Download or read book Descartes Malebranche and the Crisis of Perception written by Walter R. Ott and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeenth-century French philosophers grappled with a lasting problem: how do we use qualities such as color, feel, and sound to locate objects in the world, even though these qualities are not real? Walter Ott explores the debate about perceptual experience, covering Descartes and Malebranche alongside their less known contemporaries.
Download or read book Descartes Malebranche and the Crisis of Perception written by Walter R. Ott and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeenth-century French philosophers grappled with a lasting problem: how do we use qualities such as color, feel, and sound to locate objects in the world, even though these qualities are not real? Walter Ott explores the debate about perceptual experience, covering Descartes and Malebranche alongside their less known contemporaries.
Download or read book Descartes Malebranche and the Crisis of Perception written by Walter Ott and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naïve realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, which underwrote it. This created a problem for seventeenth century philosophers: how is that we use qualities such as color, feel, and sound to locate objects in the world, even though these qualities are not real? Ejecting such sensible qualities from the mind-independent world at once makes for a cleaner ontology, since bodies can now be understood in purely geometrical terms, and spawns a variety of fascinating complications for the philosophy of perception. If sensible qualities are not part of the mind-independent world, just what are they, and what role, if any, do they play in our cognitive economy? We seemingly have to use color to visually experience objects. Do we do so by inferring size, shape, and motion from color? Or is it a purely automatic operation, accomplished by divine decree? This volume traces the debate over perceptual experience in early modern France, covering such figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Régis alongside their better-known countrymen René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche.
Download or read book Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy written by Donald Rutherford and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-02 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.
Download or read book Malebranche and Ideas written by Steven M. Nadler and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was one of the leading French followers of Descartes and was one of the most influential philosophers in the seventeenth century. His metaphysical, epistemological, and theological doctrines - in particular, his occasionalism and the vision in God - were a focus of debate challenged by Arnauld, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and others. Malebranche's synthesis of Augustinianism and an unorthodox Cartesianism undoubtedly stands as one of the grand systems of the period. In past work, Malebranche's account of the nature of ideas and their role in knowledge and perception has been greatly misunderstood by both his critics and commentators. In Malebranche and Ideas, Nadler offers a new interpretation of the role ideas play in Malebranche's theories of knowledge and perception. He argues that Malebranche's ideas should be seen as essences or logical concepts, and that our apprehension of them is thus of a purely intellectual character and serves to provide us with knowledge of eternal truths. He then shows that the visionary representationalist reading usually given) to Malebranche's theory of perception simply misconstrues the nature of ideas and the role he intended them to play in perception. Nadler's discussion includes detailed analyses of Malebranche's notion of representation and of his arguments for the presence of divine ideas in knowledge and perception. These aspects of Malebranche's system are considered both in the light of his Cartesian and Augustinian commitments and in the broader seventeenth-century philosophical context.
Download or read book Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy written by Dominik Perler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book re-examines the roles of causation and cognition in early modern philosophy. The standard historical narrative suggests that early modern thinkers abandoned Aristotelian models of formal causation in favor of doctrines that appealed to relations of efficient causation between material objects and cognizers. This narrative has been criticized in recent scholarship from at least two directions. Scholars have emphasized that we should not think of the Aristotelian tradition in such monolithic terms, and that many early modern thinkers did not unequivocally reduce all causation to efficient causation. In line with this general approach, this book features original essays written by leading experts in early modern philosophy. It is organized around five guiding questions: What are the entities involved in causal processes leading to cognition? What type(s) or kind(s) of causality are at stake? Are early modern thinkers confined to efficient causation or do other types of causation play a role? What is God's role in causal processes leading to cognition? How do cognitive causal processes relate to other, non-cognitive causal processes? Is the causal process in the case of human cognition in any way special? How does it relate to processes involved in the case of non-human cognition? The essays explore how fifteen early modern thinkers answered these questions: Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Louis de la Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ralph Cudworth, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, John Sergeant, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. The volume is unique in that it explores both well-known and understudied historical figures, and in that it emphasizes the intimate relationship between causation and cognition to open up new perspectives on early modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics.
Download or read book The Cartesian Brain written by Denis Kambouchner and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-23 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents new research on Cartesian psychophysiology that combines historical and textual analysis with a consideration of recent advances in contemporary neuroscience research. It seeks to explain why the Cartesian theory of the brain and its communication with the mind still offer a remarkable model for cognitive studies. New research in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science has reignited interest in the role and the structure of the "Cartesian brain" among scholars of Descartes. This volume rethinks Cartesian psychology from the perspective of physiology, with the aim of redetermining the contributions of the brain and central nervous system to mental phenomena. The first part of the volume concerns the details of Descartes’s own physiological account of the brain. The discussion covers his treatment not only of the anatomy of the brain but also of the mode of interaction between mind and body, in which the pineal gland plays a central role, and of the relation between the brain and the rest of the body. The second part considers the reception and legacy of the Cartesian brain. The focus here is on understanding how Cartesian psychophysiology was received by Descartes’s early modern contemporaries and immediate successors, as well as on the relevance of the Cartesian brain for contemporary neurophysiology and cognitive science. The Cartesian Brain is an essential resource for scholars and advanced students interested in Descartes, history of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.
Download or read book Descartes s Method written by Tarek Dika and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-02 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tarek Dika presents a systematic account of Descartes' method and its efficacy. He develops an ontological interpretation of Descartes's method as a dynamic and, within limits, differentiable problem-solving cognitive disposition or habitus, which can be actualized or applied to different problems in various ways, depending on the nature of the problem. Parts I-II of the book develop the foundations of such an habitual interpretation of Descartes's method, while Parts III-V demonstrate the fruits of such an interpretation in metaphysics, natural philosophy, and mathematics. This is the first book to draw on the recently-discovered Cambridge manuscript of Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1620s): it gives a concrete demonstration of the efficacy of Descartes's method in the sciences and of the underlying unity of Descartes's method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind to Principles of Philosophy (1644).
Download or read book Through the Eyes of Descartes written by Cecilia Sjöholm and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I shall here present my life," writes Descartes in Discourse on Method, "as in a painting" and my method "as a fable." Through the Eyes of Descartes demonstrates how a Cartesian aesthetics is interwoven in his thought. It brings together a variety of materials: his metaphysical writings and essays in natural philosophy, through to his letters, drawings, and printed images. Cecilia Sjöholm and Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback seek to bring Descartes into dialogue with contemporary phenomenology as well as contemporary psychoanalytic thought. They focus on how perception interacts with emotions and thought, and the way in which our gaze is directed toward limit-phenomena of beauty and fascination. In Through the Eyes of Descartes, Cecilia Sjöholm and Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback counter the traditional picture of Descartes by presenting his work in an entirely different light: a Descartes of the arts, of sensibility, of inner images, and of imagination.
Download or read book Descartes s Method written by Tarek R. Dika and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-27 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descartes's Method develops an ontological interpretation of Descartes's method as a dynamic and, within limits, differentiable problem-solving cognitive disposition or habitus, which can be actualized or applied to different problems in various ways, depending on the nature of the problem. Parts I-II develop the foundations of an habitual interpretation of Descartes's method, while Parts III-V demonstrate the fruits of such an interpretation in metaphysics, natural philosophy, and mathematics. The first book to draw on the recently discovered Cambridge manuscript of Descartes's Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes's Method concretely demonstrates the efficacy of Descartes's method in the sciences and the underlying unity of Descartes's method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind to Principles of Philosophy (1644).
Download or read book On True and False Ideas New Objections to Descartes Meditations and Descartes Replies written by Antoine Arnauld and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a translation of Des Vraies et des Fausses Idees by Antoine Arnauld, in which Arnauld demolishes Malebranche's version of idealism. It allows the reader with only minimal French (or Latin) the ability to recognize Arnauld's technical terms.
Download or read book Kant on Poetry Kant ber Poesie written by Fernando M. F. Silva and published by Georg Olms Verlag. This book was released on 2023 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Obwohl es verbreitet für ein bloßes Nebenthema gehalten wird, spielt das Thema der Poesie doch eine wichtige Rolle in Kants Denken. Mit dem Ziel, geläufige Missverständnisse zu zerstreuen, versammelt der vorliegende Band Beiträge verschiedener Spezialisten zur Bestimmung des Orts und der Rolle der Poesie in Kants Denken. Es handelt sich um den Versuch einer Neubewertung der Wichtigkeit der Poesie für seine moralische, politische, anthropologische, philosophische und ästhetische Systematik.
Download or read book Nicolas Malebranche written by Susan Peppers-Bates and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was one of the most notorious and pious of Rene Descartes' philosophical followers. A member of The Oratory, a Roman Catholic order founded in 1611 to increase devotion to the Church and St. Augustine, Malebranche brought together his Cartesianism and his Augustinianism in a rigorous theological-philosophical system.Malebranche's occasionalist metaphysics asserts that God alone possesses true causal power. He asserts that human understanding is totally passive and relies on God for both sensory and intellectual perceptions. Critics have wondered what exactly his system leaves for humans to do. Yet leaving a space for true human intellectual and moral freedom is something Malebranche clearly intended. This book offers a detailed evaluation of Malebranche's efforts to provide a plausible account of human intellectual and moral agency in the context of his commitment to an infinitely perfect being possessing all causal power. Peppers-Bates suggests that Malebranche might offer a model of agent-willing useful for contemporary theorists.
Download or read book The Emergence of Relativism written by Martin Kusch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debates over relativism are as old as philosophy itself. Since the late nineteenth century, relativism has also been a controversial topic in many of the social and cultural sciences. And yet, relativism has not been a central topic of research in the history of philosophy or the history of the social sciences. This collection seeks to remedy this situation by studying the emergence of modern forms of relativism as they unfolded in the German lands during the "long nineteenth century"—from the Enlightenment to National Socialism. It focuses on relativist and anti-relativist ideas and arguments in four contexts: history, science, epistemology, and politics. The Emergence of Relativism will be of interest to those studying nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, German idealism, and history and philosophy of science, as well as those in related disciplines such as sociology and anthropology.
Download or read book Malebranche Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion written by Nicolas Malebranche and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revised edition of the work which presents the most systematic exposition of Malebranche's philosophy.
Download or read book Malebranche written by Andrew Pyle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) is one of the most important philosophers of the seventeenth century after Descartes. A pioneer of rationalism, he was one of the first to champion and to further Cartesian ideas. Andrew Pyle places Malebranche's work in the context of Descartes and other philosophers, and also in its relation to ideas about faith and reason. He examines the entirety of Malebranche's writings, including the famous The Search After Truth, which was admired and criticized by both Leibniz and Locke. Pyle presents an integrated account of Malebranche's central theses, occasionalism and 'vision in God', before exploring and assessing Malebranche's contribution to debates on physics and biology, and his views on the soul, self-knowledge, grace and the freedom of the will. This penetrating and wide-ranging study will be of interest to not only philosophers, but also to historians of science and philosophy, theologians, and students of the Enlightenment or seventeenth century thought.
Download or read book Descartes on Seeing written by Celia Wolf-Devine and published by Southern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first book-length examination of the Cartesian theory of visual perception, Celia Wolf-Devine explores the many philosophical implications of Descartes' theory, concluding that he ultimately failed to provide a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception. Wolf-Devine traces the development of Descartes' thought about visual perception against the backdrop of the transition from Aristotelianism to the new mechanistic science--the major scientific paradigm shift taking place in the seventeenth century. She considers the philosopher's work in terms of its background in Aristotelian and later scholastic thought rather than looking at it "backwards" through the later work of the British empiricists and Kant. Wolf-Devine begins with Descartes' ideas about perception in the Rules and continues through the later scientific writings in which he develops his own mechanistic theory of light, color, and visual spatial perception. Throughout her discussion, she demonstrates both Descartes' continuity with and break from the Aristotelian tradition. Wolf-Devine critically examines Cartesian theory by focusing on the problems that arise from his use of three different models to explain the behavior of light as well as on the ways in which modern science has not confirmed some of Descartes' central hypotheses about vision. She shows that the changes Descartes made in the Aristotelian framework created a new set of problems in the philosophy of perception. While such successors to Descartes as Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume accepted the core of his theory of vision, they struggled to clarify the ontological status of colors, to separate what is strictly speaking "given" to the sense of sight from what is the result of judgments by the mind, and to confront a "veil of perception" skepticism that would have been unthinkable within the Aristotelian framework. Wolf-Devine concludes that Descartes was not ultimately successful in providing a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception, and because of this, she suggests both that changes in the conceptual framework of Descartes are in order and that a partial return to some features of the Aristotelian tradition may be necessary.
