Concurrence or divergence? Reconciling Descartes's physics with his metaphysics

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 49-78

  Hattab, Helen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949675972     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2007.0008     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. The first approach is taken by more well-known Cartesians such as Geraud Cordemoy, Louis de la Forge, and Nicolas Malebranche; the second by Pierre-Sylvain Regis. For an overview of Cartesian philosophies see Desmond Clarke, Occult Powers and Hypotheses: Cartesian Natural Philosophy wilder Louis XIV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
2. For a study of de la Forge's version, see Steven Nadler, "The Occasionalism of Louis de la Forge," in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 57-73.
3. Finally, for a helpful discussion of the disagreement between Malebranche and Regis on this issue, see Tad Schmaltz, "Cartesian Causation: body-body interaction, motion, and eternal truths," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 34 (2003): 737-62.
4. I share Desmond Clarke's view that, even though Descartes introduces a new metaphysical account of matter that brings with it a new view of what counts as a scientific demonstration (and, I would add, what counts as a genuine cause), Descartes is still engaged in the same project as the Scholastics in that he is constructing a science rooted in metaphysics which makes possible demonstrative knowledge of the true causes found in nature. See, for instance, Desmond Clarke, "Descartes's Philosophy of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 258-85.
5. Martial Gueroult, "The Metaphysics and Physics of Force in Descartes," in Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, ed. Stephen Gaukroger (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980), 196-229.
6. Alan Gabbey, "Force and Inertia in the Seventeenth Century: Descartes and Newton," in Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, ed. Stephen Gaukroger (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1980), 230-320.
7. Desmond Clarke, "The Concept of Vis in Part III of the Principia," in Descartes: Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994) (Naples: Vivarium, 1996), 321-39.
8. Gary Hatfield, "Force (God) in Descartes's Physics," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 10 (1979): 113-40.
9. Daniel Garber, Descartes's Metaphysical Physics [Metaphysical Physics] (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 264-66, 299-305;
10. and Daniel Garber, "How God Causes Motion: Descartes, Divine Sustenance and Occasionalism," in Descartes Embodied (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 189-220.
11. Geoffrey Gorham, "Cartesian Causation: Continuous, Instantaneous, Overdetermined," ["Cartesian Causation"] Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (2004): 389-423.
12. Michael Della Rocca, "'If a Body Meet a Body': Descartes on Body-Body Causation," ["Body"] in New Essays on the Rationalists, ed. Rocco J. Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 48-81.
13. While the divine legislator drops out of the picture for Hume, he employs essentially the same arguments against a necessary connection between cause and effect as does Malebranche. (See Nicolas Malebranche, "The Search For Truth," in Philosophical Selections, ed. Steven Nadler [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1992], 94-96;
14. and David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1993], 39-53.)
15. See Helen Hattab, The Origins of a Modern View of Causation: Descartes and His Predecessors on Efficient Causes [Origins] (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1998).
16. Kenneth Clatterbaugh, "Cartesian Causality, Explanation and Divine Concurrence," History of Philosophy Quarterly 12 (1995), 199.
17. Dennis Des Chene, Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought [Physiologia] (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 341.
18. Andrew Pessin, "Descartes's Nomic Concurrentism: Finite Causation and Divine Concurrence," Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (2003): 25-49.
19. Helen Hattab, "Conflicting Causalities: the Jesuits, their Opponents and Descartes on the Causality of the Efficient Cause" ["Conilicting Causalities"], in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 1-22;
20. Hattab, "The Problem of Secondary Causation in Descartes: A Response to Des Chene" ["Secondary Causation"], Perspectives on Science 8 (2001): 93-118;
21. "One Cause or Many?: Jesuit Influences on Descartes's Division of Causes," in Meeting of the Minds: The Relations Between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy, ed. Stephen F. Brown (Brepols, 1998), 105-20.
22. See Hattab, Origins and "Secondary Causation."
23. Garber, Metaphysical Physics, 271.
24. Jean Vigier, "Les idées de temps, de durée et d'éternité dans Descartes," Revue Philosophique 89-90 (1920): 321-48;
25. Etienne Gilson, René Descartes Discours de la Méthode Texte et Commentaire (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1947), 340-41;
26. Jean André Wahl, Du rôle de l'instant dans la philosophie de Descartes (Paris: F. Alcan, 1920);
27. Martial Gueroult, Descartes's Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, trans. Roger Ariew (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), vol. I, 193-200;
28. Jean Laporte, Le Rationalisme de Descartes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), 158-61;
29. Jean-Marie Beyssade, La Philosophie Premiere de Descartes Le Temps et la Cohérence de la Métaphysique (Paris: Flammarion, 1979).
30. Richard Arthur ("Continuous Creation, Continuous Time: A Refutation of the Alleged Discontinuity of Cartesian Time," Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 [1988]: 349-75) gives the most complete discussion of arguments on both sides and successfully responds to the arguments for the discontinuity view, thus lending credence to the continuity view. However, while he favors the continuity view, he recognizes that the arguments arc not entirely conclusive.
31. Antonio Rubio, Commentarii in octo libros Aristotelis de Physico auditu unà cum dubiis & quaestionibus hac tempestate agitari solitis [Commentarii in Octo libros] (Lyon: Johannes Pillehotte, 1611);
32. Francisco Toledo, Commentaria una cum quaestionibus, in octo libros Aristotelis de Physica Auscultations (Cologne: In Officina Birckmannica Sumptibus, 1585).
33. See Roger Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics [Last Scholastics] (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 27.
34. See Ariew, Last Scholastics, 27.
35. In response to Caterus, Descartes (The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. II [CSM II] trans. John Cottinghain, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984], 69;
36. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae [PP], vol. I, 51;
37. Harry Frankfurt, "Continuous Creation, Ontological Inertia, and the Discontinuity of Time" ["Continuous Creation"], in Necessity, Volition and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 67.
38. Frankfurt "Continuous Creation," 68.
39. Jorge Secada, "Descartes on Time and Causality" ["Time and Causality"], The Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 47.
40. Cf. Secada, "Time and Causality," 68-70.
41. Secada, "Time and Causality," 70-71.
42. Geoffrey Gorham "Cartesian Causation," 394-402.
43. Gorham, "Cartesian Causation," 392.
44. See Hattab, "Secondary Causation."
45. De Raconis, Tertia Pars Philosophiae, 160.
46. See Rubio, Commentarii in Octo libros, bk. II, tract. 4, q. 8, 297.
47. Hattab, "Conflicting Causalities," 11-19.