Descartes, Boyle and Hooke shared, with many other seventeenth-century figures, the view that mechanical explanations were the only intellectually satisfactory ones. They also all accepted the view that we have incorporeal souls. This generated a problem for them when they wrote about perception. In this area, indeed, Descartes seems to be almost a reluctant Cartesian. When we read his scientific writings, the incorporeal soul is not stressed, and Descartes happily speaks of physical, or of corporeal, ideas in discussing sensation, memory (...) and imagination. (shrink)

In this thesis, positive and negative tensions among the “unit-ideas” of New Science and empiricism are explored as they relate to explanations of aspects of mind in the Modern period. Some constellations of ideas are mutually supporting, and provide fruitful discussion on how mind can fit into the natural world. This project aims to clarify the adequacy of this type of framework in accommodating and explaining mind, and aspects of mind. I proceed by analyzing key texts via the “unit-ideas” of (...) New Science and empiricism. The three central chapters are case studies, looking at Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. In each chapter I analyse an aspect of the mental as it is explained within a version of the framework created by that thinker’s particular constellation of New Science and empiricism. In evaluating the adequacy of these frameworks to handle the problem presented to them, new insights appear about the historical figures and the texts. For example, in analyzing Hobbes’ framework for explaining mind, the impact of Hobbes’ view of mind on his political philosophy comes into relief, creating space for new research avenues. Identifying underlying tensions within Locke’s explanatory framework, it becomes possible to put to bed an old debate about whether Locke was a libertarian, a compatibilist, or a necessitarian. And in understanding clearly the ways in which Hume’s version of this constellation of ideas leads to his view of volition, at least one interpretation of Hume as a metaphysician can be decisively rejected. This project is intended partly as an illustration of the significance of the historical dimension to adequately understanding contemporary issues in Philosophy of Mind. It is important to recognize that there are certain conditions for possibility of the emergence of philosophical concepts and views, and that the way problems can be resolved depends very much on the way they are posed or articulated. This project straddles the sub-fields of Philosophy of Mind and History of Philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract Boyle distinguished clearly between the areas which we would call scientific and theological. However, he felt that they overlapped seamlessly, and that the truths we discovered (or which were revealed to us) in one of these areas would be relevant to us in the other. In this paper I outline and discuss Boyle's views on the limitations of human knowing, Boyle's arguments in favour of accepting the revelations of the Christian faith, and his views on the kind of epistomological (...) standing that scientific knowledge claims have. Given this background I then consider the relation between hypotheses, theories and facts in Boyle's work, and consider a particular case, that of Boyle's Law, as an exemplification of the claims made in the rest of the paper. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Robert Boyle does not hold that true religion requires us to believe doctrines that are in violation of the law of noncontradiction or that it yields logical contradictions. Rather, due to the epistemological limitations of human reason, we are sometimes called to believe doctrines or propositions that are at first blush contradictory but, upon further inspection, not definitively so. This holds for doctrines considered singly or together and is an important qualifier to the traditional (...) line of scholarship’s flat claim that Boyle’s limits of belief are logical contradictions. My conclusions here are at odds with Jan W. Wojcik’s claim, in her important, revisionist work on the famous natural philosopher, that he teaches that sometimes we are required to believe religious doctrines that violate the law of noncontradiction. (shrink)