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34European and American PhilosophersIn Robert L. Arrington (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophers, Wiley-blackwell. 1991.Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categ…Read more
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4Locke and DescartesIn Matthew Stuart (ed.), A Companion to Locke, Blackwell. 2015.In this chapter, John Locke's anti‐Cartesian stances on the difference between body and space, on whether the soul always thinks, on the possibility of thinking matter, all connect back to the basic opposition to Cartesian overreaching in regard to essences. The chapter presents a summary of Locke's anti‐Cartesianism, which seems to fit with his own representation of his Cartesian inheritance, which, notoriously, is that it is minimal, consisting only in anti‐scholasticism. The only acknowledgme…Read more
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Sensible qualities and material bodies in Descartes and BoyleIn Lawrence Nolan (ed.), Primary and secondary qualities: the historical and ongoing debate, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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Are body and extension the same thing? : Locke versus Descartes (versus More)In Philippe Hamou & Martine Pécharman (eds.), Locke and Cartesian Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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13Gideon Manning, ed. Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. x+248. $147.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 7 (2): 381-383. 2017.
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25The Cambridge Companion to LockePhilosophical Review 105 (1): 120. 1996.The Cambridge Companion to Locke now joins the long list of titles available in this excellent series. As we have come to expect, the contributors to this Companion are distinguished and the result is comprehensive and eminently useful. This volume is one of the more accessible in the series, with most of the chapters pitched at a level accessible to advanced undergraduates and especially helpful to beginning graduate students. Many of the chapters will be of considerable interest to scholars; h…Read more
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2Berkeley's Dynamical InstrumentalismDissertation, Princeton University. 1992.The aim of this dissertation is to explore a central aspect of Berkeley's philosophy of science, namely, his philosophical account of the status of Newton's mechanics. In De Motu, Berkeley's treatise on mechanics, he makes plain that he accepts Newton's mechanics as an excellent scientific theory, while refusing to admit the existence of physical forces. Thus, Berkeley is an anti-realist about Newtonian mechanics. In the dissertation, I seek to identify the grounds and nature of this anti-realis…Read more
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49Interpreting Arnauld (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (2): 367-368. 1999.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Interpreting Arnauld ed. by Elmar J. KremerLisa DowningElmar J. Kremer, editor. Interpreting Arnauld. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 183. Cloth, $65.00.This attractive volume represents (with one exception) the proceedings of what was evidently a lively colloquium on Arnauld’s philosophy, held at the University of Toronto in 1994 to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of his death. Although A…Read more
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1Sensible Qualities and Secondary Qualities in the First DialogueIn Stefan Storrie (ed.), Berkeley's Three Dialogues: New Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 7-23. 2018.
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438Chapter 6. The “Sensible Object” and the “Uncertain Philosophical Cause”In Daniel Garber & Béatrice Longuenesse (eds.), Kant and the Early Moderns, Princeton University Press. pp. 100-116. 2008.Both Immanuel Kant and Paul Guyer have raised important concerns about the limitations of Lockean thought. Following Guyer, I will focus my attention on questions about the proper ambitions and likely achievements of inquiry into the natural/physical world. I will argue that there are at least two important respects, not discussed by Guyer, in which Locke’s account of natural philosophy is much more flexible and accommodating than may be immediately apparent. On my interpretation, however, one c…Read more
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562Occasionalism and strict mechanism: Malebranche, Berkeley, fontenelleIn Christia Mercer (ed.), Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 206-230. 2005.The rich connections between metaphysics and natural philosophy in the early modern period have been widely acknowledged and productively mined, thanks in no small part to the work of Margaret Wilson, whose book, Descartes, served as an inspirational example for a generation of scholars. The task of this paper is to investigate one particular such connection, namely, the relation between occasionalist metaphysics and strict mechanism. My focus will be on the work of Nicholas Malebranche, the mos…Read more
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1006Locke : the primary and secondary quality distinctionIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.
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896Berkeley's case against realism about dynamicsIn Robert Muehlmann (ed.), Berkeley's Metaphysics: Structural, Interpretive, and Critical Essays, Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 197--214. 1995.While De Motu, Berkeley's treatise on the philosophical foundations of mechanics, has frequently been cited for the surprisingly modern ring of certain of its passages, it has not often been taken as seriously as Berkeley hoped it would be. Even A.A. Luce, in his editor's introduction to De Motu, describes it as a modest work, of limited scope. Luce writes: The De Motu is written in good, correct Latin, but in construction and balance the workmanship falls below Berkeley's usual standards. The t…Read more
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77Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in DescartesPhilosophical Review 113 (3): 417-420. 2004.With Spirits and Clocks, Dennis Des Chene completes a two-part project begun with Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul. In both volumes, Des Chene is concerned with the question of what makes living things living. For the Jesuit Aristotelians, the answer requires a complex analysis of the ontology of soul and power. For Descartes, of course, the answer is completely different; arguably, there is a sense in which his answer is: nothing. Indeed Des Chene does argue this, concludi…Read more
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485Maupertuis on attraction as an inherent property of matterIn Janiak Schliesser (ed.), Interpreting Newton, Cambridge University Press. 2012.Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis’ famous and influential Discours sur les différentes figures des astres, which represented the first public defense of attractionism in the Cartesian stronghold of the Paris Academy, sometimes suggests a metaphysically agnostic defense of gravity as simply a regularity. However, Maupertuis’ considered account in the essay, I argue, is much more subtle. I analyze Maupertuis’ position, showing how it is generated by an extended consideration of the possibility of …Read more
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10Interpreting Arnauld (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (2): 367-368. 1999.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Interpreting Arnauld ed. by Elmar J. KremerLisa DowningElmar J. Kremer, editor. Interpreting Arnauld. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 183. Cloth, $65.00.This attractive volume represents (with one exception) the proceedings of what was evidently a lively colloquium on Arnauld’s philosophy, held at the University of Toronto in 1994 to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of his death. Although A…Read more
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346Malebranche and Berkeley on Efficient CausationIn Tad M. Schmaltz (ed.), Efficient Causation: A History, Oup Usa. pp. 198-230. 2014.
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16The Status of Mechanism in Locke’s EssayPhilosophical Review 107 (3): 381-414. 1998.The prominent place of corpuscularian mechanism in Locke's Essay is nowadays universally acknowledged. Certainly, Locke's discussions of the primary/secondary quality distinction and of real essences cannot be understood without reference to the corpuscularian science of his day, which held that all macroscopic bodily phenomena should be explained in terms of the motions and impacts of submicroscopic particles, or corpuscles, each of which can be fully characterized in terms of a strictly limite…Read more
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48Old History and Introductory Teaching in Early Modern PhilosophyIn J. B. Schneewind (ed.), Teaching New Histories of Philosophy, Princeton University Press. pp. 19-28. 2004.
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369Mechanism and Essentialism in Locke's ThoughtIn Stewart Duncan & Antonia LoLordo (eds.), Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses, Routledge. pp. 159. 2012.
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996Berkeley's natural philosophy and philosophy of scienceIn Kenneth P. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley, Cambridge University Press. pp. 230--265. 2005.Although George Berkeley himself made no major scientific discoveries, nor formulated any novel theories, he was nonetheless actively concerned with the rapidly evolving science of the early eighteenth century. Berkeley's works display his keen interest in natural philosophy and mathematics from his earliest writings (Arithmetica, 1707) to his latest (Siris, 1744). Moreover, much of his philosophy is fundamentally shaped by his engagement with the science of his time. In Berkeley's best-known ph…Read more
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481Are corpuscles unobservable in principle for Locke?Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (1): 33-52. 1992.
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1640Sensible qualities and material bodies in Descartes and BoyleIn Lawrence Nolan (ed.), Primary and secondary qualities: the historical and ongoing debate, Oxford University Press. 2011.Descartes and Boyle were the most influential proponents of strict mechanist accounts of the physical world, accounts which carried with them a distinction between primary and secondary (or sensible) qualities. For both, the distinction is a piece of natural philosophy. Nevertheless the distinction is quite differently articulated, and, especially, differently grounded in the two thinkers. For Descartes, reasoned reflection reveals to us that bodies must consist in mere extension and its modific…Read more
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142George BerkeleyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was one of the great philosophers of the early modern period. He was a brilliant critic of his predecessors, particularly Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke. He was a talented metaphysician famous for defending idealism, that is, the view that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas. Berkeley's system, while it strikes many as counter intuitive, is strong and flexible enough to counter most objections. His most studied works, the Treatise Concernin…Read more
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342Robert BoyleIn Steven M. Nadler (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 338-353. 2002.This chapter contains section titled: I. Life and Works II. Theoretical Natural Philosophy: Boyle's Corpuscularianism III. Experimental Natural Philosophy and Methodology IV. Theology, Metaphysics, and Natural Philosophy V. Boyle's Influence.
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426The uses of mechanism: Corpuscularianism in drafts a and B of Locke's essayIn William Newman, John Murdoch & Cristoph Lüthy (eds.), Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscularian Matter Theory, E.j. Brill. pp. 515-534. 2001.That corpuscularianism played a critical role in Locke’s philosophical thought has perhaps now attained the status of a truism. In particular, it is universally acknowledged that the primary/secondary quality distinction and the conception of real essence found in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding cannot be understood apart from the corpuscularian science of Locke’s time.1 When Locke provides lists of the primary qualities of bodies,2 the qualities that “are really in them whether we perc…Read more