Is Descartes a Materialist? The Descartes-More Controversy about the Universe as Indefinite (original) (raw)

International Journal of Systematic …, 2008

This article returns to Descartes' texts and correspondence and looks to recent scholarship to reveal three key elements of Descartes' distinctive epistemological structure. It shows that because objectors ignore Descartes' opposition to the 'order of being' they are led to a binary and incorrect reading of his argument. However, by correctly following Descartes' own logic, the method of doubt can be used to prove the existence of an infinite God.

rene Descartes

Designed as an introductory lecture for the conference "Einstein, God and Time," this essay provides a brief survey of three sets of relations-between Einstein and time, God and time, and Einstein and God. The question is raised whether Einstein's rejection of absolute time held any implications for theology. It is argued that, despite Einstein's denial and his exemplary caution, the fact that Isaac Newton had associated absolute space and absolute time with a deity who constituted them meant that a revisitation of theological questions was inevitable. Consideration is then given to the timelessness and changelessness of God, with a brief reference to eschatological issues. The question whether there might be parallels between the renunciation of Newtonian time by physicists and by Christian theologians is discussed with reference to recent commentary on the eschatological thinking of Jürgen Moltmann. Whether Einstein himself would have sympathized with these theologies is to be doubted, given his antipathy to anthropomorphic and anthropopathic concepts of deity. Finally, in exploring Einstein's sometimes whimsical use of theological language, it becomes necessary to acknowledge that his well-known affirmation of the complementarity of science and religion rested on a distinctive construction of religion that allowed him to say he was a "deeply religious unbeliever." Attempts to categorize his convictions, or to appropriate them for conventional theistic purposes, miss their subtlety and their apophatic resonances.

Physics and metaphysics in Descartes and in His Reception. "Introduction". Delphine ANTOINE-MAHUT and Sophie ROUX.

Physics and metaphysics in Descartes and in His Reception. New York and London: Routledge, 2019

This volume explores the relationship between physics and metaphysics in Descartes' philosophy. According to the standard account, Descartes modified the objects of metaphysics and physics and inverted the order in which these two disciplines were traditionally studied. This book challenges the standard account in which Descartes prioritizes metaphysics over physics. It does by taking into consideration the historical reception of Descartes and the ways in which Descartes himself reacted to these receptions in his own lifetime. The book stresses the diversity of theses receptions by taking into account not only Cartésianisme but also anti-Cartesianism and by showing how they retroactively highlighted different aspects of Descartes' works and theoretical choices. The historical aspect of the volume is unique in that it not only analyzes different constructions of Descartes that emerged in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, but also reflects on how his work was first read by philosophers across Europe. Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a fresh and up-to-date contribution to this important debate in early modern philosophy.

On the Conceptual and Civilization Frames in René Descartes’ Physical Works

Advances in Historical Studies, 2013

The paper try to provide a contribution to the scientific-historiographic debate concerning the relations between experiments, metaphysics and mathematics in Descartes' physics. The three works on which the analysis is focused are the Principia philosophiae and the two physical essays: La Dioptrique and Les Météores. The authors will highlight the profound methodological and epistemological differences characterizing, from one side, the Principia and, from the other side, the physical essays. Three significant examples will be dealt with: 1) the collision rules in the Principia philosophiae; 2) the refraction law in La Dioptrique; 3) the rainbow in Les Météores. In the final remarks these differences will be interpreted as depending upon the different role Descartes ascribed to the three books inside his whole work. The concepts of intensity and gradation of the physical quantities used by Descartes will provide an important interpretative means. In this paper, we compare the aprioristic approach to physics typical for Descartes' Principia with the experimental and mathematical one characterizing Descartes' Essays.

Divine Activity and Motive Power in Descartes's Physics - Part I

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 Concept of Space and the Metaphysics of Extended Substance in Descartes

There are long-standing debates in Descartes scholarship surrounding the metaphysics of extended substance. Some of the central topics involved are the real and modal distinctions, nominalism versus Platonism about the essence of extended things, and the unity or multiplicity (and divisibility or indivisibility) of extended substance. In the recent literature, a group of scholars—Thomas Lennon (2007), Kurt Smith (2010), and then Smith and Alan Nelson (2010)—favors a reading of Descartes as a monist about extended substance and an idealist (or even a transcendental idealist) about finite bodies. Other commentators, including Marleen Rozemond and Calvin Normore in recent papers, are loosely united by the claims that Descartes was a pluralist about extended substance and a realist about particular bodies (Rozemond 2011; Schmaltz 2009; Normore 2008; Slowik 2001; Stuart 1999; Des Chene 1996). My topic here is Descartes's account of the concept of space and its relationship to body. Because the discussion of place and space is closely connected with motion and divisibility, the texts concerning space are important for interpreting Descartes's metaphysics of the material world, and they show up frequently in that literature. My claim here is that a careful interpretation of the concept of space in Descartes's Principles of Philosophy supports the second kind of reading of the metaphysics of extension: there are many extended substances that are really distinct, and these particular parts of matter are real as opposed to phenomenal.

Descartes on Physical Vacuum: Rationalism in Natural-Philosophical Debate

Descartes is notorious for holding a strong anti-vacuist position. On his view, according to the standard reading, empty space not only does not exist in nature, but it is logically impossible. The very notion of a void or vacuum is an incoherent one. Recently Eric Palmer has proposed a revisionist reading of Descartes on empty space, arguing that he is more sanguine about its possibility. Palmer makes use of Descartes’ early correspondence with Marin Mersenne, including his commentary on Galileo’s Two New Sciences. I argue that Palmer’s reading is mistaken, and that it relies on an understandable but faulty inference—i.e., that if Descartes considers the implications of an opposing view, he must find it at least coherent. Descartes, as I show from his correspondence and other texts, uses a variety of persuasive strategies, and levels charges of different logical strength, against positions which he takes to be incoherent. Thus we cannot infer from the fact that Descartes argues, e.g., that something is a superfluous theoretical entity, that he admits that entity’s coherence. He often chooses to argue a weaker thesis against an opponent so that he can use an argument to which the opponent is more likely to agree.

On the Conceptual and Civilization Frames in Rene; Descartes’ Physical Works

Advances in historical studies, 2013

Is Descartes a Materialist? The Descartes-More Controversy about the Universe as Indefinite (original) (raw)

Related papers