Some of these authors have “mixed” views: for example, MacKenzie (and perhaps Arbini) ... Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, Studies in the History ..

The early modern period is arguably the most pivotal of all in the study of the mind, teeming with a variety of conceptions of mind. Some of these posed serious questions for assumptions about the nature of the mind, many of which still depended on notions of the soul and God. It is an era that witnessed the emergence of theories and arguments that continue to animate the study of philosophy of mind, such (...) as dualism, vitalism, materialism, and idealism. -/- Covering pivotal figures in philosophy such as Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Leibniz, Cavendish, and Spinoza, Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern and Modern Ages provides an outstanding survey of philosophy of mind of the period. Following an introduction by Rebecca Copenhaver, sixteen specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors discuss key topics, thinkers, and debates, including: -/- Hobbes, Descartes’ philosophy of mind and its early critics, consciousness, the later Cartesians, Malebranche, Cavendish, Locke, Spinoza, Descartes and Leibniz, perception and sensation, desires, mental substance and mental activity, Hume, and Kant. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, enlightenment philosophy, and the history of philosophy, Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern and Modern Ages is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as religion, history of psychology, and history of science. (shrink)

In this book, Martin Lenz provides the first reconstruction of intersubjective accounts of the mind in early modern philosophy. Some phenomena are easily recognised as social or interactive: certain dances, forms of work and rituals require interaction to come into being or count as valid. But what about mental states, such as thoughts, volitions, or emotions? Do our minds also depend on other minds? The idea that our minds are intersubjective or social seems to be a (...) recent one, developed mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries against the individualism of early modern philosophers. By contrast, this book argues that well-known early modern philosophers often started from the idea that minds are intersubjective. How then does a mind depend on the minds of others? Early modern philosophers are well known to have developed a number of theories designed to explain how we cognize external objects. What is hardly recognized is that early modern philosophers also addressed the problem of how our cognition is influenced by other minds. This book provides a historical and rational reconstruction of three central, but different, early modern accounts of the influence that minds exert on one another: Spinoza's metaphysical model, Locke's linguistic model, and Hume's medical model. Showing for each model of mental interaction (1) why it was developed, (2) how it construes mind-mind relations, and (3) what view of the mind it suggests, this book aims at uncovering a crucial part of the unwritten history of intersubjectivity in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Margaret J. Osler - Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 478-479 Christia Mercer and Eileen O'Neill, editors. Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xxi + 298. Cloth, $55.00. The editors of this collection of essays by the late Margaret Wilson's former students and colleagues present this book (...) "as a snapshot of state-of-the-art history of early modern philosophy" . Many of the usual suspects make an appearance in these pages: Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Malebranche, and Kant. A couple of new faces also come on stage: Damaris Cudworth , best known as Locke's companion but presented here as a philosopher in her own right, and the Cartesian Bernard le Bouvier de.. (shrink)

This volume showcases the best current work now being written on a wide range of issues in early modern philosophy, when some of the most influential current philosophical problems were first identified by figures like Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Spinoza, and Descartes. Collectively the articles exemplify the wide range of methodological perspectives currently being employed by top figures in the field. Indeed the selling point of the volume is the very high level of the fourteen contributors, each of (...) whom has a highly distinguished international reputation. (shrink)

An important task for every major philosopher is to offer us an understanding of the nature of mind. The essays in this volume discuss different aspects of the philosophical theories of mind put forward in the century and a half that followed Descartes' Meditations of 1641. These years, often referred to as the 'early-modern' period, are probably unparalleled for originality and diversity in conceiving the mind. The volume not only includes two essays on Descartes' own (...) thinking, but there are also examinations of what Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, Reid, the Cambridge Platonists, and others, have to say about the nature of mind. The aim of the volume is to represent some of the best contemporary research and reflection on mind in early-modern philosophy. The contributors, who teach at a range of universities in mainland Europe, Great Britain and North America, are Margaret Atherton, Miran BozoviÄ, Petr GlombìÄek, Boris Hennig, James Hill, Nicholas Jolley, Jan Palkoska, G. A. J. Rogers, and Anthony Savile. All the essays appear here for the first time. (shrink)

A survey of the issue. Topics include Descartes; early critics of Descartes; occasionalism and pre-established harmony; materialism; idealism; views about animal minds; and simplicity.

This book re-examines the roles of causation and cognition in early modern philosophy. The standard historical narrative suggests that early modern thinkers abandoned Aristotelian models of formal causation in favor of doctrines that appealed to relations of efficient causation between material objects and cognizers. This narrative has been criticized in recent scholarship from at least two directions. Scholars have emphasized that we should not think of the Aristotelian tradition in such monolithic terms, and that many (...) early modern thinkers did not unequivocally reduce all causation to efficient causation. -/- In line with this general approach, this book features original essays written by leading experts in early modern philosophy. It is organized around five guiding questions: -/- What are the entities involved in causal processes leading to cognition? What type(s) or kind(s) of causality are at stake? Are early modern thinkers confined to efficient causation or do other types of causation play a role? What is God's role in causal processes leading to cognition? How do cognitive causal processes relate to other, non-cognitive causal processes? Is the causal process in the case of human cognition in any way special? How does it relate to processes involved in the case of non-human cognition? -/- The essays explore how fifteen early modern thinkers answered these questions: Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Louis de la Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ralph Cudworth, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, John Sergeant, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. The volume is unique in that it explores both well-known and understudied historical figures, and in that it emphasizes the intimate relationship between causation and cognition to open up new perspectives on early modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and MetaphysicsMargaret J. OslerChristia Mercer and Eileen O’Neill, editors. Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xxi + 298. Cloth, $55.00.The editors of this collection of essays by the late Margaret Wilson's former students and colleagues present this book "as a snapshot of state-of-the-art history of early (...) modern philosophy" (8). Many of the usual suspects make an appearance in these pages: Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Malebranche, and Kant. A couple of new faces also come on stage: Damaris Cudworth (Lady Masham), best known as Locke's companion but presented here as a philosopher in her own right, and the Cartesian Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle. As the title suggests, most of the papers deal with metaphysical topics, including the nature of matter, the nature of mind, and arguments for the existence of God. Notably absent from the stage are other figures who played key roles in seventeenth-century philosophy, such as Hobbes, Gassendi, and the Cambridge Platonists. The authors stay fairly close to the traditional canon of early modern philosophers and philosophical issues, but, then, so did Margaret Wilson.In their Introduction, Mercer and O'Neill briefly outline the recent historiography of early modern philosophy, at least as practiced in the Anglo-American tradition. These approaches range from the logical analysis of the arguments of historical figures to accounts that situate their subjects in the context of their times. Mercer and O'Neill identify two methodological principles that have emerged since the 1960s and that depart from the older analytic approach, which sought to use historical sources for new philosophical insights. The two principles, articulated by Janet Broughton in her paper in the volume, encourage a greater historical sensibility: (1) the history of philosophy should aim "to articulate how previous philosophers saw their projects"; and (2) the history of philosophy should accept "how remote the fundamental concerns of previous philosophers may be from our own (and how historically conditioned both their concerns and ours may be)" (4–5). The editors claim that all the authors in the volume accept principle (1), but disagree about whether they should abide strictly by the principle or go on to debate with their historical subjects about philosophical issues. Would that the essayists had been as historiographically aware as their editors.It is not surprising that a book honoring Margaret Wilson should contain four articles on Descartes. With a few noteworthy exceptions, the articles deal with very traditional problems growing out of the analytic tradition. Janet Broughton describes the results of a close reading of Descartes's skeptical arguments in the Meditations. Michael Ayers examines Descartes's dualism, demonstrating its relevance to modern discussions of personal identity and the mind-body problem. Edwin Curley considers Descartes's ontological argument for the existence of God, revisiting his own earlier analysis of this question. And Louis E. Loeb provides a critical analysis of Descartes's mind-body dualism. Although all these papers are based on close textual analysis, they largely ignore the historical and intellectual context within which Descartes was writing, focusing instead on the logic of his arguments. They give little acknowledgement to the fact that Descartes was working in intellectually turbulent times as philosophers wrestled with the relationships among the foundations of knowledge, natural philosophy, and theology, or that these factors might have been formative influences on the development of his thought.Most of the other papers take a similar approach. Catherine Wilson sets out to find contradictions between Spinoza's "severe ontology" and his ethical program, and proceeds to explain why his ethical theory has been less influential on modern ethical theory than the ideas of Hume or Kant. She ignores the influence of medieval Jewish philosophy on [End Page 478] Spinoza's thinking, suggesting instead a Platonic influence for which she provides no textual evidence. Roger S. Woolhouse and Jonathan Bennett provide close readings of Locke's theory of matter. Useful as explications, neither paper contains any discussion of the mechanical philosophy more generally or the theological implications of matter theory in seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Vere Chappell examines Locke... (shrink)

This book presents seventeen of Nicholas Jolley's essays on early modern philosophy. They focus on two main themes: the debate over the nature of causality; and the issues posed by Descartes' innovations in the philosophy of mind. Together, they show that philosophers in the period are systematic critics of their contemporaries and predecessors.

The Hausmans wed an intentional theory of ideas with a modern information theoretic approach in a critical tour of some of the most important issues in the philosophy of mind and some of the most outstanding figures in early modern philosophy.

We look at some interesting and important episodes in the life of early modern Epicureanism, focusing on natural philosophy. We begin with two early moderns who had a great deal to say about ancient Epicureanism: Pierre Gassendi and Ralph Cudworth. Looking at how Gassendi and Cudworth conceived of Epicureanism gives us a sense of what the early moderns considered important in the ancient tradition. It also points us towards three main themes of early (...) class='Hi'>modern Epicureanism in natural philosophy, which we then discuss at greater length: atomism, materialism about the mind or soul, and the denial of providence, which was often accompanied by deflationary explanations of religious belief. (shrink)

This paper determines the state of mind, logic and language in medieval philosophy. It also exhibits the journey from medieval to early modern philosophy. In medieval philosophy, concept of mind was intimately connected soul or spirit with its harmony with religious tradition. Logic and language as well were corresponding with religion and faith. However in early modern philosophy the schema of mind, logic and language were different. These concepts were (...) bailed from the clutches of religious dogmatism and faith towards the mechanical correspondence. Mind was treated as non-modular. Logical truth which includes mostly inductive and deductive in medieval and modern period has been explained clearly. This paper shows the evolution of these concepts in the tradition of Rationalists, Empiricists and Critical Philosophers. In this paper I would as well show the interrelation between mind along with language and logic. This write up further shows the development of language in medieval period to early modern philosophy. it also demonstrates the footprints for the analytical study and international study in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

By investigating conceptions of experience from Descartes to Kant, this book shows that one of the central questions of the early-modern period was how humans can instantiate in their actions the principles of rational moral agency, while at the same time responding with their bodies to the causal play of nature. Through the analysis of this question, the book draws attention to the bodily underpinnings of the ability to experience thoughts and feelings. It thus challenges overly subjectivist interpretations (...) that concentrate on the inner realm of the experiencing mind and because of this fail to account for the worldly dimension of being experientially responsive to the affections of the body. (shrink)

This book is a study of the philosophy of the early 18th century Irish philosopher George Berkeley in the intellectual context of his times, with a particular focus on how, for Berkeley, mind is related to its ideas. It does not assume that thinkers like Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke define for Berkeley the context in which he develops his own thought. Instead, he indicates how Berkeley draws on a tradition that informed his early training and that (...) challenges much of the early modern thought with which he is often associated. Specifically, the book indicates how Berkeley's distinctive treatment of mind (as the activity whereby objects are differentiated and related to one another) highlights how mind neither precedes the existence of objects nor exists independently of them. This distinctive way of understanding the relation of mind and objects allows Berkeley to appropriate ideas from his contemporaries in a manner that transforms the issues with which he is engaged. The resulting insights--for example, about how God creates the minds that perceive objects--are only now starting to be fully appreciated. (shrink)

This article compares early nineteenth-century English and Scottish theories of the mind and the way that it develops to findings in today's developmental psychology and neuroscience through a close observation of the work of Elizabeth Hamilton. Hamilton was a Scottish writer and philosopher who produced three pedagogical works in her lifetime, consisting of her carefully formulated philosophy of mind and practical suggestions to caretakers and educators. Although Hamilton has received relatively little attention in modern philosophical (...) literature, her understanding of the mind and the way it develops—based on her nuanced understanding of associationism and Scottish faculty psychology—is overwhelmingly supported by empirical findings today. In addition to utilizing Hamilton's work for the sake of understanding early nineteenth-century philosophy of mind, I argue that a large portion of Hamilton's work should be used to inform future research programs, early caregiving guides, and educational methods. (shrink)

The early modern period in Western philosophy is the source of many of our most powerful and seductive intellectual commitments. While we may disagree with philosophers of this period, the terms of philosophical inquiry and our standards of rational argumentation are in part derived from the work of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. For this reason, we will pursue a rigorous and sustained introduction to this episode of human intellectual history. We will cover topics in (...) Metaphysics, Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy is a comprehensive introduction to the central topics and changing shape of philosophical inquiry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It explores one of the most innovative periods in the history of Western philosophy, extending from Montaigne, Bacon and Descartes through Hume and Kant. During this period, philosophers initiated and responded to major intellectual developments in natural science, religion, and politics, transforming in the process concepts and doctrines inherited from (...) ancient and medieval philosophy. In this Companion, leading specialists examine early modern treatments of the methodological and conceptual foundations of natural science, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, logic and language, moral and political philosophy, and theology. A final chapter looks forward to the philosophy of the Enlightenment. This will be an invaluable guide for all who are interested in the philosophical thought of the early modern period. (shrink)

The thoroughly contemporary question of the relationship between emotion and reason was debated with such complexity by the philosophers of the 17th century that their concepts remain a source of inspiration for today’s research about the emotionality of the mind. The analyses of the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and many other thinkers collected in this volume offer new insights into the diversity and significance of philosophical reflections about emotions during the early modern era. A focus is (...) placed on affective components in learning processes and the boundaries between emotions and reason. (shrink)

Francis Bacon and the art of direction -- An art of tempering the mind -- The distempered mind and the tree of knowledge -- A comprehensive culture of the mind -- The end of knowledge -- The study of nature as regimen -- Cultura and medicina animi: an early modern tradition -- The physician of the soul -- Sources -- Genres -- Utility: practical versus speculative knowledge -- Self-love and the fallen/uncultured mind -- The (...) office of reason -- Passions, errors, and assent -- The discipline, the virtues, and habituation -- Virtuoso discipline -- The cure of the mind and Solomon's house -- Passions, errors, and method -- Idols and diseases of the mind -- Epistemic modesty -- The way of inquiry -- A 'union of eyes and hands': the community and objectivity revisited -- Robert Boyle: experience as paideia -- The limits and the 'perfection' of reason -- The weak mind and the virtues of a free inquiry -- Reason and experience -- The Christian philosopher -- John Locke and the education of the mind -- Limits of reason, useful knowledge, and the duty to search for truth -- A natural history of the distempered mind -- The regulation of assent: a perfecting exercise -- The discourse with a friend -- Studying nature -- Lived physics -- The appropriateness of disproportion -- Experience, history, and speculation -- Affective cognition -- Studying 'God's contrivances' -- The study of theology and the growth of the mind -- Worlds and angels -- Reading scripture -- Conclusion. (shrink)

The long-accepted interpretation of the history of modern philosophy is that, beginning with Descartes, philosophers explicitly took the data of consciousness as their epistemic foundation. Descartes supposedly held that the mind always thinks and that consciousness is an necessary to thought. Unsatisfied with this doctrine, Leibniz and Locke modified this view of the conscious nature of thought. The former introduced the concept of unconscious thought with petites perceptions, the latter argued that while thought is conscious, the (...) class='Hi'>mind does not always think. The mind-body distinction Descartes is to have introduced, with which later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers allegedly struggled, is between what is conscious and what is not conscious. The various conceptions of consciousness integral to this history are assumed not to differ from one another to any interesting extent. ;A purpose of this study is to question this understanding of modern views of consciousness. I contend that there is evidence that conventional reading of the history of the concept of consciousness in modern philosophy is unacceptable. Its simplicity obscures the richness and complexity of the various conceptions of consciousness and their roles in modern philosophy. ;The standard view provides no analysis of the early modern concept of consciousness. The present study comprises primarily an analysis of a work which was supposed by its author to be the first effort at an account of consciousness in Western philosophy. Thus this study is the beginning of an attempt to place the development of modern views of consciousness in its historical context. Though its results are schematic and incomplete, they do include grounds for taking the possibility that a 1728 author's claim to present the first systematic treatment of consciousness to be a reasonable possibility. (shrink)

Normativity has long been conceived as more properly pertaining to the domain of thought than to the domain of nature. This conception goes back to Kant and still figures prominently in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and ethics. By offering a collection of new essays by leading scholars in early modern philosophy and specialists in contemporary philosophy, this volume goes beyond the point where nature and normativity came apart, and challenges the well-established opposition between (...) these all too neatly separated realms. It examines how the mind’s embeddedness in nature can be conceived as a starting point for uncovering the links between naturally and conventionally determined standards governing an agent’s epistemic and moral engagement with the world. The original essays are grouped in two parts. The first part focuses on specific aspects of theories of perception, thought formation and judgment. It gestures towards an account of normativity that regards linguistic conventions and natural constraints as jointly setting the scene for the mind’s ability to conceptualise its experiences. The second part of the book asks what the norms of desirable epistemic and moral practices are. Key to this approach is an examination of human beings as parts of nature, who act as natural causes and are determined by their sensibilities and sentiments. Each part concludes with a chapter that integrates features of the historical debate into the contemporary context.​. (shrink)

Between the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 and Husserl’s Ideas in 1913, the nineteenth century was a pivotal period in the philosophy of mind, witnessing the emergence of the phenomenological and analytical traditions that continue to shape philosophical debate in fundamental ways. The nineteenth century also challenged many prevailing assumptions about the transparency of the mind, particularly in the ideas of Nietzsche and Freud, whilst at the same time witnessing the birth of (...) class='Hi'>modern psychology in the work of William James. -/- Covering the main figures of German idealism to the birth of the phenomenological movement under Brentano and Husserl, Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century provides an outstanding survey to these new directions in philosophy of mind. -/- Following an introduction by Sandra Lapointe, fourteen specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors discuss key topics, thinkers, and debates, including: -/- German idealism, Bolzano, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Ernst Mach, Helmholtz, Nietzsche, William James, Sigmund Freud, Brentano’s early philosophy of mind, Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Husserl, and Natorp. -/- Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, continental philosophy, and the history of philosophy, Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, and literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 559-560 [Access article in PDF] Elmar J. Kremer and Michael J. Latzer, editors. The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Pp. vi + 179. Cloth, $60.00. What can be added to classical defenses of the problem of evil? Did Voltairenotrelieve us from taking seriously the theodicies of early (...) class='Hi'>modern thinkers in Candide when Pangloss avers that spectacles exist because noses were made to support them? Do we not rightfully regard Malebranche's ingenious appeal to God's simplicity and uniformity to explain malformed offspring as little more than a curiosity? Yet, the editors of this volume claim that the "theodicy problem was no mere idle puzzle of dogmatics, but a problem of immense social significance, a problem which cut to the heart of the philosophical and theological projects of the very best minds of the age" (5). Several essays in this volume bear out the editors' claim, and to a modern reader, show how the problem of evil was intricately woven into the philosophical ideas of early modern thought.The problem of evil is especially acute for many of the seventeenth-century authors surveyed in this volume who held that God is the total and efficient cause of the universe. God's constant involvement in physical events meant that defects, deformities, and natural disasters fell into the framework of the traditional problem of evil. Hence, physical evil became the preoccupation of natural philosophers and theologians alike. We learn that Leibniz, Malebranche, and Spinoza chose to limit God's will rather than His wisdom, whereas Descartes opted to limit God's wisdom. The odd man out is Bayle who crafted a third position that emphasized God's benevolence at the expense of His wisdom and will.The essays found in this volume are just a sampling of views in the period, but it is more than a good start. Freddoso's essay on Francisco Suarez sets the tone for the problem of explaining the causal origin of human evil. Freddoso shows how Suarez distinguished concurrent from original causes in order to credit God for His supreme causal role yet absolved Him of blame for the existence of moral defectiveness. Latzer, in his essay on Rene Descartes, perhaps overstates the case in attributing to Descartes a theodicy grander than that of Leibniz, but he draws on the Fourth Meditation account of error to provide a plausible and nuanced reconstruction of his views on evil.There are two essays on Baruch Spinoza. Hunter's essay lays out an argument for Spinoza as a radical Christian reformer touching on Spinoza's views on providence. Nadler notes in his essay that Spinoza ought to have rejected the whole question of theodicy as incoherent, but shows how the matter is a good deal more complicated. Nadler then introduces us to the Medieval Jewish tradition, from which Spinoza is said to have drawn his views leading to a denial of personal immortality. [End Page 559]Moreau's essay on Nicholas Malebranche is rich in historical context and philosophical interpretation. Malebranche is shown to be a critical and original thinker on the problem of evil. Moreau lauds Malebranche's philosophical and moral courage in his bold assertion that physical evil is not a negation but rather a real phenomenon requiring explanation.Larivière and Lennon argue that Bayle held a third position rarely seen in the period: that God's benevolence trumps considerations of both His wisdom and will. Bayle develops a "moral solution" to the problem of evil wherein God's benevolence requires that humans possess an autonomy of conscience whose exercise makes error and heresy morally possible and justifiable.The final three essays in the volume rightly focus on aspects of Leibniz's response to the problem of evil. Kremer shows how, in the case of Leibniz's treatment of the fate of infants who die unbaptized, Leibniz abandons the Augustinian approach to the problem of evil and calculates the fate of all creatures on the basis of what produces... (shrink)

Causality and Mind presents seventeen of Nicholas Jolley's essays on early modern philosophy, which focus on two main themes. One theme is the continuing debate over the nature of causality in the period from Descartes to Hume. Jolley shows that, despite his revolutionary stance, Descartes did no serious re-thinking about causality; it was left to his unorthodox disciple Malebranche to argue that there is no place for natural causality in the new mechanistic picture of the physical (...) world. Several essays explore critical reactions to Malebranche's occasionalism in the writings of Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume, and show how in their different ways Leibniz and Hume respond to Malebranche by re-instating the traditional view that science is the search for causes. A second theme of the volume is the set of issues posed by Descartes' innovations in the philosophy of mind. It is argued that Malebranche is once again a pivotal figure. In opposition to Descartes Malebranche insists that ideas, the objects of thought, are not psychological but abstract entities; he thus opposes Descartes' 'dustbin theory of the mind'. Malebranche also challenges Descartes' assumption that intentionality is a mark of the mental and his commitment to the superiority of self-knowledge over knowledge of body. Other essays discuss the debate over innate ideas, Locke's polemics against Descartes' theory of mind, and the issue of Leibniz's phenomenalism. A major aim of the volume is to show that philosophers in the period are systematic critics of their contemporaries and predecessors. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that before the emergence of terms like “consciousness” and “Bewusstsein,” philosophers and scientists relied on intuitions about phenomena of subjective experience that we would now classify as “conscious.” In other words, pre-modern thinkers availed themselves of one or another concept of consciousness as they developed their theories of mind, perception, representation, the self, etc., although they did not attend to consciousness in its own right. In the early modern period, terminology of (...) consciousness emerges to pick out concept(s) of consciousness. This brings with it an occasion for philosophical disagreements concerning consciousness among contemporaries, on the one hand, and an occasion for us as interpreters of historical authors to better assess their views on consciousness, on the other. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive examination of the ideas of the early modern philosophers on the nature of mind. Taking Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in turn, Janice Thomas presents an authoritative and critical assessment of each of these canonical thinkers' views of the notion of mind. The book examines each philosopher's position on five key topics: the metaphysical character of minds and mental states; the nature and scope of introspection and self-knowledge; the nature of (...) consciousness; the problem of mental causation and the nature of representation and intentionality. The exposition and examination of their positions is informed by present-day debates in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology so that students get a clear sense of the importance of these philosophers' ideas, many of which continue to define our current notions of the mental.Again and again, philosophers and students alike come back to the great early modern rationalist and empiricist philosophers for instruction and inspiration. Their views on the philosophy of mind are no exception and as Janice Thomas shows they have much to offer contemporary debates. The book is suitable for undergraduate courses in the philosophy of mind and the many new courses in philosophy of psychology. (shrink)

In his renowned collection Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot suggests that the original trait of philosophy as a method by which one exercises themselves to achieve a new way of living and seeing the world fails with the rise of modernity. In that time, philosophy increasingly takes on a merely theoretical aspect, tending toward a system. However, Hadot himself glimpses at the dawn of modernity some instances of the original trait of philosophy still (...) very much present, and in his wake, Michel Foucault warns that between the late 16th and early 17th centuries the philosophical question of the reform of the mind attests to a still very close link between asceticism and truth. This book aims to develop just such an idea by thoroughly analyzing the most representative works of the reform of the mind in the early modern period: Francis Bacon's New Organon (1620), René Descartes' Discourse on the Method (1637), and Baruch Spinoza's Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (1677). From this analysis it will emerge that these modern works fully deserve to be counted among the tradition of philosophy as way of life. On closer inspection, the inquiries about method elaborated in these works are fully understandable only when read in the light of a broader and more complex philosophical need: to establish the spiritual conditions for accessing truth and aspiring to full self-realization. (shrink)

Many historical and philosophical studies treat infinity as an exclusively quantitative notion, whose proper domain of application is mathematics and physics. The main aim of this paper is to disentangle, by critically examining, three notions of infinity in the early modern period, and to argue that one—but only one—of them is quantitative. One of these non-quantitative notions concerns being or reality, while the other concerns a particular iterative property of an aggregate. These three notions will emerge through examination (...) of three central figures in the period: Locke, Descartes, and Leibniz. (shrink)

In this work Thomas surveys the contributions of (pre-Kantian) early modern philosophy to our understanding of the mind. She focuses on the six canonical figures of the period -- Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume -- and asks what each has to say about five topics within the philosophy of mind. The topics are (1) the ontological status of mind, (2) the scope and nature of self-knowledge, (3) the nature of consciousness, (4) (...) the problem of mental causation, and (5) the nature of representation or intentionality. The overarching aim of the book is to show that the theories articulated by these thinkers are not just historical curiosities, but have much to contribute to our understanding of these topics today. (shrink)

Modernity seemed to be the autumn of eternity. The secularization of European culture provided little sustenance to the concept of eternity with its heavy theological baggage. Yet, our hero would not leave the stage without an outstanding performance of its power and temptation. Indeed, in the first three centuries of the modern period – the subject of the third chapter by Yitzhak Melamed - the concept of eternity will play a crucial role in the great philosophical systems of the (...) period. The first part of this chapter concentrates on the debate about the temporality of God. While most of the great metaphysicians of the seventeenth century – Suarez, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz – ascribed to God eternal, non-temporal, existence, a growing number of philosophers conceived God as existing in time. For Newton, God’s eternity was simply the fact that “He was, he is, and is to come.” A similar view of God as being essentially in time was endorsed by Pierre Gassendi, Henry More, Samuel Clarke, Isaac Barrow, John Locke, and most probably Descartes as well. In the second part of the chapter we study the concept of eternal truth, and its relation to the emerging notion of Laws of Nature. The third part of the chapter explicates Spinoza’s original understanding of eternity as a modal concept. For Spinoza, eternity is a unique kind of necessary existence: it is existence that is self-necessitated (unlike the existence of other things whose necessity derives from external causes). Eternity is the existence of God or the one substance. Yet, Spinoza claims that if we conceive finite things adequately - “sub specie aeternitatis” – as nothing but modes flowing from the essence of God, even finite things (like our minds) can take part in God’s eternity. The fourth and final part of the chapter is mostly focused on the reception of Spinoza’s original conception of eternity by Leibniz and other eighteenth century philosophers. (shrink)

The life sciences have been very much in vogue these days in the history of early modern philosophy. In the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, historians of philosophy c.

In _Regimens of the Mind_, Sorana Corneanu proposes a new approach to the epistemological and methodological doctrines of the leading experimental philosophers of seventeenth-century England, an approach that considers their often overlooked moral, psychological, and theological elements. Corneanu focuses on the views about the pursuit of knowledge in the writings of Robert Boyle and John Locke, as well as in those of several of their influences, including Francis Bacon and the early Royal Society virtuosi. She argues that their experimental (...) programs of inquiry fulfill the role of regimens for curing, ordering, and educating the mind toward an ethical purpose, an idea she tracks back to the ancient tradition of _cultura animi_. Corneanu traces this idea through its early modern revival and illustrates how it organizes the experimental philosophers’ reflections on the discipline of judgment, the study of nature, and the study of Scripture. _ _ _ _ It is through this lens, the author suggests, that the core features of the early modern English experimental philosophy—including its defense of experience, its epistemic modesty, its communal nature, and its pursuit of “objectivity”—are best understood. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’s Legacy: Minds and Meaning in Early Modern Philosophy by David B. Hausman, Alan HausmanDaniel E. FlageDavid B. Hausman and Alan Hausman. Descartes’s Legacy: Minds and Meaning in Early Modern Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Pp. xiv + 149. Paper, $19.95.David and Alan Hausman have written a fascinating study of Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume. It is an examination of what (...) the Hausmans call the “information problem,” that is, “how an information-processing entity receives input from a source outside itself and processes it” (1), and how those philosophers attempted to solve the problem. It does not examine the writings of these philosophers in their historical context.At the heart of their work is an argument that Cartesian ideas are intentional. Noting the remark in the Comments on a Certain Broadsheet that all ideas—including ideas of color—are innate, they argue that innate ideas intend exemplars or archetypes, entities whose existence is eternal but in principle, even if not in fact, independent of God. Only such a position, they argue, can solve the semantic problem posed by the third Cartesian demon, namely, that “if our thoughts could mean something other than what we believe they mean, then no proof for the actual existence of anything, including God and the cogito, could give us results” (38). This implies that all ideas are meaningful, have objective reality, and represent genuine possibilities, a point that Descartes himself came to recognize only in the years following the publication of the Meditations (39). Further, it solves the problem posed by the ex nihilo principle: “If the ex nihilo principle as a constraint on efficient causality requires that the meaningfulness of ideas have an intentional structure such that a complex of such ideas necessitates which possibilities must be actualized in order for the ideas to be true; there are necessary connections between ideas and their intentions” (40). Contending that the ex nihilo principle is the basis for Cartesian rationality (41), they argue that their position disposes [End Page 465] of a significant element of the Cartesian circle: the meaningfulness of an idea is independent of the existence and goodness of God (42). Since ideas intend exemplars, it is possible to explain the notion of eminent containment of extension without contending that God is extended (43–46). With the introduction of ideas as intentional entities—not entities which inherently resemble their objects—the mind/body distinction becomes a logical outgrowth of the necessity of solving a new philosophical problem, viz., how to deal with the fact that intentional entities have an entirely different logical structure from physical entities.Descartes’s second demon concerns individuals (49). The Hausmans attempt to solve this problem by way of a discussion of the distinction between simple and complex ideas: “Complex ideas will get meaning as a function of the simple ideas they ‘contain’ ” (49). Simple ideas intend exemplars. Complex ideas are ideas of complex individuals. The Hausmans argue that Descartes deals with the problem of individuation on the basis of some version of a substratum theory of substance, a claim based in part on an analysis of the piece of wax argument (54–57). “[G]iven the causal principles of the Third Meditation, the only way we can account for our judgements about individual physical things is to posit the existence of a physical world” (57): the problem is a semantic problem resting on the necessity of the ex nihilo principle (58).Their first Cartesian demon is discussed in terms of the “inverted spectrum” problem, e.g., the possibility that cubes produce sphere ideas and vice versa, a possibility that results systematically in false judgments: there is a physical world, but it is systematically different from the way we believe it to be (58–61). Unlike the earlier demons, the first demon can be exorcised only if there is a good God, although behaviorally such a systematic deception would be indistinguishable from behavior based on ideas corresponding to a physical reality.In their last three chapters, the Hausmans focus on related issues in the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume. They argue that Berkeley’s account of reality blurs the distinction between idea... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to My CriticsExperience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in NatureAnik Waldow (bio)I would like to thank Dario Perinetti and Hynek Janoušek for their thoughtful comments and the time and effort they invested into my work. Their reflections drive attention to important questions and make helpful suggestions about how some of the arguments of the book can be further developed and clarified. In what (...) follows, I will first discuss the proposal to distinguish between a narrow and a broad sense of experience, then specify how I understand the connection between having a body and being able to engage in experiences. In this context, I will also discuss Janoušek’s suggestion to draw further distinctions between the different senses in which the concept of body relates to experience in Descartes and Hume. In the last section, I address the question of whether the focus on bodies risks undermining the claim that experience is intersubjectively constituted.1. Narrow versus Broad Concept of ExperienceDario Perinetti raises the worry that during the early modern period, and even before, the concept of experience was mainly used to discuss epistemological questions, and that therefore the Broad Experience Thesis fails. According to this thesis, it is reductive to think of experience in exclusively epistemological terms, since this ignores that many early modern writers approached questions about the benefits and dangers of experience from a wider moral perspective. This perspective, as I argue in [End Page 329] Experience Embodied, was concerned with the training of the mind’s intellectual and moral capacities, the role of pleasure and pain (and other affects) in epistemic and moral judgement, and, more generally, the question of how it is possible to be self-determined agents who do more than simply respond to the experiences they have.To support his claim, Perinetti cites the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin’s Lexicon Rationale sive Thesaurus Philosophicus, but also Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes. The approach I pursue in my book is based on the usage of the concept of experience by the authors examined (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, Kant). I will turn to the analysis of this usage in a moment, but before this let me say a few words about dictionaries.It is in principle not surprising that a dictionary like the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie—and its discussion of Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes—supports the traditional approach to experience as a centrally epistemological concept. Its entry on “experience” revolves around the idea that philosophers are either empiricists or rationalists.1 Yet it is precisely the establishment of this distinction that has substantially contributed to promoting a reductive concept of experience. After all, rationalism and empiricism are labels typically used to describe competing epistemological positions.2 It is also worth noting that the dictionary’s entry is from the 1970s. Because of this, it operates with a picture of the history of philosophy that has long been challenged by studies that show that there is far more to early modern philosophy than the standard works of some selected canonical figures.3 When dealing with Locke, the entry for instance exclusively focuses on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and does not even mention that experience is a key concept in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.The rather short and general entry on experience in Chauvin’s Lexicon Philosophicum (1692) is not very telling either—at least not if treated in isolation from other dictionaries and encyclopedias of the period, such as D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encylopédie: a tremendously influential work, that, according to its editors, is in itself committed to the Baconian method.4 And here César Chesneau Du Marsais’s entry on experience straightforwardly highlights the moral dimension of the knowledge acquired through experience:Experience, abstract term, commonly means the knowledge acquired through a long life, combined with the reflections made on what one has seen, and on the good and bad that has happened to us. In this sense, reading history is a highly profitable way of gaining experience; it tells us of events, and shows us the good or bad repercussions and consequences of these events.5The... (shrink)

This book is a collection of studies on topics related to subjectivity and selfhood in medieval and early modern philosophy. The individual contributions approach the theme from a number of angles varying from cognitive and moral psychology to metaphysics and epistemology. Instead of a complete overview on the historical period, the book provides detailed glimpses into some of the most important figures of the period, such as Augustine, Avicenna, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume. The questions addressed (...) include the ethical problems of the location of one's true self and the proper distribution of labour between desire, passion and reason, and the psychological tasks of accounting for subjective experience and self-knowledge and determining different types of self-awareness. (shrink)

This paper argues that, while Locke’s unstable usage of the term ‘mind’ prevents us from claiming that he had a theory of mind, it can still be said that he made a contribution to the philosophy of mind in its contemporary sense. After establishing that it was the term ‘soul’ that predominated in early modern British philosophy, the paper turns to Locke’s three central notions of the soul, the understanding, and the person. It (...) is argued that there are two stages to the development of Locke’s view of the soul: a first philosophical stage and a later theological stage. The first stage is characterized by the application of the material/immaterial distinction. The second stage rejects the utility of this distinction. The two stages are not, however, incompatible, for the bridge between them is found in Locke’s conceptions of the understanding and personhood. While the latter theological stage was, in the end, of the greatest concern to Locke, it is in the earlier philosophical stage that we find his real contribution to what we now call the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The chapter focuses on attributions of the transparency of thought to early modern figures, most notably Descartes. Many recent philosophers assume that Descartes believed the mind to be “transparent”: since all mental states are conscious, we are therefore aware of them all, and indeed incorrigibly know them all. Descartes, and Berkeley too, do make statements that seem to endorse both aspects of the transparency theses (awareness of all mental states; incorrigibility). However, they also make systematic theoretical statements (...) that directly countenance “unnoticed” thoughts or mental states, that is, thoughts or mental states of which the subject is unaware and has no knowledge. Descartes, having identified the essence of mind with thought or representation, distinguishes bare states of mind from states of which we have reflective awareness, thereby providing a theoretical tool for understanding both his seeming endorsement of transparency and his actual denial of it: Descartes distinguished between a basic perceptual state, or a basic awareness, and reflectively conscious states that involve explicit noticing and cognizing on the part of the subject. Leibniz (as is better known) directly endorsed a similar distinction between bare perception and reflective consciousness, using the term “perception” for the first and “apperception” for the second. In these cases, bare perceptions are not transparently available to the subject, and so in fact the subject does not have knowledge, hence does not have incorrigible knowledge, of all its occurrent mental states. This chapter gives evidence to support these claims; elaborates the complex psychology of the subject found in Descartes and other early moderns; and notes some ways in which these early moderns contributed to the genesis of the modern subject. Finally, it compares McDowell’s conception of the Cartesian mind with the conceptions of mind found in the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, and Leibniz, finding that his characterization caricatures the positions of early modern philosophers. McDowell's characterization has four elements: consciousness as essence of mind; intentionality as exclusively mental; the veil of perception; and the transparency of mind. Only the second point, about intentionality, fully fits Descartes. As a consequence of his own misdirection, McDowell misses the actual basis of his difficulty in connecting mind with world, which arises from a point of agreement between him and Descartes: the removal of intentionality from material sensory systems. But whereas Descartes could relocate (nonconceptual) sensory intentionality in mental states, McDowell is left to account for it with his overly cognitivized scheme of perceptual content as exclusively conceptual. (Paper first given at the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy, 2007.). (shrink)

Table of Contents Note from the Editors 1. Deflating Descartes’ Causal Axiom, Tad Schmaltz 2. The Dustbin Theory of Mind: A Cartesian Legacy?, Lawrence Nolan and John Whipple 3. Is Descartes a Libertarian?, C. P. Ragland 4. The Scholastic Resources for Descartes’ Concept of God as Causa Sui, Richard Lee 5. Hobbesian Mechanics, Doug Jesseph 6. Locks, Schlocks, and Poisoned Peas: Boyle on Actual and Dispositive Qualities, Dan Kaufman 7. Atomism, Monism, and Causation in the Natural Philosophy of (...) Margaret Cavendish, Karen Detlefsen 8. Descartes, the First Cartesians, and Logic, Roger Ariew 9. On the Necessity and Nature of Simples: Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, and the Pre-Critical Kant, Eric Watkins 10. Review Essay: Descartes’ Theory of Mind, by Desmond Clarke, Dennis Des Chene. (shrink)

Malebranche argues that ideas are representative beings existing in God. He defends this thesis by an inference to the best explanation of human perception. It is well known that Malebranche’s theory of vision in God was forcefully rejected by philosophers such as Arnauld, Locke, and Berkeley. However, the notion that ideas exist in God was not the only controversial aspect of Malebranche’s approach. Another controversy centered around Malebranche’s view that ideas are to be understood as posits in an explanatory theory. (...) Opponents of this approach, including Arnauld and Locke, held that our talk about ideas was not explanatory but instead merely descriptive: we use the word ‘idea’ to describe phenomena that we observe by reflecting on our own minds. This controversy has not received much attention from scholars, but in the present paper I will show that it was an explicit and important subject of concern for Malebranche, Arnauld, Locke, and Berkeley and that attention to this controversy can illuminate several aspects of these philosophers’ work. (shrink)

Stephen H. Daniel’s monograph offers a novel interpretation of Berkeley’s philosophy of mind while situating Berkeley’s thought within the context of early eighteenth-century epistemology and metaphysics. The text is commendable for its attempt to shed light on Berkeley’s engagement with thinkers and traditions that tend to fall outside the canon of early modern philosophy and its attempt to place Berkeley’s lesser-known works, such as De Motu and Siris, on a par with his best-known texts. (...) Daniel’s approach to historical interpretation is strongly contextualist and fits well with recent attempts to read... (shrink)