Descartes’ Concept of Will

This dissertation focuses on Descartes’ concept of will. Following the Scholastics Descartes takes the will, alongside intellect, to be the main faculty of the mind. The essence of the Cartesian mind is thinking. Most Cartesian scholars take this to mean that for Descartes the essence of the mind consists of thoughts as objects of awareness. I argue that willing is not just another type of thought on a par with conceiving, imaginging, and having sensory perceptions but that willing is as much an essential feature of the Cartesian mind as awareness. Without willing there would be no thinking; willing pertains to the essence of the mind. For Descartes, the will is so free it can never be coonstrained; an unfree will is a contradiction in terms. If willing pertains to the essence of the mind and if the will is essentially free then freedom pertains to the essence of the mind. We are essentially free beings; we would not remain the types of individuals we are now without freedom. Descartes wants to evaluate our volitional performance in different circumstances while taking into account different factors: the types of ideas involved, before/after an act of will is elicited, and the overall goal of our eliciting an act of will. Given these numerous factors he works with a threefold concept of freedom of will: freedom of spontaneity, freedom of indifference due to a balance of reasons and freedom of perversity. Although we cannot be deprived of freedom we can fail to exercise our wills and thus be deprived of the rights free will affords us. The rights in question are to receive credit and praise for our conduct, both cognitive and practical. Exercising our free will affords us the right to be praised for obtaining knowledge and for regulating our passions. Descartes’ emphasis on the role of the will in the theoretical realm (making assent an act of will) and in the practical sphere (making desire an act of will) is tantamount to viewing knowledge and our personalities (or pragmatic selves) not as blessings but as accomplishments, although a benevolent God has endowed us with faculties especially well-suited for arriving at the truth and for pursuing the good. For Descartes, believing the truth is not an automatic process resulting from our mental make-up but the result of properly investigating the matter, paying attention and deliberately applying the appropriate common notion (though, extension or the union between mind and body). Similarly, leading an embodied human existence is more than acting on the guidance of our appetites and emotions; it means using reason and experience to keep emotions in check and integrate them into a coherent pragmatic self. Both in believing the truth and in creating a pragmatic self we manifest ourselves as agents: what we do is not only up to us but obtains because of us

Desc(ART) or the 21st Century Cartesian Meditator

In this paper I argue that the continued relevance of Descartes\u27 philosophy for present-day concerns can be demonstrated by bringing to bear on his Meditations state-of-the-art developments in Informal logic and Argumentation theory, specifically Leo Groarke’s approach to multimodal arguments. I show that the meditative exercises that Descartes viewed as preconditions of establishing the metaphysical tenets of his system can be recast in present-day form using technological tools and media that we are familiar with. We will see that, due to the different historical and cultural contexts, the 21st century Cartesian meditating process can be: 1) technology-enhanced (a customizable, multimodal process using images and nonverbal sounds alongside verbal claims) and 2) interdisciplinary (sensitive to and informed by the history of philosophy, of ideas and of art). Reformulated and practised in this way, Descartes’ meditative exercises can serve as tools for honing much-needed critical thinking skills and dispositions, as well as for promoting autonomous decision-making. After providing examples of this contemporary Cartesian meditation, I suggest that Groarke’s multimodal approach can be extended to reconstructing the arguments of other philosophers thus supplying a way of doing history of philosophy that is both novel and has personal benefits for its practitioners

EFFICIENT CAUSATION – A HISTORY. Edited by Tad M. Schmaltz. Oxford Philosophical Concepts. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press

A new series entitled Oxford Philosophical Concepts (OPC) made its debut in November 2014. As the series’ Editor Christia Mercer notes, this series is an attempt to respond to the call for and the tendency of many philosophers to invigorate the discipline. To that end each volume will rethink a central concept in the history of philosophy, e.g. efficient causation, health, evil, eternity, etc. “Each OPC volume is a history of its concept in that it tells a story about changing solutions to specific philosophical problems” (xiii). The series presents itself as innovative along three main lines: its reexamination of the so-called “canon,” its reconsidering the value of interdisciplinary exchanges, and its encouraging philosophers to move beyond the current borders of philosophy. By engaging with non-Western traditions and carefully considering topics and materials which are not strictly philosophical, the collections from this series aim to render the history of philosophy accessible to a wide audience. The first OPC volume to appear in print is “Efficient Causation – A History” edited by Tad Schmaltz. Using careful historical and philosophical analysis as well as interdisciplinary reflections this anthology proposes to tell the story of how efficient causation, equated nowadays with “causation” tout court, came to play its prominent role in our philosophical and scientific vocabulary. Eleven contributions cover the period from Ancient times (Aristotle and the Stoics), through the Middle Ages (both the Western and the Islamic traditions), passing through the Early Modern times (represented here by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, Berkeley and Hume), all the way to Kant and finally contemporary philosophers (classified into two opposing camps: Humean and Neo-Aristotelian). There are also four reflections which explore the applications of the notion of efficient causation to areas different from philosophy, especially the arts (literature, music, painting, etc.)