Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

More documents

Recommendations

Info

CHAPTER 10 Occasionalism Daisie Radner The seventeenth-century doctrine known as occasionalism arose in response to a perceived problem. Cartesian philosophy generated the problem and provided the context for the answer. In the Cartesian ontology, mind and matter are substances totally different in nature. Souls or minds have modes of thought but not modes of extension; bodies have modes of extension but not of thought. Modes are properties that affect or modify substances. A substance with a particular mode can be conceived as not having this mode, but the mode cannot be conceived apart from the particular substance of which it is the mode. The modes of each substance belong to that substance alone and cannot belong to any other substance. 1 Each mind has its own thoughts, that is, its own perceptions and volitions, and they are numerically distinct from the thoughts of every other mind. Likewise, each body has its own figure, and each moving body has its own motion. Even when two bodies are said to have the same shape, the mode which is the figure of one body is numerically distinct from the mode which is the figure of the other. In the 1640s, the following question was put to Descartes by Pierre Gassendi and again by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia: how can the human mind act on the human body, and the body on the mind, if they are two substances totally different in nature? Descartes responds to Gassendi by dismissing the question: The whole problem contained in such questions arises simply from a supposition that is false and cannot in any way be proved, namely that, if the soul and the body are two substances whose nature is different, this prevents them from being able to act on each other. 2 To Elizabeth, he acknowledges that the question is a fair one. He appeals to the notion of the union of soul and body, ‘on which depends our notion of the soul’s power to move the body, and the body’s power to act on the soul and cause sensations and passions’. 3 He considers the notion of the union of soul and body to be a primitive notion and does not attempt to analyse it.
OCCASIONALISM 321 What belongs to the union of the soul and the body can be known only obscurely by pure intellect or by intellect aided by imagination, but it can be known very clearly by the senses. That is why people who never philosophize and use only their senses have no doubt that the soul moves the body and that the body acts on the soul. 4 The problem of mind-body interaction stems not from the Cartesian dualism per se, but from the dualism together with a certain view of efficient causation. Statements of this view are found in Descartes’s Third Meditation and Second Replies. ‘There is nothing in the effect which was not previously present in the cause, either in a similar or in a higher form.’ 5 The reason why what is in the effect must preexist in the cause is that the cause communicates reality to the effect. ‘For where, I ask, could the effect get its reality from, if not from the cause? And how could the cause give it to the effect unless it possessed it?’ 6 How can the body cause sensations and passions in the soul, when it contains no such modes either in a similar or in a higher form? How can the soul move the body? Even if the soul is considered to contain motion in a higher form in so far as it has the idea of motion, how does the soul give reality to the body’s motion? The causation of motion is no less problematic in the action of one body upon another. Consider the instance in which a moving body B comes into contact with a smaller body C, which is at rest. According to Descartes’s fifth rule of impact, body B ‘transfers’ part of its motion to C, as much of it as would permit the two bodies to move at the same speed. 7 In a letter to Henry More, Descartes admits that ‘motion, being a mode of a body, cannot pass from one body to another’. 8 If no literal transference of motion occurs, then how does the moving body produce motion in the body moved? Descartes never explicated the concept of communication of reality. To the philosophers we are about to consider, there seemed to be only two ways in which a cause could give to an effect something that it possessed in itself: either the cause transfers something from itself to the effect, or else it creates something in the effect comparable with what it has in itself. A created substance cannot transfer anything from itself to another substance, since everything in it is a mode of it, and the modes of one substance cannot be modes of another. The only way in which one substance can cause a change in another is by creating a new mode in the other substance. If a mode comes into existence and no created substance has the power to create it, then it must have been produced by God. Occasionalism may be characterized in general as the view that causal efficacy belongs to God instead of to creatures. A being with causal efficacy is one having the power to produce a substance or a mode of substance. Occasionalism may be either partial or complete in the extent to which causal efficacy is denied to creatures. In partial occasionalism, at least some created substances have the power to modify themselves or other things. Some modes are produced by creatures; the rest are produced directly by God on the occasion of certain creatures being in certain states. A complete occasionalist denies that created
Page 2 and 3:
Routledge History of Philosophy Vol
Page 4 and 5:
Routledge History of Philosophy Vol
Page 6 and 7:
v 1. Philosophy, Renaissance. 2. Ph
Page 8 and 9:
vii Glossary 389 Index of names 407
Page 10 and 11:
element in learning about the natur
Page 12 and 13:
J.G.Cottingham is Professor of Phil
Page 14 and 15:
xiii Politics and Religion The Arts
Page 16 and 17:
xv Politics and Religion The Arts 1
Page 18 and 19:
xvii Politics and Religion The Arts
Page 20 and 21:
xix Politics and Religion The Arts
Page 22 and 23:
xxi Politics and Religion The Arts
Page 24 and 25:
xxiii Politics and Religion The Art
Page 26 and 27:
xxv Politics and Religion The Arts
Page 28 and 29:
xxvii Politics and Religion The Art
Page 30 and 31:
2 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTU
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
10 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENT
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ITALIAN RE
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52 and 53:
Page 54 and 55:
Page 56 and 57:
Page 58 and 59:
Page 60 and 61:
Page 62 and 63:
Page 64 and 65:
Page 66 and 67:
Page 68 and 69:
Page 70 and 71:
Page 72 and 73:
Page 74 and 75:
Page 76 and 77:
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Page 94 and 95:
66 RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY OUTSIDE I
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
98 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS UP TO DE
Page 128 and 129:
100 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS UP TO D
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
Page 150 and 151:
Page 152 and 153:
Page 154 and 155:
Page 156 and 157:
Page 158 and 159:
CHAPTER 4 Francis Bacon and man’s
Page 160 and 161:
132 FRANCIS BACON AND MAN’S TWO-F
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
Page 174 and 175:
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
Page 184 and 185:
CHAPTER 5 Descartes: methodology St
Page 186 and 187:
158 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CEN
Page 188 and 189:
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200 and 201:
Page 202 and 203:
Page 204 and 205:
Page 206 and 207:
Page 208 and 209:
Page 210 and 211:
Page 212 and 213:
Page 214 and 215:
Page 216 and 217:
Page 218 and 219:
Page 220 and 221:
Page 222 and 223:
Page 224 and 225:
Page 226 and 227:
Page 228 and 229:
Page 230 and 231:
Page 232 and 233:
Page 234 and 235:
Page 236 and 237:
Page 238 and 239:
Page 240 and 241:
Page 242 and 243:
Page 244 and 245:
Page 246 and 247:
Page 248 and 249:
Page 250 and 251:
Page 252 and 253:
Page 254 and 255:
Page 256 and 257:
Page 258 and 259:
Page 260 and 261:
Page 262 and 263:
Page 264 and 265:
Page 266 and 267:
Page 268 and 269:
Page 270 and 271:
Page 272 and 273:
Page 274 and 275:
Page 276 and 277:
Page 278 and 279:
Page 280 and 281:
Page 282 and 283:
Page 284 and 285:
Page 286 and 287:
Page 288 and 289:
Page 290 and 291:
Page 292 and 293:
Page 294 and 295:
Page 296 and 297:
Page 298 and 299: 270 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CEN
Page 316 and 317: CHAPTER 9 The moral and political p
Page 382 and 383: 354 LEIBNIZ: TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE AND M
Page 398 and 399:
370 LEIBNIZ: TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE AND M
Page 400 and 401:
Page 402 and 403:
Page 404 and 405:
Page 406 and 407:
Page 408 and 409:
Page 410 and 411:
Page 412 and 413:
Page 414 and 415:
Page 416 and 417:
Page 418 and 419:
390 GLOSSARY attribute: Averroism:
Page 420 and 421:
392 GLOSSARY compositio: a Latin ve
Page 422 and 423:
394 GLOSSARY disposition: double as
Page 424 and 425:
396 GLOSSARY gnoseology: habitus: H
Page 426 and 427:
398 GLOSSARY induction, eliminative
Page 428 and 429:
400 GLOSSARY modus tollens: monad:
Page 430 and 431:
402 GLOSSARY Organon: pantheism: pa
Page 432 and 433:
404 GLOSSARY Remonstrants: resoluti
Page 434 and 435:
406 GLOSSARY truth, double: truth,
Page 436 and 437:
408 INDEX OF NAMES Ceredi, Giuseppe
Page 438 and 439:
410 INDEX OF NAMES Plato 6, 20, 29,
Page 440 and 441:
412 INDEX OF SUBJECTS cogito ergo s
Page 442 and 443:
414 INDEX OF SUBJECTS civil 264, 33
Page 444:
416 INDEX OF SUBJECTS Descartes’
show all

Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?