Reading Of Descartes Research Articles

Cartesian Imperativism

AbstractWe propose a novel reading of Descartes' views on the nature of pain, thirst, and hunger: imperativism. According to imperativism, rather than (exclusively) having intentional contents individuated by a set of correctness conditions specifying the way the world is, pain thirst, and hunger have contents individuated by satisfaction conditions, which specify the way the world ought to be. Unlike representationalist treatments, the imperativist reading satisfies the unique health‐preserving role Descartes sets out for pain, thirst, and hunger, without inflating his austere metaphysics of res extensa.

Why Peirce’s Anti-Intuitionism is not Anti-Cartesian: The Diagnosis of a Pragmatist Dogma

A close reading of Descartes’ works, particularly his Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii, calls into question the common interpretation of Peirce’s ‘Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man’ and ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’ as being anti-Cartesian. In particular, Descartes’ conception of intuition differs from Peirce’s, and on one plausible reading of Descartes his intuitionism actually mirrors Peirce’s inferentialism in key respects. Given these similarities between Descartes and Peirce, the dogmatic status of the anti-Cartesian interpretation of Peirce becomes evident.

In Defense of Real Cartesian Motion: A Reply to Lennon

On Thomas Lennon’s (2007) “Eleatic” reading of Descartes, the Cartesian world is in reality motionless, its motions conceived as mere phenomenal appearances. Lennon is aware that this radical reading appears to be at odds with various Cartesian texts that seemingly describe real motions, and accordingly he reinterprets these texts in such a way as to render them compatible with his reading. This reply to Lennon considers many further Cartesian texts that cannot be “reinterpreted” along the lines Lennon describes, with the ultimate aim of showing that the phenomenalist is committed to dividing Cartesian texts into passages dealing with reality and with appearance. I argue there are good reasons not to read Descartes in this way, and we should take Cartesian motion at face value: to be real.

Reworking Descartes’ mathesis universalis

Descartes-Agonistes is the magnum opus of John Schuster, formerly of the University of New South Wales, honorary fellow at the University of Sydney. Its roots go back to the dissertation he wrote 35 years ago under Thomas Kuhn at Princeton University. As Schuster correctly remarks, some regard his dissertation as an underground classic. I count myself among them: Schuster’s work has been directional in my work on the history of early modern science. Schuster himself prefers to regard his dissertation as ‘a vestige’ of a history of science of the 1970s that he has since gone beyond. In the 1980s, he elaborated and published on some central insights in a series of seminal articles, but his work on Descartes really got into its stride again around the turn of the millennium (Schuster 1980, 1990; Gaukroger et al. 2000). This book is the acme of this work, and grand it is: clocking 600 pages (excluding appendices) it extends, deepens and reinforces his analysis of Descartes into a dense and penetrating exposition. The result is a cogent interpretation of Descartes’ philosophy that is of vital importance to our understanding of early modern science and philosophy. In developing a new dynamical image of Descartes’ work and its significance for the scientific revolution, Schuster has closely collaborated with fellow expat Stephen Gaukroger. They understand the work of Descartes from its intellectual development in intense interaction with the knowledge cultures of his time. In this way, the published works are read as products of responses to and deliberate moves in a lifelong struggle with promising ideas, disillusioning insights, and ingenious reflections on the production of knowledge. This offers an alternative for the usual modern reading of Descartes, explaining his ideas from his ‘main’ philosophical works, the Meditationes and the Discours de la Methode. At the same time, it overcomes the unease of historians of science for whom Descartes represents

Taking the Fourth: Steps toward a New (Old) Reading of Descartes

Taking the Fourth: Steps toward a New (Old) Reading of Descartes

Divine Activity and Motive Power in Descartes's Physics

This paper is the first of a two-part reexamination of causation in Descartes's physics. Some scholars – including Gary Hatfield and Daniel Garber – take Descartes to be a `partial' Occasionalist, who thinks that God alone is the cause of all natural motion. Contra this interpretation, I agree with literature that links Descartes to the Thomistic theory of divine concurrence. This paper surveys this literature, and argues that it has failed to provide an interpretation of Descartes's view that both distinguishes his position from that of his later, Occasionalist followers and is consistent with his broader metaphysical commitments. I provide an analysis that tries to address these problems with earlier `Concurentist' readings of Descartes. On my analysis, Occasionalism entails that created substances do not have intrinsic active causal powers. As I read him, Descartes thinks that bodies have active causal powers that are partly grounded in their intrinsic natures. But I argue – pace a recent account by Tad Schmaltz – that Descartes also thinks that God immediately causes all motion in the created world. On the picture that emerges, Descartes's position is both continuous with, and a subtle departure from, the Thomisitic theory of divine concurrence.

The Moviegoer's Cartesian Theater: Moviegoing as Walker Percy's Metaphor for the Cartesian Mind

Binx Bolling is the moviegoing protagonist of The Moviegoer (1961), Walker Percy's first novel. In an interview, Percy once referred to Binx as a “victim” of Descartes. Did Percy intend some connection between Binx's moviegoing and his unfortunate, Cartesian heritage? In this essay, I argue that Percy used Binx's moviegoing as a metaphor for his having a Cartesian mind. As Percy knew, many Descartes scholars regard the Cartesian self as a purely thinking thing whose mind is like a theater. Seated in that theater, the self entertains ideas, or mental objects, which stand like a solid screen between the self and the nonmental world outside. It is consistent with the two most widely held readings of Descartes on the nature of an idea to regard ideas as mental objects, as I discuss in the first section. In section two, I argue that there is ample evidence to support our seeing Binx's moviegoing as a metaphor for his Cartesian mind. In the final section, I describe how our reading The Moviegoer in this way might enrich our understanding of this novel, Percy's other work, and Percy himself.

Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations, by John Carriero.

Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations, by John Carriero.

The Taste to Come

This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipsisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of corporeal self-reflexivity that emerges in the oral sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh.

Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations (review)

Reviewed by: Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations Brandon C. Look John Carriero. Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. xv + 519. Paper, $26.95. In his Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations, John Carriero presents a sustained and sensitive interpretation of this seminal work of modern philosophy. The two worlds of the title are the worlds of Scholastic philosophy on the one side, and of the mechanical philosophy on the other, and it is Carriero’s argument that the Meditations are most helpfully understood against the background of Thomistic Scholasticism. In particular, Carriero shows that there is a deep difference between St. Thomas and Descartes, first, concerning philosophical theology and the nature and possibility of our cognition of the divine essence, and second, concerning the nature of human cognition. What Carriero is ultimately trying to argue against is a picture of Descartes according to which he is fundamentally engaged in an anti-skeptical project and at the same time responsible for a crass and superficial form of dualism. While the book is organized simply, with one chapter devoted to each of the Descartes’s six Meditations, it is philosophically very rich and will reward careful study. Indeed, it is rare for a book to be devoted to such a close reading of a single text at this high level. Certainly, there are many “Introductions” for undergraduates, but few works written for advanced graduate students and professional philosophers cover a text so closely and so subtly. Carriero’s book demonstrates the virtues of this kind of text-immanent approach. It is clearly in the tradition of Martial Guéroult, whose two-volume Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons represents the pinnacle of twentieth-century French Cartesian studies; and it is much more historically sensitive than Margaret Wilson’s Descartes, which directed a generation of budding Descartes scholars in the English-speaking world. Carriero wants his reader to see an argumentative continuity within the Meditations, as well as a developed philosophical [End Page 104] view. And while he occasionally refers to Descartes’s comments in his correspondence, the Objections and Replies, and other works, Carriero largely confines his discussion to Descartes’s short masterpiece. In the limited space I have here, I shall simply indicate several of Carriero’s more interesting and important points. First, Carriero argues that, for Descartes, the essential activity of the mind is judging—that is, coming to create a special kind of relation between the mind and the world. The related point is that consciousness per se should not be seen as occupying the central position in Descartes’s philosophy of mind. In fact, as Carriero points out, Descartes uses the Latin ‘conscius’ only once in the entire Meditations. And while much of our cognitive vocabulary implies consciousness, Descartes is not intent upon emphasizing this at all. So, as Carriero puts it, the crucial feature of the Cartesian mind is its “ability to see that something is so, to make judgments and (at times) to know the truth, to penetrate beneath the surface of things to the underlying structure” (24). Second, by focusing on the mind’s power of judgment rather than on consciousness, Carriero shows that the mind-world relation in Cartesian philosophy differs from that which we see in the “standard view” of Descartes. It is here that Descartes’s picture of the nature of truth actually approaches that of Thomas Aquinas, for Descartes thinks of “truth as fundamentally a property of a judgment that brings about a relation of ‘adequation’ between the mind and reality, and not as fundamentally a property of thoughts, perceptions, or propositions” (229). However, given Descartes’s rejection of the Aristotelian and Thomistic view that nihil est in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu, he arrives at his important form of rationalism. Third, while many are accustomed to thinking of medieval philosophy as being deeply connected to theological concerns and modern philosophy as moving towards the serious pursuit of epistemology, Carriero shows how simplistic this picture is. He reminds us that a great deal of metaphysical and epistemological work has to be done by...

The Bifurcated Subject

Michel Henry wishes to salvage Descartes’s first principle ‘I think, I am’ by claiming that there is no need to appeal to the world or others to make sense of the self. One of his main targets is Edmund Husserl, who claims that thought is necessarily intentional and thus necessarily about something that is other to thought. To show that this is not so, Henry draws on passages from Descartes’s texts which emphasize that we should not equate the cogito with thinking but with sensation and imagination. This allows Henry to explore the notion that the self has its own form of manifestation. This paper questions Henry’s reading of Descartes and his critique of Husserl on two fronts. First, the passages Henry draws upon, if anything only confirm, rather than question Husserl’s claim that consciousness is intentional. Second, Henry believes that he can show that the life of the self is infinitely rich without having to appeal to other persons or, indeed, to the world. Yet, I wish to contend that Henry is mistaken: as Husserl has shown convincingly, a life without others and the world is not only impoverished and bereft of meaning, but remains entirely indeterminate. The self only manifests itself with respect to others and the world.

Between two worlds: a reading of Descartes's Meditations

Preface ix Note on Translations xv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The First Meditation 27 Chapter 2: The Second Meditation 65 Chapter 3: (I) The Third Meditation: The Truth Rule and the Chief and Most Common Mistake 128 Chapter 3: (II) The Third Meditation: Two Demonstrations of God's Existence 168 Chapter 4: The Fourth Meditation 223 Chapter 5: The Fifth Meditation 280 Chapter 6: The Sixth Meditation 359 Notes 427 Bibliography 489 Index Locorum 495 Subject Index 505

The Enigma of the Cartesian Infinite

In Levinas' hands, the problematic of transcendence challenges phenomenological description by positing, as primary, that which is outside intentionality. How, then, to think about this transcendence outside intentionality? This essay explores the possibilities of a description of transcendence through Levinas' and Marion's readings of the Cartesian idea of the Infinite. What emerges from these readings of Descartes' idea of the Infinite is a sense of indication that is fundamentally elliptical, pointing beyond what it can render to presence, but pointing nonetheless. Thinking through this problem of elliptical indication, I argue, is central to generating a phenomenological account of transcendence.

Reconsidering the Debate Concerning the Cartesian Cogito

This essay will consider some of the issues that have been posed by Foucault and Derrida concerning their disagreement on the Cartesian cogito. I will argue that what is at stake this debate is the question of where exclusion takes place and what exactly its nature is. As we shall see, Derrida's argument is that exclusion is connected with certainty and objectification, and this is the meaning of the discussion of hyperbolic doubt Descartes. The sheltering of the cogito from hyperbolic wanderings amounts to an act of mastery which is unjustifiable. The debate also reflects a difference between the two philosophers as far as historicity and critique are concerned. Nevertheless, it shows a common theme that runs throughout their philosophy; that is, the dangers the movement of thought to function within an economy, along with the different levels of inclusion and exclusion the realm of meaning its relation to what does not yet belong to it. Both thinkers want to disrupt totality, and thus emphasize the opening of thought as opposed to its closing upon itself, as it relates itself to its objectifications as total and absolute determinations. The debate began with Derrida's critique of Foucault's first book on madness.1 Derrida's critique focused on two main points: on Foucault's reading of Descartes' First Meditation the introduction to his book, and on some methodological and philosophical issues dealing with the whole project of Foucault's analysis. His discussion of Descartes concentrates on the passage from the example of madness to the example of dreams, and how this relates to their status, continuity, or rupture Descartes' system. Descartes' First Meditation is about doubt as far as the senses are concerned. As Descartes says, though we learn through the senses, we have been deceived by them as well and this constitutes sufficient reason not to trust them at all. Nevertheless, he speculates that there are things that we cannot have any doubt about. example, there is the fact that I am here, seated by the fire, attired a dressing gown, having this paper my hands and other similar matters.2 Only persons devoid of sense who think they are kings when they are poor can have doubts about these things. Descartes continues: But they are mad, and I should not be any the less insane were I to follow examples so extravagant.3 However, Descartes says the next paragraph, when we sleep and dream we experience things that those who are insane do when they are awake. For example, we may dream that we sit next to the fire while reality we are bed. Though, he remarks, it is true that what happens our waking moments appears more clear, there are not clear indications on the basis of which we can distinguish the status of sleep from that of wakefulness. At this, Descartes says, he is lost astonishment; And my astonishment is such that it is almost capable of persuading me that I now dream.4 According to Foucault's reading, Descartes' analysis, madness and dreams or sensation have a different status. As he put it, in the economy of doubt there is a fundamental disequilibrium between madness on one side and error on the other. Their situation is different relation to both truth and inquiry; dream and illusion are surmounted through the very structure of truth; but madness is excluded by the subject who doubts.5 Derrida challenges this reading of Descartes. According to Derrida, Descartes does not exclude madness from the interiority of thinking. Thus, the relation of madness and dreams to sensation Descartes' text is not one of philosophical and methodological rupture. Derrida argues, on the contrary, that Descartes is not moving from the example of madness to the example of dreams, because he decides that madness should be excluded from the possibility of thinking. Rather, the gesture is a pedagogical and a rhetorical one. Therefore, where Foucault finds a definite conclusion, Derrida sees the continuation of the issue. …

Mind-body dualism and the biopsychosocial model of pain: what did Descartes really say?

In the last two decades there have been many critics of western biomedicine's poor integration of social and psychological factors in questions of human health. Such critiques frequently begin with a rejection of Descartes' mind-body dualism, viewing this as the decisive philosophical moment, radically separating the two realms in both theory and practice. It is argued here, however, that many such readings of Descartes have been selective and misleading. Contrary to the assumptions of many recent authors, Descartes' dualism does attempt to explain the union of psyche and soma - with more depth than is often appreciated. Pain plays a key role in Cartesian as well as contemporary thinking about the problem of dualism. Theories of the psychological origins of pain symptoms persisted throughout the history of modern medicine and were not necessarily discouraged by Cartesian mental philosophy. Moreover, the recently developed biopsychosocial model of pain may have more in common with Cartesian dualism than it purports to have. This article presents a rereading of Descartes' mental philosophy and his views on pain. The intention is not to defend his theories, but to re-evaluate them and to ask in what respect contemporary theories represent any significant advance in philosophical terms.

Scepticism and Science in Descartes

Recent Descartes scholarship has revised the traditional view of the Cartesian project as one of strictly deductive rationalism. This revision has particularly stressed the role of science in Descartes' thought. The revisionist conception of Descartes also downplays the significance of the sceptical arguments offered in the First Meditation, seeing them as tools for 'turning the mind away from the senses' in the interest of Cartesian science, rather than as reflecting genuinely epistemological concerns. This paper takes issue with this aspect of the revisionist reading of Descartes. It argues that seeing scepticism as critically important for Descartes is independent of interpreting him as a canonical rationalist. In fact, it is precisely Descartes' scientific thought and practice which make scepticism such a problem for him.

Was Cartesian Science ever Meant to be a Priori? A Comment on Hatfield

In a recent article G. Hatfield claims that Descartes for a certain time thought a purely a priori science to be possible. Hatfield's evidence consists of his reading of the Cartesian method in the Regulae and of a letter to Mersenne, written in May 1632. I argue that Hatfield misinterprets the Cartesian method and Descartes' claim in the letter to Mersenne. I first show that the latter does not argue for an a priori science. Then, I show that the method of the Regulae is not a priori. Finally, I propose a reading of Descartes' letter.

Thought and Nature. Studies in Rationalist Philosophy (review)

482 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:3JULY 1988 Arthur W. Collins. Thought and Nature. Studiesin RationalistPhilosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985. Pp. xi + 248. $24-95. "If the revolution in philosophy that Descartes introduced must be set aside... ; if dualism is an irrevocably mysterious metaphysics; and if the idealist epistemology that follows the internalization of all objects of consciousness is inherendy barren, then the roots of Cartesian thinking have to be very much more fully understood than they are understood in current discussions" (23). Thus Collins' rationale for this collection of essays focussing on the metaphysics and epistemology of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. Collins is a realist in the two-fold sense of holding that an independent physical world exists and that we perceive that world. He believes that careful study of the history of philosophy should aim at the illumination of this commonsense, realistic metaphysics by, presumably, locating and understanding the mistakes which lead away from this realism. Accordingly, having identified one such mistake in the Cartesian "internalization thesis," Collins devotes some space (17-24) to explaining his provocative charge that contemporary behaviorists and materialists, indeed, even some of their most illustrious opponents (e.g., Saul Kripke) share that thesis with Descartes. In addition, he suggests that one way to avoid dualism (as well as behaviorism and mindbrain materialism) might be to abandon the notion "that believing and desiring are things that are present in men, or go on in men" (55). Now this is indeed a way of avoiding dualism, particularly if the analysis is extended to include perception. But it is worth noting that in this latter case it will also allow Collins to avoid the objectionable consequence of the internalization thesis: If perceivings are not "things that are present in men," then perceptual objects, despite their causal origins, will not be such things either. Ironically, this curious view may be a consequence of Collins' own commitment to the internalization thesis, a commitment so deep that, like Thomas Reid whom he quotes with approval (18), Collins is prevented from seeing any alternative to a representationalist interpretation of Descartes' perceptual idea. What Collins misses is that Arnauld sawjust such an alternative when, arguing that he was the true Cartesian, he advanced an "act" interpretation of Descartes ' perceptual idea in the face of Malebranche's "object" account. Although Malebranche's (and Reid's) reading of Descartes has been the overwhelmingly popular one, the failure to discuss Arnauld's other alternative is a serious omission in Thought and Nature, particularly given recent literature on the issue and the avowals expressed in the passage with which I opened this review. Moreover, given Collins' two-fold realism, it is arguable that the omission is self-defeating: without acts a realistic ontology of perception is impossible. Be this as it may, Collins' aim here is not to reap the benefits of historical analysis but, less ambitiously, to do that analysis. And in this, the results are far more satisfying. The essays on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are excellent--the Leibniz by itself being worth the price of admission. The two essays on Kant are as full of illuminating details as the earlier essays, but they are less satisfying, mainly because Collins insists on reading Kant as a realist while downplaying all that is inconsistent with realism (196-97; 936-42 ). As good as the Spinoza and Leibniz essays are, however, one omission flaws both of BOOK REVIEWS 483 them, and for this reason is worth especial attention. It occurs first in connection with Spinoza's proof of Proposition I:v (there cannot be two substances with the same attribute). Here Collins deftly discusses the interesting question of why Spinoza "does not try to rule out the possibility that two substances might have one attribute in common but differ nonetheless, not in virtue of the shared attribute, but in virtue of two other attributes, one possessed exclusively by one of the substances and the other possessed exclusively by the other substance" (82-83); indeed, Collins' discussion illuminates the central ambiguity in Spinoza's notorious definition of 'attribute'. But he does not make clear--in fact he is entirely...

Comment on John Yolton's ?Is There a History of Philosophy? Some difficulties and suggestions?

In this comment on John Yolton's ‘Is There a History of Philosophy?’ (Yolton, 1985) I review his account of the development during the 17th to 19th centuries of a common sense of the range of philosophical problems and of the canon of philosophical works. I suggest that his account may be read in light of Rorty's four genres of historiography (Rorty, 1984). I criticize his view of the place of the history of philosophy in philosophy as too timid, though correct as far as it goes. I then suggest, but do not attempt to establish, a bolder thesis. Finally, I raise some doubts about the adequacy of Yolton's reading of Descartes and Berkeley set out in two of his ‘Puzzlements.’ The ‘Puzzlements’ themselves are supposed to illustrate typical misreading of major figures in the history of philosophy.

My Body, This Paper, This Fire

On pages 56-59 of Histoire de la folie I said that dreams and madness have neither the same status nor the same role in the development of Cartesian doubt: dreams allow me to doubt this place where I am, this sheet of paper I see, this hand I hold out ; but madness is not an instrument or stage of doubt; for 7 who am thinking cannot be mad'. Madness is therefore excluded, contrary to the sceptical t radi t ion, which made it one of the reasons for doubting. To sum up Derrida's objection to this thesis, it is no doubt best to quote the passage where he gives most energetically his reading of Descartes.