Descartes's Changing Mind

Peter Machamer, J. E. McGuire

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781400830435
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Descartes's works are often treated as a unified, unchanging whole. But in Descartes's Changing Mind, Peter Machamer and J. E. McGuire argue that the philosopher's views, particularly in natural philosophy, actually change radically between his early and later works--and that any interpretation of Descartes must take account of these changes. The first comprehensive study of the most significant of these shifts, this book also provides a new picture of the development of Cartesian science, epistemology, and metaphysics.
No changes in Descartes's thought are more significant than those that occur between the major works The World (1633) and Principles of Philosophy (1644). Often seen as two versions of the same natural philosophy, these works are in fact profoundly different, containing distinct conceptions of causality and epistemology. Machamer and McGuire trace the implications of these changes and others that follow from them, including Descartes's rejection of the method of abstraction as a means of acquiring knowledge, his insistence on the infinitude of God's power, and his claim that human knowledge is limited to that which enables us to grasp the workings of the world and develop scientific theories.

Table of contents

• Cover
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER ONE From Method to Epistemology and from Metaphysics to the Epistemic Stance
• CHAPTER TWO God and Efficient Causation
• CHAPTER THREE Seeing the Implications of His Causal Views: The Response to His Critics
• CHAPTER FOUR Body-Body Causation and the Cartesian World of Matter
• CHAPTER FIVE Mind, Intuition, Innateness, and Ideas
• CHAPTER SIX Mind-Body Causality and the Mind-Body Union: The Case of Sensation
• References
• Index