Mary Astell (1666-1731) relies on a Cartesian account of the self to argue that both men and women are essentially thinking things and, hence, that both should perfect their minds or intellects. In offering such an account of the self, Astell might seem to ignore the inescapable fact that we have bodies. I argue that Astell accommodates the self’s embodiment along two main dimensions. First, she tempers her sharp distinction between mind and body by insisting on their union. The mind (...) and body are united in such a way that they exert reciprocal causal influence and form a whole together. Second, she argues that the mind-body union is good, that the union has its own distinctive form of good or perfection, and that the mind should pursue this good alongside its own. (shrink)

An old question in Spinoza scholarship is how finite, non-eternal things transitively caused by other finite, non-eternal things (i. e., the entities described in propositions like E1p28) are caused by the infinite, eternal substance, given that what follows either directly or indirectly from the divine nature is infinite and eternal (E1p21–23). In “Spinoza’s Monism I,” “Spinoza’s Monism I,” in the previous issue of this journal. I pointed out that most commentators answer this question by invoking entities that are indefinite and (...) sempiternal, but argued that perhaps we should not be so quick to assume that in Spinoza’s system, an infinite and eternal substance could cause such indefinite, sempiternal entities. But if such eternal-durational causation is denied, then it seems harder to see how Spinoza’s system could be coherent: if Spinoza holds that the infinite, eternal substance cannot cause anything that is not infinite and not eternal, then how can he also hold that all things are modes immanently caused by substance (E1p15, E1p18, E1p25)? In this essay, I explain how Spinoza’s system could be understood in light of a denial of eternal-durational causation. On the interpretation I offer, God is the cause of all things and all things are modes because the essences of all things follow from the divine nature and all essences enjoy infinite, eternal reality as modes immanently caused by the infinite, eternal substance. The same non-substantial essences can also be conceived as enjoying non-infinite, non-eternal reality, but so conceived, they are enduring, finite (or sempiternal, indefinite) entities that cannot be conceived as modes caused by and inhering in the one infinite, eternal substance. I conclude by pointing out that if we take this interpretive route, we do have to understand Spinoza as committed to acosmism, or a denial of the reality of the world – at least the world of enduring, finite things. (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)

Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

The conservation of energy and momentum have been viewed as undermining Cartesian mental causation since the 1690s. Modern discussions of the topic tend to use mid-nineteenth century physics, neglecting both locality and Noether’s theorem and its converse. The relevance of General Relativity has rarely been considered. But a few authors have proposed that the non-localizability of gravitational energy and consequent lack of physically meaningful local conservation laws answers the conservation objection to mental causation: conservation already fails in GR, so there (...) is nothing for minds to violate. This paper is motivated by two ideas. First, one might take seriously the fact that GR formally has an infinity of rigid symmetries of the action and hence, by Noether’s first theorem, an infinity of conserved energies-momenta. Second, Sean Carroll has asked how one should modify the Dirac–Maxwell–Einstein equations to describe mental causation. This paper uses the generalized Bianchi identities to show that General Relativity tends to exclude, not facilitate, such Cartesian mental causation. In the simplest case, Cartesian mental influence must be spatio-temporally constant, and hence 0. The difficulty may diminish for more complicated models. Its persuasiveness is also affected by larger world-view considerations. The new general relativistic objection provides some support for realism about gravitational energy-momentum in GR. Such realism also might help to answer an objection to theories of causation involving conserved quantities, because energies-momenta would be conserved even in GR. (shrink)

It is a matter of continuing scholarly dispute whether Descartes offers a metaphysics of the material world that is “monist” or “pluralist.” One passage that has become crucial to this debate is from the Synopsis of the Meditations, in which Descartes argues that since “body taken in general” is a substance, and since all substances are “by their nature incorruptible,” this sort of body is incorruptible as well. In this article I defend a pluralist reading of this passage, according to (...) which there are indefinitely many bodies-taken-in-general, each of which counts as an incorruptible material substance. However, I also consider some surprising features of the argument in the Synopsis. One is that this argument conflicts with the implication in Descartes that any two “really distinct” substances can each exist without the other existing. Another is that the argument tends to undermine his suggestion that there is room at a fundamental metaphysical level for ordinary material objects. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of Descartes's conception of freedom that resolves an important tension at the heart of his view. It does so by appealing to the important but overlooked distinction between possessing a power, exercising a power, and being in a position to exercise a power.

Additive theories of rationality, as I use the term, are theories that hold that an account of our capacity to reflect on perceptually-given reasons for belief and desire-based reasons for action can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms that do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational reflection, conceived as an independent capacity to ‘monitor’ and ‘regulate’ our (...) believing-on-the-basis-of-perception and our acting-on-the-basis-of-desire. I show that a number of recent discussions of human rationality are committed to an additive approach, and I raise two difficulties for this approach, each analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The interaction problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The unity problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject's entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he or she oversees as ‘I’ rather than ‘it’. I argue that these difficulties motivate a general skepticism about the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, ‘transformative’ framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal. (shrink)

This essay addresses two main aspects of Descartes’s views on the mind’s voluntary control over judgment. First, I argue that in his view, the mind’s control over judgment is indirect: rather than believing things directly at will, the mind’s voluntary control is exercised by directing its attention to reasons—the reasons then doing the work of determining either assent, dissent, or suspension. Second, I argue that the foregoing indirect voluntarism account undermines an influential line of argument purporting to show that Descartes (...) holds a compatibilist account of the mind’s liberty in its judgment formation. On the broader interpretation that emerges, Descartes assigns a more significant role to attention in proper judgment formation than has generally been acknowledged. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore René Descartes' conception of human freedom. I begin with the key interpretive challenges of Descartes' remarks and then turn to two foundational issues in the secondary literature: the philosophical backdrop of Descartes' remarks and the notions of freedom that commentators have used to characterize Descartes. The remainder of the paper is focused on the main current debate: Descartes' position on the relationship between freedom and determinism.

Argues that Descartes's commitment to mind-body causation leads to a commitment to body-body causation.

Scholars have long recognized that Newton regarded Descartes as his principal philosophical interlocutor when composing the first edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. The arguments in the Scholium on space and time, for instance, can profitably be interpreted as focusing on the conception of space and motion in part two of Descartes's Principles of Philosophy (1644). What is less well known, however, is that this Cartesian conception, along with Descartes's attempt to avoid Galileo's fate in 1633, serves as (...) an essential background to understanding Newton's own (poorly understood) view of the theological implications of his theory of space and motion. In particular, after withdrawing Le Monde from publication in 1633 because of its Copernican leanings, Descartes later introduced what some regard as a “fudge factor” into the theory of motion in the Principles: from an ordinary perspective the earth does move; but from a philosophical one, it does not. This background indicates the novelty and originality of Newton's own attempt to explicate how scriptural passages concerning the motions of the heavenly bodies can be reconciled with the philosophical views he developed during the 1680s. New evidence from archival sources and correspondence supports this argument, shedding light on the Scholium and on Newton's conception of philosophy's relation to theology. (shrink)

The concept of efficient causation originates with Aristotle, who states that the types of cause include ‘the primary source of the change or rest’. For Medieval Aristotelians, the scope of efficient causality includes creative acts. The Islamic philosopher Avicenna is an important contributor to this conceptual change. In his Metaphysics, Avicenna defines the efficient cause or agent as that which gives being to something distinct from itself. As previous studies of Avicenna's ‘metaphysical’ conception of the efficient cause attest, it takes (...) God as a model agent. This essay considers whether Avicenna's ‘metaphysical’ conception of the efficient cause applies to natural agents. It ultimately argues that Avicenna offers a unified view of the efficient cause, which includes both divine and natural agents. On this view, an efficient cause gives being to another and is simultaneous with its effect. While Avicenna's defence of this view is an important chapter in the history of the concept of the efficient cause, it is also of interest in its own right. By appeal to a version of the principle of sufficient reason, it challenges a widespread view that causes are temporally prior to their effects. (shrink)

The Quietist affair at the end of the seventeenth century has much to teach us about theories of the will in the period. Although Bossuet and Fénelon are the names most famously associated with the debate over the Quietist conception of pure love, Malebranche and his erstwhile disciple Lamy were the ones who debated the deep philosophical issues involved. This paper sets the historical context of the debate, discusses the positions as well as the arguments for and against them, and (...) opens up investigation of important material that is all but ignored in the English literature and only incompletely addressed in the French. (shrink)

This paper offers a non-traditional account of what was really at stake in debates over the legitimacy of teleology and teleological explanations in the later medieval and early modern periods. It is divided into four main sections. The first section highlights two defining features of ancient and early medieval views on teleology, namely, that teleological explanations are on a par (or better) with efficient causal explanations, and that the objective goodness of outcomes may explain their coming about. The second section (...) argues that it was the first thesis – the thesis of explanatory parity –that came under attack by mainstream philosophers in the later medieval and early modern traditions, rather than teleology per se. The third section argues similarly that it was the second thesis – the thesis of explanatory goodness – that was the object of Spinoza’s critique of final causes, rather than teleology itself. Finally, the fourth section argues that Leibniz’s claim to be a champion of traditional teleology rests on his willingness to defend both the theses of explanatory parity and goodness against the very charges that led to their demise. The essay concludes by contrasting the narrative offered here with Don Garrett’s recent account according to which “it is not Leibniz but Spinoza who holds the position on teleology and teleological explanation nearest to that of Aristotle” (312). (shrink)

It is well known that the French Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) was both an occasionalist in metaphysics and a mechanist in physics. He consistently argued that God is the only true caus...

À partir de l’analyse d’un argument présenté dans la correspondance avec More, cette étude examine la conception cartésienne du rapport de l’étendue à l’impénétrabilité à travers le prisme de l’imagination. Je montre que l’argument en question est une expérience de pensée qui s’appuie sur le caractère inimaginable d’une étendue pénétrable. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle la conception proprement cartésienne de l’imagination implique que le contenu et les limites de nos actes d’imagination dépendent des propriétés des images cérébrales. J’en déduis que (...) cette conception particulière de l’imagination explique pourquoi l’argument des lettres à More est concluant du point de vue de Descartes. (shrink)

Introduction The discussion of “self-knowledge” as a philosophical issue begins with an intuition. This intuition is based on the fact that our knowledge of our mental states or our knowledge in relation to statements like: “I know that I am happy,” is a particular knowledge that is distinct from the rest of our knowledge. It seems that in order to gain knowledge of ourselves, we do not need to go through those processes that we go through in order to gain (...) knowledge about the external world or knowledge of other minds. We feel that we directly know our own mental states. The role of self-knowledge philosophers is to explain this type of particular knowledge. Theories such as the Inner Sense Theory, the Acquaintance Theory, inferentialism, or theories with a rationalist approach are presented in response to this issue. Considering theories such as the Inner Sense Theory and the Acquaintance Theory, we will find that a common aspect of these theories is that self- knowledge has been defined as a product of an internal observation of our mental states. Such an approach is a kind of Empiricism in self-knowledge. The Rationalist approach has been raised against this approach. This approach, by linking self-knowledge with rationality, has opened a new chapter in the discussion of self-knowledge. The foundation of this approach is based on the principle that our situation as a rational agent plays a fundamental role in self-knowledge. Rationalists believed that this ignorance of the fundamental role of rationality in self-knowledge has caused Empiricists to ignore the most important kind of self-knowledge that is associated with rationality. Tyler Burge, Richard Moran, and Matthew Boyle are some of the important philosophers who theorize about this kind of self-knowledge. Goal In this paper, we will first introduce the main components of Rationalist approaches because we want to review the theoretical literature of this approach. Then, we will bring up a summary of the Tyler Burge view, a famous and important philosopher of the rationalist approach. This is an introduction to introduce Moran’s Theory of Transparency which is the focal point of our discussion. We will then refer to one of the most important challenges facing the Transparency Theory and bring up a significant solution that is presented by Matthew Boyle. We will also show that despite the advantages of this solution, there are ambiguities and other challenges. Finally, we will try to set up two proposals as a way to advance Boyle’s solution. Conclusion The perspective of rationalist philosophers about the existence of a kind of self-knowledge in rational creatures seems to be a powerful idea that is difficult to oppose. Tyler Burge presented interesting arguments about this issue. But it is not easy replying to the question of how this kind of self-knowledge occurs. The theory of Transparency and Reflectivism were proposed to respond to this question. Although they have been considered as efficient theories; however, the mentioned problem still remains ambiguous and complex. Transparency denied the introspective self-knowledge, but couldn’t explain how transparent self-knowledge occurs and therefore, it does not provide a complete explanation for self-knowledge. Some vagueness and some important challenges still continue to exist in this theory. Finally, we propose two proposals as a complement to Boyle’s theory. Maybe they could advance this theory. We suggest that we can use the concept of non-conceptual belief and dispositional belief. These debates have the potential for solving some of the challenges of Transparency and Reflectivism. These are profound topics and need great reflection. We know that our proposals are very elementary and crude ideas. But perhaps they can be a way toward developing the Transparency and Reflectivism theories. (shrink)

Misconceptions about energy conservation abound due to the gap between physics and secondary school chemistry. This paper surveys this difference and its relevance to the 1690s–2010s Leibnizian argument that mind-body interaction is impossible due to conservation laws. Justifications for energy conservation are partly empirical, such as Joule’s paddle wheel experiment, and partly theoretical, such as Lagrange’s statement in 1811 that energy is conserved if the potential energy does not depend on time. In 1918 Noether generalized results like Lagrange’s and proved (...) a converse: symmetries imply conservation laws and vice versa. Conservation holds if and only if nature is uniform. The rise of field physics during the 1860s–1920s implied that energy is located in particular places and conservation is primordially local: energy cannot disappear in Cambridge and reappear in Lincoln instantaneously or later; neither can it simply disappear in Cambridge or simply appear in Lincoln. A global conservation law can be inferred in some circumstances. Einstein’s General Relativity, which stimulated Noether’s work, is another source of difficulty for conservation laws. As is too rarely realized, the theory admits conserved quantities due to symmetries of the Lagrangian, like other theories. Indeed General Relativity has more symmetries and hence more conserved energies. An argument akin to Leibniz’s finally gets some force. While the mathematics is too advanced for secondary school, the ideas that conservation is tied to uniformities of nature and that energy is in particular places, are accessible. Improved science teaching would serve the truth and enhance the social credibility of science. (shrink)

In his unpublished freewill manuscripts, Ralph Cudworth seeks to complete the project that he begins in The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) by arguing for an account of human liberty that avoids the opposing poles of necessitarianism and indifferency. I argue that Cudworth’s account rests upon a crucial distinction between the will and the power of freewill. Whereas we necessarily will the greater apparent good, freewill is a more fundamental power by which we endeavour to discern the greater (...) good before willing to pursue it. Cudworth thus opposes necessitarianism by arguing for a libertarian account of freewill while nonetheless rejecting the indifferentist claim that we can will contrary to the greater apparent good. (shrink)

RESUMEN La interpretación habitual de Descartes sostiene que la nueva ciencia cartesiana es resultado del remplazo, en las explicaciones científicas, de las causas finales y formales por las causas eficientes. Si bien dicha afirmación en líneas generales es correcta, se ha tendido a asumir que las causas eficientes no entrañan problema alguno. Este artículo desea cuestionar dicha asunción, poniendo de manifiesto una serie de problemáticas concernientes a la cognoscibilidad de las causas eficientes. ABSTRACT The common interpretation of Descartes argues that (...) the new science is a result of Cartesian replacement, in scientific explanations, of the final and formal causes by the efficient causes. While this statement is broadly correct, it has tended to assume that efficient causes do not imply any problem. This paper wishes to question this assumption, showing a number of problems concerning the knowability of efficient causes. (shrink)

I consider a somewhat obscure but important feature of Descartes’s physics that concerns the notion of the “force of rest.” Contrary to a prominent occasionalist interpretation of Descartes’s physics, I argue that Descartes himself attributes real forces to resting bodies. I also take his account of rest to conflict with the view that God conserves the world by “re-creating” it anew at each moment. I turn next to the role of rest in Malebranche. Malebranche takes Descartes to endorse his own (...) occasionalist version of physics. However, he nonetheless rejects Descartes’s account of rest by appealing to the fact that whereas God’s production of motion requires a power beyond the mere power to create, his production of rest requires only the latter power. It turns out that this argument in Malebranche is incompatible with the sort of “re-creationist” account of divine conservation that he is widely thought to have inherited from Descartes. (shrink)

The employment by seventeenth-century natural philosophers of stock theological notions like creation, immensity, and eternity in the articulation and justification of emerging physical programs disrupted a delicate but longstanding balance between transcendent and immanent conceptions of God. By playing a prominent (if not always leading) role in many of the major scientific developments of the period, God became more intimately involved with natural processes than at any time since antiquity. In this discussion, I am particularly concerned with the causal and (...) spatio-temporal relations between God and nature in the seventeenth century as recent scholarship has revealed how dramatically traditional conceptions of these relations were transformed by philosophers and scientists like Descartes, Malebranche, More, and Newton. (shrink)

The notion that something can exist a se is central to Descartes’s overall metaphysics of causation. In the Meditations, divine aseity plays the role of explaining not only God’s existence but ultimately the existence of everything else apart from God. Yet in the Meditations proper, as well as in the early Replies, Descartes does little to clarify exactly what his view of divine aseity is and how it might differ from the sort of aseity commonly posited by the Scholastics. Despite (...) Descartes’s later attempts to assuage this worry and clarify his position, the positive aseity charge has not gone away. Here I shall argue that the charge is unjustified on all counts. Baldly stated, Descartes’s notion of aseity is no different than the negative sense of aseity endorsed by his Scholastic predecessors - especially Aquinas. Understanding this not only helps in clarifying the overall picture of Cartesian causality but also aids in seeing how commentaries on the Meditations, old and new, have obscured it. (shrink)

The mind-body problem in philosophy is typically understood as a discourse concerning the relation of mental states to physical states, and the experience of sensation. On this level it seems to transcend issues of race and racism, but Another Mind-Body Problem demonstrates that racial distinctions have been an integral part of the discourse since the Modern period in philosophy. Reading figures such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant in their historical contexts, John Harfouch uncovers discussions of mind and body that engaged (...) closely with philosophical and scientific notions of race in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, in particular in understanding how the mind unites with the body at birth and is then passed on through sexual reproduction. Kant argued that a person’s exterior body and interior psyche are bound together, that non-White people lacked reason, and that this lack of reason was carried on through reproduction such that non-Whites were an example of a union of mind and body without full being. Charting the development of this phenomenon from sixteenth-century medical literature to modern-day race discourse, Harfouch argues for new understandings of Descartes’s mind-body problem, Fanon’s experience of being ‘not-yet human,’ and the place of racism in relation to one of philosophy’s most enduring and canonical problems. -/- “Harfouch has written an important book on the intersection of race and the Western construction of the mind-body problem … This book is a significant resource for theorists dealing with race and decolonization issues, but it is more significant for the critique of philosophy itself and the continued teaching of mind-body issues. Readers will need some knowledge of philosophy, but the volume is in general accessible. It should be required reading for scholars of philosophy. Harfouch establishes a logically strong argument and makes a unique contribution to the field.” — CHOICE. (shrink)

The relationship between divine and created causality was widely discussed in medieval and early modern philosophy. Contemporary scholars of these discussions typically stake out three possible positions: occasionalism, concurrentism, and mere-conservationism. It is regularly claimed that virtually no medieval thinker adopted the final view which denies that God is an immediate active cause of creaturely actions. The main aim of this paper is to further understanding of the medieval causality debate, and particularly the mere-conservationist position, by analysing Peter John Olivi's (...) neglected defence of it. The paper also includes discussion of Thomas Aquinas's arguments for concurrentism and an analysis of whether Olivi's objections refute his position. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate Louis de La Forge's argument against body–body causation. His general strategy exploits the impossibility of bodies communicating their movement by transfer of motion. I call this the ‘non-transfer’ argument . NT allows La Forge both to reinterpret continuous creation in an occasionalistic fashion and to support his non-occasionalistic view concerning mind–body union. First, I present how NT emerges in Descartes’ own texts. Second, I show how La Forge recasts it to draw an occasionalistic account of (...) body–body interactions, and I discuss how La Forge supports NT with continuous creation. Third, I conclude by suggesting that this further step of his argument does not undermine his non-occasionalistic account of mind–body union. (shrink)

This paper compares Newton’s and Descartes’s conceptions of the complex relationship between physics and metaphysics.

Descartes holds that ideas have or contain _objective reality_ of their objects, so that the idea of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect. In this paper, I examine this obscure thesis which grounds the disagreement about Descartes’ commitment to direct or indirect realism. I suggest that, importantly, both readings are correct to a certain extent. I argue that the view of objective reality Descartes develops bears the earmarks of both direct and indirect realist views but must (...) be classified as a third alternative combining some central features of both. I elaborate first on the direct realist interpretations of Descartes’ objective reality and explain their most significant shortcomings. My interpretation of objective identity comes in the form of attributing to Descartes a view about identity and persistence of objects known as _sortalism_. I argue that Descartes’ objective identity turns out to be much like the Aristotelian view of _formal identity_, yet without the forms. By way of discussing the case of Theseus’ ship, I point out how Cartesian sortalism, contrary to other versions of sortalism, allows us to analyze the puzzle as a tension between two distinct yet independently legitimate criteria of identity. It is this sortalist insight that helps to render Descartes’ account of objective identity consistent. This point also grounds my argument that we need not consider direct and indirect realism as logical complements, contrary to the received wisdom. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Marion, in his latest book, “Sur la pensée passive de Descartes,” recently published in an English translation, challenges something he refers to, in the English subtitle, as “the Myth of Cartesian Dualism” and counters it with his original interpretation of Descartes’ notion of meum corpus. This article explores the reasons he adduces for this purpose. The case is made that Marion fails to provide sufficiently solid argumentative and textual support for his construal in this respect and that traditional substance (...) dualistic interpretative resources allow for a more straightforward and systematic reading. It is argued that Marion’s central dualism-deflecting claim, that in the Meditations, “my body” is not an extended thing but a mode of thought, is undermined by an analysis that carefully considers the context of those Descartes’ statements to which Marion appeals. (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)

I argue in this paper that Descartes is committed both to a compatibilist view concerning the relation between free will and divine preordination, namely, one according to which both of these views come out true, and to a libertarian view as regards human free will. I defend here that what allows our author to maintain both of these committments is what I call Mysterism, namely, the view according to which God's immense and incomprehensible nature explains our incapacity to understand fully (...) that compatibility through our own finite reason. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the manner in which Descartes defends his Vortex Hypothesis in Part III of the Principles of Philosophy, and expand on Ernan McMullin’s characterization of the methodology that Descartes uses to support his planetary system. McMullin illuminates the connection between the deductive method of Part III and the method Descartes uses in earlier portions of the Principles, and he brings needed light to the role that imaginative constructions play in Descartes’s explanations of the phenomena. I develop (...) McMullin’s reading by bringing further attention to the constraints that Descartes places on the imagination in Part III. I focus in particular on the way in which Descartes uses metaphysical truths concerning God’s nature to support his general description of the planetary system, and on the way he relies on a mathematical standard of intelligibility to defend his proposals about the configuration of matter. Attending to the role of metaphysics and mathematics in Part III shows that Descartes’s arguments for the explanatory power of the Vortex Hypothesis are more effective than McMullin suggests. The reading I forward also offers important perspective on how Descartes’s hypotheses in Part III can be seen as both metaphysically and mathematically well-grounded. (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)

One vexing strand of Spinozism asserts that God's nature is more expansive than traditionally conceived and includes properties like being extended. In this paper, I argue that prominent early moderns embrace metaphysical principles about causation, mental representation, and modality that pressure their advocates towards such an expansive account of God's nature in similar ways. I further argue that the main early modern escape route, captured in notions like “eminent containment,” fails to adequately relieve the metaphysical pressures towards Spinozism. The upshot (...) is that those sympathetic with these early modern projects must embrace a costlier option if they are to successfully escape the orbit of Spinoza. (shrink)

Descartes is usually taken to be a strict reductionist, and he frequently describes his work in reductionist terms. This dissertation, however, makes the case that he is a nonreductionist in certain areas of his philosophy and natural philosophy. This might seem like simple inconsistency, or a mismatch between Descartes's ambitions and his achievements. I argue that here it is more than that: nonreductionism is compatible with his wider commitments, and allowing for irreducibles increases the explanatory power of his system. Moreover, (...) Descartes depends on nonreductionist knowledge and on irreducibles in order to maintain his epistemology and metaphysics. That is, there is more in the Cartesian world than mind, matter, and God. (shrink)

According to most medieval thinkers, whenever something causally acts on another thing, God also acts with it. Durand of St.-Pourçain, an early fourteenth-century Dominican philosopher, disagrees. This paper is about a fourteenth-century objection to Durand’s view, which I will call the Fiery Furnace Objection, as formulated by Durand’s contemporary, Peter of Palude. Although Peter of Palude is not usu- ally regarded as a particularly original thinker, this paper calls attention to one of his more interesting controversies with his fellow friar, (...) while it also clarifies how some medieval thinkers understood the broadly speaking Aristotelian conviction that causes and effects are necessarily related. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that it is in the fourteenth century that the problem of the compatibility or unity of efficient and final causality emerges. William Ockham and John Buridan start to flirt with a mechanized view of nature solely explainable by efficient causality, and they hence push final causality into the human mind and use it to explain for example action, morality and the good. Their argumentation introduces the problem of how to give a unified account of the (...) world, that is, how are nature and freedom compatible. In the paper, I set up the discussion by going through some of the problems associated with final causality in the seventeenth century and show that Ockham and Buridan's problems are similar. I then argue using a formulation from Leibniz's Monadology that the problems here traced should be seen as versions of the mind/body problem. (shrink)

Este artigo examina quais teorias da causalidade explicam a ocorrência de sentimentos em animais e homens, segundo Descartes. Esse exame é feito à luz do debate entre as teorias ocasionalista e interacionista, bem como da posição de Descartes nesse debate. Nesse contexto, são discutidas algumas objeções a essas teorias, buscando determinar em quais pontos Descartes poderia ser considerado um adepto de uma ou da outra. A hipótese defendida é a de que ele adota certos aspectos da teoria interacionista para explicar (...) a causalidade entre corpos, que caracteriza a ocorrência de sentimentos em animais. Por outro lado, ressalta-se o uso de duas linguagens em sua explicação da causalidade entre corpos humanos e mentes, que caracteriza os sentimentos humanos. Esse uso é explicado pelo fato de que, no caso desses sentimentos, ele adota uma posição que concilia ocasionalismo e interacionismo. (shrink)