Humans' capacity to attain knowledge is central to Spinoza's philosophy because, in part, knowing things enables humans to deal properly with their affects. But it is not just any sort of knowledge that humans should attain. There are different types of knowledge, but only two of them–rational and intuitive knowledge–enable humans who attain them to know things clearly. Because rational knowledge attends to universals whereas intuitive knowledge attends to particulars, intuitive knowledge is better than rational knowledge at enabling humans to (...) deal with their affects. Most scholars recognize both the importance of knowledge to humans' dealing with their affects and the superiority of intuitive knowledge at enabling them to do this. But these points are particularly relevant to the affect that Spinoza calls "tristitia," which is usually translated as either "pain" or "sadness." I argue in this dissertation that attaining knowledge– especially intuitive knowledge–enables humans to deal properly with their experiences of pain. This ability that humans acquire by knowing things is what I call "active suffering." A person suffers passively when she merely reacts to her pain, in this way allowing an external force to control her. She suffers actively when she uses knowledge to respond to her pain, in this way being in control of herself. This knowledge she uses to deal actively with her pain bears a relation to Spinoza's theory of freedom, since it entails a realization that all events (such as a person's experience of pain) happen necessarily and that embracing this necessity is the same as being free. (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)

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)

The usual reading of Descartes' “anthropological” perspective classifies it as a radical dualism with a distinction between two substances, mind and body, which experience major interaction difficulties. Through a contextualization of Descartes' physiological and psychological thought as well as through a less fragmented reading of his work, we intend to review this traditional interpretation, thereby showing its distorted character. When we pay attention to passion, a new Descartes’ image as a sort of phenomenal monism appears, which is markedly different from (...) the legendary image typically associated with him, even today. (shrink)

The article analyses recent English publications in Cartesian studies that deal with two problems: (1) the problem of the intrinsic coherence of Descartes’s doctrine of the real distinction and interaction between mind and body and (2) the problem of the consistency of this doctrine with the causal principle formulated in the Third Meditation. The principle at issue is alternatively interpreted by different Cartesian scholars either as the Hierarchy Principle, that the cause should be at least as perfect as its effects, (...) or the Containment Principle, that the cause should contain all there is in its effects. The author argues that Descartes’s claim (in his argument against the scholastic doctrine of substantial forms) that it is inconceivable how things of different natures can interact does not conflict with the acknowledgement of interaction between things of different natures in the case of soul and body. The case is made that Cartesian mind-body interaction can agree with both the Hierarchy Principle and the Containment Principle, because the Principle is about total and efficient cause, whereas in the interaction, mental and brain states are only partial (and plausibly, in the case of brains states, occasional) causes. In particular, in the case of the causality in the brain-to-mind direction, the mind is conditioned by brain states to form the corresponding specific ideas on the basis of its innate general ideas of movements, forms, colours, etc. Eventually, for Descartes, the most natural way to deal with worries about the possibility of mind-brain interaction is to rely on God’s omnipotence, which certainly enables Him to arrange for such interaction. (shrink)

While Descartes’s Passions of the Soul has been taken to hold a place in the history to human physiology, until recently philosophers have neglected the work. In this research summary, I set Descartes’s last published work in context and then sketch out its philosophical significance. From it, we gain further insight into Descartes’s solution to the Mind--Body Problem -- that is, to the problem of the ontological status of the mind--body union in a human being, to the nature of body--mind (...) causation, and to the way body-caused thoughts represent the world. In addition, the work contains Descartes’s developed ethics, in his account of virtue and of the passion of générosité in particular. Through his taxonomy of the passions and the account of their regulation, we also learn more about his moral psychology. (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...

Descartes argues that the mind and body are really distinct substances. He also insists that minds and bodies compose human beings. But how are mind and body united to compose a human? This question is crucial to understanding the place of human beings in Descartes’s ontology. Many scholars argue that Descartes has no solution to the unity problem, and they call into question the ontological status of mind-body composites. On some views, Cartesian humans are mere aggregates, like stacks of pancakes; (...) on other views, Descartes is not entitled to the view that humans exist at all. I argue that Descartes has a solution to the unity problem, and that he appropriates this solution from contemporaneous Jesuit discussions of soul-body unity—discussions that remain mostly unknown to contemporary scholars. The upshot is that Descartes has the metaphysical machinery to account for mind-body unity and doesn’t have to say that a human being is like a stack of pancakes. (shrink)

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)

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the role that the imagination plays in the later philosophy of René Descartes. The thesis will look at two related questions: the status of the imagination as a mode of thought dependent on the body; the role of the imagination in object-perception. Throughout, the traditional view of Descartes as a Cartesian Dualist is rejected and a more holistic approach is taken towards the relationship between mind and body, in which Descartes’ claims that (...) the two make up a “substantial union” are taken seriously. Part One deals with the relationship between mind and body. I argue that Cartesian Dualism cannot account for the faculties of sensation and imagination, because they have a corporeal basis. However, the ‘union of mind and body’, Descartes’ device for explaining their interaction, can. I end Part One by identifying a problem with the paradigm case of mind-body interaction, object-perception. To determine the object of an idea there needs to be a mechanism to marry the two ingredients of perception: the innate ideas of geometry in the intellect, and ‘adventitious’ ideas of the object delivered by the senses. Otherwise we have no explanation for how the essentially ‘inward-looking’ intellect can apply its ideas to the essentially passive sensations. Part Two focuses on the imagination and the question of object-perception raised in Part One. I argue against the largely-held view in the secondary literature that, with the advent of the cogito, the imagination’s cognitive profile declined sharply. I argue that, in fact, the corporeal basis of the imagination places it beautifully to bridge the gap in object-perception, and that this is part of its role in all Descartes’ discussions on the topic. The other, related, role of the imagination is to conjure fictions and hypotheses, suiting it for scientific and epistemological endeavours. The fact that the imagination is not tied to what is present to the senses, even though it receives its original content from them, means that it can manipulate ideas of corporeal things; including the innate notions of extension, shape and motion so key to gaining a clear and distinct idea of matter. (shrink)

Fidelity to the Cartesian philosophy requires a defense of dualism as well as mind-body union and interaction, all the while keeping to some form of the causal likeness principle. Each of these positions are ones that Descartes maintained throughout his writings. Yet, successors and scholars alike have noted the inconsistencies that arise from defending these views conjointly and have argued that one or more of them should be abandoned. Even the first generation of Cartesian successors whose fidelity to the Cartesian (...) principles was especially steadfast, such as Louis de la Forge, have been interpreted and characterized as giving up causal interactionism and wittingly or unwittingly embracing occasionalism. In my dissertation project, I have made mind-body not body-body cases the starting point of the inquiry into cartesian causal interactionism and from there developed a general model of interaction. This goes against the scholarly norm of focusing on the body-body cases to develop a model that then cannot explain how the mind-body cases work. This is not a minor change in point of view, but rather, requires a paradigm shift in cartesian studies, particularly with respect to understanding mind-body union and interaction. Further supporting the needed paradigm shift in our reading of La Forge is that in his account of union criteria we discover that mind-body union is the true union and that body-body unions are considered such only by extension. As such the case of mind-body union should be taken as the exemplar case and not body-body. According to La Forge, mind and body are linked via the relative attribute of will and share a relationship of mutual and reciprocal dependence. Union is not based on a spatial relation. The union is a hybrid mode – a way of being of the two substances if and when they stand in such a relation to one another. While, the union provides the commonality needed to bridge the gap of what two distinct substances have in common it does not provide the explanation of how mind and body interact. Operationalizing the union in terms of mutual and reciprocal dependence requires further explanation. La Forge explains that mind and body are secondary causes. The causal model of interaction of mind and body is one in which these particular causes and their relation of mutual and reciprocal dependence allows for the action of the one to bring about the effect in the other. The body’s movements stimulate thoughts in the mind and the mind’s thoughts direct movements in the body. There is a bi-directional causal interaction. Furthermore, by coupling La Forge’s account of union and interaction with that of Nadler’s proposed occasional causation model we find that mind and body both have causal agency in the weaker secondary sense. Both substances have the power to determine and direct motion, albeit neither mind nor body create motion per se. La Forge establishes a key distinction between universal and particular causes, which then grounds his subsequent attribution of secondary causal power to wills – to direct the movements of bodies, and to bodies in virtue of their modes of configuration – to direct the movement of other bodies. While, God is the universal and efficient cause that creates minds, bodies, and motion, He has minimal involvement in the particular determinations of volitions and movements. He imparts power to His creatures to determine motion. God conserves the world and the laws set by Him in the form of three laws of motion and seven laws of union. However, finite substances such as mind and body also have force, albeit not in the same sense as God does as the universal and total cause, but rather as particular secondary causes that have autonomy and can determine the direction and local quantity of motion. Thus, La Forge explains how both mind-body and body-body interactions are genuine causes, i.e., non-occasionalistic. Accordingly, in keeping with Cartesian philosophy La Forge maintains dualism, and provides an account of union and an account of interaction that is not occasionalistic. Both mind-body and body-body interaction is based on equivocal causation – the effect does not strictly resemble the cause – but both operate through the likenesses of relations of union, mutual dependence and proximity respectively. Thus, La Forge’s causal model that has minds and bodies interacting based on their relation of mutual and reciprocal dependence, and bodies interacting based on their shared mutual proximity and dependence, provides a weaker account of the causal likeness principle. Nonetheless, there is nothing inconsistent with his defense of a weaker notion of likeness that does not demand resemblance. My examination of La Forge’s Treatise on the Human Mind has demonstrated that we can maintain fidelity in our interpretation of Descartes and the Cartesian philosophy that maintains its adherence to dualism while giving an account of union and causal interaction. (shrink)