• . 2008.
  •  72
    Review: Descartes's Dualism (review)
    Mind 116 (461): 215-219. 2007.
  •  109
    I—Sarah Patterson: Descartes on Nature, Habit and the Corporeal World
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1): 235-258. 2013.
    Descartes says that the Meditations contains the foundations of his physics. But how does the work advance his geometrical view of the corporeal world? His argument for this view of matter is often taken to be concluded with the proof of the existence of bodies in the Sixth Meditation. This paper focuses on the work that follows the proof, where Descartes pursues the question of what we should think about qualities such as light, sound and pain, as well as the size and shape of particular bodies…Read more
  •  121
    Descartes on the Errors of the Senses
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 78 73-108. 2016.
    Descartes first invokes the errors of the senses in the Meditations to generate doubt; he suggests that because the senses sometimes deceive, we have reason not to trust them. This use of sensory error to fuel a sceptical argument fits a traditional interpretation of the Meditations as a work concerned with finding a form of certainty that is proof against any sceptical doubt. If we focus instead on Descartes's aim of using the Meditations to lay foundations for his new science, his appeals to s…Read more
  •  134
  •  62
    Doubt and Human Nature in Descartes's Meditations
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 70 189-217. 2012.
    Descartes is well known for his employment of the method of doubt. His most famous work, the Meditations, begins by exhorting us to doubt all our opinions, including our belief in the existence of the external world. But critics have charged that this universal doubt is impossible for us to achieve because it runs counter to human nature. If this is so, Descartes must be either misguided or hypocritical in proposing it. Hume writes:There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and ph…Read more
  •  4
    Competence and the Classical Cascade: A Reply to Franks
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (4): 625-636. 1998.
  •  9
    Book synopsis: History of the Mind-Body Problem is a collection of new essays by leading contributors on the various concerns that have given rise to and informed the mind-body problem in philosophy. The essays in this stellar collection discuss famous philosophers such as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes and cover the subjects of the origins of the qualia and intentionality.
  •  343
    History of the Mind-Body Problem (edited book)
    with Tim Crane
    Routledge. 2000.
    This collection of new essays put the debates on the mind-body problem into historical context.
  •  3
    Realist Christian theology in a postmodern age
    Cambridge University Press. 1999.
    This book cuts new ground in bringing together traditional Christian theological perspectives on truth and reality with a contemporary philosophical view of the place of language in both divine and wordly reality. Patterson seeks to reconcile the requirements that Christian theology should both take account of postmodern insights concerning the inextricability of language and world as well as taking God's truth to be absolute for all reality. Yet it is not simply about theological language and t…Read more