To be able to believe that a dog with a broken paw is not really in pain when it whimpers is a quite extraordinary achievement even for a philosopher. Yet according to the standard interpretaion, this is just what Descartes did believe. He held, we are informed, the ‘monstrous’ thesis that ‘animals are without feeling or awareness of any kind’. The Standard view has been reiterated in a recent collection on animal rights, which casts Descartes as the villain of the (...) piece for his alleged view that animals merely behave ‘ as if they feel pain when they are, say, kicked or stabbed’. The basis for this widely accepted interpretation is Descartes' famous doctrine of ‘animal machine’ ; a doctrine that one critic condemns as ‘a grim fortaste of a mechanically minded age’ which ‘brutally violates the old kindly fellowship of living things’. (shrink)

The seventeenth century saw a major revolution in our ways of thinking about such issues as the method appropriate to philosophy and science, the relation between mind and body, the nature of substance, and the place of humanity in nature. While not neglecting the lesser but still influential figures, such as Arnauld and Malebranche, John Cottingham focuses primarily on the three great "rationalists": Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. He examines how they approached central problems of philosophy, and shows how closely their (...) ideas are related, despite the radically different philosophical systems they produced. He not only places the major thinkers in their historical and philosophical contexts, but engages their ideas in a vigorously critical way, revealing their capacity to throw light on major philosophical topics that are still very much alive today. (shrink)

Little, Brown, 1992 Review by Glenn Branch on Jul 5th 1999 Volume: 3, Number: 27.

Descartes nimmt in Anspruch, daß sein Argument des Deus malignus über die Einwände der Skeptiker hinausgehe. Was fügt es dem Traumargument hinzu? Die verbreitete Ansicht, der Dämon stelle die Erkenntnis mathematischer und logischer Wahrheiten in Frage, wird im folgenden diskutiert und zurückgewiesen. Die richtige Interpretation lautet: Die Annahme des Dämons unterstützt den Skeptizismus und verstärkt die Zweifel an der Existenz äußerer Objekte. Es werden drei Einwände gegen diese Interpretation erörtert und zurückgewiesen. Eine andere Auffassung vertritt Frankfurt: Die Rolle des Traumarguments (...) sei wesentlich begrenzt; die durch den Dämon aufgeworfenen Zweifel seien umfassender. Eine genaue Analyse der Entwicklung des Traumarguments in der Ersten Meditation führt zur Widerlegung dieser Interpretation. (shrink)

To confront the philosophical system of Rene Descartes is to contemplate a magnificently laid out map of human cognitive endeavour. In following Descartes arguments, the reader is drawn into some of the most fundamental and challenging issues in all of philosophy. In this dictionary, John Cottingham presents an alphabetied guide to this most stimulating and widely-studied of philosophers. He examines the key concepts and ideas in Cartesian thought and places them in the context both of the seventeenth-century intellectual climate and (...) of subsequent interpretation. The entries range over a wide variety of areas including cosmology, physics, theology, psychology and ethics. The book is designed to appeal to the newcomer to Descartes, whether student or general reader, while also providing detailed critical comment and precise textual references for the more advanced reader. Also included are a general introduction describing Descartes' life and works, and bibliographic guide to the Cartesian texts and the mass of interpretative literature on Descartes. (shrink)

The article argues that descartes' inclusion under the label 'thought' ("cogitatio") of willing, Perceiving, Feeling, Etc., Is a deliberate and ("pace" anscombe and geach) idiosyncratic move. It is not an arbitrary extension of usage, But requires careful diagnosis. The proper diagnosis reveals the philosophical reason for the labelling: the various operations listed are "cogitationes" only and precisely insofar as they include a reflective cognitive act-The mind's intellectual awareness of itself which descartes terms "conscientia". The upshot is that when descartes calls (...) himself a "res cogitans" there is an important and illuminating sense in which he means precisely that-A thing which "thinks". (shrink)