So his position is a bit more complicated than the simplified version that is usually considered in the literature. (And I do not know how to represent it more accurately.) — Ludwig V
Here is my reference for this derivation. If you have an alternative derivation, do tell. — Wayfarer
Yes, indeed. If that passage had been taken more seriously, the history of philosophy might have been very different. Yet, he is so insistent on his substances that one has to admit that the "popular" presentation isn't wholly wrong.Nevertheless the depiction of the 'thinking thing' is very much the residue of his philosophy in popular culture. — Wayfarer
SEP on substance.The philosophical term ‘substance’ corresponds to the Greek ousia, which means ‘being’, transmitted via the Latin substantia, which means ‘something that stands under or grounds things’.
c. 1300, substaunce, "divine part or essence" common to the persons of the Trinity;" mid-14c. in philosophy and theology, "that which exists by itself; essential nature; type or kind of thing; real or essential part;" from Old French sustance, substance "goods, possessions; nature, composition" (12c.), "
And it simply means in scholastics "something that exists by itself", there is no problem conceiving something immaterial that exists by itself unless you are a close-minded physicalist. — Lionino
What's going on here is even weirder than that. Latin has a perfectly good equivalent for ousia, "being" in "esse". But somehow that got used for the Aristotle's phrase "en tôi ti esti" - literally "what it is to be". (Obviously, he can't find an actual Greek word for what he has in mind. His Metaphysics is riddled with his coinages.) — Ludwig V
Is it possible to be too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Midgley's point? — Banno
I doubt that Midgley would have disagreed with your account of Descartes. — Banno
↪Fooloso4 Is it possible to be too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Midgley's point? I doubt that Midgley would have disagreed with your account of Descartes. — Banno
From Aristotle, "something that exists by itself", is commonly translated as "subsists", and this is understood as "having subsistence", therefore "exists by itself" is a predicate. — Metaphysician Undercover
The dude was a mathematician and a natural scientist surrounded by all kinds of scholasticism and dogma — fdrake
Midgley claimed that for Descartes other people's existence had to be inferred. I said she was wrong about this. — Fooloso4
Then there's "exist". Wikipedia tells us that "The word "existence" entered the English language in the late 14th century from old French and has its roots in the medieval Latin term ex(s)istere, which means to stand forth, to appear, and to arise." (Note that our use of the word has absolutely no basis in ancient Rome.) — Ludwig V
In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.
Lionino is right, however that it arrived in English from Old French. — Ludwig V
And so a word (i.e. 'substantia') designed by the anti-Aristotelian Augustine to mean a low and empty sort of being turns up in our translations of the word whose meaning Aristotle took to be the highest and fullest sense of being. Descartes, in his Meditations, uses the word substance only with his tongue in his cheek; Locke explicitly analyzes it as an empty notion of an I-don’t-know-what; and soon after the word is laughed out of the vocabulary of serious philosophic endeavor. It is no wonder that the Metaphysics ceased to have any influence on living thinking: its heart had been cut out of it by its friends.
Is it possible to be too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Midgley's point? — Banno
You are right that we should not divide philosophers into good eggs and bad eggs, though that can make for a more exciting read. There can be both useful ideas and useless ideas in the work of any philosopher, and a balanced assessment needs to take both into account. I don't think anyone would fail to acknowledge the important intellectual developments in Descartes' work. But that doesn't mean we should forget about the mistakes that he made.Descartes has come under a great deal of criticism for the mind/body problem but it is his view of the body as mechanistic that led to advances in medicine. — Fooloso4
by not leading what she regards as a "normal domestic life" their development was arrested. — Fooloso4
Rather than a deliberate and immature choice to not develop attachments, his attachments were severed from him. — Fooloso4
You are also right that we need to be cautious in tying specific ideas in the work of a philosopher to details of their biography. Philosophers, as Midgley herself observes, are human beings and consequently often flawed. We should not rush to judgement. Most people will probably turn out to have been a mixed bag.as if if he only he had married there would not have been the turn to subjectivism. — Fooloso4
There are many words of which it is futile to ask what their meaning is. These terms are among them, in my view. (I don't even really understand what the meaning of being is supposed to be.)My personal heuristic is that classical metaphysics allows for a distinction between what exists and what is real which are generally assumed to be coterminous. I've had many lengthy and often vexed debates about this topic here over the years, centered around my claim that the term 'ontology' is concerned with 'the meaning of being', and not with 'the nature of what exists', which is the proper concern of the natural sciences. — Wayfarer
This isn't affected by the history of the word in English, of course. But it is a nice example of how the arrival of a term in a text can have more than one origin.Lionino is right, however that it arrived in English from Old French.
— Ludwig V
Descartes' Principia Philosophiae was published in Latin, in which I presume the word 'substantia' would have been used (although I'm open to correction). — Wayfarer
Isn't there a view somewhere in Aristotle that things that best "realize" their form (essence) - i.e. realize their potential - are the best because most real. Something like that.In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist.
Well, I gather you more or less agree with substance dualism, a notion that I cannot see as coherent. I decide to move my hand, the damn thing moves; I take the drugs, the pain goes away. I can't see how such facts can be made to fit Descartes without folly.I think Midgley makes a good point, and I generally enjoy reading her work, but I'm always interested in discussions of Descartes. — Wayfarer
the fact that he found it necessary to try and account for the interaction between mind and body through the pineal gland, is also indicative of the sense in which he treats the mind as something objectively existent. — Wayfarer
Well, I gather you more or less agree with substance dualism, a notion that I cannot see as coherent. I decide to move my hand, the damn thing moves; I take the drugs, the pain goes away. I can't see how such facts can be made to fit Descartes without folly. — Banno
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Pp35-36
Explaining how the ghost interacts with the machine is your problem. — Banno
There is a doctrine about the nature and place of the mind which is prevalent among theorists, to which most philosophers, psychologists and religious teachers subscribe with minor reservations. Although they admit certain theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome without serious modifications being made to the architecture of the theory.... [The doctrine states that] with the doubtful exceptions of the mentally-incompetent and infants-in-arms, every human being has both a body and a mind.... The body and the mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body the mind may continue to exist and function. — Gilbert Ryle
One of the consequences of the approach Descartes takes is substance dualism. It's not, for him, the body that does the doubting. — Banno
You do understand that in your quote, Ryle is setting out his target, not defending a doctrine. — Banno
What is your claim? — Banno
Again - my claim is that due to the form that Cartesian dualism assumed, that there is a kind of widespread, implicit dualism of mind and body or spirit and matter that is endemic in culture. And that the untenability of the idea of a 'thinking substance' or 'thinking thing' has had huge influence of philosophy of mind ever since, it is one of the principal causes of the dominance of physicalism in mainstream philosohpy (remember your surveys in which only 1% of respondents hold to alternatives to physicalism?) Which is implicit in the question you asked. — Wayfarer
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