display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
19676 | Nature is devoid of thought [Descartes, by Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: It is Descartes who ratifies the idea that nature is devoid of thought. | |
From: report of René Descartes (works [1643]) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 5 | |
A reaction: His dualism is crucial, along with his ontological argument, because they make all mentality supernatural. Remember, for Descartes animals are mindless machines. |
6518 | Matter can't just be Descartes's geometry, because a filler of the spaces is needed [Robinson,H on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Notoriously, the Cartesian idea that matter is purely geometrical will not do, for it leaves no distinction between matter and empty volumes: a filler for these volumes is required. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (works [1643]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.3 | |
A reaction: Descartes thinks of matter as 'extension'. Descartes's error seems so obvious that it is a puzzle why he made it. He may have confused epistemology and ontology - all we can know of matter is its extension in space. |
16215 | Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Counterfactual accounts of causation say that a causal connection is exhausted by the counterfactuals it appears to ground. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.5) | |
A reaction: I am bewildered as to how this became a respectable view in philosophy. I quite understand that this might exhaust the 'logic' of causal relations. Presumably you can have counterfactuals in mathematics which are not causal? |