Larger Than Life

If two or more substances, distinct in essence not merely in number, can form a union, it is little wonder that collections of such composites can also form unions. The difference between the union of mind and body and social and political unions, however, is that the latter depend not upon God (directly) but upon the wills of individual humans who create them. The force behind the creation of communities is a passion, love, which Descartes defines as a willing to join oneself in union with others. As a passion, love is dependent upon the body, and as an act of will, upon the divine element within the soul. It is argued in this chapter that such unions rely on organizational and mereological principles similar to those which account for the integrity of organic bodies. It is from here that the idea of a “body politic” emerges, demonstrating the continuity of Descartes’ thinking in natural philosophy, politics, and ethics.

Bodies

Against a growing consensus that Descartes was a closet monist committed to the idea that the divisions between bodies were either modal or phenomenal, this chapter argues that Descartes held to the doctrine of actual parts and real distinctions within a plurality of extended substances. Four arguments for the monistic reading are addressed and arguments both textual and conceptual advanced for a pluralist reading. These four arguments for monism are: the argument from the incoherence of infinitely divisible substances; the argument from the absence of substantial forms; the argument against individuation by motion; and the argument from the unreality of motion. Contrary to this trend, we argue that if the concept of body is to serve the purposes of a finite Cartesian physics, there had better be real divisions between individual bodies or extended substances. Alternative interpretations of those passages which seem to suggest otherwise are advanced.

Introduction

In the Introduction, we explain what this book is about and why it is significant. The book concerns the question of whether the many ordinary objects of which Descartes speaks—including tools, automata, animals, plants, the human body, the human being, families, and nation states—have any place in his metaphysical system, or whether they should be eliminated from a properly Cartesian scientific worldview. This study is significant both for challenging the standard reductionist and eliminativist readings of Descartes’ natural philosophy and for offering a different way of thinking about such issues in contemporary debates. The introduction offers the reader a quick tour through the chapters, giving a concise overview of the aims and structure of the entire book.

Automata

Automata or “self-moving things” occupy a unique place in Descartes’ worldview. Lacking souls, their internal principle of motion must be accounted for wholly in mechanistic terms. Starting from the form of mechanical explanation engineers use to explain the inner workings of artificial automata—the clocks, mills, and fountain automata of his youthful experience—Descartes proceeds to argue that the same model of explanation is suitable for explaining how animals, plants, and the human body—automata made by God—operate. With these most complex organic systems demystified, Descartes hoped to have demonstrated the universality of mechanism as a science of (non-rational) nature. His recognition of the distinctiveness of such complex systems raises puzzles for what has seemed to many a commitment to a reductionist physics. Automata require special modes of explanation (specifically, functional) and appear to satisfy conditions of identity and persistence that are distinct from those that pertain to the substances composing them. This chapter advances an interpretation according to which Descartes’ notion of true and immutable natures can help to make sense of the special status afforded to automata in his philosophy.

The World as Descartes Found It

Descartes stands as the pivotal transitional figure between Aristotelian Scholasticism and modern philosophical systems. This chapter documents the philosophical trends of ancient and medieval origin that remained current in Descartes’ time and with which he grappled in developing his own ideas about composite entities and the substances from which they were composed. It presents an analysis of Descartes’ theory of distinctions according to which all three distinctions (real, modal, and of reason) are argued to have a foundation in nature, and the issue of where to fit the part/whole distinction among this typology of distinctions is addressed. By outlining the history and development of the terminology Descartes uses to make metaphysical and physical sense of the world around him, this chapter sets the foundation for further discussion of Descartes’ treatment of ordinary objects that occurs throughout later chapters of the book.

The State of the Union

The union of mind and body in Descartes’ philosophy is the paradigm example of a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Despite being composed of radically distinct kinds of substance, it has a unified nature of its own. It too is an ens per se not an ens per accidens and the subject of unique modes—sensations, passions and volitions terminating in movements of the body. It is argued that for neither Descartes’ interlocutors nor us need the terminology of “unio substantialis” entail that the mind-body union is a substance. Nor do we need to suppose that Descartes’ only interest in the union is in its phenomenology—that is, in the distinctively embodied experience we enjoy “in this life.” It is argued that the union belongs in Descartes’ theory of wholes and parts, as much a part of his metaphysics as it is of his phenomenology.

Lifeblood

In Aristotelian-Scholastic accounts that equated life with the possession of a soul, there is no particular problem explaining the distinction between living and non-living things. Descartes makes frequent references to living things and to the distinction between life and death, equating the latter to the difference between an automaton working and one that is not. The question arises how robust is the distinction between the living and the dead for Descartes? How real is the possibility of artificial life? Should we conclude that a clock is alive? This chapter examines four attempts to give an analysis of “life” in Descartes’ philosophy and finds each wanting. It is argued that the best one can do to understand what “life” means for Descartes is to look at what death involves—the gradual silting up of an automaton through the very processes that for its duration sustain and nourish it.

Systems and Functions

Descartes’ reliance on functional analyses to understand automata has struck many critics as deeply problematic, particularly in light of his rejection of the necessity of ends or final causes in physics. This chapter examines how important answering this question was to Descartes to avoid falling into the trap of vitalism, on the one side, and a materialist reduction of human nature, on the other. It advances a non-teleological analysis of “function” that steers a middle course between teleological/normative accounts and naïvely causal accounts that identify functions in terms of what they contribute to the complex causal capacities of a system. Causal functional analyses are accused of begging the question on the identity of the system to whose capacities they contribute. Drawing on an examination of how Descartes uses the notion of “function” in biological contexts and how it relates to a concept of work, implicit in his physics, it is argued that his notion of “function” is neither teleological nor causal in the standard sense, although it represents an extension of the causal approach. Descartes thus makes a unique and lasting contribution to debates about the notion of function and its place in a mechanical physics.

Conclusion

This chapter draws together themes from the previous chapters culminating in the raising of certain questions about how best to understand Descartes as a metaphysician, natural philosopher, and as an ethicist. Having shown that we are not disconnected aggregates of minds and bodies but complex subsystems embedded in increasingly complex natural, social and political systems, we find ourselves, on Descartes’ picture, thoroughly embedded in the world. From this perspective, the image of Descartes as an eliminativist, reductionist, and individualistic thinker is utterly untenable. It is thereby hoped that this book will foster new lines of discussion and inquiry into what kind of philosopher he was and how best to interpret him.