Descartes' image of the tree of knowledge from the preface to the French edition of the Principles of Philosophy is usually taken to represent Descartes' break with the past and with the fragmentation of knowledge of the schools. But if Descartes' tree of knowledge is analyzed in its proper context, another interpretation emerges. A series of contrasts with other classifications of knowledge from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries raises some puzzles: claims of originality and radical break from the past do (...) not seem warranted. Further contrasts with Descartes' unpublished writings and with school doctrines lead to the ironic conclusion that, in the famous passage, Descartes is attempting to appeal to conventional wisdom and trying to avoid sounding novel. (shrink)

This paper examines Descartes's third primary notion and the distinction between different kinds of knowledge based on different and mutually irreducible primary notions. It discusses the application of the notions of clearness and distinctness to the domain of knowledge based on that of mind-body union. It argues that the consequences of the distinctions Descartes is making with regard to our knowledge of the human mind and nature are rather different from those that have been attributed to Descartes due to the (...) influential Rylean picture of Cartesian mind-body dualism. (shrink)

Research in animal behavior begins by identifying what animals are doing. In the course of observation, the observer comes to see animals as performing a particular activity. How does this process work? How cn we be certain that behavior is identified correctly? Wittgenstein offers an approach to these questions. looking at the uses of certainly rather than attempting to find rules that guarantee it. Here two stages in research are distinguished: first, watching animals, and second, reporting the results to other (...) scientists. Certainly about what animals are doing, has different uses at each stage. (shrink)

Este artículo examina cómo la separabilidad y unidad mente-cuerpo resultan clave para poner de manifiesto lo inapropiado del “teatro cartesiano”, metáfora creada por Daniel Dennett para criticar la experiencia consciente unificada en Descartes. La primera sección introduce al problema de la separabilidad cartesiana. La segunda examina cómo mente y cuerpo, separables mediante lo concebible según Descartes, resultan ser cosas metafísicamente distintas. La tercera enfatiza como separables no implica separados. La última sección enfatiza el argumento de la dis-analogía del piloto y (...) el navío, y cómo, según el filósofo francés, aunque separables, mente y cuerpo son substancias estrechamente unidas, formando un ens per se. En vista de este, criticamos la metáfora del “teatro cartesiano” de Dennett: es imposible que la mente sea un espectador, puesto que la experiencia consciente ya es unificada e incluso somatizada. Notamos, por último, que pese a Dennett, hay investigadores de la Ciencia Cognitiva que coinciden con Descartes en relación con la estrecha unión mente-cuerpo, i.e., quienes defienden que la mente es encarnada, incrustada o incluso extendida. (shrink)

This chapter examines the mechanistic psychology of Descartes in the _Passions_, while also drawing on the _Treatise on Man_. It develops the idea of a Cartesian “psychology” that relies on purely bodily mechanisms by showing that he explained some behaviorally appropriate responses through bodily mechanisms alone and that he envisioned the tailoring of such responses to environmental circumstances through a purely corporeal “memory.” An animal’s adjustment of behavior as caused by recurring patterns of sensory stimulation falls under the notion of (...) “learning,” behavioristically conceived. Indeed, Descartes’s animal-machine hypothesis may well be a distant ancestor to Watsonian behaviorism, via T. H. Huxley (1884). The final two sections of the chapter take stock of what psychological capacities Descartes ascribed to mind, body, or both, and consider those capacities that we might now plausibly construe as being explicable by nonmentalistic mechanisms as opposed to those that at present remain unreducedly mentalistic. -/- This chapter derives from a lecture delivered at the University of King's College (Halifax, Nova Scotia) as part of a year-long series on Descartes and the Modern. The lecture series was co-sponsored by the programs in History of Science and Early Modern and Contemporary Studies. (shrink)

Throughout their life Ibn Sînâ and Descartes firmly believed that the soul or mind of a human being was essentially incorporeal. In his ‘On the Soul’ (De anima), the psychological part of his vast...

ZusammenfassungNach Descartes besteht der Hylomorphismus nur beim Menschen und sonst gar nicht. Die Cartesische Lehre wird an Hand von vier Fragen untersucht. 1. Wie sehen die Texte aus, in denen Descartes gegen die substantiale Form im allgemeinen bzw. fur die substantiale Form im Men schen spricht? 2. Wie verhält sich die Cartesische Lehre von der Stelle des Menschen in der Natur zur Aristotelischen Fassung? 3. Wie hat Descartes das scholastische Modell umgedeutet, um zu seiner Kritik der substantialen Form zu gelangen? (...) 4. Welche Rolle spielt die substantiale Form in der Entwicklung der Cartesischen Metaphysik, und wie verandert sich der Substanzbegriff durch diese Entwicklung?SummaryAccording to Descartes hylomorphism occurs in man only and nowhere else. The Cartesian doctrine is examined in relation to four questions. 1. What are we to make of the texts in which Descartes speaks against substantial form in general and for substantial form in the human case? 2. How does Descartes's doctrine of the place of man in nature compare with Aristotle's? 3. How did Descartes reinterpret the scholastic model, in order to arrive at his critique of substantial form? 4. What role does substantial form play in the development of Descartes's metaphysic, and how is the traditional concept of substance altered by this development?RésuméPour Descartes, l'hylomorphisme ne se trouve que chez I'homme, et nulle part ailleurs. L'auteur examine cette doctrine en essayant de répondre à quatre questions: 1. Que peut‐on tirer des textes où Descartes se prononce contre les formes substantielles dans le cas général et pour ces mêmes formes dans le cas de l'homme? 2. Comment se présente, comparée à celle d'Aristote, la doctrine cartésienne de la place de I'homme dans la nature? 3. Comment Descartes, réinterpré‐tant le modéle scolastique, est‐il arrivéà sa critique des formes substantielles? 4. Quel rôle les for mes substantielles jouent‐elles dans le développement de la métaphysique cartésienne et en quoi le concept traditionnel de substance a‐t‐il été affecté par ce développement? (shrink)

Para exponer lo que Descartes dijo acerca de la razón y de las pasiones, hay que comprender sus razones para dar a la mente el lugar privilegiado que le otorga en su filosofía. Por una parte, Descartes defendió su dualismo, sin hacer concesiones acerca de la naturaleza incorpórea de la mente, debido a las exigencias de su proyecto científico-filosófico. Por otra parte, en la obra cartesiana aparece la concepción de la unión del cuerpo y la mente de los seres humanos, (...) así como de su entremezcla. La presencia del dualismo y la unión en la obra de Descartes ha generado interpretaciones diversas. Para una mejor comprensión de la concepción cartesiana al respecto, los reconsidero bajo una perspectiva opuesta a quienes consideran contradictoria la propuesta de Descartes. Esta perspectiva permite reconocer los aspectos antropológicos (morales, psicológicos, sociales) del pensamiento cartesiano y ver que también fue un pensador acerca de las pasiones. (shrink)

Abstract Descartes's theory of volition as expressed in his Passions of the Soul is analyzed and outlined. The focus is not on Descartes's proposed answers to questions about the nature and processes of volition, but on his way of formulating questions about the nature of volition. It is argued that the assumptions underlying Descartes's questions have become ?intellectual strait?jackets? for all who are interested in volition: neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists. It is shown that Descartes's basic assumption?that volition causes change in (...) the brain/mind, not in the world around us?has set in train a series of ?themata? that have dominated studies of the will, severely curtailing our understanding. It is then shown that these Cartesian themata are so limiting and confusing that a number of internally contradictory ideas have actually become mainstays of most theories of volition; in particular, the concepts of unconscious sensations and of involuntary volitions. (shrink)