Dugald Murdoch

Volumes I and II provide a completely new translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. Volume III contains 207 of Descartes' letters, over half of which have not been translated into English before. It incorporates, in its entirety, Anthony Kenny's celebrated translation of selected philosophical letters, first published in 1970. In conjunction with Volumes I and II it is designed to meet the widespread demand for a comprehensive, accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English.

These two volumes provide a translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the widespread demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English.

These two 1985 volumes provide a translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the widespread demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English.

One of the most influential physicists of the twentieth century, Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen on 7 October 1885, and died there on 18 November 1962. He came of a well‐to‐do, cultivated family, his father being Professor of Physiology at Copenhagen University, where Bohr himself received his education in physics. After taking his doctorate in 1911, Bohr went to Cambridge University to continue his research on the theory of electrons under Sir J. J. Thomson. After several months in Cambridge, he moved to Manchester to work under Ernest Rutherford, the world leader in the newly emerging field of atomic physics. It was in Rutherford's department that Bohr proposed his revolutionary quantum theory of the structure of the hydrogen atom in 1913.

Based on the new and much acclaimed two-volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, this anthology of essential texts contains the most important and widely studied of those writings, including the Discourse and Meditations and substantial extracts from the Regulae, Optics, Principles, Objectives and Replies, Comments on a Broadsheet, and Passions of the Soul. In clear, readable, modern English, with a full text and running references to the standard Franco-Latin edition of Descartes, this book is planned as the definitive one-volume reader for all English-speaking students of Descartes.

At the beginning of Meditation Three, Descartes puts forward the proposition that whatever he clearly and distinctly perceives is true. He observes, however, that so long as he does not know whether there is a deceiving God, he has reason to doubt the proposition. Later in Meditation Three, he purports to prove that there is no deceiving God. The difficulty, as Arnauld pointed out, is to see how Descartes avoids reasoning in a circle or begging the question here, for if he can be certain that there is no deceiving God only because he clearly and distinctly perceives this, then he must already be certain that what he clearly and distinctly perceives is true.

This paper suggests that the appearance of circularity in descartes' arguments is due to a lack of precision in his statements of them, Rather than to any flaw in his reasoning. The clear and distinct perceptions presupposed in the demonstrations of the existence of God are not the same as those whose reliability depends upon the existence of god. He is presupposing the reliability only of those clear and distinct perceptions which are known through the light of nature and have metaphysical certainty in that they cannot be imagined false even on the demon hypothesis. And the only clear and distinct perceptions whose reliability he is demonstrating are those which are not known through the light of nature with metaphysical certainty but are subject to metaphysical doubt on the demon hypothesis, Even though they have moral or psychological certainty