The author argues for the reductive interpretation of Descartes’ notion of the substantial union of soul and body, according to which the union is reduced to causal interactions. The opponents countered the reductive approach with the claims that Descartes (1) attributed sensations to the union rather than the soul; (2) held that the soul is the substantial form of the body; (3) identified some special conditions of the human body’s self-identity. In the article, the case is made that (a) these (...) claims lack clear textual evidence: if their context is properly considered, Descartes’ corresponding statements are consistent with the reductive interpretation; (b) they do not give proper weight to other Descartes’ statements (in particular, his numerous unambiguous statements that sensations are the soul’s states). The author argues that the reductive interpretation is consistent with other Descartes’ statements to which its opponents appeal - that sensations arise from the union of mind and body and that the causal interactions between the soul and the body are explained with the reference to their union. The consistency is achieved if we interpret these statements in the sense that the enduring union between a soul and a body is an ontological prerequisite and, hence, an explanation, of all interactions between the soul and the body and their effects (such as sensations): these interactions and effects would not take place without the union between this particular soul and this particular body. Such explanation is similar to the explanation of certain natural events by the laws of nature: just as the gist of a law of nature can be reduced to a set of causal dispositions, so the content of the notion of the union can be reduced to the emergence and maintenance of a set of causal dispositions between a certain soul and a certain body. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes intended the so-called ontological "argument" as a self-validating intuition, rather than as a formal proof. The textual evidence for this view is highly compelling, but the strongest support comes from understanding Descartes's diagnosis for why God's existence is not 'immediately' self-evident to everyone and the method of analysis that he develops for making it self-evident. The larger aim of the paper is to use the ontological argument as a case study of Descartes's nonformalist theory of deduction (...) and his method of analysis, showing how he conceives the latter as a form of philosophical therapy. (shrink)

According to naïve realist (or primitivist) theories of colour, colours are sui generis mind-independent properties. The question that I consider in this paper is the relationship of naïve realism to what Mark Johnston calls Revelation, the thesis that the essential nature of colour is fully revealed in a standard visual experience. In the first part of the paper, I argue that if naïve realism is true, then Revelation is false. In the second part of the paper, I defend naïve realism (...) against a number of objections. (shrink)

How does Descartes characterize the peculiar way in which each of us is aware of our bodies? I argue that Descartes recognizes a sense of bodily ownership, such that the body sensorily appears to be one's own in bodily awareness. This sensory appearance of ownership is ubiquitous, for Descartes, in that bodily awareness always confers a sense of ownership. This appearance is confused, in so far as bodily awareness simultaneously represents the subject as identical to, partially composed by, and united (...) to her body, without distinguishing these relations. Finally, the appearance of ownership is grounded in multiple other ways in which the body sensorily appears: namely, in the fact that the body appears to be inescapable, modified by bodily sensations, and an object of special concern. (shrink)

This paper attempts to resolve the apparent conflict between Descartes’ commitments to the creation doctrine and the necessity of eternal truths by elaborating different conceptions of necessity in Descartes’ framework. More specifically, I argue that the fact that Descartes concedes the necessity of eternal truths does not compel him to assert the impossibility of their negation. Necessity, for Descartes, rather means immutability. Descartes distinguishes two kinds of immutable truths. While truths about God’s essence are absolutely immutable, truths about the essences (...) of God’s creation are conditionally immutable, i.e., they can change if God’s will changes. Since there are different kinds of eternal truths, they express different kinds of necessity as well, namely conditional and absolute necessity. After I clarify these two kinds of necessity, I explain how Descartes coherently maintains both that eternal truths are necessary and that God could have created eternal truths otherwise without undermining their necessity. (shrink)

In the Synopsis to the Meditations Descartes assures us that ‘extensive doubt… [provides] the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses’. And in the Fifth Replies Descartes adds that it is essential to a proper understanding of the Meditations that ‘the entire testimony of the senses should be regarded as uncertain and even as false’. But to deny our ordinary trust in the senses on the grounds of such ‘hyperbolic’ or ‘metaphysical’ doubts as that (...) one might be dreaming or the victim of an evil demon is, as Descartes himself puts it, quite mad: ‘no sane person has ever seriously doubted that there really is a world and that human beings have bodies’. We seem, then, to be confronted with a dilemma: on the one hand, the skepticism about the senses that we find in the First Meditation must be taken seriously. On the other hand, it is, in some sense, a sham. How, then, are we to understand these doubts? (shrink)

Descartes developed an elaborate theory of animal physiology that he used to explain functionally organized, situationally adapted behavior in both human and nonhuman animals. Although he restricted true mentality to the human soul, I argue that he developed a purely mechanistic (or material) ‘psychology’ of sensory, motor, and low-level cognitive functions. In effect, he sought to mechanize the offices of the Aristotelian sensitive soul. He described the basic mechanisms in the Treatise on man, which he summarized in the Discourse. However, (...) the Passions of the soul contains his most ambitious claims for purely material brain processes. These claims arise in abstract discussions of the functions of the passions and in illustrations of those functions. Accordingly, after providing an intellectual context for Descartes’s theory of the passions, especially by comparison with that of Tho- mas Aquinas, I examine its ‘machine psychology’, including the role of habituation and association. I contend that Descartes put forth what may reasonably be called a ‘psychology’ of the unensouled animal body and, correspondingly, of the human body when the soul does not intervene. He thus conceptually distinguished a mechanistically explicable sensory and motor psychology, common to nonhuman and human animals, from true mentality involving higher cognition and volition and requiring (in his view) an immaterial mind. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that Descartes invokes “objective being in the intellect” in order to explain or describe an idea’s status as being “of something.” I argue that this assumption is mistaken. As emerges in his discussion of “materially false ideas” in the Fourth Replies, Descartes recognizes two senses of ‘idea of’. One, a theoretical sense, is itself introduced in terms of objective being. Hence Descartes can’t be introducing objective being to explain or describe “ofness” understood in this sense. Descartes (...) also appeals to a pretheoretical sense of ‘idea of’. I will argue that the notion of objective being can’t serve to explain or describe this “ofness” either. I conclude by proposing an alternative explanation of the role of objective being, according to which Descartes introduces this notion to explain the mind’s ability to attain clear and distinct ideas. (shrink)

Descartes famously endorsed the view that (CD) God freely created the eternal truths, such that He could have done otherwise than He did. This controversial doctrine is much discussed in recent secondary literature, yet Descartes’s actual arguments for CD have received very little attention. In this paper I focus on what many take to be a key Cartesian argument for CD: that divine simplicity entails the dependence of the eternal truths on the divine will. What makes this argument both important (...) and interesting is that Descartes’s scholastic predecessors share the premise of divine simplicity but reject the CD conclusion. To properly understand Descartes, then, we must determine precisely where he diverges from his predecessors on the path from simplicity to CD. And when we do so we obtain a very surprising result: that despite many dramatic prima facie differences, there is no substantive difference between the relevant doctrines of Descartes and the scholastics . Or so I argue. (shrink)

In Descartes's Method of Doubt Janet Broughton examines in depth Descartes's well-known use of the method of doubt in the Meditations. This is a very stimulating book. The book is rich in subtle, interesting ideas, and the writing is engaging in perhaps the best sense for philosophy. It is not only extremely lucid, but in addition one senses Broughton think the issues through on the page in a way that strongly draws the reader in. Broughton pursues the historian's aim of (...) offering an interpretation of Descartes's method of doubt that accounts for the texts. She does so while pursuing the issues with philosophical intensity and depth and connecting her interpretation to contemporary investigations in skepticism. Her evaluation of Descartes's use of the method is mixed: she thinks his ambitions in using it are ‘splendid but doomed, and highly instructive’. After describing the contents of the chapters of the book, I will focus on two issues: Broughton's interpretation of Descartes's anti-skeptical strategy and her treatment of transparency of the mental. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I evaluate whether conceivability can be regarded as an epistemic guide to possibility.

In the present paper I shall argue that the real problem here is the very idea that there is a dilemma that compels us to choose sides. We can hold both that the meditator's doubts are fully serious, and that they leave the perspective of common sense largely unscathed. The key to dissolving the dilemma is to see that the meditator observes a distinction between two levels of epistemic standards: the very demanding standards appropriate to certainty, understood in a rather (...) technical sense of that term; and the commonplace standards appropriate to reasonable belief. The significance of this levels distinction has not been widely appreciated but it has important consequences both for how we are to understand the skepticism about the senses that is at issue and for appreciating the extent to which Descartes acknowledges and retains our natural trust in the senses. I aim to show that the meditator’s skepticIsm about the senses specifically concerns the possibility of sensory certainties, and is quite serious. It is intended to lead one to a stable change of mind about what is most certain. But a skepticIsm about sense-based certainty leaves the matter of whether experience provides a reliable basis for belief untouched by reasonable doubt. Since the meditator's doubts presuppose very demanding standards they have no bearing on our assessments from within the common sense perspective. I defend this view by arguing that the methodological 'withdrawal of assent' from perceptual beliefs is a mere pretense that is compatible with continued endorsement. Despite the seriousness with which the method of doubt is pursued, there is an important sense in which the meditator never doubts the basic deliverances of his senses. This helps explain the practical insulation of perceptual beliefs from skepticism. With one minor qualification, the meditator retains his natural trust in the senses throughout - although Descartes’ rhetoric sometimes suggests otherwise. Note that I shall be exploring the skepticism about the senses as we find it in the First Meditation. This paper does not purport to discuss all of the skeptical doubts of the First Meditation, e.g., skepticism about mathematical truths, God's existence and reason. Instead I shall focus solely upon the ways in which the meditator's doubts bear on his perceptual beliefs. The rationale for this restriction is twofold: 1) in the first place Descartes describes the general aim of the skeptical doubts of the First Meditation m terms of 'freeing us from our preconceived opinions, and providing the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses’. I am specifically concerned to qualify this ambition and argue that Descartes retains throughout his preconceived trust in the reliability of the senses; and 2) the Meditations has long been thought to provide the grounds for a radical form of external world skepticism which not only denies us knowledge of, but also any reason to believe in, the existence of an external world. My discussion of Descartes' perceptual doubts is intended to show just how distant any such skepticism is from Descartes' own thoughts and intentions. (shrink)

This journal article has been superseded by a revised version, published in the collection _Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Rene Descartes_, ed. by Stephen Voss (Oxford University Press, 1993), 259–287.

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)

Descartes contends that he, or his mind, is really distinct from his body. Many philosophers have little patience with this claim. What could be more obvious than that the mind depends on the body? But their impatience often dissolves when they recognize that Descartes only asserts a de re modal statement. To say that one thing is really distinct from another is to say that each can exist apart from the other. But should we grant Descartes this de re modal (...) claim itself?Descartes's argument for the real distinction is based on the assumption that clear and distinct conception provides a reliable guide to possibility. (shrink)

In an attempt to reject Cartesian Dualism, some philosophers and scientists of the late twentieth century proposed a return to the ancient position that Descartes had opposed, i.e., Aristotle’s psychological hylomorphism, which applied to living beings the ontological thesis, according to which every substance is a compound of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). In this perspective, the soul is actual possession of the body’s capacity to perform a series of life functions. Therefore, according to Aristotle, soul and body are reciprocally (...) interdependent aspects of the living being, so that we must consider the former as an enmattered form, and the latter as an enformed or ensouled matter. This means that, for Aristotle, all the functions of the soul, even the highest ones like thought, are essentially connected with the body, since they ultimately require sensations. This paper illustrates and supports this doctrine in detail, especially in relation to the cognitive processes of the human mind. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 The main goal of this paper is to maintain that the skeptical hypotheses in the First Meditation, and especially the doubt about material things, should be interpreted as a kind of mental exercise whose purpose is both to weaken our confidence in the senses and to prepare the reader of the Meditation for the learning of the truths accessible through the light of reason. Thus, the paper purports to show that in the economy of the Meditations skeptical (...) doubts play a positive and constructive role, which is distinct from their role of bringing about philosophical skepticism that prevails in contemporary epistemological debates. The strategy that allowed for this reading consisted in both valuing the emergence of skeptical doubts within a text written in a meditative style and highlighting certain aspects of the intellectual context that were part of the scientific revolution experienced by Descartes. (shrink)

In The Varieties of Reference (1982), Gareth Evans claims that considerations having to do with certain basic ways we have of gaining knowledge of our own physical states and properties provide "the most powerful antidote to a Cartesian conception of the self" (220). In this chapter, I start with a discussion and evaluation of Evans' own argument, which is, I think, in the end unconvincing. Then I raise the possibility of a more direct application of similar considerations in defence of (...) common sense anti-Cartesianism. Progress in this direction depends upon a far more psychologically informed understanding of normal and abnormal bodily awareness than is generally found in philosophical discussions of these issues. In the context of my attempt at some such understanding, I go on to assess the potential of this more direct line of argument. (shrink)

Generalmente los comentadores han abordado la temática de la intuición en la filosofía de Spinoza desde la perspectiva de la problemática de lo que en la Ética aparece como ciencia intuitiva o tercer genero de conocimiento. En el presente artículo, en cambio, intentamos mostrar que hay en los escritos de Spinoza un concepto de intuición más amplio que el que está implícito en la ciencia intuitiva, del cual esta no sería más que una subespecie. Como paso previo para alcanzar dicho (...) fin, intentaremos mostrar que la concepción de la intuición que sostiene Spinoza está estrechamente emparentada con la concepción cartesiana -de la cual ofrecemos un breve esbozo en el primer apartado- y que ambas concepciones tienen como fundamento la naturaleza de la idea. Generally, critics had tackle the issue of intuition in Spinoza’s philosophy from the point of view of the problem of what in the Ethics is called intuitive science or third kind of knowledge. In the present paper, instead, we try to show that there is in Spinoza`s writings a wider concept of intuition than that which is implied in the intuitive science, being the later no more than a sub-kind of the former. As a previous step to achieve this target, we try to show that Spinoza`s conception of intuition is narrowly tied with the Cartesian conception -of which we offer a brief draft in the first part- and that both conceptions are based on the nature of the idea. (shrink)

The long history of theorizing about perception divides into two quite distinct and irreconcilable camps, one that takes sensory experience to show us external reality just as it is, and one that takes such experience to reveal our own mind. I argue that we should reject both sides of this debate, and admit that the phenomenal character of experience, as such, reveals little about the nature of the external world and even less about the mind.

Selflessness can be considered on an epistemic, on a moral, and on a historical level. The article follows recent thoughts by Jay L. Garfield on the idea that conceiving of oneself as a substantive self means following an illusion. It investigates the different senses of “illusion” and asks what it could mean for individuals and societies tobe transformed in such a way that this illusion would not play a role anymore.

Descartes maintained that sensations of color and the like misrepresent the material world in normal circumstances. Some prominent scholars have argued that, to explain this Cartesian view, we must attribute to Descartes a causal account of sensory representation. I contend that neither the arguments motivating this reading nor the textual evidence offered in its support is sufficient to justify such attribution. Both textual and theoretical reasons point in the direction of an (at least partial) internalist account of Descartes' views on (...) sensory representation. (shrink)

How we understand Descartes’s physics rests on how we interpret his ontological commitment to individual bodies, and in particular on how we account for their individuation. However, Descartes’s contemporaries as well as contemporary philosophers have seen Descartes’s account of the individuation of bodies as deeply flawed. In the first part of this paper, I discuss how the various problems and puzzles involved in Descartes’s account of the individuation of bodies arise, and the relevance of these problems for his physics. With (...) an eye toward resolving these puzzles, I argue for an interpretation of the Cartesian ontology in which bodies are not individuated by motion but, instead, are mind-dependent. As part of this reading, I demonstrate the sense in which we can clearly and distinctly perceive bodies, and also the senses in which the real, conceptual, and modal distinctions apply to them. I conclude by explaining how this account of the mind-dependent individuation of bodies is consistent with Descartes’s definition of ‘motion’ and ‘a body’ in Principles, Part II, section 25—the very passage that prima facie entails the most troubling of the individuation puzzles. Finally, I show that this account is consistent with Descartes’s general goal in constructing his physics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThough the apprehension one may have of Aristotelian forms comes about from what Aristotle calls ‘induction,’ there is nothing necessary or intelligible to link together their components, as there is between the properties of matter. That is what leads René Descartes to rid the sciences of them surreptitiously in his VIth Meditation, and to make matter and its properties the common denominator of natural beings. The attempt is made in what follows to bring this move to light — a move (...) that continues to elude some of his readers. (shrink)

Recent discussions of physicalism have focused on the question how the physical ought to be characterized. Many have argued that any characterization of the physical should include the stipulation that the physical is non-mental, and others have claimed that a systematic substitution of ‘non-mental’ for ‘physical’ is all that is needed for philosophical purposes. I argue here that both claims are incorrect: substituting ‘non-mental’ for ‘physical’ in the causal argument for physicalism does not deliver the physicalist conclusion, and the specification (...) that the physical is non-mental is irrelevant to the task of formulating physicalism as a substantive, controversial thesis. (shrink)

The modem rationalist tradition initiated by Descartes has as one of its central tenets the independence of the human understanding from the senses. Regardless of the different ways in which independence from experience is understood, there is much common ground among the modem views on the a priori. Yet Kant, culminating this tradition, introduces an entirely new conception of the a priori never before articulated in the history of philosophy. This is the notion of elements in knowledge which are independent (...) of experience but nevertheless closely connected, in a special way, with experience.Although for Kant the a priori has a privileged position in the structure of knowledge - as it has for other modem rationalist philosophers - one of the most striking, and often neglected, aspect of his conception of the a priori is the great extent to which it is opposed to foundationalism. (shrink)

According to necessitarianism, all truths are logically necessary, and the modal doctrine of a necessitarian philosopher is in a sharp contrast with something that seems manifest—the view that there are contingent truths. At least on the face of it, then, necessitarianism is highly implausible. René Descartes is usually not regarded as a necessitarian philosopher, but some of his philosophical views raise the worry as to whether he is committed to the necessity of all truths. This paper is an appraisal of (...) this worry. (shrink)