont autoréflexives et présentent ainsi la même structure que la conscience du cogito. (shrink)

In early life, the philosopher, theologian and scientist Robert Boyle wrote extensively on moral matters. One of the extant early documents written in Boyle's hand deals with the morality of our treatment of non-human animals. In this piece Boyle offered a number of arguments for extending moral concern to non-human animals. Since the later Boyle routinely vivisected or otherwise killed animals in his scientific experiments, we are left with the biographical questions, did his views change, and if so, why? as (...) well as with the philosophical questions, what were his arguments and how good are they? (shrink)

Commentators have argued that along with adopting a mechanical view of nature, Descartes developed two innovative views concerning sensation: sensation occurs without the involvement of an entity resembling the sensation, and sensations represent features of objects but without resembling them. When Descartes is interpreted as making both of these claims, it appears that in removing resemblance from the causal process of sensation, Descartes preserves the notion that sensations represent features of objects and that he does this by introducing a new (...) conception of representation — one not requiring resemblance.It is important to recognize that the two claims are distinct. The first claim, that the physical process of sensation does not involve something resembling the qualitative content of the sensation, does not in and of itself entail anything about the representational nature of the sensation. Or rather, what it does entail is thatifsensations do represent their causes in objects, then it cannot be by presenting those causes to the mind as they exist in objects. (shrink)

Le présent essai examine d'abord les notions newtoniennes d'espace et de temps absolus en elles-mêmes et dans leurs relations réciproques, puis ensuite dans leurs rapports avec d'autres notions connexes comme celles de lieu et de mouvement, en prenant pour base le Scholium qui fait suite aux définitions formulées au début des Principia mathematica philosophiae naturalis. La seconde partie analyse les arguments et precédés utilisés par Newton pour identifier des mouvements absolus, et prouver ainsi que de tels mouvements existent. La troisième (...) partie montre en quel sens il faut entendre que ces mouvements sont « absolus », et pourquoi on ne peut en tirer une preuve ultérieure de l'existence d'un temps et d'un espace absolus et subsistants. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the received view that the anti‐nativist arguments of Book I of Locke's Essay conclusively challenge nativism. I begin by reconstructing the chief argument of Book I and its corollary arguments. I call attention to their dependence on (what I label) “the Awareness Principle”, viz., the view that there are no ideas in the mind of which the mind either isn't currently aware or hasn't been aware in the past. I then argue that the arguments' (...) dependence on this principle is question begging on two counts. Unless this principle is defended, Locke's arguments beg the question against Descartes and Leibniz because their nativism implies the denial of the Awareness Principle. And even when Locke defended the principle, his arguments remain question begging because they presuppose the empiricism they aim to prove. The disclosure of the question‐begging status of these arguments debunks a seemingly powerful way of attacking nativism. (shrink)

Raffaella De Rosa discusses the theory of sensory perception, especially color perception, offered by René Descartes. She offers a detailed overview of the recent literature on the topic and provides a new reading of Descartes' theory; she also raises questions of great interest in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Descartes endorses the two prima facie inconsistent claims that sensory ideas are innate and caused in us by bodies. Most scholars believe that Claims A and B can be reconciled by appealing to the notion of occasional or triggering causation. I claim that this notion does not solve the theoretical problems it is introduced to solve and it generates additional difficulties. I argue that these difficulties result from conflating two questions that need to be kept distinct while inquiring about the (...) origin of ideas: the psychological question of the mechanisms by which we acquire ideas and the metaphysical question of how the content of these ideas is determined. I conclude by proposing a new way of reconciling Descartes's Claims A and B in light of this distinction. On my account, Descartes's very views on innateness explain why bodily states must be causes of sensory ideas. (shrink)

It is a common view that Descartes' causal principle is to be understood in light of a similarity condition that accounts for how finite causes contribute to an explanation of their effects. This paper challenges this common view and offers a sui generis reading of Descartes' views on causation that has also the advantage of solving the two exegetical issues of whether Descartes thought of the body-to-mind relation in occasionalist or causal terms and of whether Descartes regarded sensory ideas innate (...) or caused by bodies. (shrink)

Let me begin with what may seem a very minor point, but one which I think reveals something about how many philosophers today conceive of their subject. During the past few decades, there has been an increasing tendency for references in philosophy books and articles to be formatted in the ‘author and date’ style (‘see Fodor (1996)’, ‘see Smith (2001)’.) A neat and economical reference system, you may think; and it certainly saves space, albeit inconveniencing readers by forcing them to (...) flip back to the end of the chapter or book to find the title of the work being referred to. But what has made this system so popular among philosophers? A factor which I suspect exerts a strong subconscious attraction for many people is that it makes a philosophy article look very like a piece of scientific research. For if one asks where the ‘author-date’ system originated, the answer is clear: it comes from the science journals. And in that context, the choice of referencing system has a very definite rationale. In the progress-driven world of science, priority is everything, and it's vitally important for a career that a researcher is able to proclaim his work as breaking new ground. Bloggs (2005) developed a technique for cloning a certain virus; Coggs (2006) showed how certain bits of viral DNA could be spliced; and now Dobbs (2007) draws on both techniques to develop the building blocks of a new vaccine. The idea is that our knowledge-base is enhanced, month by month and year by year, in small incremental steps (perhaps with occasional major breakthroughs); and in the catalogue of advances, the date tagged to each name signals when progress was made, and by whom. (shrink)

The best way to understand the Meditations is through the lens of Descartes's theistic metaphysics rather than via his programme for physical science. This applies to his use of the concept of ‘nature’ in the Sixth Meditation, which serves Descartes's goal of theodicy. In working this out, Descartes reaches a conclusion about the functional role of sensory perception that is, paradoxically, not far from that offered by Darwinian naturalism. So far from being inherently geared to tracking the truth, the role (...) of sensation is linked to its survival value for the organism. In virtue of his theistic metaphysics however, Descartes is able to set this conclusion against the background of other cognitive faculties that are in principle accurate detectors of the truth; the absence of such a resource for modern Darwinian naturalists creates difficulties for the presumption that humans are cognitively equipped to search for the truth. (shrink)

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which Descartes presents his reasoning (...) in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances. (shrink)