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Cartesian Substances as Modal Totalities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
Extract
I. Analytic interpretation of Descartes' argument for a substantial distinction between mind and body works within a framework of assumptions – which is broadly Aristotelian – concerning the character of the Cartesian categories of substance, essence, and mode. Relying on a series of texts concerning the mind/body distinction which is usually passed over by interpreters, I will develop and draw out the implications of a different – a Platonic – view of these categories.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 320 - 343
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1978
References
Notes
1 Schiffer, S., ‘Descartes on His Essence’, The Philosophical Review, (1976), p. 23Google Scholar. In a fashion typical of analytic interpreters, Schiffer ascribes an ‘Aristotelian-Thomistic’ character to Descartes' position.
2 The canonical form (…/-) is used in citing Cartesian texts. To the left of the slash I give (usually shortened) identification of the work in which the quoted passage appears (thus: Rules, Meditations, Principles) and the finest section location in the original; to the right the corresponding page location in the translated edition. The numerals I and II after the slash refer to volumes I and II of Descartes Philosophical Works, translated by Haldane, and Ross, (Dover Publications: New York, 1931)Google Scholar. The letter K refers to Descartes' Philosophical Letters, translated and edited by Kenny, A. (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar. In the case of letters, I also give the volume and first page location in the standard Adam and Tannery edition, coded by AT. In quoting, I omit non-emphatic italics.
3 Thus Schiffer, for whom the sort form is definitive, maintains that completeness, as figuring in Replies 4, only ‘vivifies’ (p. 39) the proof, and does not constitute a cog of internal clockwork.
4 I use this non-standard term, rather than speaking of ‘non-ascribability’ of modal proper-ties, inasmuch as it is not yet clear what sort of connection Descartes has in mind. Descartes says ‘deny of’. This should not be indiscriminately glossed as ‘falsely ascribed to’.
5 The Method of Descartes (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1952), pp. 95–96Google Scholar. Next quotation: ibid, pp. 96–97.
6 M. Hooker, ‘Descartes’ Argument for the Claim that his Essence is to Think', Grazer Philosophische Studien, (1975), p. 149. And Hooker adds: 'Cartesian essentialism begins to look like what we can label “Aristotelian Essentialism” (ibid)
7 Bennett, J., Kant's Dialectic (Cambridge U.P.: London, 1974), p. 43Google Scholar.
8 See Gilson, E., Being and Some Philosophers (Pontifical Institute: Toronto, 1952), p. 110n4Google Scholar.
9 Cherniss, H., Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy (Russell & Russell: New York, 1962), p. 46Google Scholar. Next two quotations: ibid, ibid; ibid, p. 60.
10 Compare Beck's talk of a Cartesian “network of necessarily connected ideas, or implicates, [which] constitutes a conceptual system” (p. 97).
11 But note that, in the Aristotelian framework, even this is less than completely true. Thus Kant denies that non-Euclidean geometries are ‘real’ possibilities, though they are selfconsistent. And, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle sees certain kinds of division of concrete particulars as ‘irrational’ from the viewpoint of their substantial forms.
12 Schiffer, p. 34.
13 The shift from ‘idea’ to ‘concept’ is significant. On an Aristotelian view, all objects of thought are conceptual in the sense that they are abstract, i.e they express contents abstracted from particular instances. ‘Concreteness’ applies literally only in the realm of particular instances. But Platonists-and this is true of pre-Kantian ideationists of the Cartesian tradition generally - regard ideas as concrete objects of thought. What we call ‘concepts’ they call ‘abstract ideas’: but their contrast is with concrete ideas, not with concrete particulars. It is no wonder that Aristotelian reconstructions of Descartes' arguments fail to convince: how could an ontological rift be proved from an abstract basis? (Descartes' real problem is, of course, that he cannot effectively distinguish concrete from abstract ideas. But this is a remark belonging to evaluation, not interpretation.) I have explained the historical dialectic of ideationism and conceptualism, which seems to have been forgotten by modern analysts, in 'Conceptuality: An Essay in Retrieval', Kant-Studien (forthcoming).
14 So the model-let it be clear-is further removed from accuracy than it need be. The series of positive integers is certainly part of a wider series, containing fractions, negative integers, etc., viz. the series of numbers. So this ‘substantial’ distinction would be classified as ‘modal’ by Descartes.
15 Letter to Blyenbergh, , Works of Spinoza, volume II, translated by Elwes, R.H.M. (Dover Publications: New York, 1955), p. 333Google Scholar.
16 Part of the material costs of preparing this piece was covered by Grant #56436 from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.