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Descartes’s Indefinitely Extended Universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2018

JASPER REID
JASPER REID*
Affiliation:
King’s College London
*
*<[email protected]>
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Abstract

Descartes believed the extended world did not terminate in a boundary: but why? After elucidating Descartes’s position in §1, suggesting his conception of the indefinite extension of the universe should be understood as actual but syncategorematic, we turn in §2 to his argument: any postulation of an outermost surface for the world will be self-defeating, because merely contemplating such a boundary will lead us to recognise the existence of further extension beyond it. In §3, we identify the fundamental assumption underlying this argument by comparing Descartes’s and Malebranche’s respective conceptions of the ontological status of modes of extension.

Descartes croyait que le monde étendu ne se terminait pas par une borne, mais pourquoi? Après avoir expliqué la position de Descartes au §1, en suggérant que sa conception de l’étendue indéfinie de l’univers devrait être entendue comme actuelle, mais syncatégorématique, nous nous penchons sur son argument dans le §2 : toute postulation d’une surface extérieure au monde sera autodestructrice, parce que la simple contemplation d’une telle borne nous conduira à reconnaître l’existence d’une étendue allant au-delà. Au §3, nous identifions l’hypothèse fondamentale qui sous-tend cet argument en comparant les conceptions respectives de Descartes et de Malebranche quant au statut ontologique des modes de l’étendue.

Keywords

Descartesextensionimaginary spacesindefiniteinfinitesyncategorematicmode
Type
Original Article/Article original
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 341 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2018 

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