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Formal Traces in Cartesian Functional Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Amelie Oksenberg Rorty
Amelie Oksenberg Rorty*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Extract

In the Passion of the Soul Descartes sets out to explain the origins and structure of intentional voluntary action, to give an account of physical behavior and motion that (in some sense) has psychological and intellectual causes.

Actually of course this is not at all what he says. He announces an analysis of the passions of the soul. But why does he define his subject as he does? His correspondence had forced a concern with questions of virtue. How is he to introduce an account of virtue in his metaphysically, scientifically oriented philosophy of mind, a theory which must accommodate his normative epistemology on one hand and his mechanistic physiological psychology on the other? Other pressures forced closely related questions. Just what is the character of the ‘substantial’ union of mind and body? What is the psychological status of perception, and what are the relations among various types of perceptions? It is these questions that Descartes sets out to answer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 545 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 1984

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References

1 Elisabeth to Descartes, May, 1943 (AT III. 661) ‘Please tell me how the mind of a human being can determine bodily spirits in producing voluntary actions, being only a thinking substance.’ Descartes’ Letters to Elisabeth, May, 1645 (AT IV.218; K 161 ff.); August, 1645 (AT IV.248; K 181 ff); May, 1646 (AT IV. 406; K 191 ff); January, 1646 (AT IV.351; K 188ff).

2 Meditations VI (AT VII. 81; H&R 192 ff.)

3 This paper was written for an NEH Summer Seminar, given at Wellesley, 1982. I am grateful to the members of that seminar for their comments. Daniel Garber and J.J. Macintosh also made some helpful suggestions, as did an anonymous reviewer for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.