The influence of St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises on Descartes’ work, including the Meditations, has been recognized and discussed by many historians. I just mention a few fairly recent and easily accessible instances. In The Metaphysics of Descartes, J. L. Beck suggests that the literary form of the Meditations is most likely due to the Ignatian meditations to which Descartes had been exposed during his training at the Jesuit college of LaFlèche. Arthur Thomson in ‘Ignace de Loyola et Descartes’ (...) traces some elements in Descartes’ method and psychology to Ignatian sources, mainly focusing on the Discourse. (shrink)

Rene Descartes's argument begins from one obviously true premise that (at the time when he was considering this argument) Descartes is thinking. It then proceeds by means of two principles about what is “conceivable” to the conclusion that Descartes is essentially “a thinking substance distinct from his body, which he calls his 'soul'”. This chapter looks in more detail at Descartes's argument. It explains some of the terminology which Descartes uses. Descartes consists of two parts ‐ an essential part (his (...) soul) and an inessential part (his body). And, Descartes would add, what applies to Descartes, applies to all other humans. Hence substance dualism ‐ humans consist of two substances, a soul (the essential part) and a body (the inessential part). The chapter illustrates how there can be Descartes's propositions whose metaphysical modality differs from their logical modality. (shrink)

We critically reconsider an old hypothesis of the role of the dekad in Pythagorean philosophy. Unlike Zhmud, we claim that: 1) the dekad did play a role in Philolaus’ astronomical system, and 2) Aristotle did not project Plato’s theory of the ten eidetic numbers onto the Pythagoreans. We claim that the dekad, as the τέλειος ἀριθμός, should be understood in Philolaus’ philosophy as completeness and the basis of counting in Greek – as in most other languages – in a decimal (...) system. Additionally, we argue that the number ten is not even a candidate for the τέλειος ἀριθμός in Plato’s philosophy. As a final result of our discussion, we compare and contrast Philolaus’, Plato’s, and Speusippus’ accounts of completeness in relation to numbers. (shrink)

As a cognitivist about emotions, Socrates takes the fear of death to be a belief that death is a bad thing for the one who dies. Socrates, however, thinks there are reasons for thinking death is not a bad thing at all, and might even be a blessing. So the question considered in this paper is: how would Socrates explain the fact that so many people believe death is bad?

This book discusses that imagination is as important to thinking and reasoning as it is to making and acting. By reexamining our philosophical and psychological heritage, it traces a framework, a conceptual topology, that underlies the most disparate theories: a framework that presents imagination as founded in the placement of appearances. It shows how this framework was progressively developed by thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant, and how it is reflected in more recent developments in theorists as different as (...) Peirce, Saussure, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Bachelard. The conceptual topology of imagination incorporates logic, mathematics, and science as well as production, play, and art. Recognizing this topology can move us past the confusions to a unifying view of imagination for the future. (shrink)

The mind-body problem: background and history -- Dualist theories of mind and body -- Physicalist theories of mind -- Anti-materialism about the mind -- Science and the mind-body problem: consciousness -- Three neutral theories of mind and body -- Neutral monism.

A groundbreaking collection of contemporary essays from leading international scholars that provides a balanced and expert account of the resurgent debate about substance dualism and its physicalist alternatives. Substance dualism has for some time been dismissed as an archaic and defeated position in philosophy of mind, but in recent years, the topic has experienced a resurgence of scholarly interest and has been restored to contemporary prominence by a growing minority of philosophers prepared to interrogate the core principles upon which past (...) objections and misunderstandings rest. As the first book of its kind to bring together a collection of contemporary writing from top proponents and critics in a pro-contra format, The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism captures this ongoing dialogue and sets the stage for rigorous and lively discourse around dualist and physicalist accounts of human persons in philosophy. Chapters explore emergent, Thomistic, Cartesian, and other forms of substance dualism—broadly conceived—in dialogue with leading varieties of physicalism, including animalism, non-reductive physicalism, and constitution theory. Loose, Menuge, and Moreland pair essays from dualist advocates with astute criticism from physicalist opponents and vice versa, highlighting points of contrast for readers in thematic sections while showcasing today’s leading minds engaged in direct debate. Taken together, essays provide nuanced paths of introduction for students, and capture the imagination of professional philosophers looking to expand their understanding of the subject. Skillfully curated and in touch with contemporary science as well as analytic theology, The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism strikes a measured balanced between advocacy and criticism, and is a first-rate resource for researchers, scholars, and students of philosophy, theology, and neuroscience. (shrink)

_Pragmatism: An Introduction _provides an account of the arguments of the central figures of the most important philosophical tradition in the American history of ideas, pragmatism. This wide-ranging and accessible study explores the work of the classical pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey, as well as more recent philosophers including Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein, Cheryl Misak, and Robert B. Brandom. Michael Bacon examines how pragmatists argue for the importance of connecting philosophy to practice. In so doing, (...) they set themselves in opposition to many of the presumptions that have dominated philosophy since Descartes. The book demonstrates how pragmatists reject the Cartesian spectator theory of knowledge, in which the mind is viewed as seeking accurately to represent items in the world, and replace it with an understanding of truth and knowledge in terms of the roles they play within our social practices. The book explores the diverse range of positions that have engendered marked and sometimes acrimonious disputes amongst pragmatists. Bacon identifies the themes underlying these differences, revealing a greater commonality than many commentators have recognized. The result is an illuminating narrative of a rich philosophical movement that will be of interest to students in philosophy, political theory, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

_Process Philosophy_ surveys the basic issues and controversies surrounding the philosophical approach known as “process philosophy.” Process philosophy views temporality, activity, and change as the cardinal factors for our understanding of the real—process has priority over product, both ontologically and epistemically. Rescher examines the movement’s historical origins, reflecting a major line of thought in the work of such philosophers as Heracleitus, Leibniz, Bergson, Peirce, William James, and especially A. N. Whitehead. Reacting against the tendency to associate process philosophy too closely (...) with this last-named thinker, Rescher writes, “Indeed, one cardinal task for the partisans of process at this particular juncture of philosophical history is to prevent the idea of ‘process philosophy’ from being marginalized through a limitation of its bearing to the work and influence of any one single individual or group.” This book will appeal to both students and professors of philosophy. Those teachers who have not been trained in process philosophy will welcome this new text by one one of North America’s foremost philosophers as a perspicuous and informative introduction. (shrink)

Introduction -- Epistemology, metaphysics, and rhetoric : contexts of imagination -- Aristotle, Phantasia, and the problem of epistemology -- Plato, the neoplatonists, and the vagaries of the sublunar world -- Phantasia and ecstatic knowledge -- A more skillful artist than imitation -- Dreams, doubts, and evil demons : Descartes and imagination -- Mediatio prima : certainty, the cogito, and imagination -- Imagination in the rules -- Meditatio secunda : the world of the cogito -- Descartes, Montaigne, and Pascal -- Analogies (...) and enthusiasm -- Excogitations : fabulating the cogito -- The reasonable imagination : Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy -- Imagination in the limits of pure reason -- Dreamers and madmen : imagination in the anthropology -- Natural art and sublime madness : imagination in the critique of judgment -- The highest point of philosophy : Fichte's reimagining of the kantian system -- The logics of positing intellectual intuition and the absolute subject -- Ecstasy, inspired communication, and philosophical genius -- Light, dusk, and darkness : the reconciliation of opposites -- The metaphysics of oscillation and the truth of imagination -- Reason fixations : arresting imagination -- A system without foundations : poetic subjectivity in Friedrich von Hardenberg's Ordo inversus -- A system without foundations -- Fantasy and the body -- Divine law and abject subjectivity : Coleridge and the double knowledge of imagination -- Divine imagination -- The abyss of the empirical self -- Coda: Imagining ideology. (shrink)

Dualism argues that the mind is more than just the brain. It holds that there exists two very different realms, one mental and the other physical. Both are fundamental and one cannot be reduced to the other - there are minds and there is a physical world. This book examines and defends the most famous dualist account of the mind, the cartesian, which attributes the immaterial contents of the mind to an immaterial self. John Foster's new book exposes the inadequacies (...) of the dominant materialist and reductionist accounts of the mind. In doing so he is in radical conflict with the current philosophical establishment. Ambitious and controversial, _The Immaterial Self_ is the most powerful and effective defence of Cartesian dualism since Descartes' own. (shrink)

Descartes is possibly the most famous of all writers on the mind, but his theory of mind has been almost universally misunderstood, because his philosophy has not been seen in the context of his scientific work. Desmond Clarke offers a radical and convincing rereading, undoing the received perception of Descartes as the chief defender of mind/body dualism. For Clarke, the key is to interpret his philosophical efforts as an attempt to reconcile his scientific pursuits with the theologically orthodox views of (...) his time. (shrink)