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Philosophy and Liberal LearningQueen's Quarterly 104 (1): 84-95. 1997.The subject of this essay is philosophy, its place in the university, and the role of philosophy and university studies within what the late British philosopher Michael Oakeshott has called "the conversation of mankind." But we are not going to begin, as it may seem we should, with a definition of "philosophy." The immediate task is rather to say something about the issues with which philosophers concern themselves and to discuss certain misconceptions which are very widespread and which most of…Read more
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Condensation and Rarefaction in Descartes' Analysis of MatterNature and System 5 (3): 169-180. 1983.
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23Psycho-Physical Union: The Problem of the Person in DescartesDialogue 22 (1): 23-46. 1983.The problem of the person may be described as the crux of Descartes' philosophy in the fairly obvious literal sense that it is the point of intersection of the two chief axes of the system, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Mind. The actual, if not professed aim of the former is the ousting of the occult powers and faculties of Scholastic-Aristotelian physics by the mechanical concept of force or action-by-contact. The chief tenet of the latter is that mind, whose essence is thinkin…Read more
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29Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophyUniversity of Toronto Press. 1999.Descartes's achievement is a radical reversal of the order of knowing, a subjectivism that places knowledge of the mind ahead of knowledge of material things, ...
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37The Three Faces of the Cogito: Descartes (and Aristotle) on Knowledge of First PrinciplesRoczniki Filozoficzne 68 (2): 63-86. 2020.With the systematic aim of clarifying the phenomenon sometimes described as “the intellectual apprehension of first principles,” Descartes’ first principle par excellence is interpreted before the historical backcloth of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. To begin with, three “faces” of the cogito are distinguished: (1) the proto-cogito (“I think”), (2) the cogito proper (“I think, therefore I am”), and (3) the cogito principle (“Whatever thinks, is”). There follows a detailed (though inevitably s…Read more
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19Part four: Hume and the road back to common lifeIn Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 485-556. 2003.
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68Leibniz on Apperception and Animal SoulsDialogue 33 (4): 701-. 1994.InLeibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought, Robert McRae alleges a flat “contradiction” at the heart of Leibniz's doctrine of three grades of monads: bare entelechies characterized by perception; animal souls capable both of perception and of sensation; and rational souls, minds or spirits endowed not only with capacities for perception and sensation but also with consciousness of self or what Leibniz calls “apperception.” Apperception is a necessary condition of those distinctively human …Read more
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44. The New Order of KnowingIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 39-44. 1999.
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510. The Degrees of CertaintyIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 107-147. 1999.
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6Part two: Plato and the road to realityIn Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 257-360. 2003.
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7PrefaceIn Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy, University of Toronto Press. 2003.
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512. The Modalities of TruthIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 165-183. 1999.
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55. SynopsisIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 45-54. 1999.
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6Part one: Socrates and the road to wisdomIn Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 147-256. 2003.
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18NotesIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 391-530. 1999.
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922. The Old and the New MetaphysicsIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 378-390. 1999.
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213. Truth and CorrespondenceIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 184-204. 1999.
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12Part three: Descartes and the road to certaintyIn Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 361-484. 2003.
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22McRae on Innate Ideas: A RejoinderDialogue 27 (1): 29-. 1988.In two separate studies, published some four years apart, Robert McRae has argued the provocative thesis that the idea of extension is not to be numbered among the ideas accounted innate by Descartes, but among the adventitious. He has defended this view despite explicit statements to the contrary by Descartes both in the Correspondence and in the second part of the Principles of Philosophy. Against such evidence McRae has urged the overriding importance of the sixth Meditation, where, he allege…Read more
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444RésuméLa critique kantienne de la psychologie rationnelle est une expérience de pensée visant ni un individu ni une école, mais une tendance de la raison humaine à « hypostasier » la condition intellectuelle suprême d'une connaissance quelconque (le « Je pense ») en connaissance du « moi ». Cette tendance implique une circularité qui est également la cible des critiques transcendantales bien plus familières qui visent Locke et Hume. De même qu'un nouveau type de cercle (dit « de niveau »), cet a…Read more
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21The Idea of Extension: Innate or Adventitious? On R. F. McRae's Interpretation of DescartesDialogue 27 (1): 15-. 1988.It will come as no surprise that I have a different interpretation of the four passages in which, McRae claims, Descartes “definitely includes extension and its modes in what is given through the senses”. In the first, Descartes includes extension, etc., among his ideas of corporeal bodies. This is not to say that he includes them among his adventitious ideas, though. All adventitious ideas are ideas of external bodies. But the converse is not true. Not all ideas of corporeal bodies are ipso fac…Read more
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102. Scholastic-Aristotelian MetaphysicsIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 11-23. 1999.
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9ReferencesIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 531-546. 1999.
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6Note on texts and quotationsIn Inroads: Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy, University of Toronto Press. 2003.
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78. The Structure of ThoughtIn Murray Lewis Miles (ed.), Insight and inference: Descartes's founding principle and modern philosophy, University of Toronto Press. pp. 86-95. 1999.