La Forge Research Articles

The young Leibniz's tentative acceptance of physical occasionalism

AbstractIn this article, I revisit Leibniz's early views on physical causation, more specifically, his relation to physical occasionalism focusing on the period from 1668 to 1676. An in‐depth analysis of the Confession of Nature against the Atheists taken together with the Catholic Demonstrations, Leibniz's correspondence with Jakob Thomasius from 1668/69, and the Pacidius Philalethi (1676) serve as evidence that his position leads to physical occasionalism. This receives further confirmation by taking into account Leibniz's familiarity with Weigel's occasionalism in contrast to Leibniz's later encounter of French occasionalism à la Cordemoy, La Forge, or Malebranche. Leibniz's exposure to Weigel's occasionalism, in turn, helps us better understand Leibniz's later critical reaction to occasionalism and how occasionalism helped him develop his own distinct views on causation as expressed in his mature philosophy.

Science contra the Meditations: The Existence of Material Things

ABSTRACT In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes intends to prove that material things exist. His proof, which centers on the origin of the ideas of material things, has frequently been judged weak. But there is another proof—centered on the existence of one’s own body—that assumes as a starting point the feelings of pain and pleasure, which recent interpreters consider more substantial than the proof from the ideas of external objects. I argue that the doubt raised in the Sixth Meditation regarding the deceptions of internal senses, such as pain and pleasure, suggests that the most critical doubt about the existence of one’s own body comes from that very science that the Meditations intend to validate, in particular from physiology. As the proof of the existence of one’s own body grounded on pain and pleasure exploits the results of Cartesian physiology, it is precisely these feelings that show that it is not possible to prove that one’s own body and external bodies exist. Thus, instead of permitting a simpler answer to the question of the existence of one’s own body and external bodies, Descartes’ novel theory of physiology makes it impossible to give a satisfactory solution to exactly this question. This conclusion, moreover, is confirmed by Descartes’ followers such as La Forge and Malebranche.

Consciência e sentimento no 'Emílio' de Rousseau

Este artigo examina a ideia de consciência no Emílio de J.-J. Rousseau a partir de uma perspectiva que combina história da filosofia e história lexical. A análise é contextualizada tanto em relação a outros escritos do autor, sobretudo o Discurso sobre a origem da desigualdade, quanto no interior do quadro histórico das ciências nos séculos XVII e XVIII, com atenção para a teoria empirista de John Locke. Busca-se investigar o processo de constituição semântica de “conscience” e “sentiment intérieur” em língua francesa à luz de certos debates envolvendo o inatismo e o mecanicismo, destacando-se a contribuição do médico cartesiano Louis de la Forge. O objetivo do trabalho é mostrar as vias pelas quais a ideia de consciência no Emílio, combinada a uma interpretação do sentimento interior associada à fisiologia cartesiana, estabelece pilares significativos das estruturas mentais e institucionais que tornaram possível a emergência daquilo que passou a ser denominado subjetividade moderna.

L'Empreinte cartésienne: L'interaction psychophysique, débats classiques et contemporains by Sandrine Roux

Reviewed by: L'Empreinte cartésienne: L'interaction psychophysique, débats classiques et contemporains by Sandrine Roux Andrew Platt Sandrine Roux. L'Empreinte cartésienne: L'interaction psychophysique, débats classiques et contemporains. Preface by Steven Nadler. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018. Pp. 438. Paper, €48,00. Sandrine Roux's L'Empreinte cartésienne addresses what she describes as one of the "persistent problems" in philosophy, namely, the mind-body problem raised by Descartes's substance dualism (17). Her book carefully lays out the various puzzles, both real and perceived, raised [End Page 175] by Descartes's theory of humans as a mind-body union. She distinguishes clearly between the way these problems are understood by Descartes, and the way they were seen by some of his seventeenth-century followers, especially the occasionalists, Louis de La Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, and Malebranche. And she tries to orient the Cartesian mind-body problem with respect to theories in contemporary philosophy of mind. The first two parts are primarily historical in focus (though they also make use of contemporary analytic philosophy to clarify the issues and arguments discussed). In the first part, Roux presents Descartes's views regarding mind-body interaction and the mind-body union, and uses Jaegwon Kim's "pairing problem" objection to Cartesian dualism to clarify the issues raised by Descartes's position. Roux goes on to contrast Descartes's response to these issues with the perspective of the Cartesian occasionalists, La Forge and Cordemoy. Roux's analysis of their arguments does well to highlight the importance of the claim, found in both authors, that causal interaction between two bodies is no more conceivable than causal interaction between a mind and a body. The second part focuses on problems for Descartes having to do with our knowledge or experience of the mind-body union. Roux presents an objection put to Descartes by Arnauld, based on the observation that we do not have knowledge of the physiological processes inside our body when we engage in voluntary motion. Following Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine, Roux labels this the "defect of knowledge" problem (159). Roux links this problem with the "Quod nescis" argument for occasionalism, found in Cordemoy and Malebranche. Roux analyzes Malebranche's version of this argument in terms of a distinction—developed in papers from the 1960s by Arthur Danto, and in Alvin Goldman's A Theory of Human Action (1970)—between "basic" and "non-basic" actions. She then draws on Danto, Goldman, and Donald Davidson to consider possible responses to Malebranche's reasoning. This leads to an especially interesting discussion of what Roux takes to be a crucial difference between Malebranche's conception of the mind-body union and that of Descartes: While Malebranche and other Cartesians think the mind-body union is grounded in causal relations between the mind and body, Roux argues that Descartes takes the mind-body union to be metaphysically primitive. Roux's interpretation is (I think) plausible as a reading of Descartes. It is also of particular interest with reference to Kim's pairing problem. Roux turns to this problem in the third part, which concerns contemporary philosophy of mind. (In addition to responding to Kim, Roux discusses, among others, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, Frank Jackson, Joseph Levine, and Robert Stalnaker.) She develops a "Cartesian response" to Kim's argument that Cartesian souls cannot act in the physical world (290). Building on Descartes's account of the primitive notion of the mind-body union and his analogy of a sailor in a ship, Roux argues that a Cartesian mind can be paired with a body on the basis of sensation. Roux makes a compelling case that (on her interpretation) Descartes has the resources to reply to Kim's argument. One way we might take this is to say that Kim's criticisms of the position he labels "Cartesian dualism" miss their mark. Kim presents the pairing problem as a clarification of the historical mind-body problem in Descartes. But if Roux is correct, then the position that Kim attacks is not Descartes's view, but rather a view found in later Cartesians (who themselves reject mind-body causal interaction). However, this seems to undermine...

Occasionalism: From Metaphysics to Science ed. by Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero, Mariangela Priarolo, and Emanuela Scribano

Reviewed by: Occasionalism: From Metaphysics to Science ed. by Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero, Mariangela Priarolo, and Emanuela Scribano Fred Ablondi Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero, Mariangela Priarolo, and Emanuela Scribano, editors. Occasionalism: From Metaphysics to Science. The Age of Descartes 2. Giulia Belgioioso, series editor. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Pp. 293. Paper, €65.00. This volume consists of papers originally presented at the international conference "Occasionalism: History and Problems," held in Venice in 2015; it contains twelve chapters, nine of which are in English, three in French. In their introduction, the editors describe occasionalism as a theory that was viewed by Medieval Christian philosophers as a "dangerous and treacherous" threat (7), only later to be "proudly asserted" in the post-Descartes era (9). This raises the question of to what degree this transition should be seen as a result of interpretations of the commitments of Cartesian metaphysics, particularly with regard to questions concerning mind-body interaction. Many scholars have pointed out that to view the acceptance of occasionalism as an ad hoc solution to explain interaction between an immaterial soul and a physically extended body ignores the numerous philosophers who adopted occasionalism to cover other varieties—and in some cases, all varieties—of interaction in a world consisting only of minds and bodies. As the editors observe, "occasionalism now appears less and less a cheap solution to the mind-problem and more and more a family of theories on causality, which share the fundamental claim that God is the only real causal agent" (12). This said, one cannot entirely separate the increased acceptance of occasionalism in the early modern period from ties to Cartesian philosophy, including issues that arise from substance dualism. (On this point, see the chapter of the present volume by Sandrine Roux.) If the rise in popularity of occasionalism is not tied to Cartesian metaphysics, there is the question of just why there was such a proliferation of occasionalists in the years after Descartes's death. Indeed, this collection seeks to address this two-fold question: what reasons did early modern philosophers have for embracing occasionalism (to the varying degrees that they did), and what was going on at the time philosophically/historically that led many to adopt the theory then? As it is not uncommon for volumes consisting of conference contributions to address its theme to varying degrees, I will highlight some of the chapters that more closely relate to the editors explicitly stated goal for the collection. Tad Schmaltz, Sukjae Lee, and Andrea Sangiacomo each examine the relation between divine conservation, specifically when it is understood as a matter of continuous creation, and occasionalism. The question is whether the former entails the latter, for if continuous creation is really a matter of continuous re-creation, it could be argued that God, in recreating bodies in their locations and minds with their thoughts at each consecutive instant, must be posited as the only true cause at work in the world. Did any early modern occasionalists accept occasionalism because they saw it as following from continuous creation? Schmaltz answers in the negative with regard to both Malebranche and La Forge. Lee claims that while Malebranche takes continuous creation as a matter of divine maintenance rather than a literal recreation, even so understood, the doctrine does play a part in his occasionalism. Sangiacomo makes the argument that in addition to the three traditional positions regarding any putative human causal contributions to effects in the world—namely, occasionalism at one extreme, mere conservation at the other, and concurrentism somewhere in the middle—there is a fourth option offered by Pierre-Sylvain Régis, one that at once denies (against the Thomists) that secondary causes are per se causes and (against the occasionalists) that only per se causes can be true causes. Contributions by Mariangela Priarolo and Nicholas Jolley highlight the changing understanding of the concept of "law" in the early modern period and the role that this [End Page 404] new conception played in Malebranche's formulation of occasionalism. According to Priarolo, Malebranche takes laws to be both rules for the behavior of bodies (Descartes) and instruments of God's providence (Aquinas), while Jolley leaves it as an open question as to whether...

Descartes on Error and Madness

In the fourth Meditation, Descartes’ theory of error holds bad use of free will responsible for mistaken judgment. This theory turns out to be apposite only for an adult and sound human being. In infancy and if ill, the mind cannot suspend judgment, because its brain alteration necessarily dictates a judgment, often mistaken. The most dramatic case is madness, which necessarily induces the mind to make mistaken judgments beyond correction. Madness is not just an extreme case of false representation of the world. In the Dioptrique, madness is a crucial experiment for understanding the physiological mechanics of perception. This claim has the consequence of making it hard to distinguish between madness and normality, and then between error and truth, as La Forge and Malebranche will realize.

Louis de La Forge and the ‘Non-Transfer Argument’ for Occasionalism

In this paper, I investigate Louis de La Forge's argument against body–body causation. His general strategy exploits the impossibility of bodies communicating their movement by transfer of motion. I call this the ‘non-transfer’ argument (NT). NT allows La Forge both to reinterpret continuous creation in an occasionalistic fashion and to support his non-occasionalistic view concerning mind–body union. First, I present how NT emerges in Descartes’ own texts. Second, I show how La Forge recasts it to draw an occasionalistic account of body–body interactions, and I discuss how La Forge supports NT with continuous creation. Third, I conclude by suggesting that this further step of his argument does not undermine his non-occasionalistic account of mind–body union.

Dall'origine della superstizione all'origine del movimento: lo strano caso della confutazione tolandiana di Spinoza

Toland’s Letters to Serena proposes a confutation of Spinoza that is rather puzzling. Apparently, the theme of the confutation, which discusses the cause of movement and the activity of matter, is not linked with previous letters addressing the genealogy of religious prejudice. Moreover, the confutation as such seems grounded on a misunderstanding of Spinoza’s position. This paper aims to show that Toland’s attitude towards Spinoza can be better understood by considering it against the background of seventeenth-century debates on secondary causation and Occasionalism. First, I will show the continuity between the first three letters concerning prejudices and the confutation of Spinoza. Second, I will argue that Toland’s confutation as such is philologically mistaken and Spinoza himself may have been in sympathy with Toland’s own position on the activity of matter. Third, I suggest that Toland’s way of framing the entire discussion is deeply influenced by his attempt to counter a precise argument against body-body causation formulated by Louis de La Forge and reproduced by Antoine Le Grand. According to Toland, this Occasionalistic perspective has dangerous ethical- political consequences that Spinoza’s ontology is unable to deal with.

Étalonnage de sondes FDR (« frequency domain reflectometry ») sur les cinq premiers centimètres des sols et des couverts de bryophytes de deux tourbières minérotrophes du milieu boréal Québécois (Canada)

To map the water content of Quebec’s northern boreal soils using remote sensing, it is necessary to calibrate the radar signal for fens (minerotrophic peatlands), which represent a high percentage of the land cover. Frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) probes were inserted in mosses and upper horizons (not presented here) of two representative minerotrophic peatlands, the “L’Abeille” (54°06′51.81″N, 72°30′03.73″O) and “La Chenille” (54°07′00.34″N, 72°30′15.43″O) fens, near Hydro-Quebec’s “La Forge” dam. The FDR probes were installed in the main environments located on both peatlands: plateaus (ridges, lawn plateaus), hollows (wet hollows, lower lawns, shallow pool margins), and hummocks (sphagnum hummocks and Pleurozium schreberi hummocks). However, the default calibrations of the FDR probes, performed for mineral soils, are not adapted to the materials analysed in this study. The main objective of this article was to establish specific relationships between apparent dielectric constants (Ka) and volumetric moisture contents (θv) for the organic soils and vegetative covers found in the studied peatlands. Hence, microenvironments (blanket mosses and upper peat horizons) were sampled and brought back into the laboratory. Several successive stable periods of pressure head (h) were applied to determine equivalent θv and Ka values. For all samples, a general equation Ka–θv was determined. The θv values measured in the laboratory were compared with values of volumetric moisture contents obtained with the default calibration (θFDR). The comparison confirmed that it is required to make specific FDR probe calibrations for organic soils and moss blankets, because default calibrations consistently underestimated actual volumetric moisture contents.

François Lamy, Occasionalism, and the Mind-Body Problem

There is a long-standing view that Malebranche and his fellow occasionalists accepted occasionalism to solve the problem of interaction between immaterial souls and extended bodies. Recently, however, scholars have shown this story to be a myth. Malebranche, Geulincx, La Forge, and Cordemoy adopted occasionalism for a variety of reasons, but none did so because of a need to provide a solution to a perceived mind-body problem. Yet there is one Cartesian for whom the “traditional” reading is largely on the mark. François Lamy argues in the second volume of his De la Connoissance de Soi-Meme much as the standard story has it. In this article I discuss and analyze Lamy’s argument, showing how he deals with some of the many concerns that made occasionalism attractive, and how he brings out some of the thorny questions that an occasionalist must face.

Essaying the Mechanical Hypothesis: Descartes, La Forge, and Malebranche on the Formation of Birthmarks

This essay examines the determination by Cartesians to explain the maternal imagination's alleged role in the formation of birthmarks and the changing notion of monstrosity. Cartesians saw the formation of birthmarks as a challenge through which to demonstrate the heuristic capacity of mechanism. Descartes claimed to be able to explain the transmission of a perception from the mother's imagination to the fetus' skin without having recourse to the little pictures postulated by his contemporaries. La Forge offered a detailed account stating that the failure to explain the maternal imagination's impressions would cast doubt on mechanism. Whereas both characterized the birthmark as a deformation or monstrosity in miniature, Malebranche attributed a role to the maternal imagination in fashioning family likenesses. However, he also charged the mother's imagination with the transmission of original sin.

Combination of biotransformation and chromatography for the isolation and purification of mannoheptulose

Mannoheptulose is a seven-carbon sugar. It is an inhibitor of glucose-induced insulin secretion due to its ability to selectively inhibit the enzyme glucokinase. An improved procedure for mannoheptulose isolation from avocados is described in this study (based upon the original method by La Forge). The study focuses on the combination of biotransformation and downstream processing (preparative chromatography) as an efficient method to produce a pure extract of mannoheptulose. The experiments were divided into two major phases. In the first phase, several methods and parameters were compared to optimize the mannoheptulose extraction with respect to efficiency and purity. In the second phase, a mass balance of mannoheptulose over the whole extraction process was undertaken to estimate the yield and efficiency of the total extraction process. The combination of biotransformation and preparative chromatography allowed the production of a pure mannoheptulose extract. In a biological test, the sugar inhibited the glucokinase enzyme activity efficiently.

Knowing our nature: A note on Régis’ response to Malebranche

Nicolas Malebranche was the first Cartesian philosopher to challenge Descartes’ claim that we are capable of possessing a clear and distinct understanding of the soul's nature. Other Cartesians, including Clauberg, La Forge, and Cordemoy, accepted without question the conclusion of the Second Meditation that the nature of the soul is better known than is the nature of body. After presenting an overview of Malebranche's argument, this note turns to the Cartesian philosopher Pierre-Sylvain Régis. Régis, like the Cartesians before Malebranche, sides with Descartes in this debate over the question of whether we can have knowledge of our soul's nature, but unlike his predecessors, he provides an original argument defending his position. This argument is, I argue, a direct response to the argument Malebranche had used in his case against Descartes.

Early Modern Women Philosophers and the History of Philosophy

It has now been more than a dozen years since the Eastern Division of the APA invited me to give an address on what was then a rather innovative topic: the published contributions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women to philosophy.' In that address, I highlighted the work of some sixty early modern women. I then said to the audience, Why have I presented this somewhat interesting, but nonetheless exhausting .. . overview of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women philosophers? Quite simply, to overwhelm you with the presence of women in early modern philosophy. It is only in this way that the problem of women's virtually complete absence in contemporary histories of philosophy becomes pressing, mind-boggling, possibly scandalous. My presentation had attempted to indicate the quantity and scope of women's published philosophical writing. It had also suggested that an acknowledgment of their contributions was evidenced by the representation of their work in the scholarly journals of the period and by the numerous editions and translations of their texts that continued to appear into the nineteenth century. But what about the status of these women in the histories of philosophy? Had they ever been well represented within the histories written before the twentieth century? In the second part of my address, I noted that in the seventeenth century Gilles Menages, Jean de La Forge, and Marguerite Buffet produced doxographies of women philosophers, and that one of the most widely read histories of philosophy, that by Thomas Stanley, contained a discussion of twenty-four women philosophers of the ancient world. In the nineteenth century, Mathurin de Lescure, Alexander Foucher de Careil, and Victor Cousin wrote books on

:Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works

During her lifetime, the gifted writer Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565-1645) was celebrated as one of the seventy most famous women of all in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women (1663). The adopted daughter of Montaigne, as well as his editor, Gournay was a major literary force and a pioneering feminist voice during a tumultuous period in France. This volume presents translations of four of Gournay's works that address feminist issues. Two of these appear here in English for the first time - The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne and The Apology for the Woman Writing. One of the first modern psychological novels, the best-selling Promenade was also the first to explore female sexual feeling. With the autobiographical Apology, Gournay defended every aspect of her life, from her moral conduct to her household management. The book also includes Gournay's last revisions (1641) of her two best-known feminist treatises, The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Complaint. The editors provide a general overview of Gournay's career, as well as individual introductions and extensive annotations for each work.

81-Year-Old Man With Unusual Spells

81-Year-Old Man With Unusual Spells

Nocturnal hypoxemia, night-day arterial pressure changes and left ventricular geometry in dialysis patients

Nocturnal hypoxemia, night-day arterial pressure changes and left ventricular geometry in dialysis patients

Louis de La Forge and the Development of Occasionalism: Continuous Creation and the Activity of the Soul

Soulevant la question de la pertinence de la doctrine de la conservation divine du point de vue du cartesianisme du XVII e siecle, l'A. montre que la conception de Dieu comme causa secundum esse et la theorie de la causalite naturelle possedent des ramifications occasionnalistes inacceptables pour le successeur de Descartes que fut Louis de La Forge. Examinant l'explication dualiste de l'homme developpee dans le «Traite de l'esprit de l'homme» (1665), l'A. montre que la these de la creation continue soutenue par La Forge se heurte au probleme de la liberte mais ouvre la voie a l'occassionnalisme de Malebranche

Nocturnal home oximetry was a sensitive but not specific test for identifying patients with the sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome

Source Citation Series F, Marc I, Cormier Y, La Forge J. Utility of nocturnal home oximetry for case finding in patients with suspected sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome. Ann Intern Med. 1993 Sep 15;11...

Causation in early modern philosophy: Cartesianism, occasionalism, and preestablished harmony

Three general accounts of causation stand out in early modern philosophy: Cartesian interactionism, occasionalism, and Leibniz's preestablished harmony. The contributors to this volume examine these theories in their philosophical and historical context. They address them both as a means for answering specific questions regarding causal relations and in their relation to one another, in particular, comparing occasionalism and the preestablished harmony as responses to Descartes's metaphysics and physics and the Cartesian account of causation. Philosophers discussed include Descartes, Gassendi, Malebranche, Arnauld, Leibniz, Bayle, La Forge, and other, less well-known figures.