A Companion to Descartes Edited by Janet Broughton John Carriero Blackwell Publishing A Companion to Descartes Blackwell Companions to Philosophy This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by today’s leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and engaging coverage of the key fi gures, terms, topics, and problems of the fi eld. Taken together, the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, representing an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike. Already published in the series: 20. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy Edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa 1. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 21. A Companion to Genethics Second Edition Edited by Justine Burley and John Harris Edited by Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui-James 22. A Companion to Philosophical Logic 2. A Companion to Ethics Edited by Dale Jacquette Edited by Peter Singer 23. 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A Companion to Descartes Edited by Dale Jamieson Edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero A Companion to Descartes Edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero © 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd blackwell publishing 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Janet Broughton and John Carriero to be identifi ed as the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. 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B1873.C26 2007 194–dc22 2007012578 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10 on 12.5 pt Photina by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed and bound in Singapore by C.O.S. Printers Pte Ltd The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com For Kathleen Hitchner Setzer, and in memory of Gene Willis Setzer J. S. B. For Catherine Dowd Carriero and Nicholas Runfola Carriero J. C. Contents Notes on Contributors x List of Abbreviations xiv Introduction xv PART I THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT 1 1 Life and Works 3 STEPHEN GAUKROGER 2 Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Body, Cause, Nature 17 DENNIS DES CHENE 3 Descartes and Augustine 33 CATHERINE WILSON 4 Descartes and the Legacy of Ancient Skepticism 52 CASEY PERIN PART II MATHEMATICS AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 67 5 Descartes and Galileo: Copernicanism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Physics 69 MICHAEL FRIEDMAN 6 Explanation as Confi rmation in Descartes’s Natural Philosophy 84 ERNAN MCMULLIN 7 Descartes and Mathematics 103 PAOLO MANCOSU 8 Descartes’s Optics: Light, the Eye, and Visual Perception 124 MARGARET J. OSLER vii contents PART III EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS 143 9 Descartes’s Method 145 MURRAY MILES 10 Descartes’s Use of Doubt 164 DAVID OWENS 11 Self-Knowledge 179 JANET BROUGHTON 12 Descartes on True and False Ideas 196 DEBORAH J. BROWN 13 Clear and Distinct Perception 216 SARAH PATTERSON 14 Causation Without Intelligibility and Causation Without God in Descartes 235 MICHAEL DELLA ROCCA 15 Descartes on Substance 251 VERE CHAPPELL 16 Descartes and the Metaphysics of Extension 271 C. G. NORMORE 17 The Role of God in Descartes’s Philosophy 288 JOHN COTTINGHAM 18 The Cartesian Circle and the Foundations of Knowledge 302 JOHN CARRIERO 19 Cartesian Innateness 319 ALAN NELSON 20 Descartes on the Will in Judgment 334 LEX NEWMAN 21 Omnipotence, Modality, and Conceivability 353 LILLI ALANEN 22 Descartes’s Dualism 372 MARLEEN ROZEMOND 23 The Union and Interaction of Mind and Body 390 PAUL HOFFMAN 24 Animals 404 GARY HATFIELD 25 How to Engineer a Human Being: Passions and Functional Explanation in Descartes 426 AMY M. SCHMITTER viii contents 26 Descartes’s Ethics 445 LISA SHAPIRO PART IV DESCARTES’S LEGACY 465 27 Descartes’s Legacy in the Seventeenth Century: Problems and Polemic 467 THOMAS M. LENNON 28 Contemporary Reactions to Descartes’s Philosophy of Mind 482 QUASSIM CASSAM 29 Descartes and the Phenomenological Tradition 496 WAYNE M. MARTIN 30 Our Debt to Descartes 513 BARRY STROUD Index 526 ix Notes on Contributors Lilli Alanen is Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. She is the author of Descartes’s Concept of Mind (2003) and has written numer- ous articles on early modern philosophy. Janet Broughton is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Descartes’s Method of Doubt and has published a number of papers about Descartes and Hume. Deborah J. Brown is Senior Lecturer in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is the author of Descartes and the Passionate Mind (2006) as well as articles on Descartes’s account of the human body, the human being, and other unions stranger still. John Carriero is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He works primarily on seventeenth-century rationalists and has published articles on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. He is the author of Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations (forthcoming). Quassim Cassam is Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University and a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. He is the author of Self and World (1997) and The Possibility of Knowledge (2007). Vere Chappell is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Locke and of Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, among other volumes. He has also published articles on Descartes, Locke, and other early modern philosophers. John Cottingham is Professor of Philosophy and Departmental Director of Research at the University of Reading, UK, and editor of Ratio: An International Journal of Analytic Philosophy.