Descartes and individual corporeal substance

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 1-15

  Slowik, Edward ^a  

^a WINONA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 61149267783     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09608780010012666     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. G. de Cordemoy, Oeuvres philosophiques. P. Clair and F. Girbal, eds. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 103-104
2. J. Rohault, A System of Natural Philosophy, vol. 1 (written 1671), trans. J. Clarke and S. Clarke (1723). (New York, Johnson Reprint Corp., 1969), 28
3. B. Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Prop. 15, Demonstration, in Spinoza Opera, ed. by G. Gerhardt (Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1925)
4. G. (Rodis-)Lewis, L'individualité selon Descartes. (Paris, J. Vrin, 1950), 45-57
5. D. Garber, Descartes' Metaphysical Physics. (Chicago, U. of Chicago Press, 1992) 175-6
6. D. Des Chene, Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought. (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996). 367-7
7. S. V. Keeling, Descartes, 2nd ed. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968), 145
8. R. S. Wool-house, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth Century Metaphysics. (London, Routledge, 1993), 22-3, 55
9. W. E. Anderson, 'Cartesian Motion', in Motion and Time, Space and Matter: Interrelations in the History and Philosophy of Science, ed. by P. K. Machamer and R. G. Turnbull. (Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1976), 202
10. G. Rodis-Lewis, L'oeuvre de Descartes. (Paris, J. Vrin. 1971), 548
11. D. Marshall, jr.. Prinzipien der Descartes: Exegese. (Freiburg, Verlag Karl Alber, 1979), 54-7. Listing all the commentators who accept the monist position, or at least find the notion of individual corporeal substance untenable, would take up nearly the entire length of this essay
12. Translations from the Principles of Philosophy are based on the edition by V. R. Miller and R. P. Miller (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983), but are checkedagainst the C. Adam and P. Tannery edition of the Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris, J. Vrin, 1974). I will identify passages according to the standard convention: thus, Article 15, Part II, of the Principles will be labeled 'Pr II 15'. Passages from the French translation of 1647 will be prefaced by 'Fr'. Other translations that are based on the complete Adam and Tannery edition will be marked, 'AT', followed by volume and page number
13. As G. Brown has argued, nevertheless, it may not be necessary to read the intimate correlation between extension and matter as a straightforward identity claim; 'Mathematics, Physics, and Corporeal Substance in Descartes', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 70 (1989), 281-302. This issue will be raised briefly below, although the identity of extension and matter, or lack there of, will not affect the main arguments of this essay
14. For an analysis of some of these problems, see, E. Slowik, 'Descartes, Space-Time, and Relational Motion', Philosophy of Science, vol. 66, no. 1, 1999, 117-39
15. and M. Jammer, Concepts of Space, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, 1969), 43-4
16. G. W. Leibniz, 'Letter to De Voider, May 13, 1699', in G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, trans, and ed. by L. E. Loemker. (Dordrecht, D. Reidel, 1970), 519
17. M. Gueroult. 'The Metaphysics and Physics of Force in Descartes', in Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics, S. Gaukroger, ed. (Harvester Press, Sussex, 1980) 199. Gueroult's full presentation of his argument appears in Descartes' Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, Vol. II, trans. By R. Ariew (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press), 63-74
18. J. Bennett, 'Spinoza's Metaphysics', in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed., D. Garrett. (Cambridge, Cambridge U. Press, 1996), 70-1. Interestingly. Bennett's interpretation, which he dubs a 'field' theory, is much in the spirit of later 'supersubstantivalist' theories of space (i.e. where space is the only predicable substance; and thus objects are merely qualitatively/quantitatively distinct portions of space). Newton toyed with this idea in his early essay, De Gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum, trans, and eds. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall, in Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 1962). 139
19. T. M. Lennon, The Battle of the Cods and Giants: The Legacy of Descartes and Gassendi. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993), 204-5
20. AT VII 14. This translation is from The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. II, trans, and ed. By J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1984), 10
21. This problem with the modal the sis is raised by P. Hoffman, 'The Unity of Descartes's Man', reprinted in The Rationalists, ed. by D. Pereboom (Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 64
22. Ironically. Descartes's 'empty vessel' argument can be seen as an early forerunner to the 'hole' problem that plagued Einstein's developmentof General Relativity, as well as recent formulations of substantivalist space-time theories. See, J. Earman, World Enough and Space-Time. (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1989), chap. 9
23. E. Grosholz raises related difficulties, stressing that Descartes's arguments against the vacuum can only work for finite, bounded vacua, and not necessarily against a vacuum that surrounds the material world: 'Descartes and the Individuation of Physical Objects', in Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by K. F. Barber and J. J. E. Gracia (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1994) 48-53. Also, Descartes's term 'indefinite' essentially functions as 'infinite', since it stands for a concept of which no limit can be conceived. Only God. however, is the proper subject of the 'positive'-sounding designation, 'infinite', which lacks any sense of limit (Pr I 26-7)
24. E. Grosholz, Cartesian Method and the Problem of Reduction. (Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1991), 68
25. There were many sixteenth and seventeenth century Natural philosophers who did accept a theory with similar implications, such as F. Suarez, P. Fonseca, the Coimbra Jesuits, B. Amicus, and E. Maignan. These thinkers tried to accommodate both the notion of a finite extended world and an infinite (quasi-) non-extended void: i.e. an 'imaginary' space that, while not possessing extension or dimensionality, had the capacity to receive extended bodies. Descartes's theory of space rules out this option, for he interprets vacuum as an extended 'nothing', which is an impossible state-of-affairs (since 'nothing' cannot be the subject of a property). Thus the actual existence of a plenum is impossible since extension must be a property of some thing (but this should not be taken to undermine the argument centered upon conceivability that will be advanced below). (Pr II 16) His substance-property dichotomy is clearly at work, here. (see. Pr I 56) On 'imaginary' space theorists, see, E. Grant, Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), chap. 7
26. R. Florka has suggested to me that a better interpretation of the consequences of removing all of the space surrounding a body is that it would now fill all of extension: i.e. the body, say, a chair, would now assume the role of the 'indefinitely' extended plenum, which is a better analogue to the case of the empty vessel, as examined above. Of course, the problem that would now arise is whether or not the object retains its identity after it becomes indefinite extension; since, if it is indefinitely extended, and thus has no boundary, in what sense can it still be referred to as a 'chair'? Overall, both versions of individual material substance, i.e. Florka's and my own, face the difficulty of coherently explaining the boundary, or surface, of these substances given their lack of contiguous neighbors, thus both approaches to this problem can be seen as complimentary. R. Florka, 'Comments on Slowik's "Descartes, Monism, and Individual Corporeal Substance"', presented at the American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting, May 8, 1999
27. M. Grene, Descartes. (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1985) 100-1
28. I would like to thank Calvin Normore, Jonathan Bennett, R. Florka, Andrew Black, and an anonymous referee from the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, for their helpful comments and discussions which contributed greatly to the formulation of this paper