Locke's opposition to Descartes runs deep in the Essay. An obvious way to try to sum it up might ... more Locke's opposition to Descartes runs deep in the Essay. An obvious way to try to sum it up might be this: Our ideas must all come from the senses, and our senses "are scarce acute enough to look into the pure Essences of Things" (2.13.24). Let's call this the pure empiricist reading of Locke's anti-Cartesianism. If we understand "senses" here as serving as shorthand for both inner and outer sense, reflection and sensation, then this seems accurate enough. Indeed, it nicely encompasses Locke's major points of disagreement with Descartes. Most obviously, there is Locke's attack on innate ideas and principles, where Descartes is clearly a prominent target. Less obviously, most of Locke's other points of explicit disagreement with Descartes flow from his view that Descartes has made unjustified claims to know essences -the essence of mind, the essence of body. As a result, he has made unjustified claims about the certainty of dualism. As we will see in what follows, Locke's anti-Cartesian stances on the difference between body and space, on whether the soul always thinks, on the possibility of thinking matter, all connect back to this basic opposition to Cartesian overreaching in regard to essences. Further, this stark summary of Locke's anti-Cartesianism seems to fit with his own representation of his Cartesian inheritance, which, notoriously, is that it is minimal, consisting only in anti-scholasticism. That is, the only acknowledgment that Locke wishes to give Descartes is that reading his work helped him to shake off the influence of Aristotelianism: But though I must always acknowledge to that justly admired Gentleman the great Obligation of my first Deliverance from the unintelligible way of talking of the Philosophy A Companion to Locke, First Edition. Edited by Matthew Stuart.
By focusing on the First Dialogue’s use of ‘sensible quality’ rather than ‘idea’, we can draw out... more By focusing on the First Dialogue’s use of ‘sensible quality’ rather than ‘idea’, we can draw out some important morals that allow us to better appreciate its actual accomplishments. Whereas the Principles is an attack on materialist mechanism primarily via its representative theory of perception, the First Dialogue is an attack on materialist mechanism primarily via its primary/secondary-quality distinction. Viewing the First Dialogue in this light allows us to see it as more effective and insightful than we otherwise might, although it also requires us to acknowledge that Hylas is never as philosophically naïve as Berkeley sometimes seems to suggest.
it is exceedingly difficult to determine where exactly the arguments are taking place. 6 In what ... more it is exceedingly difficult to determine where exactly the arguments are taking place. 6 In what follows, I will show that Part I of the Principles contains a serious argument for demoting the sensible qualities. I will argue for the unique importance of this argument as the only argument that Descartes gives for demoting the sensible qualities that does not, in one way or another, rely on Ockham's razor. I show that locating and identifying that argument allows for a new understanding of the argumentative structure of Principles I and II vis-à-vis the nature of bodies. On my interpretation, however, Descartes' argument relies on a highly controversial premise whose justification is left obscure by the texts. In the paper's penultimate section (section 6), I develop several Cartesian strategies for justifying this premise, evaluating their relative strengths and weaknesses. In the end, I am forced to the conclusion that none of these strategies is promising. In the process, however, we will identify one way in which Descartes' physics leans (precariously) on his metaphysics. In addition, we will gain a better appreciation of what a difficult task it is, even for Descartes, to banish sensible qualities from the physical world. 3. Locating the argument: other arguments and Ockham's razor First, we need to locate the relevant arguments. It might seem that one should look to the Meditations for Descartes' justification of his conception of body, since he regarded that work as his official metaphysics (AT V 291: CSMK III 369) and he famously told Mersenne (in confidence) that it formed the foundation for all his physics (AT III 297-8: CSMK III 173). However, it is a noteworthy fact about the Meditations that it contains no argument that bodies possess no non-geometrical qualities. In the wax argument of the Second Meditation, Descartes foreshadows the geometrical conception of body, but does not attempt to establish it. In the Fifth Meditation, he shows that we have a clear and distinct conception of bodies as merely geometrical objects. From this, in the Sixth Meditation, he concludes that bodies which are extended could exist, and then, via a problematic argument from God's veracity, that such bodies do exist. Descartes warns us repeatedly that we have no reason to conclude that bodies have all the qualities that we ordinarily attribute to them on the basis of sense perception. Of course, this is not to show that they in fact lack such qualities. And, although Descartes repeatedly insinuates that we are mistaken in attributing sensible qualities such as color to bodies, he does not actually claim to have established that bodies have only geometrical qualities. 7 Rather, he states his conclusion quite precisely as follows: 6 Monte Cook (1996, 17, note 3) notes that Descartes' argument for the claim that bodies don't have color is surprisingly difficult to reconstruct. Jill Vance Buroker (1991) is driven to combing the Rules for an implicit justification for the move. 7 Thus I am somewhat puzzled by Daniel Garber's strategy (1992, 77, 85) of tracing all of Descartes' arguments for his minimal conception of body back to the Meditations. Of course, elements of whatever arguments Descartes can make in this regard are to be found in the Meditations, but the conclusion is not.
work, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, is therefore an important work in... more work, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, is therefore an important work in its own right and not simply as the work of a woman. As Lady Conway and van Helmont moved closer to Quakerism, More was increasingly excluded from their company. His biographer, Richard Ward, described the tears of anguish he shed at Lady Conway's conversion to a sect he believed personified enthusiasm--an anathema to More. But even More was affected by Lady Conway's confession that the persecuted Quakers were the only people who could offer her comfort in her suffering (42 l). Lady Conway died at the age of forty-nine. Van Helmont performed his last service to her as a chemist. He preserved her body in spirits of wine so that her husband could have a final look before her burial. She went to her grave with the simple words "Quaker Lady" her only epitaph. In terms of sheer intellectual interest the Conway Letters have few equals, but when one adds the drama and pathos o f the lives o f these extraordinary correspondents, they are without peer. The reader cannot help but become absorbed by a story in which even the minor characters include such luminaries as George Fox, Robert Barclay, William Penn, Valentine Geatrakes, Boyle, Newton, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Leibniz. The correspondence has been splendidly presented by Marjorie Nicolson. It is a delight to reread her evocative introductions. She came to know "her old friends," as she later referred to them, as few historians are ever privileged to know their subjects. Returning to Ragley Hall after completing her edition, she describes her sense o f loss in a way that brought tears to the eyes of this reviewer. It was not, she says, the grounds, the stately rooms, nor even the portraits that made her realize how much she missed Anne Conway and her friends. "It was the tiny skeleton of a dog, found not long ago in the bole o f a great oak at Ragley, which had been struck by l ightning--a little dog of a breed unknown to English taxidermists, a skeleton they declared to be at least two centuries old. The story of that dog no one at Ragley Hall had ever known; but the memory of the editor went back across dead centuries, and for a lonely moment she realized that only she, and these men and women dead two hundred years, could know that little dog was one which John Finch had sent his sister f rom Italy, and that its name was Julietto!" (xxix). Marjorie Nicolson first brought the members of the Conway circle back to life. That they have re turned with such vigor is entirely due to the efforts o f Sarah Hutton, who has only added to the interest of this collection by including letters either overlooked or mistakenly thought too technical for inclusion. ALLISON P. COUDERT Arizona State University
... Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1988, 2743. Sleigh, Robert. Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on Th... more ... Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1988, 2743. Sleigh, Robert. Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on Their Correspondence. ... History of Philosophy in Philosophy Today and the Case of the Sensible Qualities. Philosophical Review 101 (1992), 191243. LISA DOWNING 28
This chapter focuses on Locke’s attempts to prove in the Essay II. xiii. 11–14 that we have disti... more This chapter focuses on Locke’s attempts to prove in the Essay II. xiii. 11–14 that we have distinct ideas of body and of extension. The goal is both to evaluate this anti-Cartesian foray, and to use it to reflect on some intriguing and abstruse elements of Descartes’s ontology of body. The chapter shows that Locke’s engagement with Descartes goes surprisingly deep on this issue. It illustrates how many of Locke’s points on space, extension, and solidity are clarified by seeing them as responding to Descartes’s correspondence with More, in which Descartes specifically says that impenetrability results from extension.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 09608789508570918, Jun 3, 2008
Page 1. 1 Lisa Downing [Published in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995), ... more Page 1. 1 Lisa Downing [Published in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995), 279-300.] SIRIS AND THE SCOPE OF BERKELEY'S INSTRUMENTALISM I. Introduction Siris, Berkeley's last major work, is undeniably a rather odd book. It could ...
Page 1. Locke's Newtonianism and Lockean Newtonianism Lisa J. Downing University of Penn... more Page 1. Locke's Newtonianism and Lockean Newtonianism Lisa J. Downing University of Pennsylvania I explore Locke's complex attitude toward the natural philosophy of his day by focusing on (1) Locke's own treatment of ...
The De Motu is written in good, correct Latin, but in construction and balance the workmanship fa... more The De Motu is written in good, correct Latin, but in construction and balance the workmanship falls below Berkeley's usual standards. The title is ambitious for so brief a tract, and may lead the reader to expect a more sustained argument than he will find. A more modest title, say ...
Locke's opposition to Descartes runs deep in the Essay. An obvious way to try to sum it up might ... more Locke's opposition to Descartes runs deep in the Essay. An obvious way to try to sum it up might be this: Our ideas must all come from the senses, and our senses "are scarce acute enough to look into the pure Essences of Things" (2.13.24). Let's call this the pure empiricist reading of Locke's anti-Cartesianism. If we understand "senses" here as serving as shorthand for both inner and outer sense, reflection and sensation, then this seems accurate enough. Indeed, it nicely encompasses Locke's major points of disagreement with Descartes. Most obviously, there is Locke's attack on innate ideas and principles, where Descartes is clearly a prominent target. Less obviously, most of Locke's other points of explicit disagreement with Descartes flow from his view that Descartes has made unjustified claims to know essences -the essence of mind, the essence of body. As a result, he has made unjustified claims about the certainty of dualism. As we will see in what follows, Locke's anti-Cartesian stances on the difference between body and space, on whether the soul always thinks, on the possibility of thinking matter, all connect back to this basic opposition to Cartesian overreaching in regard to essences. Further, this stark summary of Locke's anti-Cartesianism seems to fit with his own representation of his Cartesian inheritance, which, notoriously, is that it is minimal, consisting only in anti-scholasticism. That is, the only acknowledgment that Locke wishes to give Descartes is that reading his work helped him to shake off the influence of Aristotelianism: But though I must always acknowledge to that justly admired Gentleman the great Obligation of my first Deliverance from the unintelligible way of talking of the Philosophy A Companion to Locke, First Edition. Edited by Matthew Stuart.
By focusing on the First Dialogue’s use of ‘sensible quality’ rather than ‘idea’, we can draw out... more By focusing on the First Dialogue’s use of ‘sensible quality’ rather than ‘idea’, we can draw out some important morals that allow us to better appreciate its actual accomplishments. Whereas the Principles is an attack on materialist mechanism primarily via its representative theory of perception, the First Dialogue is an attack on materialist mechanism primarily via its primary/secondary-quality distinction. Viewing the First Dialogue in this light allows us to see it as more effective and insightful than we otherwise might, although it also requires us to acknowledge that Hylas is never as philosophically naïve as Berkeley sometimes seems to suggest.
it is exceedingly difficult to determine where exactly the arguments are taking place. 6 In what ... more it is exceedingly difficult to determine where exactly the arguments are taking place. 6 In what follows, I will show that Part I of the Principles contains a serious argument for demoting the sensible qualities. I will argue for the unique importance of this argument as the only argument that Descartes gives for demoting the sensible qualities that does not, in one way or another, rely on Ockham's razor. I show that locating and identifying that argument allows for a new understanding of the argumentative structure of Principles I and II vis-à-vis the nature of bodies. On my interpretation, however, Descartes' argument relies on a highly controversial premise whose justification is left obscure by the texts. In the paper's penultimate section (section 6), I develop several Cartesian strategies for justifying this premise, evaluating their relative strengths and weaknesses. In the end, I am forced to the conclusion that none of these strategies is promising. In the process, however, we will identify one way in which Descartes' physics leans (precariously) on his metaphysics. In addition, we will gain a better appreciation of what a difficult task it is, even for Descartes, to banish sensible qualities from the physical world. 3. Locating the argument: other arguments and Ockham's razor First, we need to locate the relevant arguments. It might seem that one should look to the Meditations for Descartes' justification of his conception of body, since he regarded that work as his official metaphysics (AT V 291: CSMK III 369) and he famously told Mersenne (in confidence) that it formed the foundation for all his physics (AT III 297-8: CSMK III 173). However, it is a noteworthy fact about the Meditations that it contains no argument that bodies possess no non-geometrical qualities. In the wax argument of the Second Meditation, Descartes foreshadows the geometrical conception of body, but does not attempt to establish it. In the Fifth Meditation, he shows that we have a clear and distinct conception of bodies as merely geometrical objects. From this, in the Sixth Meditation, he concludes that bodies which are extended could exist, and then, via a problematic argument from God's veracity, that such bodies do exist. Descartes warns us repeatedly that we have no reason to conclude that bodies have all the qualities that we ordinarily attribute to them on the basis of sense perception. Of course, this is not to show that they in fact lack such qualities. And, although Descartes repeatedly insinuates that we are mistaken in attributing sensible qualities such as color to bodies, he does not actually claim to have established that bodies have only geometrical qualities. 7 Rather, he states his conclusion quite precisely as follows: 6 Monte Cook (1996, 17, note 3) notes that Descartes' argument for the claim that bodies don't have color is surprisingly difficult to reconstruct. Jill Vance Buroker (1991) is driven to combing the Rules for an implicit justification for the move. 7 Thus I am somewhat puzzled by Daniel Garber's strategy (1992, 77, 85) of tracing all of Descartes' arguments for his minimal conception of body back to the Meditations. Of course, elements of whatever arguments Descartes can make in this regard are to be found in the Meditations, but the conclusion is not.
work, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, is therefore an important work in... more work, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, is therefore an important work in its own right and not simply as the work of a woman. As Lady Conway and van Helmont moved closer to Quakerism, More was increasingly excluded from their company. His biographer, Richard Ward, described the tears of anguish he shed at Lady Conway's conversion to a sect he believed personified enthusiasm--an anathema to More. But even More was affected by Lady Conway's confession that the persecuted Quakers were the only people who could offer her comfort in her suffering (42 l). Lady Conway died at the age of forty-nine. Van Helmont performed his last service to her as a chemist. He preserved her body in spirits of wine so that her husband could have a final look before her burial. She went to her grave with the simple words "Quaker Lady" her only epitaph. In terms of sheer intellectual interest the Conway Letters have few equals, but when one adds the drama and pathos o f the lives o f these extraordinary correspondents, they are without peer. The reader cannot help but become absorbed by a story in which even the minor characters include such luminaries as George Fox, Robert Barclay, William Penn, Valentine Geatrakes, Boyle, Newton, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Leibniz. The correspondence has been splendidly presented by Marjorie Nicolson. It is a delight to reread her evocative introductions. She came to know "her old friends," as she later referred to them, as few historians are ever privileged to know their subjects. Returning to Ragley Hall after completing her edition, she describes her sense o f loss in a way that brought tears to the eyes of this reviewer. It was not, she says, the grounds, the stately rooms, nor even the portraits that made her realize how much she missed Anne Conway and her friends. "It was the tiny skeleton of a dog, found not long ago in the bole o f a great oak at Ragley, which had been struck by l ightning--a little dog of a breed unknown to English taxidermists, a skeleton they declared to be at least two centuries old. The story of that dog no one at Ragley Hall had ever known; but the memory of the editor went back across dead centuries, and for a lonely moment she realized that only she, and these men and women dead two hundred years, could know that little dog was one which John Finch had sent his sister f rom Italy, and that its name was Julietto!" (xxix). Marjorie Nicolson first brought the members of the Conway circle back to life. That they have re turned with such vigor is entirely due to the efforts o f Sarah Hutton, who has only added to the interest of this collection by including letters either overlooked or mistakenly thought too technical for inclusion. ALLISON P. COUDERT Arizona State University
... Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1988, 2743. Sleigh, Robert. Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on Th... more ... Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1988, 2743. Sleigh, Robert. Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on Their Correspondence. ... History of Philosophy in Philosophy Today and the Case of the Sensible Qualities. Philosophical Review 101 (1992), 191243. LISA DOWNING 28
This chapter focuses on Locke’s attempts to prove in the Essay II. xiii. 11–14 that we have disti... more This chapter focuses on Locke’s attempts to prove in the Essay II. xiii. 11–14 that we have distinct ideas of body and of extension. The goal is both to evaluate this anti-Cartesian foray, and to use it to reflect on some intriguing and abstruse elements of Descartes’s ontology of body. The chapter shows that Locke’s engagement with Descartes goes surprisingly deep on this issue. It illustrates how many of Locke’s points on space, extension, and solidity are clarified by seeing them as responding to Descartes’s correspondence with More, in which Descartes specifically says that impenetrability results from extension.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 09608789508570918, Jun 3, 2008
Page 1. 1 Lisa Downing [Published in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995), ... more Page 1. 1 Lisa Downing [Published in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995), 279-300.] SIRIS AND THE SCOPE OF BERKELEY'S INSTRUMENTALISM I. Introduction Siris, Berkeley's last major work, is undeniably a rather odd book. It could ...
Page 1. Locke's Newtonianism and Lockean Newtonianism Lisa J. Downing University of Penn... more Page 1. Locke's Newtonianism and Lockean Newtonianism Lisa J. Downing University of Pennsylvania I explore Locke's complex attitude toward the natural philosophy of his day by focusing on (1) Locke's own treatment of ...
The De Motu is written in good, correct Latin, but in construction and balance the workmanship fa... more The De Motu is written in good, correct Latin, but in construction and balance the workmanship falls below Berkeley's usual standards. The title is ambitious for so brief a tract, and may lead the reader to expect a more sustained argument than he will find. A more modest title, say ...
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