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Adequate Causes and Natural Change in Descartes’ Philosophy

1986; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-94-009-5349-9_6

2214-7942

Janet Broughton,

Historical Philosophy and Science

Descartes uses versions of the principle that a cause must contain what comes about in its effect in his proofs that God exists and that the external world exists. I want in this paper to show that Descartes does not regard this adequacy principle simply as a formal device useful in constructing a special kind of argument, but rather regards it as a principle true of natural change in general. I shall support this claim by showing that it is that principle which generates central problems for Descartes's treatment both of causal connections between body and mind and of causal connections among bodies. My method, then, is indirect. I will be looking at these problems, and at the ways Descartes handles them, as symptoms; and I will be arguing that they arise from an underlying and thoroughgoing commitment to the conception of causality articulated in the adequacy principle.