Cartesian substance dualism

The usual reading of Descartes' “anthropological” perspective classifies it as a radical dualism with a distinction between two substances, mind and body, which experience major interaction difficulties. Through a contextualization of Descartes' physiological and psychological thought as well as through a less fragmented reading of his work, we intend to review this traditional interpretation, thereby showing its distorted character. When we pay attention to passion, a new Descartes’ image as a sort of phenomenal monism appears, which is markedly different from the legendary image typically associated with him, even today

The aim of this article is to clarify an aspect of Descartes’s conception of mind that seriously impacts on the standard objections against Cartesian Dualism. By a close reading of Descartes’s writings on imagination, I argue that the capacity to imagine does not inhere as a mode in the mind itself, but only in the embodied mind, that is, a mind that is not united to the body does not possess the faculty to imagine. As a mode considered as a general property, and not as an instance of it, belongs to the essence of the substance, and as imagination (like sensation) arises from the mind-body union, then the problem arises of knowing to what extent a Cartesian embodied mind is separable from the body.

In dialogue with Gerrit Glas’ contribution to this volume, this chapter interacts with two clusters of concepts of emergence, drawing on Dooyeweerdian insights in order to provide a thorough critique of them and to provide an alternative proposal. It starts from the concept of emergence as used today in analytical philosophy of mind, discussing Jaegwon Kim’s critical work on emergence, Philip Clayton’s emergentist “ontological monism,” and non-reductive physicalism. Drawing on Dooyeweerd’s modal aspects, I conclude that this type of emergence cannot fulfil the promise of providing a satisfactory non-reductive view. The chapter then discusses a concept of emergence used in the context of phenomenology and developed by a group of philosophers inspired by Francisco Varela. Proponents of this second approach share some concerns with a Dooyeweerdian-inspired critique of analytical emergence, but their explicit stance against creation leads them to develop co-emergence in accordance with Buddhist “emptiness.” This chapter then examines Dooyeweerd’s refusal of mind−body dualism, linked to his rejection of the concept of substance and “logos speculation.” Based on the biblical warrant for the role of the divine Logos in creation, I conclude, over against Dooyeweerd, that the concept of substance can be redeemed and that a minimal form of dualism is necessary in order to account for the Bible’s teaching about humans. Adopting a realist reading of the multidimensionality of human existence uncovered by Dooyeweerd’s modal aspects analysis, we arrive at a truly non-reductionist view of human nature, which the two forms of emergence examined here aimed at but could not provide.

This article deals with an argument reported by Razi (d. 1210) that attempted to undermine the immaterialist position about human nature. After some introductory remarks and explanation of the conceptual background, the article analyses the structure of the argument, with special attention to the idea of soul-switching.’ Some comparisons are made between the argument reported by Razi and a number of arguments from modern and contemporary eras of philosophy. One section is devoted to the critique of the argument and its conceptual basis. This article shows that the argument reported by Razi is a methodological antecedent of a family of contemporary epistemological arguments against substance dualism. It is also shown that discussion of the argument could be useful to highlight a weakness in some, but not all, versions of immaterialism about human nature.

François Lamy, a Benedictine monk and Cartesian philosopher whose extensive relations with Arnauld, Bossuet, Fénélon, and Malebranche put him into contact with the intellectual elite of late-seventeenth-century France, authored the very first detailed and explicit refutation of Spinoza’s Ethics in French, Le nouvel athéisme renversé. Regrettably overlooked in the secondary literature on Spinoza, Lamy is an interesting figure in his own right, and his anti-Spinozist work sheds important light on Cartesian assumptions that inform the earliest phase of Spinoza’s critical reception in the seventeenth-century. I begin by presenting Lamy’s life and the contentious state of Spinoza’s French reception in the 1680 and 1690s. I then discuss a central argument in Lamy’s refutation, namely the Cartesian objection that Spinoza’s account of the conceptual independence of attributes is incompatible with the theory of substance monism. Contrasting Lamy’s objection with questions put to Spinoza by de Vries and Tschirnhaus, I maintain that by exhibiting the direction Spinoza’s views on substance and attribute took in maturing we may accurately assess the strength of Spinoza’s position vis-à-vis his Cartesian objector, and I argue that, in fact, Spinoza’s mature account of God as an expressive ens realissimum is not vulnerable to Lamy’s criticism. In conclusion, I turn to Lamy’s objection that Spinoza’s philosophy is question-begging in view of Spinoza’s account of God, and I exhibit what this point of criticism tells us about the intentions of the first French Cartesian rebuttal of the Ethics.

Mereological nihilists hold that composition never occurs, so that nothing is ever a proper part of anything else. Substance dualists generally hold that we are each identical with an immaterial soul. In this paper I argue that every popular objection to substance dualism has a parallel objection to composition. This thesis has some interesting implications. First, many of those who reject composition, but accept substance dualism, or who reject substance dualism and accept composition, have some explaining to do. Second, one popular objection to mereological nihilism, one which contends that mereological nihilism is objectionable insofar as it is incompatible with the existence of people, is untenable.

I argue that beliefs about what appears possible are justified in much the same way as beliefs about what appears actual. I do so by chisholming, and then modalizing, the epistemic principle associated with phenomenal conservatism. The principle is tested against a number of examples, and it gives the intuitively correct results. I conclude by considering how it can be used to defend two controversial modal arguments, a Cartesian argument for dualism and an ontological argument for the existence of God.

Mental disorders have become the topic of numerous contemporary American novels. Attesting to the ongoing fascination with the workings and the sciences of the human mind, many of these texts turn to neuroscientific questions. This paper offers a close reading of one of these ‘neuronarratives’ – Joshua Ferris’s acclaimed 2010 novel The Unnamed, a story in which the protagonist is afflicted with an utterly mysterious condition that disrupts his sense of self as his mind appears to be separated from his body. In this paper, I aim to show how such a dualist conception problematizes not only the concepts of self and agency as the unnamed disease is linked to contemporary lifestyles in corporate America, but also helps to craft a counternarrative that challenges recent materialist conceptions and neuroscientific theories.

Reflexive monism is, in essence, an ancient view of how consciousness relates to the material world that has, in recent decades, been resurrected in modern form. In this paper I discuss how some of its basic features differ from both dualism and variants of physicalist and functionalist reductionism, focusing on those aspects of the theory that challenge deeply rooted presuppositions in current Western thought. I pay particular attention to the ontological status and seeming “out-thereness” of the phenomenal world and to how the “phenomenal world” relates to the “physical world”, the “world itself”, and processing in the brain. In order to place the theory within the context of current thought and debate, I address questions that have been raised about reflexive monism in recent commentaries and also evaluate competing accounts of the same issues offered by “transparency theory” and by “biological naturalism”. I argue that, of the competing views on offer, reflexive monism most closely follows the contours of ordinary experience, the findings of science, and common sense.

John Locke famously claimed that our idea of substance is but a confused idea of "something we know not what." However, he also thought that the idea of substance is a fundamental part of our ideas of ourselves and the objects surrounding us-of objects we do know. Interpreting this apparently ambivalent stance has long been a major challenge for Locke scholarship. In this article, I argue that the leading interpretations of Locke's conception of substance have failed to resolve this tension because they have misconstrued the source of Locke's skepticism about our knowledge of what substance is. This skepticism, I argue, issues from an observation about the signification of the term "substance": Locke maintained that the philosophical usage of the term is irremediably equivocal. This reading allows us to acknowledge that Locke could consistently hold that ordinary objects, such as persons, horses, or trees, are paradigmatic examples of substances. It also points to a better appreciation of how Locke's discussion of substance relates to the scholastic conceptions of substance he tried to overcome.

The author argues for three interconnected theses which provide a cognitive account for why humans intuitively believe that others survive death (Bering, 2006). The first thesis, from which the second and third theses follow, is that the acceptance of afterlife beliefs is predisposed by a specific, and already well-documented, imaginative process—the offline social reasoning process. The second thesis is that afterlife beliefs are social in nature. The third thesis is that the living imagine the deceased as socially embodied in such a way as to continue to fulfill on-going social obligations with others. The author further suggests six reasons why the fantasy/reality distinction breaks down for the imaginer such that the continued existence of the decedent in the afterlife is believed to be real. Finally, the author suggests avenues for further research which would support this cognitive account.

Th is article presents arguments and evidence that run counter to the widespread assumption among scholars that humans are intuitive Cartesian substance dualists. With regard to afterlife beliefs, the hypothesis of Cartesian substance dualism as the intuitive folk position fails to have the explanatory power with which its proponents endow it. It is argued that the embedded corollary assumptions of the intuitive Cartesian substance dualist position (that the mind and body are diff erent substances, that the mind and soul are intensionally identical, and that the mind is the sole source of identity) are not compatible with cultural representations such as mythologies, funerary rites, iconography and doctrine as well as empirical evidence concerning intuitive folk reasoning about the mind and body concerning the afterlife. Finally, the article suggests an alternative and more parsimonious explanation for understanding intuitive folk representations of the afterlife.

In this paper, I explore various views on which mind-body dualism is true, but the soul is located in the body. I argue that this sort of dualism (which I call 'somatic dualism') once was a not-uncommon view in the philosophy of mind. I also argue that it has the resources to reply to some of the problems thought to affect Cartesian dualism.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2019.

Gregory David Roberts is a contemporary Australian author who had been involved in several criminal activities and was therefore convicted to prison sentence earlier in his life. In 2003, he published the semi-autobiographical novel Shantaram largely based on his experiences in the Indian city of Bombay. The novel, which became a best-seller around the globe is an astounding account of a westerner’s spiritual voyage in the outskirts of India. Shantaram deals with a great many themes and issues such as ethics, violence and good vs. evil, but the theme which lies at the core of the narrative is the binary opposition between dualism and materialism. While dualism defends the autonomy of the mind/soul over the body, materialism affirms that all living beings are bound to material laws. This article aims to analyse Roberts’ Shantaram through the binary opposition of dualism and materialism, and specifically from a dualistic perspective. As the founder of modern philosophy and dualism, René Descartes’ theories will be applied to the text as opposed to the contrasting philosophy of materialism. In this respect, dualism is compared and contrasted with materialism and physicalism with reference to several influential thinkers who contributed to this thought from Greek antiquity to modern philosophy such as Aristotle, Plato, Lucretius, Kant and George Berkeley. Thus, a Cartesian analysis is implemented to Shantaram in order to expose the dualism emphasised in the subtext of Roberts’ narrative. All in all, the study concludes that Shantaram exhibits depictions of Cartesian dualism through the protagonist’s experiences in the slums of Bombay and determines that dualism overcomes materialism in Roberts’ story as the mind/soul asserts its autonomy over the body and its physical sphere.

The article discusses the relationship between John Searle's doctrine of naturalism and various forms of materialism and dualism. It is argued that despite Searle's protestations, his doctrine is not substantially different from the epiphenomenalistic property dualism, except for the admission , in his later works, of the existence of an irreducible non-Humean self. In particular, his recognition that consciousness is unique in having an irreducible first-person ontology makes his disavowal of property dualism purely verbalistic. As for epiphenomenalism, Searle's explanation of how consciousness can be efficacious without violating the causal closure of the physical, by analogy with the causal efficacy of the higher level properties of physical objects that are supervenient on the microphysical, confuses causality and constitution (causal and constitutive supervenience). It is also argued that Searle's recognition of the existence of an irreducible non-Humean self that is responsible for decision-making sits badly both with his (property dualistic) view that conscious mental states are irreducibly first-personal states of the brain (rather than of the self) and with his (epiphenomenalistic) view that consciousness has no causal power in addition to that of the underlying neurobiology.

Rosi Braidotti's The Posthuman is intent on ‘updating critical theory for the third millennium’. Indeed, Braidotti repeatedly stresses that the aim of her book is to develop an affirmative form of posthumanist critical theory which, by providing creative alternatives to current arrangements, will allow us to better face various contemporary socio-political challenges. This review essay argues, however, that the philosophical position which Braidotti's book develops is unsustainable, and that it does not provide us with the kind of basis for affirmative forms of critical theory and political practice which she suggests it does. Specifically, it argues that her philosophical framework results in persistent theory/praxis inconsistencies and is therefore lacking in ‘seriousness’. In addition, it will claim that these persistent theory/praxis inconsistencies reveal that her relation to ontological verticality (or ‘ontological stratification’) remains unresolved.

Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris (1972) is studied through the lens of philosophy of mind.  The question of memory and personhood, as developed by John Locke and then expanded by Derek Parfit, is applied to the status of Hari — the copy of the protagonist's deceased wife.  The key question addressed by this paper is on what basis Hari can (or should?) be considered human.  Hari's personhood is further analyzed in the context of Cartesian dualism, the response to Descartes by reductionism and the rebuttal of reductionism by the functionalist theories of Hilary Putnam.  Descartes' thoughts on animal suffering and the bête-machine are pitted against Hari's experience in Solaris. The key question is whether Hari can be reduced to her alien structure or should be considered in terms of her behavior.  The moral implications of these questions are extended to human sociality, human emotional response and the role of the body in the human condition.

Originally published in Feminist Theory, 6.3, 2005, I will be presenting a critical reflection on this original work and on Elaine Scarry's "The Body in Pain" at University of Brighton, December, 2015.

Abstract: Appealing to theorists such as Judith Butler, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, and Bibi Bakare-Yusef, the aim of the following is to show that, despite ongoing critique, Cartesian dualism continues to haunt our analyses of the relationship of the subject to embodiment, particularly with respect to the experience of pain. Taking Bakare-Yusef’s critique of Elaine Scarry’s account of institutionalized violence (slavery) as an example, I will argue, first, that the dualistic impulse which Bakare-Yusef identifies in Scarry’s view has deep historical roots in, for instance, Aristotle’s hylomorphic concept of the subject. Second, I will consider the specific relevance of poststructualist analyses of subjectification to our conceptions of violence. Lastly, I will explore some contemporary examples of pain in light of the question: Can violence ‘deconstruct the body’ without desubjectifying the subject? I think that the answer is a qualified , but certainly not an easy, “yes.”

In this paper I argue that understanding John Locke’s account of personal identity in the context of the metaphysical and religious debates of his day, especially the debates concerning the possibility of the afterlife and the resurrection, reveals the strengths of his theory. I follow Locke in classifying the views of his predecessors into material, Cartesian and non-Cartesian immaterial views of the soul, and views, according to which human beings are mind-body unions. I identify metaphysical problems for each view respectively and argue that the strength of Locke’s account of personal identity is not only that it provides a response to the various problems that arise for the views of his predecessors, but also that he offers a theory that does not require him to prove their views to be mistaken and is thereby consistent with their mutually exclusive views.

A collection of fifty essays on Descartes and his influence in the seventeenth century. The first section is devoted to various aspects of Descartes’s philosophy (biography, epistemology, metaphysics, natural philosophy (science), mathematics, philosophical theology, etc.). The second section is devoted to Descartes’s influence, especially Cartesians and the Cartesian movement, in France, the Netherlands, Italy, England and elsewhere. The third section is devoted to the critics and opponents of Descartes and Cartesianism.

Un mondo fatto di bit? di Diego MARCONI 19 RedPill® di Elena CASETTA e Achille C. VARZI 29 Quale epistemologia in Matrix? di Nicla VASSALLO 37 Matrix e la Mozione degli Affetti di Maurizio FERRARIS 55 SECONDA PARTE -IL SOGNO DI MORPHEUS Mentale, corporeo, spirituale 73 Matrix: dalla mente estesa ai cervelli bionici di Alberto OLIVERIO 75 La coscienza nella Matrice di Alfredo PATERNOSTER 85 Matrici senza uscita. Circolarità della conoscenza oggettiva e prospettiva buddhista di Franco BERTOSSA -Roberto FERRARI -Marco BESA 107 Realtà virtuale e mondo mentale di Giulio Cesare GIACOBBE 129 La Bibbia e la Matrice di Claudio CONSONNI 143 TERZA PARTE -ANTROPOLOGIA DELL'ELETTO Umano, macchinico, post-umano 151 L'imperialismo del codice di Giuseppe O. LONGO 153 Ontologia dell'individuo. La clonazione come costruzione scientifica e sociale dell'essere umano di Carlo Alberto REDI 173 Disumanizzazione o postumanesimo: il dilemma di Matrix di Gaspare POLIZZI 185 L'incubo di Wiener e la riscossa del soggetto di Antonio CARONIA 205 QUARTA PARTE -VISIONI DALLA CITTÀ DELLE MACCHINE Virtualità, esperienza, comunicazione 213 La sfida filosofica della realtà virtuale e l'avvento dell'era della tecnica di Paolo D'ALESSANDRO 215 L'Architetto e gli untori di Antonio TURSI 227 La penultima verità di Carlo FORMENTI 241 I dati dell'esperienza e il mito del mondo esterno di Carlo SINI 249 RINGRAZIAMENTI E NOTE SUGLI AUTORI 257 DIEGO MARCONI UN MONDO FATTO DI BIT?* 1

Ecophilosophers have long argued that addressing the environmental crisis not only demands reassessing the ethical aspects of human and nature relations, but also prevailing theories of human nature. Philosophical anthropology has historically taken this as its calling, and its resources may be profitably utilized in the context of ecophilosophy. Distinguishing between conservative and emancipatory naturalism leads to a critical discussion of the Cartesian culture/nature dualism. Marjorie Grene is discussed as a resource in the tradition of philosophical anthropology which enables us to avoid dualistic thinking and espouse an emancipatory naturalism by resisting reductionism and acknowledging the diffuse dependence of human being on natural processes. In order to fully explicate the conditions of human dependence upon nature it becomes necessary to define an appropriate approach to ontology. This critical ontology facilitates a stratified understanding of the place of humans in nature without lapsing into reductivism or post-Kantian constructivism. It provides a sounder basis than either alternative for motivating a many sided ecophilosophical perspective on human being.

This essay explores the interaction between medicine and metaphysics in early modern natural philosophy and especially in Descartes's philosophy. I argue that Descartes's account of birthmarks  provides an argument for the metaphysical necessity of substantial union between mind and body. This argument relies on a temporal conception of alethic modalities and provides a new answer to Henricus Regius who in 1641 claimed that, for Descartes, the human being was an ens per accidens.

Due to the rise in philosophical anthropology and the philosophy of mind there is a need to re-consider afresh the theological debate surrounding the origin of the soul. I address this particular issue in the context of the recent philosophical and theological literature that is also conversant with Ecclesiastical literature surrounding the topic by suggesting that there are, at least, three distinct options within the theology of origins. I proceed in two sections. First, I lay out the variety of positions on the soul within the philosophy of mind literature often called substance dualism. In this section, I suggest there are broadly three variations of substance dualism. These include pure substance dualism, composite or compound substance dualism, and emergent substance dualism. I compare and contrast these variations, discuss the particular problems related to each, and argue that each ‘naturally’ coheres with a particular view of origins based on the metaphysical relationship between the body and soul. Second, I lay out the three positions on the soul’s origin in the remainder of the paper. I put forth that there is not only traducianism and creationism the two most obvious positions within Ecclesiastical history, but also emergent substance dualism with materialist origins deserving further consideration in the theological literature. Furthermore, within the positions, excluding emergent substance dualism with materialist origins, there is variation within each yet still naturally falling under the particular said category. This, then, contributes to literature not only by drawing from recent philosophical literature in the fortification of the Christian view on origins, but, additionally, by putting forth one relatively new position that has not been systematized in the theological literature. Finally, I offer that theologians will benefit in three specific ways from the discussion over substance dualism and the theology of the soul’s origin.

Dualism--that the world divides to the mental and the corporeal--is a central tenet in Descartes's philosophy. It is therefore puzzling that Descartes sometimes suggests that certain phenomena--including perceptions, sensations, emotions, called the 'special modes'--belong to neither mind nor body alone, but specifically to the union of the two. It has been suggested that, accordingly, we should regard Descartes as a 'trialist' rather than a dualist. I criticize the 'trialist' interpretation, and offer an explanation of the theory of the special modes which reveals it to be perfectly compatible with Descartes's dualism.

In this monograph I propose to interpret John Locke's view of central metaphysical notions such as substance, essence and identity to the backdrop of his distinction between distinct and confused ideas. I show that Locke draws this traditional distinction in a novel way—as a distinction pertaining only to the way ideas are related to our use of language. This distinction, I argue, allows him to radically rethink traditional questions of metaphysics and to mount a linguistic criticism of traditional metaphysical views about substance, essence and identity. Furthermore, I propose that taking into account the linguistic dimension of Locke's metaphysical thought helps recognize the coherence of his overall picture of substance, essence and identity.

The paper deals with an argument reported by Razi (d.1210) which has been used to refute the immaterial conception of human nature. This argument is based on an epistemic asymmetry between our self-knowledge and our knowledge of an immaterial thing. After some preliminary remarks, the structure of the argument will be described and analyzed in four steps; then it will be shown that from a methodological point of view, the argument is similar to a family of epistemological arguments, including the so-called 'Cartesian argument from doubt', and hence is vulnerable to the same standard objection raised against the form of reasoning employed in these arguments. In the last section of the paper, it will be pointed out that the argument can be used indirectly as a reductio ad absurdum to highlight the weakness of some arguments that have been formulated for the opposite conclusion, i.e. that there is something immaterial in human beings.

With the challenges from science, there has been a shift away from traditional or classical versions of substance dualism (most notably Thomism and Cartesianism come to mind) toward emergentist accounts of the mind. Of particular importance for those still inclined to make some distinction between the mind and brain, emergent substance dualism provides an attractive option. However, it promises more than it can deliver. In the present article, I show that a version of emergent substance dualism, where the brain produces a soul (what I call mere emergent substance dualism), lacks the resources to account for the particularity of the soul. I show that, if, in fact, souls (in this case human souls) have primitive thisness, then physical laws could not produce these souls. That being the case, I show how creationism and emergent substance dualism, rather than being disjunctive options, are compatible. In the end, what I call emergent-creationism or creationist-emergentism provides an attractive theory of the origin of souls.

У статтi розглядається проблема тлумачення фiлософiї ума Декарта з огляду на iснуючi розбiжностi в розумiннi субстанцiйного дуалiзму i на висловленi в недавнiх публiкацiях Л. Боднарчук, А. Сень (2014) та О. Хоми (2016) заперечення i сумнiви щодо слушностi дуалiстичного тлу-мачення вчення Декарта з посиланням на альтернативнi тлумачення впливових сучасних декартознавцiв Джона Котингема та Жана-Люка Марйона. Висвiтлено основнi моменти змiсту картезiанського субстанцiйного дуалiзму як вчення про два фундаментальнi типи речей (субстанцiй), що є радикально вiдмiнними за своєю природою, але разом iз тим перебувають у тiсному каузальному взаємозв'язку. Висвiтлено недолiки запропонованого Котингемом триалiстичного тлумачення вчення Декарта, а також недостатнiсть пiдстав, якi наводилися українськими авторами на користь погляду на тлумачення Марйона як вагому альтернативу дуалiстичному тлумаченню.

In this paper, I shall suggest that, what Descartes supported in his letter to More of August 1649, when he claimed that God’s essence might be present everywhere, was not that God can’t exist without being extended, i.e. being omnipresent, but that God has necessarily the disposition to be extended. If my interpretation is correct, then the claim that God’s essence is omnipresent is consistant with the thesis that God is omnipresent ratione potentia.

Our notions of causation in science are often unintentionally constrained by the mathematics we use. Typically, scientific investigations use algebraic or calculus-based mathematics to model causes and effects.  In these types of models, there is a predictive relationship between the cause and the effect. This predictive pattern is what most people use to classify events as materialistic, leaving events that are not so classified as non-materialistic. Mathematics over the last century has introduced new formalisms that cover functions that do not conform to the materialistic pattern. While these functions cannot always predict outcomes for typical cases, they can be studied and analyzed in other ways, and therefore can be used for knowledge-building. Therefore, by expanding the mathematical toolset, investigators can better identify and model non-materialistic causes.

This is a pre-publication version of a paper given at an invitation-only International Symposium on The Return of Consciousness: A new science on old questions, on 14th-15th June, 2015 in Avesta Manor, Sweden, hosted by the Ax:son Johnson Foundation. The paper summarizes the basic differences between dualist, reductionist and reflexive models of perception, clarifies why these differences are important to an understanding of consciousness, and provides references to how these contrasts have entered into philosophical and scientific discussions over the 25 years since they were first introduced in Velmans (1990)  ‘Consciousness, Brain and the Physical World’, Philosophical Psychology, 3, 77-99.  The paper concludes that there never was an unbridgeable divide separating “physical phenomena” from the “contents of consciousness”. Physical objects and events as perceived are part of the contents of consciousness—which alters the nature of the “hard problem of consciousness” and provides the departure point for reflexive monism.

A paper published in 1996, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 19.2.

A bedrock assumption made by philosophers like Noam Chomsky is that the contexts within which children acquire a language exhibit an irredeemable poverty of stimulus. They argue that, given this poverty, the basic elements of language must be innate. My argument, however, is that this assumption is philosophically suspect in that it assumes an untenably Cartesian conception of "stimulus." I then go on to develop an alternative within which the underdetermination of stimulus plays a key role.

Substance dualism has received much attention from philosophers and theologians in contemporary literature. Whilst it may have been fashionable in the recent past to dismiss substance dualism as an unviable and academically absurd position to hold, this is no longer the case. My contention is not so much the merits of substance dualism in general, but a more specified variation of substance dualism. My specific contribution to the literature in this article is that I argue for the viability of pure substance dualism as a more satisfactory option in contrast to compound or composite varieties of substance dualism. I put forth one argument and tease out the implications that make compound dualism less than satisfactory. I conclude that, minimally, more work is required on compound variations of dualism to make it a more appealing and a philosophically satisfactory option. KEYWORDS I-concept, soul, substance dualism, pure, compound As of late, there has been a renaissance in the contemporary literature exploring substance dualism as a viable philosophical anthropology. 1 Given the recent discussion, it is simply not responsible to dismiss substance dualism as it has been fashionable to do in the recent past. 2 My contention here is not so much

Resumen: Los objetivos de este artículo son: (i) Mostrar cómo la pretensión de las estrategias escépticas empleadas por Descartes en Meditación Primera es tanto socavar los cimientos de la epistemología subyacente a la metafísica aristotélica como permitir la adquisición de una perspectiva racional que excluya opiniones y prejuicios, es decir, cómo dichos procedimientos son esenciales para desplazar la certeza del ámbito de los sentidos al del entendimiento. (ii) Absolver a Descartes del cargo de atentado contra el sentido común, cargo improcedente si tenemos en cuenta que, de acuerdo con el filósofo, las condiciones de verdad que regulan nuestras declaraciones cognitivas ordinarias difieren de las que regulan el conocimiento reflexivo. La distinción cartesiana entre creencias y opiniones impide la dicotomía humeana entre compulsiones naturales y normas epistémicas. (iii) Reubicar el argumento del sueño, subrayando el hecho de que su objeto son creencias perceptivas nucleares análogas a las “proposiciones-gozne” de Wittgenstein (algo que implica una concepción jerárquica del lenguaje ordinario irreconciliable con presupuestos y estrategias pirrónicas), acentuando la pertenencia de los sueños al dominio de la imaginación, y constatando que, por ello, se trata de un escenario escéptico incapaz de afectar a las apariencias intelectuales. (iv) Subrayar el papel desempeñado por el argumento del sueño en el proyecto de una concepción no intelectual de la experiencia, esto es, en el proyecto de disociar al Meditador de su yo empírico y de diseñar las condiciones de la auto-presentación del cogito. El cogito es una excepción del representacionalismo cartesiano, en la medida en que uno no puede dudar que duda sin dudar. En este sentido, el cogito marca el punto exacto donde resulta imposible disociarnos de nuestros pensamientos, donde el escepticismo llega definitivamente a un fin. 
Las perspectivas epistemológicas de Ernest Sosa y de Robert Fogelin, radicalmente diferentes entre sí, resultan esenciales para arrojar luz sobre aspectos desatendidos del proyecto cartesiano.

Palabras clave: R. Descartes – R. Fogelin – E. Sosa – Argumento del sueño – Certeza – Conocimiento reflexivo – Objetividad – Racionalismo circunspecto – Razón.

Abstract: The objectives of this article are: (i) To show that the sceptical strategies deployed by Descartes in the First Meditation are intended to undermine the epistemology that underlines Aristotelian (or vulgar) philosophy and to gain a rational perspective where opinions and prejudices play no role whatsoever, that is, to show how those very procedures are instrumental in coming to see that certainty does not lie in the senses but only in the understanding. (ii) To acquit Descartes of the charge of raising sceptical scenarios in order to cast doubts upon ordinary beliefs, that is, in order to challenge our common beliefs of everyday life. Because, according to Descartes, truth-conditions of ordinary claims of knowledge are different from conditions that make true reflective knowledge, we don’t have to face sceptical scenarios in order to know. The Humean predicament is precluded by Descartes’s distinction between beliefs and opinions. (iii) To relocate the dream argument, underlining that its target-beliefs are nuclear perceptual beliefs akin to Wittgenstein’s “hinge-propositions” (the relocation’s background is a hierarchical picture of ordinary language that is at odds with Pyrrhonian descriptions and strategies), stressing that dreams are rooted in the imagination, and stating that, as a consequence, this global scenario is unable to cast doubts upon higher-level appearances. (iv) To demonstrate that the dream argument plays a key role for construing lower-level appearances non-intellectually, namely, for detaching the Meditator from his empirical ego and for setting the stage for the self-presentation of the cogito. The cogito is an exception to Descartes’s over-all representationalism (to doubt that one is doubting is identical with one’s actually doubting). In this sense, it marks the point where we can’t treat our thoughts as if they were the thoughts of someone else, where at last scepticism comes to an end.
The different epistemological conceptions of Ernest Sosa and Robert Fogelin are instrumental in making sense of some neglected aspects of Descartes’s epistemological project.

Key Words: R. Descartes – R. Fogelin – E. Sosa – Certainty – Circumspect Rationalism – Objectivity – Reason – Reflective Knowledge.

In this paper, I inspect the grounds for the mature Spinozist argument for substance monism. The argument is succinctly stated at Ethics Part 1, Proposition 14. The argument appeals to two explicit premises: (1) that there must be a substance with all attributes; (2) that substances cannot share their attributes. In conjunction with a third implicit premise, that a substance cannot not have any attribute whatsoever, Spinoza infers that there can be no more than one substance. I begin the inspection with the analysis of the first premise, which is provided in the form of the four proofs of God’s existence in Ethics Part 1, Proposition 11. While demonstrating how Spinoza adopts a progressive approach, where the fourth proof of God’s existence is more successful and persuasive than the third, which is more successful than the second, etc., I also unpack concepts central to Spinoza’s thinking here, including the concepts of reason (ratio) and power (potesta or potentia). I then analyze the second premise of the Spinozist argument for substance monism, as established by Ethics Part 1, Proposition 4 in conjunction with Ethics Part 1, Proposition 5. I take up and respond to the objection attributed to Leibniz that a substance p can have the attributes x and y and a substance q can have the attributes y and z, and thus that substances can share some attributes while remaining distinct. Throughout the study, my attention is focused on the argumentative procedures Spinoza adopts. This yields a close, internalist reading of the text where Spinoza effectively embraces substance monism. In conclusion to this study, I underscore to the originality of Spinoza’s argument for seventeenth century theories of substance.

Keywords: Spinoza; substance monism; proofs of God’s existence; individuation.

https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/seiscentos/issue/view/1813

In the present article, I develop what I will call the 'perfect duplicate' problem for emergentist views of mental substances. In brief, the problem has to do with the particularity of the mental substance, which requires a metaphysical individuator (not simply an epistemic individuator) that makes me me and does not depend on properties (i.e., universals that are multiply-exemplifiable). Emergentist accounts of minds do not give us a sufficient reason for thinking that this mind is sufficiently distinct from that mind because an emergentist account of individual thisness depends either on properties or on a brute particularity that lacks a sufficient explanation. This is where the emergent mechanism is crucial in precluding the right sort of particularity for the origins of personal identity. Emergentism fails as an explanation for the origins of personal identity, but a traditional variant of a mental substance which is not dependent on a generalizable or universalizable process does not fail, at least not obviously, as an explanation.

In Galileo's Error, Philip Goff sets out a manifesto for a post-Galilean science of consciousness. Article four of the manifesto reads: 'Anti-Dualism: Consciousness is not separate from the physical world; rather consciousness is located in the intrinsic nature of the physical world.' I argue that there is an important sense of ‘dualism’ in which Goff’s arguments are not only compatible with but entail dualism, and not only dualism but substance dualism. Substance dualism, in the sense I have in mind, is the view that (i) there are two sides to reality, a fundamentally mental side and a fundamentally nonmental side; and (ii) the fundamentally mental side consists of mental substances resembling Cartesian souls. I do not suggest that this is bad news for post-Galilean science of consciousness. My aim is rather to push for a certain view about what a theory of consciousness motivated by Goff’s arguments must look like.

Resumo: O dualismo cartesiano é alvo de crítica desde sua formulação e, conforme Merleau-Ponty, pode parecer contraditório sem a ideia de infinito positivo operante no grande racionalismo do século XVII. Nesse cenário, o dualismo cartesiano surge como: ou uma flagrante antinomia; ou dependente do conceito de infinito positivo. Cumpre então questionar se Descartes já não teria estabelecido argumentos capazes de aclarar o que muitos críticos consideram impasses de seu sistema. Nesse sentido, o Tratado das paixões emerge como central, pois apresenta como o corpo, algo determinado, se une à alma, que é livre, sem que isso os anule em sua especificidade. Descartes detalha os termos de seu dualismo ao desenvolver a ideia de união da alma e do corpo, isto é, a condição humana de ser uma alma unida a um corpo. Nessas circunstâncias, nos parece fundamental o aprofundamento desta união por meio da adequada consideração do conceito de hábito; apesar de pouco estudado, o hábito é aquilo que permite à alma reorganizar as próprias paixões, dirigir o corpo e agir virtuosamente. Assim, este artigo considera as indicações de Merleau-Ponty sobre o dualismo cartesiano e vale-se do conceito de hábito no Tratado das paixões para investigar se Descartes aponta possíveis soluções, ou inovações, para as questões engendradas pelo dualismo de sua filosofia.

There are few philosophers who have been so influential in their own lifetimes and had so much influence, only to be subsequently ignored, as Henri Bergson (1859-1941). When in April 1922, Bergson debated Einstein on the nature of time, it was Bergson who was far better known and respected. Now Einstein’s achievements are known to everyone, but very few people outside philosophy departments have even heard of Bergson. Following Friedrich Schelling and those he influenced, Bergson targeted the Cartesian dualism that permeates the culture of modernity. In doing so, he challenged deep assumptions rooted in and cemented in place by Descartes’ philosophy. It this article I will argue that Bergson made considerable progress in this attack on Cartesian dualism, and diverse philosophers subsequently built on his ideas. However, failure to appreciate the source of these ideas has weakened their impact, being scattered among different disciplines by diverse philosophers and scientists who drew upon Bergson’s work while forgetting details of his philosophy. This article is an effort to rectify this situation.

This article argues that Ernst Cassirer’s views about the concept of substance and his views on mythic consciousness are applicable to the concept of race. By analyzing examples from the most influential and representative racial theories, this article shows that the concept of race functions like the concept of substance whereby random, large-scale, and irreducibly complex phenomena is explained through the deterministic behavior of a smaller, material, constituent part. Given that mythic consciousness explains causality in the same way, this substance-mode explanation of becoming can also be termed “mythic.” Further, under this substance/racial understanding of personhood, humans have no agency to determine their own fates. It is this fatalism that Cassirer railed against in The Myth of the State. In place of this substance (racial) understanding of personhood, and as this article will describe, Cassirer argued for a “functional” (cultural) understanding of personhood.

One of the most serious challenges (if not the most serious challenge) for interactive psycho-physical dualism (henceforth interactive dualism or ID) is the so-called 'interaction problem'. It has two facets, one of which this article focuses on, namely the apparent tension between interactions of non-physical minds in the physical world and physical laws of nature. One family of approaches to alleviate or even dissolve this tension is based on a collapse solution ('consciousness collapse/CC) of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics (QM). The idea is that the mind brings about the collapse of a superposed wave function onto one of its eigenstates. Thus, it is claimed, can the mind change the course of things without violating any law figuring in physical theory. I will first show that this hope is premature because energy and momentum are probably not conserved in collapse processes, and that even if this can be dealt with, the violations are either severe or produce further ontological problems. Second, I point out several conceptual difficulties for interactionist CC. I will also present solutions for those problems, but it will become clear that those solutions come at a high cost. Third, I shall briefly list some empirical problems which make life even harder for interactionist CC. I conclude with remarks about why no-collapse interpretations of QM don't help either and what the present study has shown is the real issue for ID: namely to find a plausible integrative view of dualistic mental causation and laws of nature.

In this article, I discuss Keith Frankish's attempt to neutralize the zombie argument against materialism with a closely parallel argument for physicalism, the anti-zombie argument, and develop David Chalmers' reply to this species of arguments. I support Chalmers' claim that the conceivability of situations like the existence of an anti-zombie is problematic with an analysis that makes it plausible that the idea of an anti-zombie is incoherent, and argue that to counter this, a materialist should deny the absence of a priori entai-lment from the physical to the phenomenal; however, this would involve the denial of the conceivability of zombies and so make the anti-zombie argument superfluous.

In this paper, I examine the role of compound substances in general, especially animals, in Leibniz’s metaphysical system. I attempt to prove that compound substances were indeed significant competitors of monads themselves, be it in terms of their lacking extension, their capability of physical interaction, or their simplicity. In addition, while compound substances may be considered to be simple in some respect, monads in turn may be considered to be composed in some respect. However, this does not mean a literal composition of parts, since parts are defined as homogeneous with the whole.

As an example of compound substances, I examine the category of animals, i.e., compound substances endowed with a dominant monad in addition to some subordinated ones. The typical example of animals are human beings; however, Leibniz was unable to decide what else is supposed to belong into this category. Finally, I point out that Leibniz, in fact, never abandoned the composite substances theory, and that he did not adopt it merely for alibistic reasons in order to justify his metaphysics in the eyes of the Catholics, as was the case of des Bosses, to whom Leibniz sent several letters about compound substances. Therefore, the idealistic interpretation, a typical one for Leibniz’s later work, does not seem to be in accord with Leibniz’s own intentions. On the contrary, there are many indications suggesting that he was fairly interested in bodies themselves, not merely in the elementary (spiritual) units of bodies.