Abstract

According to Descartes, vegetative and sensitive activities, which in the Aristotelian tradition were considered dependent on the soul, are pure effects of corporeal dispositions. What is, however, the relationship between this doctrine and Descartes’s metaphysical claim in the Meditations, namely, that the mind is the only cause of thought? In the Meditations, Descartes does not provide a doctrine of vegetative and sensitive functions, and he does not even establish the canonic Cartesian thesis that they are not dependent on the soul. In claiming that the lowest functions cannot be attributed to the soul, the Second Meditation is not making an ontological point. Nevertheless, in spite of this, the Meditations teach us something very important about the lowest functions: that both vegetative and sensitive functions depend on the soul is not, and never will be, a necessarily true proposition.