Descartes On Causation

Author : Tad M. Schmaltz
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2013-01-31
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199958504

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Descartes on Causation by Tad M. Schmaltz Pdf

This book is a systematic study of Descartes' theory of causation and its relation to the medieval and early modern scholastic philosophy that provides its proper historical context. The argument presented here is that even though Descartes offered a dualistic ontology that differs radically from what we find in scholasticism, his views on causation were profoundly influenced by scholastic thought on this issue. This influence is evident not only in his affirmation in the Meditations of the abstract scholastic axioms that a cause must contain the reality of its effects and that conservation does not differ in reality from creation, but also in the details of the accounts of body-body interaction in his physics, of mind-body interaction in his psychology, and of the causation that he took to be involved in free human action. In contrast to those who have read Descartes as endorsing the "occasionalist" conclusion that God is the only real cause, a central thesis of this study is that he accepted what in the context of scholastic debates regarding causation is the antipode of occasionalism, namely, the view that creatures rather than God are the causal source of natural change. What emerges from the defense of this interpretation of Descartes is a new understanding of his contribution to modern thought on causation.

Author : Steven Nadler
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780271039664

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Causation in Early Modern Philosophy by Steven Nadler Pdf

Author : Walter Ott
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2009-09-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199570430

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Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy by Walter Ott Pdf

Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy is a study of one of the most important debates in 17th- and 18th-century philosophy: the nature of causation. Ott offers controversial readings of such canonical figures as Descartes, Locke, and Hume, and explores related topics such as intentionality, necessity, and relations.

Author : Keith Allen,Tom Stoneham
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2011-02-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781136820052

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Causation and Modern Philosophy by Keith Allen,Tom Stoneham Pdf

This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd.

Author : Han van Ruler
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 1995-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004247208

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The Crisis of Causality by Han van Ruler Pdf

The Crisis of Causality deals with the reaction of the Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) to the New Philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650). Voetius not only criticised the Cartesian idea of a mechanical Universe; he also foresaw that shifting conceptions of natural causality would make it impossible for theologians to explain the relationship between God and Creation in philosophical terms. This threatened the status of theology as a scientific discipline. Apart from a detailed analysis of the Scholastic and Cartesian notions of causality, the book offers new perspectives on related subjects, such as seventeenth-century university training and the Cartesian method of science. It will be of great importance to any student of seventeenth-century intellectual history, philosophy, theology and history of science.

Author : Dominik Perler,Sebastian Bender
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2019-07-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351379380

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Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy by Dominik Perler,Sebastian Bender Pdf

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.

Author : Helen Hattab
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2009-07-23
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 9780521518925

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Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms by Helen Hattab Pdf

This book traces Descartes' groundbreaking theory of scientific explanation back to the mathematical demonstrations of Aristotelian physics, in the light of the arguments for and against substantial forms which were available to him. Will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in the philosophy and science of the early modern period.

Author : Nicholas Jolley
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2013-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199669554

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Causality and Mind by Nicholas Jolley Pdf

This text presents 17 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.

Author : Lawrence Nolan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2022-12-08
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1009362542

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The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon by Lawrence Nolan Pdf

The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon is the definitive reference source on René Descartes, "the father of modern philosophy" and arguably among the most important philosophers of all time. Examining the full range of Descartes' achievements and legacy, it includes 256 in-depth entries that explain key concepts relating to his thought. Cumulatively they uncover interpretative disputes, trace his influences, and explain how his work was received by critics and developed by followers. There are entries on topics such as certainty, cogito ergo sum, doubt, dualism, free will, God, geometry, happiness, human being, knowledge, Meditations on First Philosophy, mind, passion, physics, and virtue, which are written by the largest and most distinguished team of Cartesian scholars ever assembled for a collaborative research project - 92 contributors from ten countries.

Author : Anthony Dardis
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780231144179

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Mental Causation by Anthony Dardis Pdf

Two thousand years ago, Lucretius said that everything is atoms in the void; it's physics all the way down. Contemporary physicalism agrees. But if that's so how can we--how can our thoughts, emotions, our values--make anything happen in the physical world? This conceptual knot, the mental causation problem, is the core of the mind-body problem, closely connected to the problems of free will, consciousness, and intentionality. Anthony Dardis shows how to unravel the knot. He traces its early appearance in the history of philosophical inquiry, specifically in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and T. H. Huxley. He then develops a metaphysical framework for a theory of causation, laws of nature, and the causal relevance of properties. Using this framework, Dardis explains how macro, or higher level, properties can be causally relevant in the same way that microphysical properties are causally relevant: by their relationship with the laws of nature. Smelling an orange, choosing the orange rather than the cheesecake, reaching for the one on the left instead of the one on the right-mental properties such as these take their place alongside the physical "motor of the world" in making things happen.

Author : Steven Nadler
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2010-11-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198250081

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Occasionalism by Steven Nadler Pdf

Steven Nadler presents a collection of essays on philosophical problems about causation in the seventeenth century. His focus is on a particular doctrine, "occasionalism", found among a number of early modern followers of Descartes. The essays consider the philosophical, scientific, theological, and historical context for the doctrine.

Author : Tad M. Schmaltz
Publisher : Oxford Philosophical Concepts
Page : 395 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199782178

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Efficient Causation by Tad M. Schmaltz Pdf

"This volume is a contribution to the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series, the main goal of which is to provide historical accounts of the development of central philosophical concepts. Among these concepts would seem to be that of efficient causation (or, today, simply causation). Causation is now commonly supposed to involve a succession that instantiates some law-like regularity. This understanding of causality has a history that includes various interrelated conceptions of efficient causation that date from ancient Greek philosophy and that extend to contemporary discussions of causation in metaphysics and philosophy of science. The consideration here of this history is divided into three sections comprising eleven chapters total. The first section concerns concepts of efficient causation in Aristotle, the Stoics, late antiquity and earlier medieval philosophy, and later medieval philosophy dating from Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) to Ockham. The second concerns the different forms of this concept in the modern period, starting with late scholasticism (as represented in Suaréz) and Descartes, and including Spinoza and Leibniz, Malebranche and Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Finally, there is a third section divided into a consideration of conceptions of causation in contemporary philosophy that derive from the work of Hume and Aristotle, respectively. A distinctive feature of the volume is that it also includes four short "Reflections" that explore the significance of the concept of efficient causation for literature, the history of music, the history of science and contemporary art theory"--

Author : Mortimer Taube
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2017-07-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351797542

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Causation, Freedom and Determinism by Mortimer Taube Pdf

This book, first published in 1936, divides into roughly two parts: a re-examination of historical material; and a positive theory of causation suggested by the results of this re-examination. The historical study discloses an ambiguity in the meanings of causation and determinism; it discloses also that this ambiguity is transferred to the meaning of freedom.

Author : Walter R. Ott
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:652509205

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Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy by Walter R. Ott Pdf

This is a study of one of the most important debates in 17th- and 18th-century philosophy: the nature of causation. Ott offers controversial readings of such canonical figures as Descartes, Locke, and Hume, and explores related topics such as intentionality, necessity, and relations.

Author : Andrea Christofidou
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780415501064

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Self, Reason, and Freedom by Andrea Christofidou Pdf

This book sheds new light on the role of freedom in Descartes' thought and defends the theory of an internal relation between freedom and reason in his metaphysics.