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What Descartes Did Not Know

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Notes

  1. Rene Descartes, “Letter to Princess Elisabeth, 28 June 1643,” in Lisa Shapiro, trans. and ed., The Correspondence Between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007), p. 70, AT III 692.

  2. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 17, AT VII 25.

  3. Ibid., p. 24, AT VII 35.

  4. Ibid., p. 40, AT VII 58.

  5. Ibid., p. 41, AT VII 59.

  6. See Descartes, Author’s Replies to the Second Set of Objections, in John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, pp. 100–101, AT VI 140-142; and Peter Markie. “Clear and Distinct Perception and Metaphysical Certainty,” Mind vol. 88, pp. 97–104 (1979).

  7. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 56, AT VII 80.

  8. Ibid., AT VII 81.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  11. See ibid., p. 57, AT VII 83.

  12. Descartes, “Letter to Arnauld, 29 July 1648,” in John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 358, AT V 222.

  13. Descartes, “Letter to Princess Elisabeth, 28 June 1643,” p. 69, AT III 691–692.

  14. See Descartes, Author’s Replies to the Fifth Set of Objections, in John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, p. 266, AT VI 390.

  15. Descartes, “Letter to Princess Elisabeth, 28 June 1643,” p. 69–70, AT III 692.

  16. Ibid. p. 71, AT III 695.

  17. See Descartes, Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence, in John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 10, AT X 362.

  18. See Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 30, AT VII 43.

  19. See Margaret Wilson, Ideas and Mechanisms: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 29; see also Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 55, AT VII 80.

  20. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 57, AT VII 83.

  21. Descartes, “Letter to Princess Elisabeth, 28 June 1643,” p. 69, AT III 692.

  22. See Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, p. 101, note 2.

  23. Descartes, “Letter to Regius, 24 May 1640,” in Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch, and Kenny, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3, p. 147, AT III 65.

  24. See Descartes, Discourse on the Method, in Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, p. 130, AT VI 38.

  25. See Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

  26. See Markie, “Clear and Distinct Perception and Metaphysical Certainty.”

  27. See Descartes, Author’s Replies to the Second Set of Objections, op. cit.

  28. See Peter Markie, Descartes’ Gambit (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986).

  29. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 48, AT VII 69.

  30. See ibid. p. 45, AT VII 65.

  31. See ibid. pp. 26–27, AT VII 38–39.

  32. Markie, Descartes’ Gambit, p. 56.

  33. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, p. 289, fn. 2, AT VIIIA 327.

  34. Descartes, Seventh Set of Objections with the Author’s Replies, in Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, p. 320, AT VII 475.

  35. See Descartes, Discourse on the Method, p. 130, AT VI 38.

  36. See Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, p. 290, AT VIIIA 327-328.

  37. Ibid, AT VIIIA 328.

  38. See Gary Hatfield, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations (Oxford: Routledge, 2003), pp. 311–312.

  39. Descartes, “Letter to Princess Elisabeth, 28 June 1643,” p. 70, AT III 692.

  40. See Hatfield, op. cit., p. 308.

  41. Descartes, Author’s Replies to the Sixth Set of Objections, in Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, p. 294, AT VII 436.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid., AT VII 437.

  44. Ibid., p. 295, AT VII 437.

  45. See Hatfield, op. cit., p. 278.

  46. Descartes, Author’s Replies to the Sixth Set of Objections, op. cit.

  47. Ibid., p. 296, AT VII 439.

  48. See Janet Broughton and Ruth Mattern, “Reinterpreting Descartes on the Notion of the Union of Mind and Body,” Journal of the History of Philosophy vol. 16 (1978), p. 32.

  49. See Louis Loeb, From Descartes to Hume (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981).

  50. Ibid., p. 139.

  51. Ibid.

  52. See Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, in Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, p. 340, AT XI 352-353.

  53. See Descartes, Comments on a Certain Broadsheet, in Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, trans. and eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, p. 304, AT VIIIB 359.

  54. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, p. 216, AT VIIIA 32.

  55. See Descartes, “Letter to Princess Elisabeth, 21 May 1643,” in Shapiro, p. 66, AT III 667-668; see also Descartes, “Letter to Arnauld, 29 July 1648,” op. cit.

  56. See Eileen O’Neill, unpublished manuscript on mind-body union and interaction in the Descartes-Princess Elisabeth correspondence.

  57. See Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 28, AT VII 40-41; see also Author’s Replies to the Second Set of Objections, p. 116, AT VII 165.

  58. See Daisie Radner, “Is There a Problem of Cartesian Interactionism?”, Journal of the History of Philosophy vol. 23 (1985).

  59. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Eileen O’Neill and Hilary Kornblith for many helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Thomas Magnell, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Value Inquiry, for his comments and help. Research underlying the present paper was conducted with generous support from the Fornander Foundation and the Hagendahl Commemoration Fund.

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    Kristoffer Ahlstrom

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Correspondence to Kristoffer Ahlstrom.

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This article is the winner of the 2010 Rockefeller Prize awarded by the American Philosophical Association.

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Ahlstrom, K. What Descartes Did Not Know. J Value Inquiry 44, 297–311 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-010-9237-x

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