Spinoza's causal axiom is at the foundation of the Ethics. I motivate, develop and defend a new interpretation that I call the ‘causally restricted interpretation’. This interpretation solves several longstanding puzzles and helps us better understand Spinoza's arguments for some of his most famous doctrines, including his parallelism doctrine and his theory of sense perception. It also undermines a widespread view about the relationship between the three fundamental, undefined notions in Spinoza's metaphysics: causation, conception and inherence.

This paper examines the pressures leading two very different Early Modern philosophers, Descartes and Locke, to invoke two ways in which thought is directed at objects. According to both philosophers, I argue, the same idea can simultaneously count as “of” two different objects—in two different senses of the phrase ‘idea of’. One kind of intentional directedness is invoked in answering the question What is it to think that thus-and-so? The other kind is invoked in answering the question What accounts for (...) the success of our proper methods of inquiry? For Descartes as well as Locke, the two kinds of “ofness” come apart as a result of strong rationalist commitments. However, I will suggest that even if we reject such commitments, we go wrong if we assume that a single kind of intentional directedness suffices to address both questions. (shrink)

I offer a diagnosis of the parallelism between the Doctrine of Potential Parts and the Doctrine of Potential Wholes and briefly examine its bearing on Johansson’s account of the Tibbles-Tib Problem.

En este texto argumento a favor de la consideración de la forma como sujeto y, por tanto, como responsable de la identidad del objeto a través del movimiento. Se consideran sucesivamente la prioridad de la forma como sustancia, su carácter particular y los distintos sentidos en los que algo puede ser sujeto, para concluir por qué en Z, 3, la forma es el mejor candidato no sólo para ser sustancia, sino para ser sujeto en sentido principal. El objeto del texto (...) es abordar la discusión en torno a por qué la forma satisface ontológicamente mejor que la materia o el compuesto el criterio de ser sujeto y las consecuencias filosóficas de esa postura. Como corolario, haré algunas observaciones en torno a la doble ontología que se sigue en Aristóteles desde Categorías o Metafísica. (shrink)

According to Robert K. Garcia, trope theories divide into two distinct groups based on the type of tropes (module or modifier) assumed. Although left unnoticed by many trope theorists, Garcia claims that the module/modifier distinction has important consequences regarding the ontological merits of the different trope theories. In this article, I argue that Garcia’s distinction between module and modifier tropes fails to provide any correct or informative classification of trope theories: Garcia’s distinction is based on assumptions and primitive notions trope (...) theorists explicitly reject. Trope theories attempt to eliminate the fundamental object-property dichotomy by means of the analysis of inherence (an object having a property). By contrast, Garcia’s module and modifier tropes are different kinds of particular properties, which fundamentally inhere in a property bearer. Therefore, no trope is a module or modifier trope in Garcia’s sense. Finally, there is an ambiguity in Garcia’s use of his term “character making” that makes void his arguments for the module/modifier distinction based on the conception of non-module tropes as “character makers”. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to survey some of the most important developments in thinking about essence in the early modern period, highlighting ways in which thinkers in the period gradually depart from the medieval Aristotelian tradition. In this tradition, essence is thought of as selective, explanatory, and kind-determining. Whereas in the beginning of the early modern period some figures (such as René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, and Anne Conway) still adhere to this traditional view, later figures (including (...) Benedict de Spinoza, G.W. Leibniz, and John Locke) reject it. (shrink)

I argue that in the Phaedo, Plato maintains that the soul is located in space and is capable of locomotion and of interacting with the body through contact. Numerous interpreters have dismissed these claims as merely metaphorical, since they assume that as an incorporeal substance, the soul cannot possess spatial attributes. But careful examination of how Plato conceives of the body throughout his corpus reveals that he does not distinguish it from the soul in terms of spatiality. Furthermore, assigning spatial (...) attributes to the soul plays an important role in Plato’s account of the relation of body and soul. (shrink)

Hylomorphists claim that substances—human beings, oak trees, chemical compounds—are compounds of matter and form. If a house is a substance, then its matter would be some bricks and timbers and its form the structure those bricks and timbers take on. While hylomorphism is traditionally presented as a theory of change, it only treats the coming-to-be and passing-away of matter-form compounds. But many hylomorphists understand forms to be entities in their own right, as parts or constituents of substances. So, a neglected (...) question arises: how, when, and from where do forms come to be? I take up the view of one prominent and representative hylomorphist, Kathrin Koslicki, and argue that she cannot answer these questions satisfactorily. I close with a proposal for an account of the generation of forms based on machinery many hylomorphists already accept, namely, causal powers, that points to a deflationary metaphysics of form. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes often includes powers and abilities in his descriptions of the world. Meanwhile, Hobbes’s philosophical picture of the world appears quite reductive, and he seems sometimes to say that nothing exists but bodies in motion. In more extreme versions of such a picture, there would be no room for powers. Hobbes is not an eliminativist about powers, but his view does tend toward ontological minimalism. It would be good to have an account of what Hobbes thinks powers are, and (...) how they fit into his understanding of the world. In this chapter, I investigate Hobbes’s account of the metaphysics of powers and abilities. Section 1 considers three important aspects of Hobbes’s account of powers: the connection between powers and causes; the modal aspects of powers; and the connection between powers and motions. Sections 2 and 3 then consider interpretive arguments about whether Hobbes identifies powers with underlying corporeal features. (shrink)

The paper delves into manuscript sources connected with various disputations held at Prague University from around 1390 to 1420 and singles out a set of hitherto unknown quaestiones dealing with the nature of the human intellect and its relation to the body. Prague disputations from around 1400 arguably offer a unique vantage point on late medieval anthropological issues, since they encompass an entanglement of numerous doctrinal influences from Buridanian De anima commentaries to John Wyclif’s theories. The paper delineates several conceptual (...) tensions regarding the nature of the intellect, e.g., between materialism (entailed by the emphasis on the intellect’s inherence in the body) and personal immortality. It presents several strategies Prague masters employed to overcome these tensions. For example, an anonymous participant of the 1409 quodlibet develops the Buridanian distinction between the rationally demonstrable materialist tendency and the indemonstrable “catholic truth” about the intellect both inhering in and separable from the body. On the other hand, Wyclif’s adherents (Jacob of Mies and another anonymous master) postulate an immortal spirit hypostatically united to each human being beside the human soul educed from the potency of the matter. Yet, the boundaries between the doctrinal standpoints in question seem permeable, whereby a rigid definition of antagonistic groups in late medieval Prague intellectual milieu (e.g., Buridanians vs Wycliffites) is rendered ineffective. (shrink)

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

This book discusses fundamental topics on contemporary Ockhamism. The collected essays show how contemporary Ockhamism can impact areas of research such as semantics, metaphysics and also the philosophy of science. In addition, the volume hosts one historian of Medieval philosophy who investigates the way in which William of Ockham “in flesh and bone” construed time and, more generally, future contingency. The essays explore the different meanings of this theory. They cover three main topics, in particular. The first examines the thesis (...) that sentences and propositions about the future have a definite truth value, without any ensuing commitment to determinism or fatalism. The second topic looks at the problem whether the branching-time model needs to countenance a privileged branch (the so-called Thin Red Line). Finally, the third topic considers the idea that there are so-called soft facts. These would be the subject matter of sentences and propositions verbally about the present or the past, but metaphysically about a later time, and which might change in the future. Overall, the book provides an updated and rigorous idea of the debate about Ockhamism. It gives readers a deeper understanding into this philosophical approach influenced by William of Ockham, characterized by the rejection of the Aristotelian idea that, in order to preserve the contingency of the future, future contingents must be deemed neither true nor false. (shrink)

"Galileo on the Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities (II). The Problem of the Ontological Status of Sensations" The article is a continuation of the paper in which a theoretical analysis of Galileo’s principal argument for the distinction between primary and secondary qualities was provided. It focuses on the problem of the ontological status of secondary qualities/sensations. I discuss three main interpretative approaches to the issue, considered in light of the findings obtained in the first paper. In the first part (...) of the article, I address the mentalist interpretation of Galileo’s secondary qualities. Additionally, I explore the mechanistic rationale behind his account, in virtue of which it may be called ‘the dustbin theory of the sensorium’. In the second part, I examine the arguments for the materialist reading of the secondary qualities and, by contrasting it with the results obtained in the first article, the theoretical problems inherent in it. In the third part of the paper, I discuss the hermeneutical advantages and theoretical disadvantages of interpreting Galileo’s secondary qualities in Aristotelian terms. I conclude the study by indicating the textual basis and historical significance of the interpretative difficulties discussed. (shrink)

Although Aristotle does not explicitly address persistence, his account of persisting may be derived from a careful consideration of his account of change. On my interpretation, he supposes that motions are mereological unities of their potential temporal parts – I dub such mereological unities ‘lasting’. Aristotle’s persisting things, too, are lasting, I argue. Lasting things are unlike enduring things in that they have temporal parts; and unlike perduring things in that their temporal parts are not actual, but rather are potential. (...) Lasting, that is Aristotle’s persisting, is thus a distinctive alternative to enduring and perduring. I assess this alternative showing it to be attractive. (shrink)

The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed a philosophical shift that would help pave the way for modern science, a shift from metaphysical theories of material objects to other views embracing only the empirically-accessible parts of material things. One much-debated topic in the course of this shift was regarding prime matter. The late scholastic Jacobus Zabarella (1533-1589) arrived upon his views about prime matter via his version of the regressus method, a program for a sort of scientific reasoning. In his De (...) rebus naturalibus, Zabarella defends the position that prime matter is extended. However, it is less clear how he accounts for its extension. There is an important text where he apparently suggests that prime matter is extended in and of itself. However, there are two other texts apparently stating that matter is extended in virtue of a distinct accident in the category of quantity. I argue that a decisive reading based solely upon any particular texts is not available. Nevertheless, examining Zabarella’s writing on the topic as a whole, the trajectory of his overall argument is remarkably sympathetic to Averroes, who famously took the accidentally quantified position. Thus, from this systematic feature, the accidentally quantified reading is more reasonable. (shrink)

A belief is valuable when it “gets it right”. This “getting it right” is often understood solely as a matter of truth. But there is a second sense of “getting it right” worth exploring. According to this second sense, a belief “gets it right” when its concepts accurately match the way the world is objectively organized – that is, when its concepts are joint-carving, or have fidelity. In this paper, I explore the relationship between fidelity and epistemic value. While many (...) philosophers (especially metaphysicians) acknowledge fidelity's value, they overlook just how much it might disrupt our understanding of epistemic value. To tease out this disruption, I draw on the Jamesian balance between seeking the truth and avoiding the false. A similar balance must be struck both within the pursuit of fidelity itself (“seeking the joints” and “avoiding the gruesome”) as well as between the pursuit of fidelity and the pursuit of truth. I then give an argument against the claim that truth is the higher epistemic good. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that Locke is a substance dualist in the general sense, in that he holds that there are, independent of our classificatory schema, two distinct kinds of substances: wholly material ones and wholly immaterial ones. On Locke’s view, the difference between the two lies in whether they are solid or not, thereby differentiating him from Descartes. My way of establishing Locke as a general substance dualist is to be as minimally committal as possible at the (...) outset, especially with respect to the classic debates on Locke’s positions in this domain, including those concerning substrata, real essences, and the like. Nonetheless, I show that minimal commitments about Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction are sufficient to derive some substantive conclusions about his positions on these issues, as well as that he is a general substance dualist. (shrink)

This chapter takes a fresh look at 3d2 of Spinoza’s Ethics, an absolutely pivotal definition for the ethical theory that ensues. According to it, “we act when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate cause,” whereas we are passive “when something happens in us, or something follows from our nature, of which we are only a partial cause.” The definition of activity has puzzled scholars: how can we be an adequate, i.e. complete, cause of (...) an effect outside us (which clearly involves other causal factors as well)? However, the definition of passivity is hardly unproblematic either: how can something follow from the patient’s nature so that the patient can nevertheless be considered only a partial cause? I begin by outlining 3d2 and situating it in the historical context formed by Descartes, Hobbes, and the Aristotelian tradition. Then I show that the existing interpretations do not solve the problem of activity and argue that unraveling the problem requires taking properly into account the distinction between immanent and transeunt causality. In relation to the definition of passivity, I argue that Spinoza’s geometry-inspired theory of essence constitution offers the key to understanding the nature of passions. (shrink)

This paper critiques a narrative concerning causality in later scholasticism due to, among others, Des Chene, Carraud, Schmaltz, Schmid, and Pasnau. On this account, internal developments in the scholastic tradition culminating in Suárez lead to the efficient cause being regarded as the paradigmatic kind of cause, anticipating a view explicitly held by the Cartesians. Focusing on Suárez and his scholastic reception, I defend the following claims: a) Suárez’s definition of cause does not privilege efficient causation; b) Suárez’s readers, from Timpler (...) to Arriaga, did not interpret him as privileging efficient causation; c) it is only much later, in Clauberg, that we find a narrowing of the meaning of causation to efficient causal action; but d) this shift is better explained by Clauberg’s rejection of substance hylomorphism in favor of Descartes’s doctrine of substance, rather than by any troubles within the Aristotelian causal framework. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Locke’s distinction between simple and complex ideas. I argue that Locke accepts what I call the “compositional criterion of simplicity.” According to this criterion, an idea is simple just in case it does not have another idea as a proper part. This criterion is prima facie inconsistent with Locke’s view that there are simple ideas of extension. This objection was presented to Locke by his French translator, Pierre Coste, on behalf of Jean Barbeyrac. Locke responded (...) to Barbeyrac’s objection, but his response, along with a passage from Chapter XV of Book II of the Essay, “Of Duration and Expansion, considered together,” has been taken to show that he did not accept the compositional criterion. I examine these passages and argue that they are not in tension with but rather affirm that criterion. (shrink)

The divine attributes of immensity and omnipresence have been integral to classical Christian confession regarding the nature of the triune God. Divine immensity and omnipresence are affirmed in doctrinal standards such as the Athanasian Creed (c. 500), the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Council of Basel (1431–49), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Second London Baptist Confession (1689), and the First Vatican Council (1869–70). In the first section of this chapter, I offer a brief (...) historical overview of divine immensity and divine omnipresence in the Christian tradition. I then offer a brief taxonomy of contemporary models of divine omnipresence in the philosophical and theological landscape. In the second, more constructive section, I aim to gesture toward the retrieval of several classical insights regarding immensity and omnipresence that remain unexplored in contemporary analytic work. (shrink)

This paper aims to resolve an unremarked-upon tension between Anne Conway’s commitment to the moral responsibility of created beings, or creatures, and her commitment to emanative, constant creation. Emanation causation has an atemporal aspect according to which God’s act of will coexists with its effect. There is no before or after, or past or future in God’s causal contribution. Additionally, Conway’s constant creation picture has it that all times are determined via divine emanation. Creaturely agency, by contrast, is fundamentally temporal, (...) occurring successively over time. It is unclear how creatures can count as emanative causes, which coexists with its effect, given that their agency is limited by time, proceeding from before to after, or past to future. Conway’s account of divine justice in the progress of time, however, requires that creatures are causally responsible. That is, moral responsibility requires causal responsibility. I propose that Conway’s distinction between vital motion and local motion enables a resolution of the tension. Vital motion contributes an atemporal aspect to creaturely agency so that creatures can count as secondary emanative causes. (shrink)

Is it possible for an individual that has gone out of being to come back into being again? The English Aristotelian, Thomas White, argued that it is not. Thomas Hobbes disagreed, and used the case of the Ship of Theseus to argue that individuals that have gone out of being may come back into being again. This paper provides the first systematic account of their arguments. It is doubtful that Hobbes has a consistent case against White. Still his criticism may (...) have prompted White to clarify his views on identity over time in his later work. (shrink)

In this paper I will defend the view that, according to Locke, secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensations in us. Although this view is widely attributed to Locke, this interpretation needs defending for two reasons. First, commentators often assume that secondary qualities are dispositional properties because Locke calls them “powers” to produce sensations. However, primary qualities are also powers, so the powers locution is insufficient grounds for justifying the dispositionalist interpretation. Second, if secondary qualities are dispositional properties then objects (...) would retain secondary qualities while not being observed, but Locke says that colors “vanish” in the dark. Some commentators use this as evidence that Locke rejects the dispositionalist view of secondary qualities, and even those that are sympathetic to the traditional interpretation find these comments to be problematic. By contrast, I argue that even in these supposedly damning passages Locke shows an unwavering commitment to the view that the powers to produce sensations in us, i.e., the secondary qualities, remain in objects even when they are not being perceived. Thus the arguments against the traditional interpretation are unpersuasive, and we should conclude that Locke does indeed hold that secondary qualities are dispositions to cause sensations in us. (shrink)

It is widely held that, in his pre-Critical works, Kant endorsed a necessitation account of laws of nature, where laws are grounded in essences or causal powers. Against this, I argue that the early Kant endorsed the priority of laws in explaining and unifying the natural world, as well as their irreducible role in in grounding natural necessity. Laws are a key constituent of Kant’s explanatory naturalism, rather than undermining it. By laying out neglected distinctions Kant draws among types of (...) natural law, grounding relations, and ontological levels, I show that his early works present a coherent and sophisticated laws-first account of the natural order. (shrink)

This essay proposes a new interpretation of a central, and yet overlooked, argument Leibniz offers against Descartes’s power-free ontology of the corporeal world. Appealing to considerations about the successiveness of motion, Leibniz attempts to show that the reality of motion requires force. It is often assumed that the argument is driven by concerns inspired by Zeno. Against such a reading, this essay contends that Leibniz’s argument is instead best understood against the background of an Aristotelian view of the priority of (...) real being over time. The essay also shows how this alternative interpretation can help to shed new light on the difference between Leibnizian forces and Aristotelian powers, as well as on Leibniz’s famous claim that accounting for force leads us beyond the mechanistic corporeal realm. (shrink)

This book collects six unpublished and published academic studies on the thought of Francisco Suárez, which is addressed through accurate textual analyses and meticulous contextualization of his doctrines in the Scholastic debate. The present essays aim to portray two complementary aspects coexisting in the work of the Uncommon Doctor: his innovative approach and his adherence to the tradition. To this scope, they focus on some pivotal, but often neglected, topics in Suárez’s metaphysics and psychology – such as his theories of (...) cognition and truth, angelology, continuous quantity – thereby developing an original inquiry into a crucial moment in the development of Western philosophy. (shrink)

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de re truths (...) about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness and Independence has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

Kant’s conception of the centrality of intellectual self-consciousness, or “pure apperception”, for scientific knowledge of nature is well known, if still obscure. Here I argue that, for Kant, at least one central role for such self-consciousness lies in the acquisition of the content of concepts central to metaphysical theorizing. I focus on one important concept, that of <substance>. I argue that, for Kant, the representational content of the concept <substance> depends not just on the capacity for apperception, but on the (...) actual intellectual awareness of oneself in such apperception. I then defend this interpretation from a variety of objections. (shrink)

The approach adopted by Early Modern authors to the notions of ‘whole’ and ‘part’ (what is called, in contemporary metaphysics, “mereology”, from the Ancient Greek word μερος: ‘part’) constitutes a central feature of their respective systems. The issue of what constituted a whole became all the more crucial as the new, revolutionary approaches to matter and extension – which mark the unavoidably fuzzy beginning of what we define as “modernity” – demanded a novel (and in some cases, radical) approach to (...) the questions of what constitutes a whole and how parts are arranged and bound together. It is important to mention that diverse attitudes towards mereology characterised Early Modern philosophers orthogonally to their belonging to different camps, such as the traditional categories of ‘Rationalists’ and ‘Empiricists’. Some of these philosophers considered wholes to be ontologically and/or logically prior to their parts (an approach that we may call “organicist” or “holist”, applying an anachronistic but nonetheless appropriate label). Others considered wholes to be derivative, resulting from the union of their parts (an approach that could be named “mereological mechanism”). Therefore, a word about terminology is in order: in what follows, I will apply the label “holist/organicist” to refer to a philosopher who would favour the priority of wholes over parts. Vice versa, I shall label as a “mereological mechanist” any philosopher favouring the priority of parts over the wholes formed by those parts, regardless of such parts being exclusively material, or including spiritual/mental parts as well as material ones. (shrink)

My aims in this essay are two. First (§§1-4), I want to get clear on the very idea of a theory of the history of philosophy, the idea of an overarching account of the evolution of philosophical reflection since the inception of written philosophy. And secondly (§§5-8), I want to actually sketch such a global theory of the history of philosophy, which I call the two-streams theory.

This paper investigates Kant’s account of “real essence” and of a thing’s “nature”. Notwithstanding their wide negligence in the literature, these concepts belong to the central ones of Kant’s metaphysics. I argue that, on the one hand, Kant is in continuity with the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition of essence. But, on the other hand, he also follows Locke in distinguishing between “logical” and “real” essence. Contrary to recent attempts of aligning real essence with contemporary approaches to essence, I will defend the thesis (...) that Kant equates real essence and (formal) nature, and that real essence has a causal, but no constitutive role. I shall also respond to potential objections and discuss some developments of Kant’s views. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Spinoza holds a perspectivalist view of mereological composition, a form of anti-realism. The paper has two parts: In the first half of the paper, I introduce interpretive puzzles for the standard realist reading of Spinoza’s mereology. In the second half of the paper, I discuss Spinoza’s positive view on mereological composition and present a perspectivalist reading that avoids the interpretive puzzles.

In the past, experts have disagreed about whether Samuel Clarke accepted the idea that gravity is a power superadded to matter by God. Most scholars now agree that Clarke did not support superaddition. But the argumentation employed by Clarke to reject superaddition has not been studied before in detail. In this paper, I explicate Clarke's argumentation by relating it to an important discussion about the possibility of superadded gravity in the Clarke-Collins correspondence. I examine Clarke's responses to Collins and draw (...) on his other works to reconstruct Clarke's reasons for rejecting superadded gravity. (shrink)

Since Leibniz's time, Cartesian mental causation has been criticized for violating the conservation of energy and momentum. Many dualist responses clearly fail. But conservation laws have important neglected features generally undermining the objection. Conservation is _local_, holding first not for the universe, but for everywhere separately. The energy in any volume changes only due to what flows through the boundaries. Constant total energy holds if the global summing-up of local conservation laws converges; it probably doesn't in reality. Energy conservation holds (...) if there is symmetry, the sameness of the laws over time. Thus, if there are time-places where symmetries fail due to nonphysical influence, conservation laws fail there and then, while holding elsewhere, such as refrigerators and stars. Noether's converse first theorem shows that conservation laws imply symmetries. Thus conservation trivially nearly entails the causal closure of the physical. But expecting conservation to hold in the brain simply assumes the falsehood of Cartesianism. Hence Leibniz's objection begs the question. Empirical neuroscience is another matter. So is Einstein's General Relativity: far from providing a loophole, General Relativity makes mental causation _harder_. (shrink)

Bonaventure is sometimes taken to be an ante litteram champion of the four-dimensional theory of persistence. I argue that this interpretation is incorrect: Bonaventure was no four-dimensionalist.

This paper investigates Locke’s views about materialism, by looking at the discussion in Essay IV.x. There Locke---after giving a cosmological argument for the existence of God---argues that God could not be material, and that matter alone could never produce thought. In discussing the chapter, I pay particular attention to some comparisons between Locke’s position and those of two other seventeenth-century philosophers, René Descartes and Ralph Cudworth. -/- Making use of those comparisons, I argue for two main claims. The first is (...) that the important argument of Essay IV.x.10 is fundamentally an argument about the causation of perfections. Indeed, Locke gives multiple such arguments in the chapter. My second main claim is that my proposed reading of IV.x is not merely consistent with what Locke says elsewhere about superaddition, but also provides reasons to favor a particular understanding of what superaddition is. (shrink)

We look at some interesting and important episodes in the life of early modern Epicureanism, focusing on natural philosophy. We begin with two early moderns who had a great deal to say about ancient Epicureanism: Pierre Gassendi and Ralph Cudworth. Looking at how Gassendi and Cudworth conceived of Epicureanism gives us a sense of what the early moderns considered important in the ancient tradition. It also points us towards three main themes of early modern Epicureanism in natural philosophy, which we (...) then discuss at greater length: atomism, materialism about the mind or soul, and the denial of providence, which was often accompanied by deflationary explanations of religious belief. (shrink)

Elisabeth was the first of Descartes' interlocutors to press concerns about mind-body union and interaction, and the only one to receive a detailed reply, unsatisfactory though she found it. Descartes took her tentative proposal `to concede matter and extension to the soul' for a confused version of his own view: `that is nothing but to conceive it united to the body. Contemporary commentators take Elisabeth for a materialist or at least a critic of dualism. I read her instead as a (...) dualist of a different variety from Descartes: a forerunner of twenty-first century naturalistic dualism which calls for empirical investigation of the psychological and its posits to be taken just as seriously as physics and its posits. -/- I argue that Elisabeth, a keen scholar of mechanistic physics, objected not to substance dualism per se but to the residual Scholasticism of Descartes' account of mind-body causality and his dogmatism about principal attributes. She queried Descartes' categorisation of the `action' of thought as mind's principal attribute, and his identification of it with the merely negative property of immateriality, holding instead that further philosophical and empirical investigation into the nature of the mind is necessary. I problematise the materialist interpretation of Elisabeth with reference to later letters where she dismissed the materialist Objections of Hobbes and Gassendi and continued to urge further clarifications to Cartesian dualism. I explore Elisabeth's contrasting of statements of mechanistic physics with statements about thought, and her call for further investigation into the properties of the mind, and argue they mark her out as a forerunner of contemporary naturalistic dualism which proposes substance dualism as a best interpretation of recent psychology and of the difference in logical form between current physics and current psychology. (shrink)

This paper explores the theory of freedom that Emilie du Châtelet advances in her essay “On Freedom.” Using contemporary terminology, we can characterize this theory as a version of agent-causal compatibilism. More specifically, the theory has the following elements: (a) freedom consists in the power to act in accordance with one’s choices, (b) freedom requires the ability to suspend desires and master passions, (c) freedom requires a power of self-motion in the agent, and (d) freedom is compatible with moral necessity (...) but not with physical necessity. While these elements may at first appear disparate, the paper shows that they fit together quite well. The resulting theory is a surprising combination of doctrines that appear to be based on Samuel Clarke’s libertarian account of free will and doctrines that are reminiscent of the compatibilist accounts of John Locke, Anthony Collins, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

John Locke’s claims about relations (such as cause and effect) and mixed modes (such as beauty and murder) have been controversial since the publication of the Essay. His earliest critics read him as a thoroughgoing anti-realist who denies that such things exist. More charitable readers have sought to read Locke’s claims away. Against both, I argue that Locke is making ontological claims, but that his views do not have the absurd consequences his defenders fear. By examining Locke’s texts, as well (...) as the intellectual context in which they were written, I show that Locke’s position is at once radical and thoroughly traditional. (shrink)

I argue that medieval solutions to the limit decision problem imply four-dimensionalism, i.e. the view according to which substances that persist through time are extended through time as well as through space, and have different temporal parts at different times.

Divine temporality is all the rage in certain theological circles today. Some even suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity entails divine temporality. While I find this claim a bit strong, I do think that divine temporality can be quite useful for developing a robust model of the Trinity. However, not everyone agrees with this. Paul Helm has offered an objection to the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality based on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He has argued that (...) this form of divine temporality entails Arianism. In other words, divine temporality suffers from an inadequate doctrine of the Trinity. In this paper I shall first articulate the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality. From there I shall develop some of the Oxford school’s theological benefits that help flesh out the doctrine of the Trinity, and assuage the charge of Arianism. Then I shall offer an examination and refutation of the Arian charge to divine temporality in order to show that the divine temporalist can maintain a robust Trinitarian theology. (shrink)

At a 2011 meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, N. T. Wright offered four reasons for rejecting the existence of soul. This was surprising, as many Christian philosophers had previously taken Wright's defense of a disembodied intermediate state as a defense of a substance dualist view of the soul. In this paper, I offer responses to each of Wright's objections, demonstrating that Wright's arguments fail to undermine substance dualism. In so doing, I expose how popular arguments against dualism fail, (...) such as dualism is merely an unwarranted influence of Greek culture on Christianity, and substance dualism is merely a soul-of-the-gaps hypothesis. Moreover, I demonstrate that Wright himself has offered a powerful reason for adopting substance dualism in his previous works. In conclusion I offer a view that explains why the human soul needs a resurrected body. (shrink)

Discussions of John Locke’s theory of causation tend, understandably, to focus on the related notion of power and in particular the dialectic with David Hume. But Locke faces a very different threat, one that is internal to his view. For he argues both that causation is a relation and that relations are not real. The obvious conclusion is intolerable. And yet the premises, I argue, are unassailable. Building on an interpretation of Locke’s treatment of relations I have developed elsewhere, I (...) show how Locke can at once speak meaningfully of causation and deny its mind-independent existence. (shrink)

Descartes notoriously characterizes substance in two ways: first, as an ultimate subject of properties ; second, as an independent entity. The characterizations have appeared to many to diverge on the definition as well as the scope of the notion of substance. For it is often thought that the ultimate subject of properties need not—and, in some cases, cannot—be independent. Drawing on a suite of historical, textual, and philosophical considerations, this essay argues for an interpretation that reconciles Descartes's two characterizations. It (...) proposes that both characterizations invoke a type of independence that obtains just in case there is no relation to another entity that holds by the nature of the entity in question. Even though the ultimate subject of properties is sometimes not independent in other respects, it satisfies this independence-by-nature condition. (shrink)