•  14
    In recent years more and more scholars of early modern philosophy have come to acknowledge that our understanding of Descartes’s thought benefits greatly from consideration of his intellectual background. Research in this direction has taken off, but much work remains to be done. Dennis Des Chene offers a major contribution to this enterprise. This erudite book is the result of a very impressive body of research into a number of late Aristotelian scholastics, some fairly well known, such as Suár…Read more
  • Unity in the multiplicity of Suárez's soul
    In Benjamin Hill & Henrik Lagerlund (eds.), The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, Oxford University Press. 2012.
    A prominent argument for the immateriality of the soul is the so-called "Achilles Argument", which relies on the claim that the soul is simple or indivisible. It was not widely used in the Aristotelian tradition, however. But a version of the argument played a crucial role in Suárez’s contention that a human being contains only one unitary soul. On an alternative view that was widespread at the time, living substances may contain several souls, such as a sensitive and a rational soul in the c…Read more
  •  5
    Descartes and the Ontology of Everyday Life
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (4): 839-842. 2022.
    Descartes was a dualist: human mental states cannot be explained in terms of matter and belong to an immaterial mind. But, in other ways, his ontology of the natural world was quite austere—or so w...
  •  44
    Leibniz on Internal Action and Why Mills Can't Think
    The Leibniz Review 29 13-40. 2019.
    In the Monadology Leibniz has us imagine a thinking machine the size of a mill in order to show that matter can’t think, or, in his terms, cannot have perceptions: his well-known Mill Argument. The argument is often thought to rely on the unity of consciousness and the notion of simplicity. Leibniz himself did not see matters this way. For him the argument relies on the Cartesian “Mode-Nature View”, and the idea that perception is not a modification of matter because perception is active and m…Read more
  •  44
    Descartes's Method of Doubt
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (4): 591-614. 2004.
    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 interpretati…Read more
  •  205
    Descartes’s Dualism
    Harvard University Press. 1998.
    In her first book, Marleen Rozemond explicates Descartes's aim to provide a metaphysics that would accommodate mechanistic science and supplant scholasticism.
  •  58
    The Faces of Simplicity in Descartes’s Soul
    In K. Corcilius, D. Perler & C. Helmig (eds.), The Parts of the Soul, De Gruyter. pp. 219-244. 2014.
    In this paper I explain several ways in which Descartes denied that the human soul or mind is composite and the role this idea played in his thought. The mind is whole in the whole and whole in the parts of the body because it has no parts. Unlike body, the mind is indivisible, and this is a different idea from the thought that mind and body are incorruptible. Descartes connects the immortality of the soul with its status as a substance and as incorruptible rather than with its indivisibility…Read more
  •  65
    Pasnau on the material–immaterial divide in early modern philosophy
    Philosophical Studies 171 (1): 3-16. 2014.
    In Metaphysical Themes: 1274–1671, Robert Pasnau compares the medieval and early modern approaches to the material-immaterial divide and suggests the medievals held the advantage on this issue. I argue for the opposite conclusion. I also argue against his suggestion that we should approach the divide through the notion of a special type of extension for immaterial entities, and propose that instead we should focus on their indivisibility
  •  318
    Descartes on mind-body interaction: What's the problem?
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (3): 435-467. 1999.
    I argue that Descartes treated the action of body on mind differently from the action of mind on body, as was common in the period. Descartes explicitly denied that there is a problem for interaction but his descriptions of interaction seem to suggest that he thought there was a problem. I argue that these descriptions are motivated by a different issue, the seemingly arbitrary connections between particular physical states and the particular mental states they produce. Within scholasticism ther…Read more
  •  27
    Critical Notice of Janet Broughton, Descartes's Method of Doubt (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (4): 591-613. 2004.
  •  1
    Descartes argued that the eternal truths, most prominently the truths of mathematics, are created by God. He was not explicit, however, about the ontological status of these truths. Interpreters have proposed interpretations ranging from Platonism and conceptualism. I argue for an intermediate interpretation: Descartes held they have objective being in God’s mind. In this regard his view was line with a prominent view in Aristotelian scholasticism. I defend this interpretation against obje…Read more
  •  50
    Leibniz: Nature and Freedom
    The Leibniz Review 15 155-162. 2005.
    Donald Rutherford and Jan Cover have put together an excellent volume of essays on Leibniz. Cover and Rutherford begin the volume with a clear and informative introduction, that should serve the less initiated extremely well. They explain the developments of Leibniz scholarship over the course of the twentieth century: the early twentieth century saw a focus on logic, truth and closely connected issues sparked by Russell and Couturat. In the second half of the century the scholarship changed cou…Read more
  •  64
    Descartes, Malebranche and Leibniz: conceptions of substance in arguments for the immateriality of the soul
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (5): 836-857. 2016.
    ABSTRACTThe most prominent early modern argument against materialism is to be found in Descartes. Previously I had argued that this argument relies crucially on a robust conception of substance, according to which it has a single principal attribute of which all its other intrinsic qualities are modes. In the present paper I return to this claim. In Section 2, I address a question that is often raised about that conception of substance: its commitment to the idea that a substance has a single su…Read more
  •  80
    The Nature of the Mind
    In Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Descartes' Meditations, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 48--66. 2006.
    IN this paper I explain how Descartes's conception of the mind was novel in relation to Aristotelian scholasticism. I also argue against the standard view that Descartes believed in transparency of the mental, the view that one cannot make mistakes about one's own mental states.
  •  2
    The Clarke-Collins correspondence was widely read and frequently printed during the 18th century. Its central topic is the question whether matter can think. Samuel Clarke defends the immateriality of the human soul against Anthony Collins’ materialism. Clarke argues that consciousness must belong to an indivisible entity, and matter is divisible. Collins contends that consciousness could belong to a composite subject by emerging from material qualities that belong to its parts. While many …Read more
  •  67
    Peach trees, gravity and God: Mechanism in Locke
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12 (3). 2004.
    Locke claimed that God superadded various powers to matter, including motion, the perfections of peach trees and elephants, gravity, and that he could superadd thought. Various interpreters have discussed the question whether Locke's claims about superaddition are in tension with his commitment to mechanistic explanation. This literature assumes that for Locke mechanistic explanation involves deducibility. We argue that this is an inaccurate interpretation and that mechanistic explanation involv…Read more
  •  7
    Leibniz’s ‘New System’ and Associated Contemporary Texts (review)
    The Leibniz Review 8 100-104. 1998.
  •  136
    Essays on Descartes
    Philosophical Review 122 (1): 122-125. 2013.
  •  241
    Descartes's case for dualism
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 33 (1): 29-63. 1995.
    Descartes's dualism, and his argument for it, are often understood in terms of the modal notion of separability. I argue that the central notions, substance and real distinction, should not be understood this way. Descartes's well-known argument for dualism relies implicitly on views he spells out in the Principles of Philosophy, where he explains that a substance has a nature that consists in a single attribute, and all its qualities are modes of that nature. The argument relies ultimately on…Read more
  •  197
    Mills Can't Think: Leibniz's Approach to the Mind-Body Problem
    Res Philosophica 91 (1): 1-28. 2014.
    In the Monadology Leibniz has us imagine a thinking machine the size of a mill in order to show that matter can’t think. The argument is often thought to rely on the unity of consciousness and the notion of simplicity. Leibniz himself did not see matters this way. For him the argument relies on the view that the qualities of a substance must be intimately connected to its nature by being modifications, limitations of its nature. Leibniz thinks perception is not a modification of matter because i…Read more
  •  122
    The first meditation and the senses
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 4 (1). 1996.
    One question that has created controversy among interpreters is just how much is in doubt at the end of the Dream Argument in Meditation I. I argue that there is doubt about the existence of composite bodies not yet about the existence of a physical world. I also caution against using later parts of the Meditations to interpret the First Meditation on account of the order of reasons in this work. I connect the Omnipotent God argument to Descartes's views about innate ideas and analyze the Fir…Read more
  •  29
    Physiologia (review)
    Philosophical Review 107 (2): 330-332. 1998.
    In recent years more and more scholars of early modern philosophy have come to acknowledge that our understanding of Descartes’s thought benefits greatly from consideration of his intellectual background. Research in this direction has taken off, but much work remains to be done. Dennis Des Chene offers a major contribution to this enterprise. This erudite book is the result of a very impressive body of research into a number of late Aristotelian scholastics, some fairly well known, such as Suár…Read more
  •  15
  •  2
    I argue that Descartes's best known argument for dualism relies on claims about intellectual activity and not on claims about mental states generally to establish dualism. I explain that this must be so give his historical context, where arguments for the immateriality of the mind on the basis of the intellect were common. But sensation and other non-intellectual states were regarded as pertaining to the body-soul composite.