Abstract
In Metaphysical Themes: 1274–1671, Robert Pasnau compares the medieval and early modern approaches to the material-immaterial divide and suggests the medievals held the advantage on this issue. I argue for the opposite conclusion. I also argue against his suggestion that we should approach the divide through the notion of a special type of extension for immaterial entities, and propose that instead we should focus on their indivisibility.
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Notes
I will not worry about the question whether the terms (im) material or (in) corporeal are more appropriate.
An exception is Leibniz who denied that matter is a substance, but he does fall beyond the scope of Pasnau’s book.
Other scholastics thought that the human being had an intellectual soul as well as a sensitive soul, and that the two are really distinct, thus, in my view, moving closer to a dualistic picture. (For discussion see Adams 1987, pp. 647–664, Perler 2013). Descartes’s treatment of the issues at stake here is most easily understood when related to the “unitarian” view. For other issues, the “pluralist” picture is very useful. See Hoffman (1986).
This point is illustrated by the important notion of a proprium, a quality that necessarily belongs to a type of entity, but that is not part of its essence, as Pasnau notes elsewhere (p. 485n, .551, 658).
Aquinas visibly struggled with the issue. See ST I.76.1 ad 6. For more discussion see Rozemond (1998, pp. 146–151).
See also Rozemond (1998, p. 23 and pp. 40–48).
CSM mistranslates the second sentence saying: “if the soul is recognized as merely a substantial form”, which obscures Descartes’s point.
See Suárez Disputationes metaphysicae XV.I.7, 8 (in Suárez 1856 v. 25), Descartes, AT III 506/CSM III 208.
See Rozemond (1998, pp. 12–22).
Pasnau himself indicates a reason why this route is problematic for the scholastics when he writes that they “tend to conceive of thought as conceptually removed from soul twice over (as activity of the intellect, which is in turn a power of the soul)” (p. 324). On that view, it is hard to see what the soul in and of itself is. Pasnau’s comment is most applicable to those scholastics, such as Aquinas and Suárez, who thought the soul is really distinct from its powers (but Pasnau and I may disagree about this). See also n. 21 below.
Shoemaker (1983, p. 235).
It plays no role in his main argument for dualism. The notion does occur in his statement of the Divisibility Argument, although I do not believe it is central to that argument. See Rozemond forthcoming.
As Pasnau notes (p. 357). See also Grant (1981) for discussion.
For more discussion see Rozemond (2003, pp. 356–362). The case of God is different as he was supposed to be able to act on bodies anywhere directly.
See Reid (2003).
He writes that “no one wanted to take that route”, that is, the route of denying all extension to immaterial substances (p. 345). While there certainly were others who attributed some sort of extension to immaterial substances, in particular, Samuel Clarke, this claim is too strong. Malebranche and Leibniz did not, Cudworth refused to take a stance (Cudworth 1678 p. 833). The question deserves more investigation. Jasper Reid, argues that the Cartesians did not hold that created spiritual substances (as opposed to God) are extended (Reid 2008).
It is important to note that the Divisibility Argument denied a particular type of composition, which comes with what Pasnau calls “integral parts”. This leaves open the possibility that the soul has what he calls metaphysical parts. This is illustrated by the example of Francisco Suárez, who held that the human soul is really distinct from its faculties, thus creating, in Pasnau’s terms, “metaphysical” complexity within the soul (De anima II.I). In this Suárez was in agreement with Aquinas, at least as the latter has usually been understood at least since Scotus (see, for instance, ST I.77.1). But at the same time Suárez held that the soul itself (as distinct from its faculties) is indivisible. (De anima I.xiii. For discussion see Rozemond 2012). For a different view of Suárez on the soul, see Shields (2012), who thinks that for Suárez the soul is nothing over and above a collection of faculties. For these issues see also Perler 2013.
Although at least some thought the case of the souls of higher animals was complicated. See Des Chene (2000, pp. 171–189).
See, for instance, Aquinas, ST I. 75.2. For references to some late scholastics see Rozemond (1998, p. 45).
The early moderns often stated that something that is extended is not merely divisible, but it has actual parts, as Leibniz held, for instance, and Samuel Clarke, as the above quote makes clear. For discussion see Holden (2004).
There are two other scenarios: only one part of the composite subject perceives, but then, given the infinite divisible of matter, the problem starts all over again. Or each particle perceives the whole face, so that there is in fact a multitude of experiences of a whole single face in us. But, Cudworth writes, “we are Intimately Conscious to our selves, That we have but only One Sensation of One Object at the same time” (Cudworth 1678, p. 825).
Some of my examples lead me beyond the period officially covered by Pasnau’s book, which ends at 1671. But the ideas at stake do not emerge only after this date. And although Pasnau limits himself to the period before 1671, his frequent talk of “the early moderns” does invite reflection on the richness of the intellectual landscape at least in the entire seventeenth century.
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Rozemond, M. Pasnau on the material–immaterial divide in early modern philosophy. Philos Stud 171, 3–16 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0254-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0254-z