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  1. Descartes’s argument for modal voluntarism.Sebastian Bender - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Descartes famously espouses modal voluntarism, the doctrine that God freely creates the eternal truths. God has chosen to make it true that two plus two equals four, for instance, but he could have chosen otherwise. Why, though, does Descartes endorse modal voluntarism? Many commentators have noted that he regularly appeals to divine omnipotence to justify his doctrine. This strategy is usually thought to be unsuccessful, however, because it seems to presuppose—question-beggingly—that the eternal truths are in the scope of God’s power. (...)
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  • Spinoza’s ‘Infinite Modes’ Reconsidered.Kristin Primus - 2019 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 1 (1):1-29.
    My two principal aims in this essay are interconnected. One aim is to provide a new interpretation of the ‘infinite modes’ in Spinoza’s Ethics. I argue that for Spinoza, God, conceived as the one infinite and eternal substance, is not to be understood as causing two kinds of modes, some infinite and eternal and the rest finite and non-eternal. That there cannot be such a bifurcation of divine effects is what I take the ‘infinite mode’ propositions, E1p21–23, to establish; E1p21–23 (...)
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  • Naked wax and necessary existence: modal voluntarism and Descartes’s motives.Jason Jordan - 2018 - Intellectual History Review 28 (4):477-513.
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  • A Spinozist Aesthetics of Affect and Its Political Implications.Christopher Davidson - 2017 - In Gábor Boros, Judit Szalai & Oliver Toth (eds.), The Concept of Affectivity in Early Modern Philosophy. Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös Loránd University Press. pp. 185-206.
    Spinoza rarely refers to art. However, there are extensive resources for a Spinozist aesthetics in his discussion of health in the Ethics and of social affects in his political works. There have been recently been a few essays linking Spinoza and art, but this essay additionally fuses Spinoza’s politics to an affective aesthetics. Spinoza’s statements that art makes us healthier (Ethics 4p54Sch; Emendation section 17) form the foundation of an aesthetics. In Spinoza’s definition, “health” is caused by external objects that (...)
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  • The Concept of Affectivity in Early Modern Philosophy.Gábor Boros, Judit Szalai & Oliver Toth (eds.) - 2017 - Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös Loránd University Press.
    Collection of papers presented at the First Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.
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  • Descartes on Will and Suspension of Judgment: Affectivity of the Reasons for Doubt.Jan Forsman - 2017 - In Gábor Boros, Judit Szalai & Oliver Toth (eds.), The Concept of Affectivity in Early Modern Philosophy. Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös Loránd University Press. pp. 38-58.
    In this paper, I join the so-called voluntarism debate on Descartes’s theory of will and judgment, arguing for an indirect doxastic voluntarism reading of Descartes, as opposed to a classic, or direct doxastic voluntarism. More specifically, I examine the question whether Descartes thinks the will can have a direct and full control over one’s suspension of judgment. Descartes was a doxastic voluntarist, maintaining that the will has some kind of control over one’s doxastic states, such as belief and doubt. According (...)
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  • Christoph Wittich's Anti-Spinoza.Alexander Douglas - 2014 - Intellectual History Review 24 (2):153-166.
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  • Clear and Distinct Perception in Descartes's Philosophy.Shoshana Smith - 2005 - Dissertation, University of California Berkeley
    (Shoshana Smith now goes by her married name, Shoshana Brassfield: http://philpapers.org/profile/37640) Descartes famously claims that everything we perceive clearly and distinctly is true. Although this rule is fundamental to Descartes’s theory of knowledge, readers from Gassendi and Leibniz onward have complained that unless Descartes can say explicitly what clear and distinct perception is, how we know when we have it, and why it cannot be wrong, then the rule is empty. I offer a detailed analysis of clear and distinct perception, (...)
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  • The Relation between Conception and Causation in Spinoza's Metaphysics.John Morrison - 2013 - Philosophers' Imprint 13:1-17.
    Conception and causation are fundamental notions in Spinoza's metaphysics. I argue against the orthodox view that, due to the causal axiom, if one thing is conceived through another thing, then the second thing causes the first thing. My conclusion forces us to rethink Spinoza's entitlement to some of his core commitments, including the principle of sufficient reason, the parallelism doctrine and the conatus doctrine.
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  • Divine simplicity and the eternal truths: Descartes and the scholastics.Andrew Pessin - 2010 - Philosophia 38 (1):69-105.
    Descartes famously endorsed the view that (CD) God freely created the eternal truths, such that He could have done otherwise than He did. This controversial doctrine is much discussed in recent secondary literature, yet Descartes’s actual arguments for CD have received very little attention. In this paper I focus on what many take to be a key Cartesian argument for CD: that divine simplicity entails the dependence of the eternal truths on the divine will. What makes this argument both important (...)
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  • Descartes' Theory of Universals.Lawrence Nolan - 1998 - Philosophical Studies 89 (2-3):161-180.
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  • Fifth meditation tins revisited: A reply to criticisms of the epistemic interpretation.David Cunning - 2008 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (1):215 – 227.
    (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.
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  • The Cartesian Circle.Peter Joseph Markie - 1976 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
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  • (2 other versions)Descartes on the Creation of the Eternal Truths.Danielle Macbeth - 2017 - Acta Baltica Historiae Et Philosophiae Scientiarum 5 (1):5-27.
    On 15 April 1630, in a letter to Mersenne, Descartes announced that on his view God creates the truths of mathematics. Descartes returned to the theme in subsequent letters and some of his Replies but nowhere is the view systematically developed and defended. It is not clear why Descartes came to espouse the creation doctrine, nor even what exactly it is. Some have argued that his motivation was theological, that God creates the eternal truths, including the truths of logic, because (...)
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  • Cartesian modality: God's nature and the creation of eternal and contingent truth.Kristopher Gordon Phillips - 2014 - Dissertation,
    Much ado has been made regarding Descartes's understanding of the creation of what he called the "eternal truths" because he described them, paradoxically, as both the free creations of God, and necessary. While there are many varying interpretations of Cartesian modality, the issue has heretofore been treated in a vacuum, as a niche issue having little import beyond being an interesting puzzle for Descartes Scholars. I argue that this treatment is misguided, and that in order to properly understand Cartesian philosophy (...)
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  • Descartes’ Atomism of Thought: A Solution to the Puzzle about True and Immutable Natures.Steven Burgess - 2018 - Res Cogitans 13 (2):1-30.
    Central to Descartes’ philosophy is a view about immutable essences and eternal truths. After mentioning a Platonist account of recollection in Meditation V, Descartes declares that the ideas we have of mathematical notions “are not my invention but have their own true and immutable natures” (AT VII, 64/CSM II, 44).Descartes claims that other important philosophical notions, such as God, mind, body, and human free will (AT VII, 68; AT VIII-2, 348; AT III, 383; AT VII, 433, respectively), also have immutable (...)
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  • Descartes's ontology.Vere Chappell - 1997 - Topoi 16 (2):111-127.
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  • What is at stake in the cartesian debates on the eternal truths?Patricia Easton - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (2):348-362.
    Descartes's claim that the eternal truths were freely created by God is fraught with interpretive difficulties. The main arguments in the literature are classified as concerning the ontological status or the modalities of possibility and necessity of the eternal truths. The views of the principal defenders of the Creation Doctrine – Robert Desgabets, Pierre Sylvain Régis, and Antoine Le Grand are contrasted with those of Nicolas Malebranche. In clarifying the theological, ontological, and logical terms of the debate we can see (...)
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  • Rethinking the Ontology of Cartesian Essences.Raffaella De Rosa - 2011 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (4):605 - 622.
    The old and recent debates on Cartesian essences have focused on the question of whether Descartes is a Platonist or a conceptualist about essences. I argue that this is a false dichotomy. An adequate account of Cartesian essences must accommodate and reconcile two central doctrines and texts in Descartes' philosophy. I will argue that recent conceptualist and Platonist interpretations neither accommodate these doctrines nor reconcile these texts. Such failures are not accidental since Descartes' doctrines of divine creation and simplicity render (...)
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  • (1 other version)Descartes: Libertarianist, necessitarianist, actualist?Timo Kajamies - 2005 - Minerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 9 (1).
    According to necessitarianism, all truths are logically necessary, and the modal doctrine of a necessitarian philosopher is in a sharp contrast with something that seems manifest—the view that there are contingent truths. At least on the face of it, then, necessitarianism is highly implausible. René Descartes is usually not regarded as a necessitarian philosopher, but some of his philosophical views raise the worry as to whether he is committed to the necessity of all truths. This paper is an appraisal of (...)
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  • Frankfurt and Descartes: God and logical truth. [REVIEW]David E. Schrader - 1986 - Sophia 25 (1):4-18.
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  • True and immutable natures and epistemic progress in Descartes's meditations.David Cunning - 2003 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2):235 – 248.
    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 (...)
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  • A defense of Cartesian certainty.Stephanie Larsen Wykstra - unknown
    This dissertation examines Rene Descartes' view of certainty and defends the view that Cartesian certainty is possible. The first half of the dissertation includes an interpretation of Descartes' epistemology as well as an examination of other interpreters' readings. The second half of the dissertation is a defense of the claim that Cartesian certainty of a particular kind is possible; it includes a variety of contemporary objections and replies in defense of the possibility of certainty.
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