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Descartes on Causation

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Descartes on Causation
TAD M. SCHMALTZ

1
2008

1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schmaltz, Tad M., 1960
Descartes on causation / Tad M. Schmaltz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-532794-6
1. Descartes, Ren, 1596-1650. 2. Causation. I. Title.
B1878.C3S26 2007
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Je ne puis pardonner Descartes: il voudrait bien, dans toute la philosophie, se pouvoir passer de Dieu; mais il na pu sempcher de lui donner
une chiquenaude pour mettre le monde en mouvement; aprs cela, il na
plus que faire de Dieu.
I cannot forgive Descartes: in his whole philosophy he would like to do
without God; but he could not refrain from giving him a ick to set the
world in motion; after that, he had no more use for God.
Propos attribus Pascal

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Acknowledgments

Work on this book was made possible by a research grant from the Arts and Sciences
Committee on Faculty Research at Duke University. I presented some of the material
in the book as a faculty member of the 2004 NEH Summer Institute at the University
of WisconsinMadison, and also as speaker for colloquia or conferences at the
Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, Harvard University,
Simon Frasier University, the University of Oxford, the University of Sydney, the
University of Washington, the University of Western Ontario, and Washington
University in St. Louis. I am grateful to the editors of Oxford Studies in Early
Modern Philosophy for permission to reprint material in chapter 2 that appeared in
an earlier version in that journal, vol. 3 (2006).
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance, both professional and personal, of
colleagues, friends, and family. Special thanks to my Newtonian/Kantian friends
Andrew Janiak and Eric Watkins (both experts on the issue of causation in modern
philosophy) for reading and commenting insightfully on the entire penultimate version of the manuscript. I also received helpful comments on various chapters or related material from more colleagues than I can remember. With apologies to those
I have forgotten, I would like to thank Roger Ariew, Ric Arthur, Andrew Chignell,
Ken Clatterbaugh, Michael Della Rocca, Dennis Des Chene, Karen Detlefsen, Alan
Gabbey, Dan Garber, Geoff Gorham, Sean Greenberg, Dan Kaufman, Sukjae Lee,
Tom Lennon, Peter Machamer, Ted McGuire, Steve Nadler, John Nicholas, Eileen
ONeill, Andy Pessin, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Michael Rosenthal, Marleen
Rozemond, Don Rutherford, Lisa Shapiro, Alison Simmons, James South, and the
referees for the press. Thanks also to my editor, Peter Ohlin, who expertly shepherded the manuscript through to publication. On a more personal note, I owe a great
debt to my wife, Louise, and to my children, Johanna and Sam, for providing the
love and encouragement that have sustained me through thick and thin. Finally,

viii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of the late Margaret Wilson, who
not only inuenced but also supported my work on Descartes, as she has the work
in early modern philosophy of so many other scholars of my generation.
T.M.S.
Durham, North Carolina
November 2006

Contents

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction

The Scholastic Context

1.1. Medieval Rejections of Occasionalism

12

1.2. Surez on Efcient Causes and Concursus

24

1.3. From Surez to Descartes

44

Two Causal Axioms


2.1. The Containment Axiom

51

2.2. The Conservation Axiom

71

2.3. From Axioms to Causation

84

Causation in Physics
3.1. God as Universal and Primary Cause

49

87
89

3.2. Laws as Particular and Secondary Causes

105

3.3. Descartess Conservationist Physics

125

Causation in Psychology

129

4.1. MindBody Interaction and Union

131

4.2. Body-to-Mind Action

145

CONTENTS

4.3. Mind-to-Body Action


5

Causation and Freedom

163
178

5.1. Jesuit Freedom and Created Truth

180

5.2. Indifference and Human Freedom

192

5.3. Human Freedom and Divine Providence

208

Conclusion

217

Works Cited

221

Index

231

Abbreviations

In the notes and text, I use the following abbreviations, keyed to the texts in Works
Cited.

DESCARTES
AT

Descartes 196474 (ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery), cited by volume:page;


abridged English translations of RM, W, DM, PP, and PS are in Descartes
198485, vol. 1, English translations of the Meditations and the accompanying Objections and Replies in Descartes 198485, vol. 2, and abridged
English translations of Descartess correspondence in Descartes 1991.
Translations in these texts are keyed to pagination in AT.

DM

Discourse on the Method/Discours de la Methode, cited by part; in AT 6.

PP

Principles of Philosophy/Principia Philosophiae, cited by part.article; original Latin edition in AT 8-1, French edition in AT 9-2.

PS

Passions of the Soul/Passions de lame, cited by part.article; in AT 11.

RM

Rules for the Direction of the Mind/Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii, cited


by rule; in AT 10.

The World/Le Monde, cited by chapter; in AT 11.

xi

xii

ABBREVIATIONS

SCHOLASTIC CONTEXT
DA

Surez, De Anima, cited by book.chapter, and paragraph; in Opera 3.

MD

Surez 1967 (Metaphysical Disputations/Disputationes Metaphysicae),


cited by disputation.section, paragraph, and volume:page; thus, XVII.1, 6,
1:582 = seventeenth disputation, rst section, sixth paragraph, in the rst
volume, page 582. There is an English translation of disputation VII in
Surez 1947, of disputations XVIIXIX in Surez 1994, and of disputations XXXXII in Surez 2002.

Opera

Surez 1866 (Opera Omnia), cited by volume:page.

QPG

Thomas Aquinas, Questions on the Power of God/Quaestiones de Potentia


Dei, cited by question.article; in TA 13, with an English translation in
Thomas Aquinas 1952.

QT

Thomas Aquinas, Questions on Truth/Quaestiones de Veritate, cited by


article.section; in TA 14, with an English translation in Thomas Aquinas
1987.

Durandus 1964 (On the Theological Sentences/In Sententias Theologicas),


cited by book.distinction.question, and paragraph, and volume:page; thus,
II.1.5, 11, 1:131 = second book, rst distinction, fth question, rst article, eleventh paragraph, in the rst volume, page 131. Online English translation of S II.1.5 in Durandus (n.d.).

ST

Thomas Aquinas 196481 (Summa Theologi), cited by part.question.


article, and response (ad); thus, I.104.1, ad 4 = rst part, question 104, rst
article, response to the third objection. This edition includes the Latin with
facing English translation.

TA

Thomas Aquinas 187180, cited by volume:page.

Citations marked with an asterisk (*) do not have publicly available English translations. Although I have consulted the translations cited above, all translations of passages from the primary texts above are my own unless indicated otherwise.

Descartes on Causation

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Introduction

Margaret Wilson has observed that the issue of causation in the early modern period
presents the interpreter with a peculiar problem, since on the one hand, the notion
of causality is central to the periods major positions and disputes in metaphysics and
epistemology, whereas on the other hand few of the most prominent gures of the
period enter into detailed or precise accounts of the relation of causal dependence or
causal connection (Wilson 1999e, 141).1 Though Wilson uses this observation to
frame a discussion of Spinoza, Descartes would seem to provide a case in point as
well. In his argument for the existence of God in the Third Meditation, for instance,
Descartes relies heavily on claims concerning causation for which he provides relatively little explication or defense. Most notably, there is his appeal in that text to the
axiom that an efcient cause contains formally or eminently all of the reality
that it produces in its effect. There is also Descartess notorious claim in a letter to
Princess Elisabeth that we derive from the senses a primitive notion of the union
of our mind with a body that involves a conception of the forces of the united elements to interact. It is largely left to the interpreter to determine the precise status of
this notion and the precise nature of the forces involved in the union.

1. For some recent survey accounts of causation and causal explanation in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, see Yakira 1994 and Clatterbaugh 1999. For a more substantive
treatment of such accounts, see Carraud 2002. Carrauds discussion of the issue of causation
in Surez and Descartes in particular has inuenced the discussion in the present study.
Whereas Carraud focuses on the connections of causation to the principle of sufcient reason
(as reected in his title, Causa sive ratio), however, I am more concerned here with the nature
of causal connection or dependence.

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Even so, we can at least start to understand Descartess theory of causation in


terms of its relation to an older account of causality deriving from the work of
Aristotle. In the second book of his Physics, Aristotle lays out four different kinds
of cause (aition): material, formal, efcient, and nal. The material cause is that out
of which something comes to be, such as the bronze of a statue, the formal cause the
form of that which comes to be, such as the shape of the statue, the efcient cause
the primary source of change, such as the sculptor in the case of the production of the
statue, and the nal cause that for the sake of which there is a change, such as the goal
of the sculptor in producing the statue.2 This account presupposes a broader concept
of causality than that with which we are now familiar.3 Yet it also is broader than the
concept that Descartes employed, since he tended to understand causality exclusively
in terms of efcient causes.4 It is not too surprising that this shift to a focus on
efcient causation has a history. What is perhaps surprising, though, is that the development of the Aristotelian theory of causation in early modern scholasticism prepared
the way for the shift reected in Descartess writings. To understand this shift
adequately, we need to consider the scholastic context in which it occurred.
The general claim that Descartess views cannot be adequately understood in abstraction from their relation to developments in scholasticism is of course not new. There is
an established tradition in the French literature of emphasizing this relation, and several
recent English-language studies have focused on Descartess debts to scholasticism with
respect to issues in metaphysics, natural philosophy, and psychology.5 What is new,
however, is my sustained attempt here to use our knowledge of scholastic treatments of
causality as a key for deciphering Descartess often-cryptic remarks concerning various
kinds of causal connections. Sometimes the relevance of the scholastic context is uncontroversial, as in the case of the appeal in the Third Meditation to the formal or eminent
containment of the effect in its efcient cause. However, the overarching thesis of this
study is that Descartess theory of causation is in fundamental respects similar to a
medieval account of causality that many early modern scholastics rejected.
It might be thought that the medieval account to which I refer is occasionalism,
the view that God is the only real cause and creatures merely occasional causes of
changes in nature. After all, we will discover that such a view has medieval origins,
and that it was almost universally rejected in early modern scholasticism. Furthermore,

2. The characterizations of the causes, but not all of the particular examples, are drawn
from Aristotles remarks in Physics II.3, 194b15195a1 (Aristotle 1984, 1:33233).
3. For a discussion that emphasizes the oddity of the Aristotelian concept of causality
from a more contemporary perspective, see Frede 1980. Frede draws attention to the narrowing of this concept in the work of the Stoics.
4. Though see the complications for Descartess restriction to efcient causality that I discuss in 2.1.2 (ii).
5. The classic discussion in the French literature of Descartess connections to scholasticism is Gilson 1930; see also Gilson 1913a and 1925. For a critique of the understanding of
these connections in Gilson, see Dalbriez 1929 (cf. chapter 2, note 42, on the Gilson-Dalbriez
debate). For examples of recent work in English on the scholastic context of Descartess work,
see Des Chene 1996, 2000a, and 2001; Rozemond 1998; Ariew 1999; and Secada 2000.

Introduction

several of Descartess Cartesian successors endorsed various versions of occasionalism, the strongest form of which is present in the work of the French Cartesian
Nicolas Malebranche.6 As the introductory remarks in chapter 1 document, the view
that Descartes himself was an occasionalist, and indeed, the father of occasionalism,
dates from the seventeenth century. More recently, commentators have continued to
defend occasionalist readings of Descartes. Perhaps the classical source in the
English-language literature for such readings is Norman (later, Kemp) Smiths 1902
text, Studies in Cartesian Philosophy. In this work, Smith claims to nd in Descartes
the view that God conserves bodies by re-creating them at each moment, and he
takes such a view to support the occasionalist conclusion that bodies cannot be
capable of causing changes in one another: not having sufcient reality to persist,
they cannot have sufcient force to act (Smith 1902, 7374). In addition, Smith
argues that the implication of Descartess dualism that mind and body have radically
different natures leads inevitably to the denial of genuine mindbody interaction.
Though he admits that Descartes sometimes asserted that there is such interaction,
Smith insists that this evidence reveals merely that he inconsistently and vainly
attempts to escape occasionalism, concluding that the inevitable consequences of
his rationalism are one and all emphasized by his successor, Malebranche (85).7
Smiths emphasis on the problems for causal interaction deriving from Descartess
dualism is linked to what Bernard Williams has called the scandal of Cartesian interactionism, which scandal derives from the fact that there is something deeply mysterious about the interaction which Descartess theory required between two items of
totally disparate natures, the immaterial soul, and the [pineal] gland or any other part
of an extended body (Williams 1978, 287). There is the claim in the literature that at
certain moments, at least, Descartes was led by his recognition of the scandalous problem of mindbody interaction to deny that mind and body, as entities with distinct
natures, can be real efcient causes of changes in each other.8 But commentators also

6. For a survey of the different forms of occasionalism in the work of Cartesians such as
Clauberg, Clerselier, Cordemoy, La Forge, and Malebranche, see Prost 1907; Gouhier 1926,
ch. 3; Specht 1966, chs. 2 and 3; and Nadler 1997.
7. In his New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes, (now, Kemp) Smith emphasizes
more Descartess distance from Malebranche; see Smith 1952, 21217. Even in this text, however, Smith claims that the occasionalism of Geulincx and Malebranche may be explained
by the view in Descartes that God, in His re-creation of things, has to be regarded as continuously modifying them in an orderly fashion (21819).
8. For the textbook view that early modern occasionalism is a response to the scandalous
problem, see the references in the works cited in chapter 1, note 1. An example of the view
that Descartes took this problem to preclude mindbody interaction is provided by Keelings
claim: The dening attributes of mind and body being wholly different and mutually
exclusive, direct causal interaction between them, [Descartes] maintains, is necessarily impossible (Keeling 1968, 153). For variations on this claim, see Radner 1971, 1985a, and 1985b;
Mattern 1978; Broughton and Mattern 1978; Baker and Morris 1996, 13862; and Gorham
1999. In Broughton 1986, there is the more limited conclusion that Descartes was led by his
conception of the differences between mind and body to rule out genuine body-to-mind action
in sensation.

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

have revived Smiths conclusion that Descartes was committed to occasionalism in his
physics. There is, for instance, Daniel Garbers claim that it seems to me as clear as
anything that, for Descartes, God is the only cause of motion in the inanimate world
of bodies, that bodies cannot be genuine causes of change in the physical world of
extended substance (Garber 1993, 12).9 Despite their differences, the various interpretations connected to Smiths early discussion agree in taking Descartess system to
deviate from the standard scholastic position that both material and immaterial creatures make a genuine causal contribution to natural interactions.
Nevertheless, the deviant account of causation that I attribute to Descartes is not
occasionalism; in fact, the view I have in mind is, in the context of the medieval
scholastic debate over causality, the antipode of occasionalism, namely, the view that
creatures rather than God are the real causes of natural change. This mere conservationismso called because Gods role in natural causation is limited to the creation and conservation of the world10was simply too radical for most scholastics.
At the beginning of the early modern period, the received scholastic view was a
concurrentism that allowed, against occasionalism, that creatures have real causal
power but that nonetheless held, against mere conservationism, that God contributes
a causal concursus to every creaturely action. Descartes admittedly helped himself
to the language of concurrence in his discussions of causation. This fact serves
to explain why recent critics of occasionalist readings of Descartess theory of
causation have attempted to link this theory to a more standard sort of scholastic
concurrentism.11 However, I nd reasons internal to Descartess systemdrawn
particularly from his account of causation in physicsfor the conclusion that
created entities rather than God are the true causes of natural change. Given this conclusion, the challenge for Descartes is to reconcile the claim that creatures are
causally efcacious not only with the fundamental tenets of his ontology but also
with the doctrine, which he inherited from the scholastics, that the created world can
remain in existence only because God continually conserves it.
Scholasticism also turns out to be relevant to the debate in the literature over the
purported scandal of Cartesian interaction. I have mentioned that this scandal is
supposed to derive from the fact that mind and body differ in nature. Critics have

9. There is a more detailed defense of this claim in Garber 1992, ch. 9. Garbers occasionalist reading of Descartess physics is anticipated not only in Smith 1902 but also in Machamer
1976, 17880, and Hateld 1979, and it is embraced in Bennett 2001, 1:98100, and Gorham
2004, 400403. See also Des Chene 1996, 31241. In contrast to Smith, however, Garber
emphasizes that his interpretation does not take Descartes to be an occasionalist in a
Malebranchean sense, since it allows him to attribute causal powers to nite minds as well as to
God; see Garber 1992, 299305.
10. This label was not used in the medieval or early modern periods but derives from the
contemporary literature; see chapter 1, note 4.
11. See, for instance, Della Rocca 1999 and forthcoming; Pessin 2003; and Hattab 2000,
2003, and 2007. See also Clatterbaugh 1995 and 1999, ch. 3, though Clatterbaugh emphasizes
that the kind of concurrentism he attributes to Descartes differs fundamentally from the old
scholastic version of this doctrine.

Introduction

charged that what renders this sort of difference incompatible with mindbody interaction is Descartess scholastic axiom requiring the containment of the reality of an
effect in its cause.12 Over the past couple of decades, several apologists have
responded on Descartess behalf that the axiom itself is perfectly consistent with his
own commitment to mindbody interaction.13 However, this line of defense has not
always been supplemented with a detailed consideration of the relevant scholastic
context of this axiom.14 Here I make such a consideration the centerpiece of my
argument that this axiom raises no general problem in Descartes for mindbody
interaction. Yet in contrast to much of the apologetic literature, I also claim that there
were in scholasticism specic difculties for interaction between material and
immaterial entities that were more pressing for Descartes than the purportedly scandalous problem that has tended to preoccupy recent commentators.
As the foregoing remarks indicate, there is an emphasis in this study on the context, and more specically the scholastic context, of Descartess theory of causation.
Chapter 1 is devoted to a consideration of that context. I start with a brief account of
the origins of occasionalism in medieval Islamic theology and then turn to the rejection of this account of causation in later medieval thought. Though concurrentism
was the dominant alternative to occasionalism offered during this period, I also consider arguments for the more radical mere conservationist alternative. In addition to
the medieval responses to occasionalism, though, an important part of the scholastic
context of Descartess theory of causation is provided by the distinctive metaphysical framework for efcient causality in the work of the early modern scholastic
Francisco Surez. I highlight in particular those features of this framework that prepare the way for the transition from a more traditional Aristotelian view of causality
to what we nd in Descartes.
Then I turn in chapter 2 from the scholastic context to Descartess own views, starting with an endorsement of basic causal axioms that reveals most clearly his debts to
scholasticism. Here I counter the suspicion that his discussion of these axioms does not
reect a particularly deep view of causality. Indeed, I argue that Descartes is best read
as adapting abstract constraints that he inherited from the scholastics to t his radically
anti-scholastic ontology. Yet though I side with the apologists in taking Descartess
causal axioms to allow for the causal efcacy of created beings, I also emphasize the
negative point that his remarks concerning these axioms do not settle the issue of his
nal position regarding the three main accounts of causation that emerged from the
medieval period, namely, occasionalism, concurrentism, and mere conservationism.
To discern his true intentions with respect to these accounts, we need to consider
Descartess treatments of concrete instances of causal interaction.
Chapter 3 concerns the treatment in Descartess physics of bodybody interaction.
We have already encountered the occasionalist interpretation of Descartess physics.

12. Thus, the axiom is prominent in discussions in the literature cited in note 8.
13. See, for instance, Richardson 1982 and 1985; Loeb 1981, 13449, and 1985; Bedau
1986; ONeill 1987; Jolley 1987; Schmaltz 1992b; and Wilson 1999b.
14. An important exception to this is ONeill 1987; I discuss her reading of Descartess
causal axiom further in 2.1.3 (ii).

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Such an interpretation may seem to be conrmed by his own claimcentral to the


metaphysical foundations of his physicsthat God is the universal and primary cause
of motion.15 However, I argue that the particular account in Descartes of the ordinary
concursus that God provides as primary cause of motion in fact supports the mere conservationist position that such a concursus consists simply in the continued creation of
matter in motion. Changes in motion are to be explained by appeal not to this concursus but rather to the features of bodies that correspond to the bodily forces that
Descartes posited in his physics.
In chapter 4, I consider causal interaction in the context of Descartess dualistic psychology. As even Smith acknowledges, Descartes explicitly allowed for genuine causes
other than God in the case of both body-to-mind action and mind-to-body action. In
each case, however, there are complications for his account of causation that differ from
the more familiar scandal of Cartesian interactionism but that are linked to earlier
scholastic discussions. Moreover, Descartess conservationist physics creates difculties for his view of mind-to-body action that he never fully confronted. Even so, his suggestion throughout is that Gods contribution to mindbody interaction is exhausted by
his continued production of the natures that serve to explain such interaction.
Finally, in chapter 5 I take up the special considerations for Descartess theory of
causation that arise from the case of our free action. In this case especially it is
important not to succumb to the temptation of taking the easy way out by considering his views in abstraction from their scholastic context. We can adequately understand what he has to say about human freedom only in relation to different views
within scholasticism concerning the indifference of our free action and of the
compatibility of that action with divine foreknowledge and providence. Descartess
discussion of human freedom is distinguished from all other scholastic accounts by
the fact that it presupposes his idiosyncratic doctrine of the divine creation of eternal truths. However, it turns out that the implication of this doctrine that God is the
cause even of truths concerning our free action does not compromise Descartess
considered position that our undetermined will, rather than God, is the immediate
causal source of that action. Once again I nd reason to distance Descartes not only
from occasionalism but also from the concurrentism that was so prominent in early
modern scholasticism.

15. See the view in Smith 1902 discussed above, as well as the literature cited in note 9.

The Scholastic Context

In his 1696 Doubts concerning the Physical System of Occasional Causes (Doutes
sur le systeme physique des causes occasionnelles), the then-future perpetual secretary of the Paris Acadmie des sciences, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, offered an
introductory histoire des causes occasionnelles. There he claims that occasional
causes are not ancient, but in fact derive from the dualism of Descartes. Descartess
view that mind as thinking substance is really distinct from body as extended substance introduced an extreme disproportion between that which is extended and that
which thinks. Given this disproportion, the question arose how bodily motions
cause thoughts in the soul and how thoughts in the soul cause motions in the body.
Recognizing that motion and thought have no natural connection and therefore
cannot be regarded as real causes, Descartes invented the theory of occasional
causes, according to which God on the occasion of bodily motion, could imprint a
thought in the soul, or on the occasion of a thought of the soul, imprint a motion in
body (Fontenelle 19892001, 1:52930). Here is an early source for the old textbook
view that occasionalism arose from the problem in Descartes of explaining how substances as different in nature as mind and body could interact.
In fairness to Fontenelle, it must be said that he does not endorse the suggestion
in the textbooks that occasionalism is merely an ad hoc solution to the Cartesian
problem of mindbody interaction.1 He notes in the Doubts, after all, that Descartes
appealed to the occasional causes that owed their birth to the system of the soul in
order to provide an explanation of how motion can be communicated in collision.
1. For the textbook view, see also the English-language literature cited in Nadler 1997,
7576, n.1, and the German- and English-language literature cited in Perler and Rudolph 2000,
15, n.1. The authors of the texts including these citations are themselves critical of this view.

10

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

According to Fontenelle, Descartes made God the true cause that, on the occasion
of the collision of two bodies, transported the motion of the one into the other
(1:530). To an extent, then, Fontenelle anticipates the recent objection that early
modern occasionalism addressed problems concerning the physics of force, as well
as those concerning the metaphysics of dualism.2
Even so, the view common to Fontenelle and the textbooks that occasionalism
originated in Descartes is, in a word, false. In fact, the theory was quite ancient by
the time of Descartess birth. Occasionalism owes its origins not to Cartesian metaphysics and physics, but rather to a view of divine omnipotence that was prominent
within a certain group of medieval Islamic theologians. Islamic occasionalism was
subject to attack during the High Middle Ages, when a consensus was reached that
settled on the position that God as primary cause communicates his power to secondary causes in nature. Later thinkers proposed importantly different accounts of
secondary causality, but by the beginning of the seventeenth century occasionalism
was all but a dead theory. So much so, in fact, that one early modern scholasticto
be discussed belowcould nd no recent author who unequivocally endorsed the
view that created things do nothing but that God instead effects all things in their
presence (MD XVIII.1, 1, 1:593).
At best, then, problems in Descartes led to the revival of an old and, by the start
of the early modern period, largely discredited theory of occasionalism. The question of whether Descartes himself endorsed a version of occasionalism is one that we
will address in due course. Before taking up his views concerning causation, however, we need to consider the context in which these views were developed. This
context is provided by Aristotelian scholasticism, which at the beginning of the early
modern period was a dominant intellectual force in Europe. The importance of
scholasticism is particularly evident given Descartess own appeals in his discussions of causation in the Meditations and elsewhere to scholastic axioms such as that
the effect must be contained formally or eminently in its cause and that the continued existence of the world depends on a divine act not distinct from his creation
of that world (see chapter 2). Closer consideration reveals that the axioms to which
Descartes appealed were in fact linked to profoundly anti-occasionalist theories of
causation. By itself, this fact does not reveal that Descartes himself rejected occasionalism. There remains the possibility that he had a revolutionary understanding of
the old scholastic concepts. But to see what he did in fact think, we need to consider
how he stood in relation to scholastic accounts of causation.
In 1.1, I begin my consideration of the scholastic context of Descartess theory of
causation with the medieval rejection (or, better, rejections) of occasionalism. I turn
rst to the most prominent form of occasionalism in the medieval period, which
derives from the Islamic tradition. My somewhat selective survey of Islamic occasionalism focuses on the discussion of this position in two important medieval
sources. Then I examine two different alternatives to this theory in the work of
Thomas Aquinas (122574), the Dominican church father, and of his Dominican

2. For this objection, see, for instance, Nadler 1997. Cf. the similar anticipation in the
views in Smith 1902 considered in the introduction.

The Scholastic Context

11

critic, the theologian and bishop Durandus of Saint Pourain (1334). Thomas held
against the occasionalists that though all operations in nature involve the operation of
the divine will, nonetheless God acts with secondary causes to bring about natural
effects. He concluded that the divine operation that results in such effects is compatible with the genuine efcacy of these secondary causes. Here Thomas offered a view
that Dominik Perler and Ulrich Rudolph, in their comprehensive study of medieval
and early-modern occasionalism, have labeled causal compatibilism.3 Durandus
later protested that Thomass response to the occasionalists deprives creatures of their
causal power, and claimed that occasionalism can be resisted only if the divine contribution to creaturely causality is limited to Gods creation and conservation of secondary causes. Duranduss mere conservationism, as Alfred Freddoso has called it,4
was widely rejected in later scholasticism, and it may seem to provide no more than
a footnote to the story of the medieval rejection of occasionalism.5 However, we will
discover that his position is surprisingly relevant to Descartess theory of causation.
In 1.2, though, I move to an account of causation in closer temporal proximity to
Descartes, namely, the one in the work of the prominent early modern scholastic, the
Spanish Jesuit Francisco Surez (15481617). In singling out Surez, I do not mean
to suggest that his position is representative of scholasticism in general. In fact, it has
become increasingly clear to scholars that early modern scholasticism was not a
monolithic doctrine, but involved different mixtures of nominalist, Ockhamist,
Scotist, or hard-line Thomist positions with basic Aristotelian doctrines.6 But though
Surez was merely one scholastic among many, he is particularly important for our
purposes, since he wrote what is perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of causality in the early modern period. In this treatment, which he included in his massive
Metaphysical Disputations (Disputationes Metaphysic) (1657), Surez follows
Aristotelian orthodoxy in distinguishing four main causes, namely, material, formal,
efcient, and nal.7 Yet he anticipates Descartess views in taking efcient causality
to provide the paradigmatic instance of causation. Moreover, as part of his treatment
of efcient causality, Surez offers a sophisticated account of Gods causal contribution to the course of nature. In particular, he develops positions in Thomas by arguing not only that divine conservation is required for the world to remain in existence,
but also that this act of conservation does not differ from Gods initial act of creation
ex nihilo. He further articulates Thomass causal compatibilist alternative to occasionalism in terms of the position that God contributes a concursus to the action of
secondary causes that is distinct from his act of conserving such causes in existence.
I close in 1.3 with a brief consideration of the path from the scholastic account of
causality in Surez to Descartess theory of causation. Descartess theory is coupled

3. See Perler and Rudolph 2000, 154, which refers to Thomass position as
Kompatibilismus als Gegenmodell zum Occasionalismus.
4. See Freddoso 1991.
5. As it is, indeed, in Perler and Rudolph 2000, 245, n.1.
6. For two recent discussions of early modern scholasticism that draw attention to its complexity, see Des Chene 1996 and Menn 1997.
7. But see note 31.

12

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

with a spare ontology that does away with many of the forms and qualities that are
prominent in Surezs account. Nevertheless, I have indicated that Surezs emphasis
on efcient causality prepares the way for Descartes. Moreover, the discussions in
Surez of divine creation and conservation are linked to Descartess own treatment of
these notions, which are central to his theory of causation. Far more than the position
of the medieval Islamic occasionalists, Surezs views provide an appropriate standard against which to measure what Descartes has to say about causation.

1.1. MEDIEVAL REJECTIONS OF OCCASIONALISM


1.1.1. Medieval Islamic Occasionalism
Medieval Islamic occasionalism is an extraordinarily complex historical phenomenon, involving various debates among Islamic theologians and philosophers dating
from the eighth century. I cannot hope in my brief survey here to provide an exhaustive discussion of its development.8 However, I would like to present some basic
features of the position by means of a consideration of two medieval sources, the rst
a late-twelfth century discussion of Islamic occasionalism from an outsider, and the
second an insiders account of this position dating from the end of the eleventh century. The former is found in the Guide of the Perplexed (Dala- lat al-Ha- ir-n)
(c. 1190), a text of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, better known by his Greek name,
Maimonides. Chapter 73 of the rst part of the Guide concerns the views of the
Mutakallimu-n, a group of dialectical theologians within medieval Islam. At the
time Maimonides wrote, there were two main schools within this group, the rst
the Basrah School of Mutazila, and the second the Asharite School associated with
the former Mutazilite, the tenth-century theologian Asar- (Abu- lHasan al-Asar-).
There are various methodological and doctrinal differences between the two
schools,9 but the one most important difference for our purposes concerns the issue
of causality. In particular, Maimonides notes that whereas most of the Mutazilites
allowed that created powers can produce effects, the majority of the Asharites
regarded as abhorrent the view that such powers displace God as the cause of
effects in nature (Maimonides 1963, 1:203). The Asharites were thus the main
medieval proponents of the occasionalist doctrine that God is the only real cause.
In chapter 73, Maimonides offers twelve premises that he took to be common
to the Mutakallimu-n. Given the disagreement over occasionalism, he understandably
did not include this doctrine in the list. However, the issue of occasionalism is

8. But see the thorough treatment of medieval Islamic occasionalism in Perler and Rudoph
2000, 23124.
9. For instance, the Mutazalites tended to emphasize more the power of natural human
reason to discover moral and political truths, whereas the Asharites tended to emphasize its
limitations with respect to the grasp of such truths. Moreover, members of the former school
tended to emphasize the indeterministic freedom of the human will, whereas members of the
latter school tended to emphasize Gods predetermination of all events, including human action.

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13

broached in Maimonides discussion of the sixth premise, namely, that an accident


cannot endure for two units of time (Maimonides 1963, 1:194). The third premise
attributed to the Mutakallimu-n has it that these units are discrete indivisible instants
that compose time. Maimonides claims that it was a view of the majority that in
order for a certain type of accident to endure over time, God must create at different
instants numerically distinct accidents of the same species (1:200).10 Moreover,
when there is any change in accidents, it is God who brings about this change. Thus,
when we, as we think, dye a garment red, it is not we who are by any means the
dyers; God rather creates the color in question in the garment when the latter is in
juxtaposition with the red dye (1:201). In general, the view attributed to the
Mutakallimu-n is that God creates at every one of the instantsI mean the separate
units of timean accident in every individual among the beings, whether that
individual be an angel, a heavenly sphere, or something else (1:203).
The evidence that the Mutakallimu-n endorsed an atomistic conception of time
seems to be rather thin. One commentator has claimed that the only clear endorsement
of such a conception is found in a single text of one of Maimonides Islamic contemporaries, Fakhr alD-n al-Ra-z-, who was in fact not a typical Mutakallim (see Schwartz
1991, 177).11 However, Maimonides may well have thought that the conclusion that
time is atomistic simply follows from other doctrines that predominate in the writings
of the Mutakallimu-n. Indeed, in the Guide he claims that such a conception follows
merely from the rst premise he attributed to these thinkers, according to which every
body is composed of indivisible atomic parts. If this conception does follow from the
premise, then there would be good reason to attribute it to the Mutakallimu-n, since
almost all such thinkers accepted an atomistic account of matter (see Schwarz 1991,
169). Maimonides argument that it does so follow appeals to the result in Aristotle
that distance, time, and local motion must be proportionate (Maimonides 1963,
1:196).12 Given this result, if time were innitely divisible, the particles that these
thinkers took to be atomic would have to be innitely divisible as well.
One problem for this argument is that the innite divisibility of time seems to
require the innite divisibility not of the particles themselves, but only of the distance
they travel. However, another option for Maimonides would be to link the atomistic
conception of time to the sixth premise that accidents cannot endure through time. This
proposition can be found in Islamic texts dating back to ninth century, and was indeed,
as Maimonides reports, a view popular among the Asharites, who formed the majority of the Mutakallimu-n (see Schwarz 1991, 194).13 Given this opinion, it would seem

10. Maimonides mentions the minority view of the Mutazilites that certain accidents can
endure through time.
11. Indeed, Schwarzs conclusion is that of the twelve premises mentioned in the Guide,
the evidence conrms a source in the writings of the Mutakalimu-n only for Maimonides
premises 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11. For the rest of the premises the evidence seems partial at best
(Schwarz 1991, 172).
12. This result follows in turn from the Aristotelian denition of time as the measure of motion.
13. Schwarz notes that the Asharite Ba-qilla-n- (1013) dened an accident as that which
cannot exist longer than an instant (Schwarz 1991, 185).

14

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

to follow that accidents cannot endure through any divisible portion of time, and so can
exist only at an indivisible instant.
Of course, the atomistic conception of time does not itself entail that God alone
can be a cause of the accidents that exist at any given moment. Maimonides indicates
that Islamic occasionalists attempted to rule out the claim that accidents can cause
other accidents by appealing to the premise that an accident does not go beyond its
substratum (Maimonides 1963, 1:202). This premise seems to derive from the
thought that an accident is something that merely inheres in its substance, and thus
that is incapable of bringing about anything other than this inherence. Such a premise still seems to leave open the possibility that the substance produces the accident
that inheres in it. However, one reason to rule out the substance as a cause is suggested by the view, which Maimonides attributes to the Mutakallimu-n, that earlier
and later accidents are linked by means of a habit that God imposes (1:201). We
can understand this habit to consist in a lawlike correlation between the accidents.
Even if a substance could produce its own accidents, it does not follow that it can
institute the law that serves to connect these accidents to other accidents. Indeed, the
assumption among the Mutakallimu-n is that only God could establish a lawlike correlation that holds for all of the relevant accidents. Thus in the case of a human agent
moving a pen, it must be that God has instituted the habit that the motion of the
hand is concomitant with the motion of the pen, without the hand exercising in any
respect an inuence on, or being causative in regard to, the motion of the pen
(1:202). God institutes the habit operative in this case by producing in successive
instants the accidents that constitute the motion of the pen.
In the medieval Islamic philosophical tradition, there was an alternative to this
account of the lawlike habits that hold in nature. Drawing on a mixture of Aristotelian
and Platonic (or Neoplatonic) positions, philosophers such as Fara-b- (Abu- Nasr
Muhammad al-Fara-b-), in the tenth century, and Avicenna (Abu- Ali al-Husayn ibn S--na-),
in the eleventh century, insisted that the natural course of events derives necessarily
from certain forms that though emanating ultimately from God through pure intelligences, nonetheless exist in created objects. Perhaps the most direct response among
the Asharites to this position in the philosophers was provided by Ghaza-l- (Abu- Hamid al-Ghaza-l-). In his Incoherence of the Philosophers (Taha-fut al-Fala-sifah)
(c. 1095)our second medieval source for Islamic occasionalismGhaza-l- offers
refutations of the purported demonstrations in the work of the Islamic philosophers
of twenty propositions concerning metaphysics and the natural sciences. The discussion of propositions concerning the natural sciences begins with the seventeenth
proposition, according to which any departure from the natural course of events is
impossible. To defend the possibility of miraculous events, Ghaza-l- argues that the
relations between natural causes and their effects are not absolutely necessary since
they derive ultimately from the divine will. The sort of causes and effects of concern
in the natural sciences are connected as the result of the decree of God (holy be his
name), which preceded their existence (Ghaza-l- 1958, 185).
In contrast to what one might expect from Maimonides remarks in chapter 73 of
the rst part of the Guide, the section on causation in the Incoherence emphasizes
neither the atomistic conception of time nor the restriction of accidents to a single

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15

instant.14 Rather, this section opens with what we could call (following Nadler
1996) the no necessary connection argument. In particular, the argument is that the
relations between what we take to be causes and their effects cannot be necessary
given that the afrmation of the existence of the one does not logically require the
afrmation of the existence of the other, nor the denial of the existence of the one
the denial of the existence of the other (Ghaza-l- 1958, 185). It may seem a bit of a
leap to Ghaza-l-s subsequent claim that cause and effect are connected as a result
of the decree of God (185). Why couldnt there be some other source of the necessity? However, Ghaza-l- argued earlier in the Incoherence that the action involved in
causation can be attributed only to the will of an agent.15 Moreover, it seems that an
effect can follow necessarily only from the will of an omnipotent being. To be sure,
Ghaza-l-s claim that God acts either directly or through the intermediacy of angels
(186) seems to leave open the possibility that the wills of nite beings necessitate
effects. I return to this complication presently. However, it is signicant that even in
the case in which angels serve as intermediaries, God is said to be the agent responsible for causal relations in nature.
Given the strong claim in the Incoherence that causal relations hold only because
God has created them in that fashion, not because the connection in itself is necessary
and indissoluble (Ghaza-l- 1958, 185), it is not surprising that this text is standardly
read as a defense of occasionalism. However, there are some complications for such a
reading. I have just noted the complication deriving from the suggestion in the text that
God can act through the intermediacy of angels. Yet there is the further complication
that Ghaza-l- presents in the Incoherence not one but two alternatives to an account of
causation that precludes miraculous events. In addition to the suggestion that God produces the causal correlations either directly or through the intermediacy of angels, he
offers a second position that concedes the point of the philosophers that objects have
certain attributes in virtue of which they habitually produce certain effects, and
merely insists that God can miraculously impede or change the speed of natural
processes (see Ghaza-l- 1958, 19091). In the Incoherence of the Incoherence (Taha-fut
al-Taha-fut) (c. 1180), Ghaza-l-s twelfth-century critic Averroes (Ibn Rushd) takes the
fact that he offered this second account to indicate his abandonment of the strong occasionalist denial of real causal efcacy in nature, and others have insisted more recently
on a non-occasionalist interpretation of his views on causation.16
14. It is unclear whether Maimonides read Ghaza-l-s work (as indicated in the editorial
comments in the introduction to Maimonides 1963, 1:cxxvii). Even if he did read it, however,
the fact that he did not take note of Ghaza-l-s innovations may be explained by the fact that,
as Perler and Rudolph have observed, what twelfth-century Asharite theologians had to say
about causality kingt vielmehr ganz konventionell than what is found in the Incoherence
(Perler and Rudolph 2000, 109; cf. 115).
15. In particular, he argued for this conclusion in a discussion of the third proposition of
the philosophers, according to which the created world follows necessarily from Gods nature
(see Ghaza-l- 1958, 6364).
16. For this charge, see Averroes 1969, 1:31633. For a more recent example of an interpretation that questions Ghaza-l-s commitment to occasionalism, see Frank 1992.

16

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Nevertheless, there is some reason to think that Ghaza-l- offers the second account
merely for the sake of argument, and not to indicate a shift in his position. After all,
his main concern in offering this account is to show that miracles are intelligible
even given certain aspects of the view of causation offered by the philosophers.17
Admittedly, the reference to the intermediary action of angels cannot be explained
away in this manner. However, I believe that Michael Marmura has shown that when
Ghaza-l- speaks of angels as intermediaries, he means to indicate only that they are
the locus of divine action (Marmura 1995, 99). This would seem to be in line with
the emphasis in the textwhich I noted previouslyon the fact that the agent ultimately responsible for causal connections in nature is God rather than the angels. In
any event, there is in the Incoherence a forceful statement of the occasionalist position that natural causes do not necessitate their effects, but are merely linked to them
by divine decree. Moreover, the defense of this position is distinctive in the context
of medieval Islamic thought, since it focuses not on the nature of time or of qualities, but rather on the lack of a necessary connection between perceived causes and
their effects and the need for a grounding of causal relations in the omnipotent will
of God. On both points Ghaza-l- anticipated the later argument for occasionalism in
the work of Nicolas Malebranche. Thus, in his discussion in the 1674/75 Search
after Truth (Recherche de la vrit) of the error of the philosophy of the ancients,
and particularly of the Aristotelian philosophy, regarding causation, Malebranche
insists that a true cause by denition is one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection [liaison ncessaire] between it and its effect, and that the mind
perceives such a connection only between the will of a necessary being and its
effects (bk. VI-2, ch. 3, Malebranche 195884, 2:316/Malebranche 1997, 450). The
occasionalist challenge to causal realism that emerges from Ghaza-l-s Incoherence
is to explain how the doctrine that creatures have real causal power can be reconciled
with the result that all connections in nature that do not involve logical necessity
derive from acts of the divine will that alone can sufce to establish their effects.
A relevant question for usbroached by the remarks in Fontenelles Doubts that
I considered at the outset of this chapteris whether Descartes joined Malebranche
in issuing this sort of challenge.

1.1.2. Thomass Causal Compatibilism


In a thirteenth-century text, Questions on the Power of God (Quaestiones de Potentia
Dei), Thomas Aquinas devotes an article to a defense of the claim that God operates
in the operations of nature. However, he is concerned there to distinguish his view
from the position reected in the law of the Moors, as Rabbi Moses [Maimonides]

17. For this argument, see Marmura 1981. Marmura also emphasizes that the point of the
Incoherence is merely to refute the strong views of the philosophers, and not necessarily to
defend the nal truth on the matters discussed (see Marmura 1981, 9899). Marmura also
responds to Franks more revisionist interpretation (see note 16) in Marmura 1995. But cf. the
discussion of the Marmura-Frank exchange in Perler and Rudolph 2000, 7173, which is critical of some features of Marmuras position.

The Scholastic Context

17

relates, according to which all natural forms are mere accidents that God creates in
objects. Thomass initial response is that this position is manifestly repugnant to the
senses, since the senses merely passively receive the effects of sensible objects
(QPG III.7, TA 13:5859). Ghaza-l- anticipated this response when he noted in the
Incoherence that sensory effects are observed to exist with some other conditions,
but we do not see that such effects exist by them (Ghaza-l- 1958, 186). Yet Thomas
adds that it is repugnant to the divine goodness that God does not communicate
to creatures the power to produce effects. Thus, he insists that the operations of
nature follow from various created forms.18 Moreover, he responds to the view of
the Moors that everything in substance is a mere accident by drawing on his
Aristotelian ontology of material substance, according to which such substances
possess not only accidental forms, such as that of heat, that inhere in them, but also
substantial forms that unite with matter to constitute the substances (TA 13:59). In
this view, both kinds of forms serve as principles of natural operations, and thus are
not merely passive effects of divine creation.19
Given Aquinass position that natural operations derive from accidental and substantial forms, there may seem to be no room for his thesis that God operates in these
operations. As we will discover, this was in fact the objection that Durandus later
leveled against this thesis. However, Aquinas responds to this line of objection in On
the Power of God by insisting that the operation of God in producing effects in
nature is compatible with the operations of secondary causes in producing those
same effects. He appeals here to the fact that we can understand a certain effect to
be produced both by an instrument and by an agent who uses that instrument. An
example he commonly uses to illustrate the nature of instrumental causality is that
of an agent who uses a pen to write. The pen is a real cause of the written words, but
is able to be efcacious in this way only because the agent uses it to produce this
effect. Similarly, Aquinas holds that though contrary to the view of the Islamic occasionalists, secondary causes can produce effects, nonetheless they cannot produce
these effects through their own power ( per virtutem propriam), but must participate
in the power of a primary or principal cause, namely, God. In this way, a secondary cause is the instrument of the divine power of operating (instrumentum
divin virtutis operantis) (QPG III.7, TA 13:60).
To understand the nature of this power of operating, we need to compare it to
the other two divine powers of operation that are essential for the existence of the
world, namely, creation and conservation. In his Summa Theologiae, Thomas claims
that any being that does not exist by its own nature and thus is a being only by

18. This response assumes that God can communicate his power to creatures, and thus
seems to beg the question against the die-hard occasionalist who insists that it is not possible for
God to so communicate, and thereby that his failure to do so does not detract from his goodness.
Aquinas offers various other arguments against occasionalism, but these additional arguments
also arguably (though I cannot argue here) employ premises the occasionalist would reject. For
a discussion of these other anti-occasionalist arguments, see Perler and Rudolph 2000, ch. 4.
19. I say more about the details of Surezs version of this position in 1.2.1. See also the
remarks concerning Surezs metaphysics in 1.3 and 3.2.1 (iii).

18

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

participationthat is, any being other than Godcan exist in the rst place only
because of a creative act of God (ST I.44.1). Since all being by participation depends
on this creative act, moreover, the act must involve the creation of being from
nothing, that is, creation ex nihilo (ST I.45.1).
Thomas also holds that just as all beings by participation depend on Gods act of
creating ex nihilo to exist in the rst place, so they depend on his act of conservation
to continue to exist. In arguing for the need for this additional dependence on God,
he appeals to the distinctionwhich, as we will discover in due course, later became
important for Descartes20between causae secundum eri, or causes of becoming,
and causae secundum esse, or causes of being. Thomas notes that though a house
can continue to exist without its builder, this is only because the builder is a causa
secundum eri that directly produces not the being of the house and its material, but
only its coming to be a house through a certain arrangement of the material. Even in
cases of natural operations that involve more than mere arrangement, such as when
accidental or substantial forms act to produce similar forms in matter, the former are
not causes of the very being of the latter. If they were, the forms would have to cause
their own being, which they share with the being of what they produce. Rather, the
producing forms merely educe produced forms similar to them that are contained
potentially in matter (ST I.104.1).
In contrast, Thomas claims that in cases where the cause is more noble than the
effect, it can be a cause secundum esse that produces the being of the form itself. He
appeals to the fact that the sun does not merely educe light from the air, but rather
creates a new form that has no root (non habet radicem) in the nature of air.21
Because the air alone cannot support the existence of this new form, light depends
essentially on the continuing action of the sun. Thomas claims that creatures depend
on God in the same manner, and thus that without the continued action of God, creatures would cease to exist (ST I.104.1). It is important to emphasize the point here
that conservation involves merely the continuation of Gods act of creation. For
Thomas himself responds to the objection that conservation cannot add anything to
the creature not already provided by creation by noting that God conserves creatures
in existence not by a new action, but by a continuation of that action whereby he
gives being (ST I.104.1, ad 4).
In On the Power of God, Aquinas recognizes as an objection to his own position
that the only operation of God involved in the operations of nature is that by which
he either makes or conserves in being a natural power (QPG III.10, TA 13:57).
However, he responds that God is not only the cause of the operations of nature that
conserve natural powers in being, but in other modes, as has been said. What was
said in particular is that secondary causes depend on God not only for their initial

20. See the remarks concerning Descartess appeal to this distinction in 2.2.1. See also
the discussion below of the relation of this distinction to views in Durandus (1.1.3) and
Surez (1.2.2 (ii)).
21. Thomas is assuming here that light is a quality that depends essentially on the action
of the substantial form of a body that is self-luminous (see ST I.67.4 and ad 1). It is because
air is not a self-luminous body that light can have no root in it. Cf. chapter 2, note 66.

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19

and continuing existence but also for the action by which they bring about their
effects. A secondary cause acts as an instrument of a superior power; whence,
exclusive of the superior power, the inferior power has no operation (TA 13:61).
The appeal here to instrumental causality in explaining the divine power of operating provides a further reason to distinguish the acts of this power from divine creation and conservation. For when God creates or conserves a secondary cause, he is
not using that cause as an instrument, since that cause contributes nothing either to
the divine act of creation ex nihilo or to the continuation of that act in conservation.
It is only when God is using an already existing secondary cause to bring about an
effect in nature that this cause contributes something to the action. Indeed, Aquinas
holds that in this case the very same action derives both from God as primary agent
and from secondary agents (see, e.g., ST I.105.5, ad 2). Admittedly, this claim would
be nonsense if an action were something in the agent. But in fact Aquinas claimed,
in line with many later scholastics, that the action is something external to the agent,
and so is distinct from the principle in the agent from which the action issues.22 In
this scholastic view, action is not that which produces an effect, but rather the actualization of that effect, which actualization occurs in the patient. Thus, the fact that
God as primary agent and secondary agents act by means of distinct principles need
not imply that the actions deriving from those principles are distinct.
The premise that a single action can proceed from both God and creatures is key
to Thomass causal compatibilism, since without this premise the causal activity
would have to be attributed either to God alone, thus resulting in occasionalism, or
to the creature alone, thus overturning the conclusion in Thomas that God operates
in all operations of nature. We have seen already a willingness among the Mutakallimu-n
to embrace the occasionalist horn of this dilemma. But there also was a member of
Thomass own Dominican order who was willing to embrace the other horn, and so
to restrict the divine contribution to natural operations to creation and conservation.
In 1.2 we will explore the further development of Thomass causal compatibilism
in the work of the early modern scholastic Surez. Before making the transition to
the early modern period, however, we need to consider the more radical medieval
rejection of occasionalism in a text of Thomass Dominican critic, Durandus of Saint
Pourain.

1.1.3. Duranduss Mere Conservationism


Durandus was a controversial fourteenth-century gure whose critique of certain
theological doctrines in Thomas earned him two censures from Dominican authorities eager to identify the order with Thomism.23 However, we are concerned here
with his challenge to Thomistic metaphysics, and in particular with the critique

22. But see note 58.


23. In particular, Durandus was censured in 1314 and 1317 for rejecting more orthodox
Thomistic views on the nature of the distinctions among and the processions of the persons of
the Trinity. For more on the theological dispute that Durandus triggered in the Dominican
order, see Iribarren 2005.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

of Thomass causal compatibilism that he offers in the second book of On the


Theological Sentences of the Commentary of Peter Lombard in Four Books (In
Sententias Theologicas Petri Lonmbardi Commentariorum Libri Quattuor). The fth
quaestio of the rst distinctio of this section of Duranduss Sentences is devoted to
Thomass claim in the Summa Theologiae that God acts immediately in all actions
of creatures (S II.1.5, 1:130, citing ST I.103.6 and 105.5). Durandus there agrees
with Thomas that the being of a secondary cause . . . is the immediate effect of the
primary cause, which is an immediate cause not only in bringing it into being, but
also in conserving it in being (S II.1.5, 17, 1:131). He also concurs in Thomass
rejection of occasionalism, holding that this view is now rejected by everyone as
improbable, because it denies of things their proper operations and also denies the
sensory judgment by which we experience that created things act on one another
(4, 1:130). What he cannot accept, however, is Thomass view that the claim that
God acts immediately in all actions of secondary causes is compatible with the attribution of real efcacy to those causes. For Durandus, the only acceptable alternative
to occasionalism is the mere conservationist position that God contributes only the
creation and continued conservation of a secondary cause to the production of an
effect by that cause.
Duranduss initial point against Thomas is that one who holds that God acts
immediately in every action of a creature cannot say merely that God is responsible
for a certain feature of an effect. In the case of the generation of a material substance,
for instance, it would not be sufcient to claim that God produces the matter of that
substance, whereas the secondary cause produces its form. For then God would not
be acting immediately in the production of the form by the secondary cause (S II.1.5,
6, 1:130). Thus, defenders of the Thomistic position must go further in claiming
that the effects of secondary causes are from God as wholes and immediately, but
not totally, that is, not in every way (7, 1:130). The effects must be from God as
wholes and immediately to avoid what we could call the problem of the divided
effect, according to which God is responsible for one part of the effect, the secondary cause for another. But if the effects were from God totally, in every way, then
the secondary cause would seem to be doing no work, just as the occasionalist contends.24 So there needs to be some sort of complementary contribution to the production of one and the same effect.
What Durandus cannot comprehend is how an effect could be from God as a
whole and immediately but not totally. He considers the suggestion, deriving from
Aristotles remarks in the Physics, that universal aspects of an effect can be traced
back to a universal cause, whereas particular aspects of the same effect can be
traced back to a particular cause (S II.1.5, 8, 1:130). And Thomas himself suggested

24. One might think that there is the possibility of causal overdetermination. Duranduss
response to this possibility is that since actions are individuated by their effects, diverse
actions cannot result in numerically the same effects (S II.1.5, 13, 1:131). Surez later countered that though an effect cannot have more than one total cause in a certain order, it can have
different total causes in different subordinated orders (MD XXVI.4, 1:92935*). For more on
this response in Surez, see 1.2.3 (ii).

The Scholastic Context

21

this model of Gods contribution to natural operations when he claimed in On the


Power of God that instances of the causing of absolute being [entis absolute] are
traced back to the rst universal cause, whereas the causing of the other things that
are superadded to the esse, or are that by which the esse is made specic, pertains
to the secondary causes (QPG III.1, TA 13:38). However, Durandus insists that in
a living thing, for instance, esse and the determination of that esse as something
involving life differ only by reason (ratione), that is, merely conceptually and not
in reality. Since the effects in this case differ only by reason, it would seem that the
causes differ only by reason as well (S II.1.5, 10, 1:130). By the same token,
according to Durandus, it is impossible for numerically the same action to be from
two or more agents in such a way that it is immediately and completely from each,
unless numerically the same power is in them (11, 1:131). Numerically the same
power cannot be present in God and creatures insofar as Gods power is innite,
whereas the power in creatures is limited in nature. Thus, for Durandus, it cannot
be said that the very same effect derives immediately and completely from both
God and creatures. For God and creatures to cooperate in producing an effect, it
must be the case that the power in God is responsible for one feature of the effect,
whereas the power in creatures is responsible for another feature of the effect that
is distinct in reality from the feature God produces.
It might be thought that this line of response simply begs the question against
Aquinas in assuming that distinct powers cannot produce the same effect. Indeed,
Aquinas offered instrumental causality as an example of a case where the same
effect issues from both the instrument and the agent using that instrument. Why
couldnt the same be true in the case of Gods action with secondary causes? 25
Durandus objects to the comparison to instrumental causality by appealing to the
possibility that an action derive principally from a secondary cause. Since an action
that does not exceed the power [virtute] of the species of the agent is sufciently
elicited by just the power of the species, in this case it would be superuous to
posit another immediate principle eliciting such an action (S II.1.5, 11, 1:131). We
will discover presently that Surez attempted to address this objection by drawing
a distinction between instrumental and principal causality that nonetheless provides
room for Gods concursus in the case of the action of principal secondary causes
(see 1.2.3 (ii)). However, Durandus could argue that there is an additional problem
with the analogy to instrumental causality. In particular, he could point out that in
the case of the use of the pen, the fact that the words are black and the fact that there
are certain words rather than others pick out distinct effects. On the Aristotelian view
common to Thomas and Durandus, the color and the shape of the words are different accidental features of it. Durandus thus could argue that in this case these distinct
effects derive from distinct causes.
This line of argument does not establish that there are no cases in which the same
effect derives from different powers. Indeed, it is not clear to me that Durandus has
an argument for this conclusion that does not rely on the assumption that distinct

25. For this line of objection to Durandus, see Freddoso 1994, 14850.

22

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

causal powers cannot issue in the very same effect. In the Summa Theologiae,
Thomas allows there cannot be more than one complete cause of a single effect that
belongs to the same causal order, thus ruling out a kind of causal overdetermination.
However, he also claims that such an illicit overdetermination is not present in the
case of Gods cooperative action with secondary causes, since these causes belong
to a different causal order than God (ST I.105.5, ad 2).26 Given that Durandus failed
to address this distinction between total causes of the same order and total causes of
different orders, his argument for the impossibility of Thomistic causal compatibilism cannot be regarded as conclusive.
Nevertheless, it will turn out that the question of whether Durandus succeeded in
refuting Thomas is less important for our purposes than the question of whether his
mere conservationism is itself a tenable position.27 Thus, it is appropriate that we
now switch from offense to defense, as it were, and consider Surezs argument
against Durandus that the conclusion that God acts immediately in every action
of the creature simply follows from the claim, on which Durandus himself insisted,
that all beings depend on God immediately for their conservation in existence once
they are produced. For Surez, creatures are no less dependent on God for their initial production than they are for their subsequent conservation. As he expresses the
argument,
[I]f it is not the case that all things come to exist immediately from God, then
neither is it the case that they are conserved immediately, since a thing is related
to being [esse] in the same way it is related to becoming [eri]. For the being of a
thing cannot depend more on an adequate cause after it has been made than it did
when it was made. (MD XXII.1, 7, 1:803)

This argument is strengthened by Surezs doctrine that the act by which God conserves a being in existence is merely a continuation of the act by which he causes that
being to exist in the rst place (see 1.2.3 (i)). Given this doctrine, it would be natural to conclude that if God is not the immediate source of the existence of an object,
he cannot conserve that object by continuing the act by which he immediately produced it. However, there is a way of expressing the point of Surezs argument that
does not rely on his particular account of divine conservation. For one basic objection
here is that given that a secondary cause can immediately and completely produce the
esse of an object on its own, there seems to be no reason to deny that it can immediately and completely conserve that esse. Surez notes that it is as obvious to the
senses that there are conserving secondary causes as it is that there are productive

26. Cf. the remarks in note 24.


27. I would just mention, however, Freddosos proposal that one can make sense of the
fact that God and secondary causes make different contributions to the effect not by splitting
the effect, as Durandus requires, but rather by distinguishing different states of affairs that
concern a unitary effect (Freddoso 1994, 150). As Freddoso himself admits, this proposal is
in need of further articulation and defense, and it is not entirely clear that when these are provided we will have a viable alternative to Duranduss position. But it also is not clear from
what Durandus has said that no such alternative proposal could succeed.

The Scholastic Context

23

secondary causes. To expand on an example he used, the senses reveal not only that
re produces the quality of heat in water, but also that heated water itself conserves
this quality after the re has ceased (MD XXII.1, 8, 1:804). Yet if the water were a
secondary cause in Duranduss sense, namely, one that produces its effects immediately by itself, then it could not be the case that God immediately conserves the heat
in the absence of the re. It therefore would not be the case, contrary to what
Durandus claimed, that God immediately conserves all beings in existence.28
There may be a way around this objection that draws on the distinction in Thomas
between causes secundum eri and secundum esse (see 1.1.2). Durandus suggests
the strong view that God cannot be in any way an immediate cause of the effects of
secondary causes. But we could perhaps modify this view to say only that God cannot be the immediate cause both secundum eri and secundum esse of such an effect.
This modication would allow for the position that God is the sole cause secundum
esse of an effect that secondary causes produce as its sole causes secundum eri.
Thus, for instance, God alone would be the cause of the esse of forms educed from
matter, whereas secondary causes alone would be the cause of the educing of forms
with that esse. This proposal would clearly seem to allow for conservationism given
that Thomas had introduced the distinction between the two causes in the rst place
to defend the thesis that all creatures need to be kept in existence by God (ST I.104.1).
Duranduss claim against Aquinas that the esse of a particular object is only conceptually distinct from the determinate form of its esse (see S II.1.5, 6, 1:130) perhaps requires that the secondary cause of the eri of this determinate form also be the
immediate cause of its esse. If so, he could not in the end allow for the division of
causal labor in the production of the object that my modication of his view requires.
But whether or not Durandus could accept it, there seems to be at least some conceptual room for the position that God as primary cause is responsible for what is
actual in causal interactions, namely, the esse of both cause and effect, whereas secondary causes are responsible for changes in what is actual, namely, what Thomas
called the eri of the effect. If the fact that God alone is the cause secundum esse of
all natural effects is compatible with the fact that secondary causes alone are causes
secundum eri of those same effects, we would seem to have a version of mere conservationism that sidesteps one of Surezs main objections to Durandus. More to the
point, given the topic of this book, we may well have a version of this position that
Descartes could accept.
To determine whether Descartes could accept this sort of mere conservationism, however, we must settle the question of whether he even allowed that secondary causes can
produce changes in objects and, if so, whether he held that such causes can produce these
changes immediately and completely by themselves, without any assistance from God
that goes beyond his creating and conserving activity as the cause secundum esse of the
world. A positive answer to the rst part of this question would reveal that he followed
the vast majority of scholastics in rejecting occasionalism. A positive answer to the second part would indicate that he deviated from most scholastics, and in particular from

28. I borrow here from the discussion of this Surezian objection to Durandus in Freddoso
1991, 56669.

24

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Surez, in accepting a form of Duranduss mere conservationism. I will be concerned to


address these issues in the course of the discussion in the following chapters of various
aspects of Descartess theory of causation. Before turning to Descartes, though, I need to
consider Surezs account of causality, since such an account is a particularly important
part of the scholastic context of that theory.

1.2. SUREZ ON EFFICIENT CAUSES AND CONCURSUS


Surezs Metaphysical Disputations includes a mini treatise on causality that spans
disputations XII through XXVII and covers a total of 590 pages in the Vivs edition, or
about a third of the total work. This treatise concerns the familiar quartet of Aristotelian
causesmaterial, formal, efcient, and nal.29 However, disputations XVII through
XXII, which cover a total of 263 pages, or close to half of the treatise on causality, concern exclusively the case of efcient causes. This imbalance reects Surezs conclusion at the start of his discussion of causation that the whole denition of the cause is
most properly suited to efcient [causes] (MD XII.3, 3, 1:389*). Such a conclusion
in fact provides a bridge from a traditional Aristotelian account of the four causes
to Descartess restriction of explanations in natural philosophy to efcient causes.30
Moreover, we will discover that Surezs discussion of efcient causes is particularly
relevant to Descartess theory of causation, since the former includes his treatment of
the nature of Gods efcient causality in creation, conservation, and concurrence.
Before turning to the particular features in Surez that serve to link his account
of causality to what we nd in Descartes, however, I pause to consider Surezs general project in the Disputations of renovating scholastic metaphysics. I provide a
sketch of the context of this project that, though very rough, hopefully serves to indicate the signicance of Surezs contributions to scholastic metaphysics as well as
the relevance of these contributions for Descartess views (1.2.1). Then I take up
the account of causality in the Disputations, beginning with a discussion of Surezs
treatment of the four main Aristotelian causes that highlights his view that efcient
causes have a special kind of priority (1.2.2).31 Finally, I consider his account of the

29. Following an initial disputation, entitled De causis entis in communi, disputations XIII
and XIV are devoted to material causes, disputations XV and XVI to formal causes, disputations XII to XXIV to nal causes, and disputation XXV to exemplary causes (see note 31).
The section on causation closes with disputation XXVI, concerning the relation between
cause and effect, and disputation XXVII, concerning the relation of causes among themselves.
30. But see the discussion in 2.1.2 of the complications for this view in Descartes.
31. As indicated in note 29, Surez also devotes a section of his treatise on causation to
exemplary causes, which involve the inuence of ideas in the production of an effect, a category of cause that, as he emphasizes, derives from the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian tradition (see MD XXV.1, 1, 1:899*). We can set aside this non-Aristotelian category of causes
given Surezs own endorsement of the view of those who deny that the exemplary cause constitutes a proper genus of cause, but who say that it pertains to the efcient cause (MD XXV.2,
8, 1:913*). For a discussion of Surezs reasons for this endorsement, Carraud 2002, 15052.

The Scholastic Context

25

distinctive sort of efcient causality exhibited in the three main divine contributions
to causation in nature, namely, creation, conservation, and concurrence (1.2.3).
Drawing on views in Thomas that we have considered, Surez not only denies that
divine conservation is distinct in reality from Gods act of creation ex nihilo, but also
concludes that in addition to creation and conservation God contributes a distinct
concursus to the action of secondary causes.

1.2.1. Renovating Scholastic Metaphysics


Surez belonged to a metaphysical tradition that Stephen Menn has labeled liberal
Jesuit scholasticism (Menn 1997).32 As with most labels, this one requires some
explanation and qualication.33 An initial point is that though Iberian Jesuits were
most prominent in this tradition, one of its main pioneers during the midsixteenth
century, more than a generation before Surez, was the Dominican Domingo de
Soto.34 Soto is distinguished from his hard-line Thomistic contemporary Cajetan by
his acceptance of the voluntarist axiom, deriving from the Paris Condemnation of
1277, that God can produce any creature in separation from any other creature really
distinct from it.35 The signicance of this departure from orthodox Thomism is indicated by Descartess appeal in the course of his Sixth Meditation argument for
mindbody distinctness to the principle that God can create separately what we can
clearly and distinctly understand apart from each other (AT 7:78).
What is liberal about the view of Soto and the later Jesuits is the way in which
the voluntarist axiom that later appeared in Descartes led them to deny the more conservative view that the Aristotelian categories faithfully reect real distinctions in
being. For the hard-line Thomists, the category of substance and the nine categories
of the predicamental accidents (viz., quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, time,
place, position, and having) pick out non-overlapping kinds of really distinct res. In
contrast, the liberal opponents of Thomistic orthodoxy held that the impossibility of
conceiving of members of certain categories as existing apart from members of other
categories reveals that the former are in fact not res really distinct from the latter.

32. Though I suggest some renements of Menns characterization of this tradition, my


remarks in this section are indebted to his exemplary discussion of it. For a general study of
Surezs metaphysics, see also Courtine 1990.
33. Menn himself notes some concerns about his label in Menn 2000, 120.
34. Soto (14941560) inuenced the work of such prominent Jesuits as Pedro da Fonseca
(152899), Francisco de Toletus (153496), Luis de Molina (15351600), and the Spanish
school of the Conimbricenses.
35. Though the axiom is not explicitly endorsed in the Condemnation, there is a repeated
condemnation in this text of propositions that seek to limit divine power. Included are condemnations of purported implications of the teachings of Aquinas, such as the claim that God cannot
multiply individuals of the same species without matter (see props. 42, 43, 110, and 116 in the
reorganized and translated version of the Condemnation in Lerner and Mahdi 1995, 33554). As
indicated in Menn 1997, 229, Cajetan rejected the axiom and held that any anti-Thomistic
elements of the Condemnation were revoked when Thomas was made a saint (in 1323).

26

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

We can illustrate this difference in terms of what was, for the scholastics, the particularly problematic case of shape. On the Aristotelian view that the scholastics inherited, shape belongs to the fourth species of the category of quality, a category that itself
is distinguished from the category of quantity.36 The conservative line of the
Thomistae was that the mere distinction of these categories sufces to reveal that shape
is a res distinct from quantity, even though not even God can create a shape apart from
quantity.37 However, many Jesuit scholastics took the voluntarist axiom to show that
shape cannot be a res distinct from quantity, and thus that it does not follow from the
fact that shape and quantity belong to distinct categories that they are distinct beings.
In denying that shape and quantity are distinct res, Surez and other liberal Jesuit
scholastics agreed with the view of the nominalists that derives from the work of the
fourteenth-century scholastic William of Ockham. For the nominalists accepted both
the voluntarist axiom and the claim that shape cannot exist apart from quantity.
However, these thinkers also endorsed the Thomistic principle that the only alternative to a real distinction is one drawn in reason, and so concluded that shape is
merely rationally distinct from quantity. Indeed, they radically reduced the number of
distinct res in holding that only substance and its affective qualities (e.g., in material
substances, sensible qualities such as colors, sweetness and bitterness, heat and cold)
are distinct in this way. The nominalist conclusion is that the other predicamental
accidents are merely rationally distinct from substance and its qualities.
The Jesuit scholastics who followed Soto were concerned to provide a middle way
between this sort of deationary nominalism and the extreme form of realism in the
work of the Thomists.38 So instead of speaking of their liberal scholasticism, perhaps
it is better to refer to their metaphysical position as moderate realism, that is, a realism that accepts the limitations on distinctions in being that follow from the voluntarist axiom but that attempts to avoid the extremes of nominalism. To forge this
middle way, the (primarily, though not exclusively) Jesuit moderate realist scholastics
required metaphysical distinctions that stood between the real and rational distinctions that both Thomists and nominalists took to be exhaustive. Prior to Surez, other
scholastics had proposed various possibilities. In the fourteenth century, for instance,
the Franciscan John Duns Scotus introduced intermediate formal and modal distinctions. Scotus embraced the principle that things one of which can remain without the
other are really distinct, but also held that even inseparable items may differ sufciently to be more than merely rationally distinct.39 Thus inseparable items that have
different dening features are said to be formally distinct, whereas a certain qualication of a quality is said to be modally distinct from that quality. Though the

36. See Categories 8, 10a1124, in Aristotle 1984, 1:16. The four species of quality are, rst,
habitus or dispositio, which assists the actualization of a potentia; second, potentia or impotentia
(i.e., the privation of a potentia); third, the affective qualities; and fourth, shape or form.
37. Thus in a passage cited in Menn 1997, 243, n. 22, Cajetan offered the example of the
relation of quantity to shape as a counterexample to the voluntarist axiom.
38. Though, as Surez notes (MD VII.1, 9, 1:25253), Soto was inconsistent on the question of whether there are intermediate distinctions between the real and the merely rational.
39. See the passage from Scotus cited in Menn 1997, 234, n. 13.

The Scholastic Context

27

human intellect and will are inseparable, they are formally distinct insofar as what it
is to have an intellect differs from what it is to have a will, and vice versa. And though
a particular degree of intensity of whiteness and the whiteness that has that degree of
intensity are inseparable, the former is modally distinct from the whiteness insofar as
it must be understood through the nature of whiteness, but not the nature of whiteness
through it.40
The Scotistic notion of formal and modal distinctions reappeared in the work of
later Iberian Jesuits such as Fonseca, who took them to be a means of accepting the
voluntarist axiom without falling into the nominalist trap.41 According to Surez, however, the Scotistic distinctions are unclear and in need of fundamental renovation. As
a rst move away from Scotus, Surez insisted that one-way separability is not sufcient for a distinctio realis, that is, a distinction of res from res. What is required,
rather, is mutual separability.42 Moreover, he held that where there is mutual inseparability, there can be only a distinctio rationis, that is, a distinction merely in reason and
not in reality. In this case, there is simply a single res that is conceived in different
ways. Finally, Surez transformed Scotuss modal distinction into a distinction of a res
from a modus that cannot exist apart from it, though it can exist apart from the modus.
In contrast to a distinction of reason, a modal distinction marks some distinction in
reality, albeit not a distinction of res from res. Whereas those inuenced by Scotus
tended to hold that shape is formally distinct from quantity, Surez claimed that the
former is distinct in reality from the latter insofar as there is a modal distinction
between the two.43
It is clear that Descartes had some knowledge of Surezs Disputations, since at
one point in the Fourth Replies he appealed to a passage from this text in support of
his conception of material falsity (AT 7:235).44 However, this one relatively minor
point of contact hardly exhausts the inuence of Surezs views on Descartess system. I have already indicated that the voluntarist axiom that was central to Surez
and other Jesuit moderate realists reappears in Descartes. Moreover, Surezs specic form of metaphysics is reected in the theory of distinctions that Descartes
offers in his Principles of Philosophy. For following Surez, Descartes holds in this

40. For discussion of Scotuss account of formal and modal distinctions, see King 2003, 2226.
41. On Fonseca, see Menn 1997, 24250.
42. Menn shows that Scotuss more permissive criterion for a real distinction lands him in
difculties with respect to the transcendental relation of inherence. Given his view that an
accident can exist (if only miraculously) without inherence, it follows that the accident and its
inherence must be really distinct res. But since he was committed to the voluntarist axiom,
Scotus must hold that the inherence can exist apart from the accident as well, and so without
its inhering in the accident. By the same line of reasoning, however, the inherences inherence
must be really distinct from that inherence, and we are on our way to an innite regress (see
Menn 1997, 23435). In denying that one-way separability entails two-way separability,
Surez was able to avoid this regress.
43. For Surezs theory of distinctions, see MD VII, 1:25074.44.
44. Descartes cited MD IX.2, 4, 1:322*, in defense of his remarks concerning material falsity in the Third Meditation, at AT 7:41. On material falsity in Descartes, see chapter 2, note 44.

28

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

text that there is a threefold distinction tied to the separability of the objects being
distinguished. Thus for Descartes, as for Surez, two-way separability results in a
distinctio realis, one-way separability in a distinctio modalis,45 and mutual inseparability in a distinctio rationis (PP I.6062, AT 8-1:2830).46
Further evidence of a Surezian inuence is provided in a 1643 letter to
Mersenne, in which Descartes is concerned to deny the scholastic view that there
are any real qualities in nature, which are attached to substance, as little souls to
their bodies, and which can be separated from it by divine power (26 Apr. 1643, AT
3:649).47 Here Descartes has in mind the scholastic claimcommon to Thomistic
extreme realists, Jesuit moderate realists, and nominaliststhat sensible qualities
are really distinct from the material substances in which they inhere. In contrast to
such a view, he insists that there is no more reality either in motion, or in all these
other variations of substance that one calls qualities, than the philosophers commonly attribute to shape, which they call not qualitatem realem, but only modum
(To Mersenne, 26 Apr. 1643, AT 3:64849). But the philosophers who call shape
a mode rather than a real quality are not the scholastics in general, or even the Jesuit
moderate realists as a group, but Surez in particular, who offered as an alternative
to various other scholastic views the technical concept of mode and the accompanying theory of distinctions that Descartes incorporated into his metaphysics.48
Even if he recognized this connection to Surezs renovated metaphysics, which
is perhaps questionable, Descartes did not draw attention to it. Nor did he acknowledge any specic debt to Surezs account of causation. But my brief consideration
of the impact of Surezian metaphysics on Descartes should warn us against taking
his indifference to the details of this account to indicate its irrelevance for his concerns. Indeed, it will turn out that the Surezian account is distinguished by claims
concerning efcient causality and Gods causal contribution to natural interactions
that are directly relevant to Descartess theory of causation.

45. There is admittedly a complication in this case given Descartess admission in the
Principles that there can be a modal distinction between different modes of the same substance,
even though such modes can exist apart from each other (PP I.61, AT 8-1:2930). However,
Descartes indicates that this case counts as a modal distinction only because both modes are
inseparable from the same substance. He notes that in the case where the modes belong to
really distinct substances, the distinction between them is more properly a real than a modal
one (AT 8-1:30). Thanks to Eric Watkins for bringing this complication to my attention.
46. In the First Replies, Descartes follows the lead of his critic Caterus by invoking the
view in Scotus that there is a formal distinction between any items that can be conceived
through different concepts (AT 7:12021; cf. First Objections, AT 7:100). Whereas he identies formal and modal distinctions in this text, however, Descartes notes in the Principles that
the formal distinction between thoughts of attributes that are only rationally distinct is itself a
distinctio rationis, not modalis (PP I.62, AT 8-1:30).
47. I return to the (mis-)characterization of the scholastics as positing tiny souls attached
to bodies in 2.1.2 (ii.b) and toward the end of 2.1.3 (ii).
48. For more on Surezs understanding of the Aristotelian categories and its relation to
Descartess views, see the remarks in 1.3.

The Scholastic Context

29

1.2.2. The Priority of Efcient Causes


Surez begins his treatise on causation in the Disputations by addressing the question of whether there is any ratio common to all cases of causality. After considering and rejecting various suggestions drawn from Aristotles texts, he settles on the
claim that cause is a per se principle from which being ows into another (causa
est principum per se inuens esse in aliud) (MD XII.2, 4, 1:384*). Practically every
term in this sentence requires explanation. In saying that a cause is a principle,
Surez means to indicate that it is the thing that causes (res quae causat), as opposed
to the causality itself (causalito ipsa) or the relation grounded in that causality (1,
1:384*). Thus, it is the heat in the re that produces heat, rather than its production
of heat or its relation to the heat it produces, that serves as the principle of this production. By holding that the principle is per se, Surez means to exclude those things
that are not res properly speaking or that are res but are linked merely per accidens
to the cause of an effect. Thus, the fact that re is not cold or the fact that it is yellow is linked only per accidens to its production of heat: in the rst case, since the
lack of cold is a privation and not a res at all, and in the second case, since the heat
derives from the heat in the re rather than from its color. Finally, the fact that the
cause inuit being into the effect indicates that it communicates or gives being
to another (dandi vel communicandi esse alteri), a being of a sort that the cause itself
somehow contains (4, 25:384*).49
Surez admits, however, that this denition does not apply equally to all members
of the Aristotelian quartet of material, formal, efcient, and nal causes. The denition applies least well to the rst two, which he called intrinsic causes, since such
causes communicate being to another only in an attenuated sense. It is only in the
case of the latter two, which he called extrinsic causes, that being is straightforwardly communicated to something external to the cause. However, even in the case
of the latter the denition applies in the strictest sense only to efcient causes insofar
as most nal causes communicate being not directly by means of an action, but only
indirectly by means of a metaphorical motion. 50 To fully understand these conclusions, we need to delve a bit into Surezs account of the metaphysics of causality.51
I consider rst the case of material and formal causes, then efcient causes, which for
Surez provide the gold standard for causation, and nally the complicated case of
nal causes.

49. As I indicate in 2.1.3, Surez holds that this being is contained in its cause formally
when it is the same kind of being as what produces it and is contained in its cause eminently
when what produces it is more noble.
50. As we will see in 1.2.2 (iii), however, Surez makes an exception for Gods nal
causality, since he held that this causality produces its effects by an action and so is not distinguishable from Gods efcient causality.
51. For a more detailed consideration of Surezs account of the four causes that emphasizes the priority of efcient causality, see Carraud 2002, 14563 (in a section appropriately
titled La reduction des causes lefcience). There is a complementary discussion of
Surezs account in Olivo 1997.

30

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

(i) Material and Formal Causes


Surezs account of intrinsic causes assumes the hylomorphic view basic to scholasticism, according to which the basic elements for composition of bodies are prime
matter and various substantial and accidental forms. Prime matter is a material cause
that is the recipient of change, whereas forms are formal causes that are the active
principles of change. The distinction between substantial and accidental forms
serves to distinguish the formal causes of the generation of composite material substances (viz., substantial forms) from the formal causes of accidental changes in such
substances (viz., accidental forms).
On these points, most scholastics were agreed. However, the details of Surezs
account of material and formal causation were more controversial. For instance,
orthodox Thomists held that matter, as pure potentiality, does not have any being of
its own apart from form. Such scholastics therefore could not accept Suarezs view
that the material cause ts the denition of a cause that inows its being into the
effect. But Surez insists that even though prime matter is merely potential, it has its
own essence apart from form, namely, the essence of a potential recipient of change.
It is this essence that matter contributes to the effect (MD XIII.4, 9, 1:411*).52
There is no similar dispute over the status of formal causality, since Surez agrees
with the Thomists that forms are principles of activity, and thus have their own
being. Nevertheless, Surezs view is distinguished from that of earlier scholastics
by his claim that a formal cause is not a cause in a full and proper sense, since it acts
merely by means of a formal and intrinsic union with matter (MD XV.6, 7,
1:520). The inux of both the material and the formal cause thus involves merely
an internal composition to which matter contributes the mode of potentiality and
form the mode of activity (MD XII.3, 9, 1:391*). Surezs conclusion is that
since such an inux is not precisely the same as the inux that occurs when a cause
produces an effect external to and distinct from itself, material and formal causes can
be called causes only by analogy. The analogy, in particular, is to the efcient
cause, which most properly inows being (MD XXVII.1, 10, 1:952*).53

(ii) Efcient Causes


Surez starts his discussion of efcient causality with a consideration of Aristotles
denition of an efcient cause as that whence there is a rst beginning of change
or rest. He rejects this denition on various grounds, including the fact that it does
not exclude material and formal causes, which in some sense also provide a principle for the beginning of change or rest, and the fact that it does not include divine
creation, which does not involve a beginning of change or rest in an already existing

52. Here Surez was under the inuence of the Scotist position that prime matter is a res
really distinct from substantial form. For discussion of this position, see Des Chene 1996, 5.1.
53. As we will discover in 2.1.2 (ii.a), Descartes also allowed for formal causes that are
merely analogous to efcient causes, though his account of formal causality differs substantially from the account the account in Surez that I have just considered.

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31

subject (MD XVII.1, 24, 1:58182).54 The alternative denition he proposes is


that an efcient cause is a principle from which the effect ows forth, or on which
it depends, by means of an action ( principium a quo effectus prouit seu pendet per
actionem) (6, 1:582).
The denition of an efcient cause as that which involves a owing forth of the
effect may not seem to be less than entirely clear. Indeed, Leibniz complained in his
preface to a 1670 edition of Nizoliuss On the True Principles of Philosophy (De
veris principiis . . . philosophandi) that Surezs denition is rather barbarous and
obscure, . . . more obscure than what it denes: I would hope to dene cause more
easily than this term inuxus taken so monstrously (Leibniz 1978, 4:148). However,
Surez indicated that in a general sense inuxus means simply giving or communicating being to another (dandi vel communicandi esse alteri) (MD XII.2, 4,
1:384*). Leibniz also had difculties with the notions of giving or communicating
being, most of which rested on the fact that he could not conceive of the literal transfer of some feature of the cause to the effect.55 Yet when Surez speaks of the efcient cause as involving the owing of an effect, he should not be understood to
claim that a feature of the cause is literally transferred to the effect. His view in fact
requires that an efcient cause is extrinsic for the very reason that it does not communicate its own proper and (as I will put it) individual esse to the effect. Rather,
what occurs in the case of efcient causality is some other [being] really owing
forth [prouens] and proceeding [manans] from [an efcient] cause by means of an
action (MD XVII.1, 6, 1:582). In either creating or educing an effect, an efcient
cause produces an esse that is distinct from, though in some manner similar to,56 the
esse that it possesses.
Surez claims that an efcient cause not only produces a new esse, but also produces it by means of an action, where this consists in the emanation or dependence of an effect on its extrinsic cause, from which it receives being. Surez himself
admits that this denition may seem to be uninformative, since it makes action
almost the same as an efcient cause (MD XVII.1, 5, 1:582). In his view, however, the action is distinguished from the cause by the fact that the former constitutes
the causality of the efcient cause, whereas the latter is the principle of that causality. Surez follows other scholastic thinkers in taking the action to be something that
resides in the patient rather than the agent.57 But drawing on his renovated form of
scholastic metaphysics, he characterizes this action as a certain mode of the effect

54. For the point about creation, see 1.2.3 (i).


55. In 1696 comments on his New System of Nature (Systme nouveau de la nature),
for instance, Leibniz objected to the way of inuence on the grounds that we can conceive
neither material particles nor immaterial qualities or species that can pass from one of these
substances [viz., the soul and body] to the other (Leibniz 1978, 4:499). For more on the background to Leibnizs conception of the way of inuence, or what he also called, following
Surez (see MD XVII.2, 6, 1:585), inuxus physicus, see ONeill 1993.
56. See note 49.
57. However, Surez mentions Cajetan and Scotus as the main dissenters from this position; see MD XLVIII, 2, 2:88889*.

32

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

that the cause produces, namely, the mode of depending on that cause (MD
XVIII.10, 8, 1:682).58
In identifying the action with the causality of the cause, Surez offers
characteristically enougha middle way between the views of Thomistic extreme
realists and nominalists. On the one hand, he holds against the nominalists that an
action is something distinct in reality from the agent, its power, and the effect in the
patient. On the other, he holds against the Thomists that causality is not something
over and above the action of an agent, but is identical to this action, which itself
exists as a mode of the effect (MD XVIII.10, 5, 1:681).
Surezs theory of action is complicated by the fact that he recognizes two different kinds of action that efcient causes can involve, namely, transeunt action,
which has an effect outside the agent itself, and immanent action, which has no
effect outside the agent (MD XLVIII.2, 1, 2:874*). I have noted above the case of
the eduction of substantial or accidental forms from matter, which for Surez is an
example of transeunt efcient causation (i.e., efcient causation by means of a
transeunt action). When the air causes the apple to become brown, the action is the
dependence on the air that modies the process in the apple of turning brown,
whereas the terminus of the action is the qualied change involving the inherence of
the accidental form of brownness. When worms cause the apple to decompose into
its elements, the dependence on the worms that modies the process of decomposition is the action, and the terminus of the action is the unqualied change involving
the union of the matter of the apple with the new substantial forms of the elements.
The case of transeunt efcient causation is best suited to the denition of a cause
as that from which being ows forth into another. The case of immanent efcient
causation (i.e., efcient causation by means of an immanent action) is more problematic insofar as the distinction of the effect from the cause is less clear. Since he
accepted the Aristotelian principle that motion (in the broad sense of any change)
requires an external mover in the case of material objects (see MD XVIII.7, 37,
1:642), Surez claims that the primary examples of immanent efcient causation are
changes that pure intellect or will causes in an intellectual (i.e., angelic) or rational
(i.e., human) soul. In the case of the cognitive acts of pure intellect, however, Surez
notes that the effect is an intelligible species that is really distinct from the faculty
that produces this species. Here he is simply following the Thomistic position that
intellectual cognition involves the impressing of this species by the agent intellect
in the passive intellect. 59 This way of saving the distinction of the effect from the
cause is not available in the case of the will, given Surezs position that no distinct

58. But see the discussion in Hattab 2003 of the dissenting view in the work of the early
modern scholastic Charles Franois dAbra de Raconis that the causality of the efcient cause
is distinct from its action in the patient.
59. For more on this Thomistic view in Surez, but also his disagreements with Thomas
concerning the production of the intelligible species, see 4.2.1. Surez notes that though
there is no species involved in the angelic contemplation of its own substance, still its substance as the object of the intellectual act can be distinguished from that substance as the principle of that act (MD XVIII.7, 48, 1:646).

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33

species are involved in this case. Nevertheless, Surez insists that there is a distinction in the will between a rst act involving the power of producing a certain
immanent effect, on the one hand, and the second act consisting in the immanent
effect, on the other. In producing a desire, the will in rst act merely has the power
to produce the quality of desiring an object, whereas the exercise of that power
results in the second act of the inherence of that quality in the will (51, 1:647).
Since desire is itself a real quality, and so really distinct from the power of the will
that produces it,60 its production involves the owing of being into something distinct from the volitional power that serves as the principle of this effect.
In giving priority to efcient causes over material and formal causes, Surez follows the view of the medieval philosopher Avicenna that the requirement that the
effect be in some way distinct from the cause is central to the notion of causality.61
What is distinct, in particular, is the esse of the effect that ows forth from the
cause. However, in claiming that an efcient cause produces the esse of its effect,
Surez need not hold that it is a cause secundum esse as Thomas understood this
notion. For recall the view in Thomas that a cause secundum esse brings about not
only the presence of its effect, but also the fact that the effect has the nature that it
does (see 1.1.2). There is no suggestion in Surez that it is essential for something
to be an efcient cause that it bring about the latter. What is essential is only that the
cause produce some being, whether with the assistance of other causes (as in the case
of all actions of secondary efcient causes, which depend on Gods concursus) or
entirely by itself (as in the case of divine creation and conservation).62 Before turning to Surezs views concerning secondary efcient causality and its relation to
Gods causal activity, however, we need to complete our summary of his account of
causation by considering his complex attitude toward what for Descartes, at least, is
the most problematic of the four kinds of Aristotelian causality, namely, the causality
of nal causes.

(iii) Final Causes


According to Surez, nal causes are the second of the two kinds of extrinsic causes.
Thus, as in the case of efcient causes, the general notion of causality (the principle
from which being ows into another) ts nal causes better than material or formal
causes. Indeed, at the start of his discussion of nal causes in the Disputations, Surez
even claims, in apparent conict with his main thesis of the priority of efcient

60. Desire belongs to the third species of the predicamental category of quality, whereas the
volitional power that produces it belongs to the second species of that category; see note 36.
61. As indicated in Gilson 1986, Surez also followed Avicenna and Peter of Auvergne
(c.1310) in combining efcient causes with motive causes that thinkers such as Aquinas
had distinguished from them. It is because he held that the divine creation of being and the
production of motion/change by secondary causes both involve an inowing of being into an
effect that Surez was able to treat both as instances of efcient causality.
62. In 1.2.3 (i), I discuss Surezs comments on the passage from the Summa Theologiae
that concerns the secundum eri/secundum esse distinction.

34

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

causes, that of the four main causes, nal causes are in some manner the most principal of all, and also the rst (MD XXIII.1, 1:843*).63 His reasoning here is that
since even the action of an efcient cause is directed toward a terminus as its end, efcient causality involves the causal efcacy of an end, and thus nal causality (7,
1:845*). However, Surez admits that the reason of the causing of [the nal cause]
is more obscure than in the case of the other three kinds of cause (1:843*). This
obscurity is due to the fact that there are very different kinds of causality depending
on whether the action involves (a) an uncreated intellectual agent, which is God
alone, (b) created intellectual agents, among which humans are best known to us,
or (c) agents that are natural, or lacking intellect (7, 1:845*). What supports
Surezs thesis of the priority of efcient causes is both the fact that nal causality in
case (b) involves not genuine action but only metaphysical motion, and the fact that
when case (c) is considered in abstraction from Gods causal contribution, there is no
genuine nal causality at all. It is only in case (a) where the nal cause produces its
effect through an action, and in this case only because there is no real distinction
between Gods nal and efcient causality. Let us consider these three cases, starting
with the case best known to us, namely, the one in which we as created intellectual
agents act as nal causes.
(b) As with other created intellectual agents, nal causality enters into only the
immanent actions of our will. Earlier we noted the distinction in Surezs account of
such action between the rst act involving the power to produce an internal effect
and the second act identied with the attainment of this effect. The ends of action
that we cognize are nal causes insofar as they incline the will in rst act to pursue
these ends as opposed to others. The motion associated with this inclination is
merely metaphorical insofar as we do not actually pursue the particular ends
toward which we are inclined in rst act.64 The pursuit is actual, and thus the ends
are efcacious, only when our will produces by means of an immanent action the
desire for or love of those ends. Thus, even though the cognized ends as nal causes
are in some manner the most principal and the rst insofar as they incline the
will to act in a particular manner, it is the will itself rather than these ends that is the
efcient cause that directly produces the relevant second acts.
The insistence on the merely metaphorical nature of the motion involved in the
rst act is particularly important for Surez in the case of our free actions, since he
was deeply committed to the position that such actions do not derive necessarily
from our will in rst act.65 In his view, this rst act can be free, and thereby
elicit a second act that is free, only if it is an active faculty that has control over its
own action in such a way that it has within its power to exercise that act and not to

63. In this subsection I am following the helpful treatment of Surezs views on nal
causality in Carraud 2002, 15261. See also the more general discussion of the relevant
scholastic background in Des Chene 1996, ch. 6.
64. Surez cites Aristotle (On Generation and Corruption I.7, 324b1415, Aristotle 1984,
1:530) and Thomas (ST I-II.1.1) as sources for his account of metaphorical motion. See also
the development of this notion in texts from Scotus cited in Carraud 2002, 158, n.1.
65. I return to this position in Surez in 1.2.3 (ii) and then again in 5.1.1.

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35

exercise it and, consequently, to elicit one action or anotherthat is, opposite


action (MD XIX.2, 18, 1:698). Surez identies this lack of determination to a
particular action with the indifference of the free active faculty of will. He further
distinguishes two kinds of indifference, namely, indifference with respect to the
exercise of an act, which is required for our freedom to act or not to act, and indifference with respect to the specication of an act, which is required for our freedom
to elicit one action as opposed to other contrary actions (MD XIX.4, 9, 1:7089).
Given these kinds of indifference, the cognized end cannot be said to produce in the
will an actual motion (in the broad Aristotelian sense of a change) that, if unimpeded, necessarily terminates in a particular second act. Rather, it merely entices the
will to freely produce this act, that is to say, it serves only as a nal and not as an
efcient cause of that effect.66
(c) I have noted the passage from the 1643 letter to Mersenne in which Descartes
caricatures the scholastics as holding that bodies have real qualities attached to them
as little souls (AT 3:649). Around the same time, in the Sixth Replies, he reports that
in his youth he was under the sway of the scholastic view that the free fall of bodies
is explained by the fact that they possessed the real quality of heaviness (gravitas),
one that carried bodies toward the center of the earth as if it had some knowledge
of the center within itself (AT 7:442). In effect, the proposal here is that the nal
causality of heaviness is to be understood on the model of the scholastic account of
the nal causality of created intelligent agents. For just as Surez takes such agents
to be directed by cognized ends to act in a particular manner, so the real quality of
heaviness is supposed to be directed by its cognition of the center of the earth to
carry the body to which it is attached to that location.
The suggestion in Aristotle is that nal causality is not restricted to cases involving cognition, but rather derives in general from the forms of composite substances,
including those substances that lack intellect.67 However, Surez is concerned to
deny that any natural beingthat is, any being that does not act by means of will
can be a nal cause at all. This is clear from his claim in the Disputations that in the
case of those actions, that are from natural agents, there is properly no nal causality, but only an inclination toward a certain terminus (MD XVIII.10, 6, 1:887).
Even when created intellectual agents act by some means other than will, according
to Surez, they are merely natural agents, and so are not true nal causes (MD
XXIII.3, 18, 1:857*). The nality of the actions of natural agents thus cannot be
explained by appeal to the nature of these agents alone, who serve merely as efcient
causes. Rather, Surez claims that there is nal causality in them only as they are

66. Whereas Surez holds that there is no volitional act, in this life, at least, toward which
we are not indifferent with respect to exercise, he allowed that we are not indifferent with
respect to specication toward volitional acts directed to ends proposed under the concept of
a universal good. In the case of such acts, Surezs conclusion is that we perform them voluntarily but not freely; see MD XIX.8, 1:72632. There is a further discussion of Surezs
views on these points in 5.1.1 (i) and 5.2.1.
67. In MD XXIII.10, 2, 1:886*, Surez cites as the source of this view Aristotles discussion in Physics II.78, 198a14199b30 (Aristotle 1984, 1:33840).

36

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

from God, as in Gods other external and transeunt actions (MD XXIII.10, 6,
1:887*). Thus, natural agents are directed to their ends by God, whose action is
directed by his cognition of these ends. We have here one reason for Surez to conclude that divine action is involved in the action of all natural agents. Such a conclusion is reinforced by his concurrentist position that God acts by means of the
action of all secondary causes (see 1.2.3 (ii)).
(a) We have noted the position in Surez that the nal causality of created intellectual agents involves a metaphorical motion of the will. However, he holds that since
the one uncreated intellectual agent is purely actual, and thus has no potentiality, this
agent, namely, God, can in no way possess metaphorical motion (MD XXIII.9, 6,
1:883*). Indeed, Surez denies that there is any nal causality internal to God himself.
Though God does love himself or others for the sake of his own goodness, his attribute of goodness is not a nal cause of this love. Rather, it is only the reason (as it is
said) of the divine will (rationem tantun (ut dixi) voluntatis divinae) ( 6, 1:883*).
Final causality is involved only when God acts as a transeunt efcient cause, and thus
produces effects by means of an action external to him (12, 1:885*). However, there
is no real distinction here between Gods nal and efcient causality insofar as the
nal causality of God with respect to external effects consists in this, that God produces the external effect by the intuition and love of his goodness. Thus one and the
same operation . . . pertains to God whether by reason of efcacy or by reason of end,
since it is related to God both as omnipotent and as the greatest good (9, 1:884). The
view here that Gods production of external effects involves both nal and efcient
causality is reected even in Descartes, who despite his disdain for appeals to divine
nal causes (see 2.1.2 (ii.b)), nonetheless told a correspondent that all creatures can
be said to exist for Gods sake insofar as it is God alone who is the nal cause as well
as the efcient cause of the universe (To Chanut, 6 June 1647, AT 5:54).
As in the case of Descartes, however, Surezs discussion of Gods causal contribution to the world emphasizes more the relation to his power as efcient cause than
the relation to his goodness as nal cause. Thus, in the section of the treatise on causality in the Disputations that concerns efcient causes, disputations XX through XXII
are devoted to Gods activity as primary efcient cause in creation, conservation, and
concurrence. There Surez takes the rst two kinds of activity to be intimately related,
as shown by his thesis that divine conservation is not distinct in reality from Gods act
of creation, but is merely the continuation of that act. However, he insists against critics such as Durandus that there is a divine concurrence that involves a concursus that
is distinct from Gods act of creation and conservation. I have indicated that these
claims are an essential part of the causal compatibilism that Thomas proposed several centuries prior to Surez. However, Surez moved beyond Thomas in explicating
these claims in terms of a comprehensive theory of efcient causality.

1.2.3. Creation, Conservation, and Concursus


(i) Creation and Conservation
Surezs discussion in disputation XX opens with the stipulation that creation involves
the production of an entity ex nihilo. Since prior to this action there is nothing on which

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37

to act, creation must be distinguished from more mundane examples of efcient causation that involve a change produced by action on an existing subject. Thus, creation
differs from the eduction either of an accidental form from a material substance, as in
the case of accidental change, or of a substantial form from prime matter, as in the case
of substantival generation (MD XX.1, 1, 1:745). In both of these cases, the efcient
causality involves a change in a patient, whereas in the case of creation, there is no
such change, since it is the existence of the patient itself that is produced. Nevertheless,
Surez insists that creation can be placed in the same category with the efcient causation of accidental and substantival change, since they all t his denition of efcient
causation, namely, the owing forth of being into another by means of an action. The
difference is merely that whereas change presupposes the existence of the patient that
receives the new esse, creation does not. Moreover, in creation as well as in the other
cases of efcient causation, the action is a mode of the effect, and thus is something
that is only modally and not really distinct from that effect. In particular, this action is
the dependence on the cause that modies the effect that is produced.68
Surez is concerned to distinguish creation ex nihilo from creation de novo, or
creation in time. He does defend the claim that creation ex nihilo is compatible with
creation de novo against the objection that what is created must be eternal insofar as
the divine act of creation is eternal. He responds by appealing to his position, mentioned previously, that an action is in the patient rather than the agent. His conclusion is that reason is perfectly consistent with the dictate of faith that an eternal God
created the world with a starting point in time (MD XX.5, 510, 1:78082).
However, Surez also holds that God could have created the world ab aeterno, and
thus could have created a world that is eternal in the sense of having no beginning in
time. Creation out of nothing thus could signify not that there was a point at which
the creature did not exist, but only that the creature would not have existed were it
not for the fact that from eternity esse had been communicated to it from another
(1112, 1:782). Surez claims that since neither matter (and the material forms
educed from matter) nor nite immaterial entities exist a se, that is, from their own
nature, they can exist in the rst place only because they have being from an efcient
cause that does exist a se, namely, God (MD XX.1, 1521, 1:78385).69 Divine
creation would be necessary whether or not these entities were eternal.
Surez accepts the traditional conclusion that God alone can create a being ex
nihilo. But though most scholastics followed Thomas in holding that natural reason
can demonstrate this conclusion, Durandus argued against Thomas that there is
nothing in the notion of creation as such that precludes a creature from creating

68. See MD XX.4, 1:76979. In this section, Surez offers this position as an alternative
both to the Thomist position that the dependence of the creature on the Creator is a res distinct from that creature, since such a dependence belongs to the category of relation, and the
nominalist position that this dependence is only distinct in reason from the creature. His position is thus perfectly in line with his renovated metaphysics (see 1.2.1).
69. Surez notes that even though the material substances are generated out of matter
rather than directly created by God, still they depend on divine creation insofar as the matter
out of which they are generated must be created (MD XX.1, 22, 1:751).

38

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

(S II.1, 4, 1:12930*, responding to ST I.45.5). Surez claims that there are more
constraints on creation than Durandus allows. He concedes to Thomas, for instance,
that only something with innite power could have the unlimited ability to create any
being whatsoever. Furthermore, Surezs concurrentist position that God must concur in all creaturely action (see 1.2.3 (ii)) precludes the possibility of any cause
other than God creating without any divine assistance. Even so, Surez notes that it
still seems possible that creatures could have a more limited power to create with the
help of Gods concursus (MD XX.2, 39, 1:764, also responding to ST I.45.5). He
grants that we can know by faith that God has not in fact created any being that has
the power to create. He also argues that since something with the perfection of being
able to create would have added to the overall perfection of the universe if it existed,
and since if it were possible God would have created this thing for that reason, the
fact that no such thing exists provides grounds for thinking that no such thing is possible. Surez concludes, however, that though the conclusion of this argument is certain for those who accept the tenets of faith, it is not evident on the basis of natural
reason alone (12, 1:75556).
However it is established, the conclusion that God alone can produce creatures
ex nihilo falls short of the thesis that creatures depend on God for the continuation
of their existence subsequent to their creation ab aeterno or de novo. Surez argues
for this additional thesis in disputation XXI, where he claims not only that the continuation of the existence of creatures depends on Gods efcient causality, but also
that this continuation depends on the very same act by which God created them in
the rst place. In arguing for the former point, Surez starts with the thesisdrawn
from the Thomistic distinction between causes secundum eri and secundum
essethat when an effect that depends on its cause directly and per se and primarily with respect to its esse, it depends on that cause not only in becoming [ eri]
but also in being conserved [conservandi] (MD XXI.1, 6, 1:787). He notes that
Thomas himself explained the distinction between being a cause of eri and being
a cause of esse somewhat obscurely (8, 1:787). The obscurity here seems to
derive from the fact that even a cause secundum eri is a source of the esse of its
effect, and so is not clearly distinct from the cause secundum esse. However, Surez
proposes that an effect is from a cause secundum eri insofar as it does not
absolutely and unconditionally require that cause to exist, but instead requires it
only to exist through the action or production in question. In contrast, the effect is
from a cause secundum esse insofar as it absolutely and unconditionally requires
that cause in order to exist (8, 1:787). Thus, Adam is a cause of Abel only secundum eri insofar as Abel does not absolutely require Adam to exist; God could have
created Abel without any causal input from Adam. In contrast, the cause secundum
esse of Abel must be such that Abel could not exist without the activity of that
cause (8, 1:787).
Though offered as an analysis of Thomass distinction between causes secundum
eri and secundum esse, Surezs alternative denitions differ in at least one important
respect from those that Thomas offered. Thus, whereas Thomass own example of the
sun suggests that he allowed for causes secundum esse other than God, Surez emphasizes that given his denition God alone can be such a cause. For since God can produce any effect by himself that he produces with secondary causes, God alone can be

The Scholastic Context

39

absolutely and unconditionally required for the effect.70 Given this strong requirement
for being a cause secundum esse, it is perhaps clearer in Surez than in Thomas why
an effect depends on such a cause not only at the rst moment of its existence, but also
at every moment it exists. For it follows from this requirement that the existence of the
effect, at whatever time it exists, depends absolutely and unconditionally on its cause
secundum esse. Thus, insofar as creatures must be created by God to exist in the rst
place, they must also depend on God for their continued existence.
Surezs second point above is that God conserves creatures by means of the
same act by which he created them. Drawing again on Thomass discussion of the
secundum eri/secundum esse distinction, Surez claims that there is no more justication for saying that God conserves by means of an act distinct from creation than
that the sun continues to propagate light by means of an act distinct from that by
which it rst produced the light (MD XXI.2, 3, 1:791). In the case of the sun, the
difference between production and propagation is merely that the term for the former connotes the prior absence of the light, whereas the latter connotes the prior
presence of that light. The difference here is only a difference in which one and the
same act is described, and so is a mere distinctio rationis, and not a distinction in
reality. Likewise, in the case of God the difference between creation and conservation consists in the fact that the term for the former connotes the denial of a previously possessed esse, whereas the term for the latter connotes the prior possession
of esse. Here again, the difference is in the words used to describe the action rather
than in the action itself.
In my discussion in 1.1.3, I noted the objection in Surez that since there can be
secondary conserving causes, a mere conservationist such as Durandus has no good
reason to hold that God must conserve all beings in existence. What requires explanation here is how Surez himself conceived of the relation between conserving
secondary causes and divine conservation. In the case of secondary causes he distinguishes between the per accidens conservation that involves the removal of an
impediment to continued existence, as when an angel conserves a human being by
turning away a rock, and the per se conservation that involves the contribution of
something needed for continued existence, as when the sun conserves life by giving
light. However, even the latter sort of conservation is distinct from divine conservation insofar as it is merely remote and mediate, whereas divine conservation is
direct and immediate. The contrast here derives from the fact that divine conservation alone involves the persistent inux of that very esse that was communicated
through production (MD XXI.3, 2, 1:794). In line with my remarks toward the end
of 1.1.3, however, I would simply note the possibility of a mere conservationist
position according to which God alone is the direct and immediate per se conserving cause of objects, but secondary causes act alone as per accidens or per se remote
and mediate conserving causes of those objects.

70. For the relevance of this difference between Thomas and Surez to Descartess understanding of the Thomistic distinction between causes secundum eri and secundum esse, see
2.2.1, at note 65.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

(ii) Concursus and Secondary Causes


At the start of disputation XXII, Surez observes that of the concursus of the primary
cause with secondary [causes] as regards their actions, one nds that little is said by
Aristotle and other philosophers (MD XXII, 1:802). His conclusion in this section
that God as primary cause concurs per se and immediately in all actions of secondary causes of course recalls the thesis of Thomass causal compatibilism that God
operates in all operations in nature. However, Surez does not follow Thomas in
equating secondary causes with instrumental ones. Moreover, he offers an alternative
to an account of Gods concursus with free human action in the work of some followers of Thomas that appeals to the relation of agents to instrumental causes.
Though Surezs account of divine concurrence clearly is indebted to Thomas, it also
differs on important points of detail from the views of Thomas and later Thomists.71
We have seen that Thomass defense of causal compatibilism relies on the analogy to instrumental causality. Gods action with creatures is compared to an agents
use of an instrument. In both cases, there is a single effect that two subordinated
agents produce by the same action. However, we have also seen the objection in
Durandus that secondary causes are not mere instruments when they elicit their
effects by means of a power that is proportioned to those effects. Thus, even though
a pen does not have the power to produce words unless moved by an agent, it seems
that re has the power to heat on its own. Insofar as the re has such a power, there
would be no need to appeal to another principle of the effects of this power in God.
Surez discusses various scholastic attempts to respond to this line of objection by
distinguishing instrumental causes from principal efcient causes (MD XVII.2,
719, 1:58591). Most notable is Scotuss proposal (considered in 1012,
1:58788) that instrumental causes merely dispose a patient to receive a form from
the principal efcient cause. Scotus insisted that though even secondary principal
causes must be subordinated to God, the subordination in this case differs from the
subordination of an instrumental cause to a principal cause. For whereas the subordinated instrumental cause does not produce the ultimate effect, the subordinated principal cause is enabled to produce this effect by the activity of the primary cause.72
Surez rejects Scotuss proposal on the grounds that some instrumental causes produce the ultimate effects directly, as when certain accidents immediately educe a substantial form (MD XVII.2, 11, 1:588).73 However, he shares Scotuss view that the

71. Surezs theory of divine concursus is, however, close to the position that his fellow
Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina offered in his 1588 Concordia, the full title of which is Liberi
arbitrii cum grati donis, divina prscientia, providential, prdestinatione et reprobatione
Concordia (The Compatibility of Free Will with the Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge,
Providence, Predestination and Reprobation). For a comparison of the views in Molina and
Surez, see Perler and Rudolph 2000, 20113. As we will see in chapter 5, the theory of middle knowledge that Molina offered in his Concordia is an important part of the scholastic
context of Descartess discussions of human freedom.
72. For further discussion of Scotuss proposal and Surezs response, see Menn 2000, 13133.
73. Surez also provides as an example the immediate effecting of an intelligible species
by a phantasm. As I indicate in 4.2.1, however, this example is problematic for him.

The Scholastic Context

41

subordination of a secondary cause to God need not be the same as the sort of subordination involved in instrumental causality. To capture the difference between these two
kinds of subordination, he offers the view that an instrumental cause is one that concurs
in, or is elevated to, the production of something more noble than itself, that is, something beyond the measure of its own proper perfection and action (MD XVII.2, 17,
590). In the case of a secondary principal cause, the effect is not more noble than itself,
and thus its subordination to God does not result in the conclusion that it is a mere divine
instrument. Nonetheless, Surez insists that this cause is subordinated to God, since it can
produce the effect proportionate to it only with the help of the divine concursus.
Duranduss question, of course, is why this further assistance is needed given that the
effect is proportionate to the secondary cause. The answer in Surez, broached in 1.1.3,
is that the effect has an esse that requires Gods immediate and per se causality as much
for its production as for its conservation. However, it might be possible to develop further the response on behalf of the mere conservationist that I offered earlier. We have considered the distinction in Surezs metaphysics between a res and a modus of that res (see
1.2.1). Though there is some distinction in reality here between a mode and its res, the
esse of the mode is not independent of the esse of the res, but is a mere determination of
the latter. Thus, it could perhaps be said that God produces the esse of a mode just insofar as he creates and conserves the esse of the res that mode modies. And such a claim
seems to leave open the possibility that secondary causes alone produce modications in
an already-existing res. Of course, Surez would protest that secondary causes can produce substantial and accidental forms that are not mere modes but res distinct from matter. But for someone, like Descartes, who rejected such qualities (see 1.3), a version of
mere conservationism that allows for such a possibility would appear to be a live option.74
As we know, however, Durandus concluded not only that his mere conservationism
is an acceptable position, but also that Thomass causal compatibilism is an unacceptable alternative. One of his main arguments for this conclusion is that since God must
produce the effect of a secondary cause by means of an action that differs from that
cause, either Gods action produces the entire effect, thus rendering the action of the
secondary cause superuous, or brings about only part of the effect, in which case the
action of the secondary cause produces the other part without divine assistance. This
dilemma is possible given Duranduss claim that God cannot produce an effect by
means of the same action as that of the secondary cause, since it is impossible for
numerically the same action to be from two or more agents in such a way that it is
immediately and completely from each, unless numerically the same power is in them
(S II.1.5, 12, 1:131). However, Surez simply endorses the Thomistic line, considered
above, that even though the same action cannot derive entirely from two different
causes of the same order, it does not follow that it cannot so derive from causes in dif-

74. Cf. Philip Quinns suggestion on Duranduss behalf, as reported in Freddoso 1991,
583, n.26, that God is a per se and immediate conserver just of substances and not of accidents (see also Quinn 1988). Freddoso objects to this suggestion on the grounds that no fullbodied naturalist will dispute the claim that secondary causes are capable of effecting
substances as well as accidents (Freddoso 1991, 583, n.26). As I indicate in 1.3, however,
Descartes at least is not a full-bodied naturalist.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

ferent causal orders. Following the development of the Thomistic position in Scotus,
Surez claims that these causes are compatible in the case where one is essentially
subordinated to the other. Given that the activity of secondary efcient causes is subordinated to Gods activity as primary cause, a single action in the patient can derive
from causes of both kinds (MD XXII.3, 4, 1:82627, citing ST I.105.5, ad 2).
Surezs identication here of the actions of secondary causes with Gods concursus with those actions reveals one important difference between divine concurrence and conservation. We have noted the view in Surez that Gods per se and
immediate conservation of an object at different times occurs by means of the same
action, which itself is merely the continuation of his act of creating that object. In
contrast, Surez emphasizes the distinctness of the acts by which God concurs with
secondary causes. Thus, he argues that since the concursus external to God is nothing other than the action itself by which the secondary cause acts, the concursus
will vary according to the variety of the actions (MD XXII.4, 8, 1:831). Whereas
God immediately conserves an object at different times by means of the same act,
then, he must concur by distinct acts in the different operations of that object.
In one sense, we should expect Surez to distinguish concurrence from conservation. After all, he is concerned to set himself apart from the mere conservationist
who holds that divine creation/conservation exhausts Gods contribution to secondary causality. However, it will be important in the context of a later consideration of
Descartess own views concerning Gods activity as primary cause to remember this
implication in Surez that divine concurrence involves a kind of inconstancy in the
effect that is not present in the case of divine conservation.
There is one nal objection to concurrentism in Durandus that we have not yet considered. In his Sentences, Durandus appealed at one point to his mere conservationist
position in support of the conclusion that though God is the universal and primary
cause of our sinful actions, their proximate and immediate cause is not God but
rather our free will (S II.38.1, 4, 1:192*, citing II.1.5, 1:13031). Surez is sensitive
to this line of objection, offering as a reason to reject his concurrentism the claim that
in the case of sinful free action, it is unseemly to attribute such actions to the primary
cause insofar as it is operating per se and immediately (MD XXII.1, 5, 1:803).
Surezs response to this claim depends on his account of the difference between
Gods concursus with necessary or natural causes, on the one hand, and his concursus with free causes, on the other. Necessary causes are such that, all the conditions
for action being posited, the action itself follows necessarily (MD XIX.1, 1, 1:688).
Gods concursus with a necessary secondary cause is determined to a particular effect.
Whereas Surez claims that all natural and nonrational beings are necessary causes, he
holds that there are rational volitional agents that are free causes in the sense that they
are not determined to a particular action even when all the conditions for acting have
been posited (MD XIX.2, 11, 1:696). As I have mentioned, his view is that free agents
are immanent causes that in rst act are indifferent with respect to which second acts
to elicit (see 1.2.2 (iii)). Surez holds that though there is a divine concursus identical
to the second act that the free agent in fact elicits, the conditions for action include Gods
offer of a concursus with refraining from eliciting the second act or with eliciting other
second acts, and so the agent is able either to refrain from acting (and so has freedom
of exercise) or to act differently (and so has freedom of specication) (MD XXII.4,

The Scholastic Context

43

21, 1:834). Since God does not offer only one concursus in the case of free sinful
action, he does not determine the agent to that action, and so it is the agent rather than
God who is responsible for the sin.75
As I indicate in chapter 5, Surezs view that indifference is an essential element of
human freedom was standard among the Jesuits but also a source of controversy in the
early modern period. We also will discover in that chapter that this controversy is an
important part of the context for Descartess various discussions of human freedom and
divine providence. However, there is a further feature of Surezs account of free
human action that is connected to his worries mentioned previously concerning the
appeal to the case of instrumental causation in an explanation of the relation of Gods
activity as primary cause to the activity of secondary causes. As Surez notes, certain
sixteenth-century Thomists cited Thomass claim that God uses secondary causes as his
instruments in support of the conclusion that God concurs with free human agents by
means of a physical premotion. Just as the craftsman produces an effect by applying
a tool in a particular manner, so God concurs in a free action by premoving the will
to act in a certain way (MD XXII.2, 11, 1:813). However, Surez claims that Thomas
in fact favored the less problematic position that Gods concursus with free human
action is simultaneous with that action, and indeed is identical to it (16 and 4950,
1:814 and 82324). We need not enter here into the dispute over the interpretation of
Thomas.76 What is more relevant to our concerns is Surezs conclusion that his theory
of simultaneous concurrence (as it came to be called) avoids certain difculties that
confront the Thomistic theory of physical premotion.77 One crucial difculty is that any
physical predetermination through premotion precludes genuine human freedom. For
in Surezs view, such freedom requires that the will be indifferent to an action even
given the presence of all of the prerequisites for that action. But if the predetermination
to a particular action is part of the set of prerequisites, then the will cannot be indifferent to that action, and so not be free in eliciting that action (39, 1:821).78 Surez admits
that his theory of human freedom has implications for an interrelated set of theological

75. For further discussion of Surezs account of divine concurrence in the case of sinful
free human action, see Freddoso 2001.
76. Surezs admitted that certain remarks in On the Power of God support the interpretation of Thomas offered by the Thomistae, but claimed that the relevant discussion in the
Summa Theologiae does not (MD XXII.2, 52, 1:824).
77. For an indication that these were the standard labels, see the 1704 Use of Reason and
Faith (Usage de la raison et de la foi) of the French Cartesian Pierre-Sylvain Regis (or Rgis)
(16321707), which includes a chapter on the dispute over divine concours between defenders of
la prmotion Physique and le (now, la) concours Simultane (I-2.32, Regis 1996, 38387). The
labels for these positions give the misleading impression, which Surez in fact encourages, that
the Thomists understood the divine moving of the human will to be temporally prior to the act of
that will. In fact, they held that the priority is one of nature and not time, and they allowed that
the premotion occurs at the very instant that the will acts. The difference from Surez consists
simply in the fact that they distinguished this instantaneous premoving from the act of the will.
78. A typical Thomist response is that the divine predetermination is not to be included in
the set of prerequisites, since these include only what is required on the part of other secondary causes. There is a sympathetic discussion of this response in Osborne 2006.

44

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

issues concerning divine providence, foreknowledge, predestination, and grace, but


notes that his main concern is to address the philosophical question of how Gods activity as primary cause is related to the activity of free human agents (41, 1:821). Though
Descartes was notoriously reticent to become entangled in theological disputes, he was
forced to confront this philosophical question. We will consider his response to it as the
last stage of our treatment of his theory of causation.

1.3. FROM SUREZ TO DESCARTES


Surez inherited the traditional Aristotelian distinction among material, formal, efcient, and nal causes. However, I have noted the view in Surez that efcient causes
best reect the denition of a cause as that which serves as a per se principle from
which being ows into another (see 1.2.2). Though we do not nd in Descartes
this (or, indeed, any other) formal denition of cause, the focus on efcient causality is reected in his remarks on causal explanation. Thus, in the Principles of
Philosophy he claims that in explaining natural events in terms of God or nature,
we should consider God as the efcient cause of all things (PP I.28, AT 8-1:16).
Admittedly, Descartes is rejecting here explanations in terms of Gods nal causality that he found in the scholastics, and that we have seen in Surez (see 1.2.2 (iii);
cf. 2.1.2 (ii.b)). However, even in Surez there is a decided emphasis on Gods
causal contribution as an efcient cause in his creation and conservation of the world
and in his concursus with the action of secondary causes (see 1.2.3).
In presenting Surez as preparing the way for Descartes, I certainly do not mean
to deny that they offered efcient causal explanations that differ in fundamental
respects. After all, Descartes himself insists on the importance of the fact that his
causal explanations of the material world do away with the sort of theoretical entities found in scholastic explanations. Thus, in speaking of the schoolmen he challenges a correspondent to compare all their real qualities, their substantial forms,
their elements and countless other such things with my single assumption that all
bodies are composed of parts (To Morin, 13 July 1638, AT 2:200). On the scholastic view in Surez, prime matter and substantial forms are distinct res that compose
material substance, whereas accidental forms are res distinct from the material composite that inhere in it.79 In contrast, Descartes proposes that matter is nothing more
than divisible res extensa, and that bodily accidents are not res but rather modes of
the parts that compose matter.80 While Descartess conception of a mode is drawn

79. An exception here is the case of the accidental form of quantity, which Surez, in
opposition to a more orthodox Thomistic position, takes to inhere in prime matter directly
rather than in the composite. In 3.1.2 (i), I indicate that the Surezian account of quantity is
in important respects closer than the Thomistic account to Descartess view of matter.
80. I am assuming here that Descartes takes the parts that serve as the subjects of the
modes to be substantial. Cf. the alternative view, cited in chapter 2, note 9, that he is committed to the conclusion that the only material substance is the whole of res extensa, and that the
parts of this substance are modes rather than substances.

The Scholastic Context

45

from Surez (see 1.2.1), his view that all bodily accidents are merely modal features of res extensa most assuredly is not.81
The differences here make a difference with respect to the particular accounts of
efcient causality in the material world that Surez and Descartes offer. Though
Surez posited the substantial form as a formal cause of a material substance (see
1.2.2 (i)), he also held in the section of the Metaphysical Disputation on efcient
causality that such a form is required as an efcient cause of certain changes in nature.
The causal role of the substantial form is particularly important in the case of substantival generation. Surez shared with Thomas the view that such generation
involves the eduction of a substantial form that is contained in the potentiality of matter (see 1.1.2). Surez further insisted that the efcient causality of accidental forms
is insufcient to account for this eduction, since a substantial form is more noble
than an accidental form, and since the principal cause 82 of an effect must be either
more noble than, or at least no less noble than, the effect (MD XVIII.2, 2, 1:599).83
We will discover that Descartes accepts a version of the axiom from Surez that a
cause must be at least as noble as the effect (see 2.1). Given his parsimonious ontology, however, Descartes could not accept the argument in Surez that such an axiom
requires the postulation of substantial forms as efcient causes of substantival generation. Indeed, Descartes rejects substantial forms on the basis of the fact that there can
be no natural generation of a substantial res. As he put the point in correspondence
with Regius, [I]t is inconceivable that a substance should come into existence without being created de novo by God (Jan. 1642, AT 3:505). Of course, Surez would
insist that a secondary cause cannot produce a new substance without the help of
divine concursus. Moreover, he could protest that the eduction of a substantial form
does not amount to the creation of a substance insofar as a substance naturally subsists on its own, whereas a substantial form naturally composes a substance. Even so,
Surezs metaphysical scheme requires that substantial forms are res distinct from
matter, and thus that in producing such a form, the secondary cause produces a being
that can, at least miraculously, subsist on its own apart from matter (see 1.2.1). For
Descartes, this result is unacceptable, since any being that can subsist on its own, even
if only by Gods absolute power, is itself a substance.84 The dispute here is not simply

81. For a further consideration of Descartess various arguments against substantial forms
and real qualities, see Rozemond 1998, ch. 4.
82. As opposed to an instrumental cause; see 1.2.3 (ii).
83. Surez also appealed to the efcient causality of the substantial form in explaining the
production of accidents that immediately derive from that form by means of a natural emanation. Thus, the substantial form of water is the efcient cause of the accident of coldness
that naturally emanates from it. It is due to such an emanation that heated water will, when
removed from the source of heat, reduce itself to its natural state of being cold (see MD
XVIII.3, 4, 1:616). For more on the scholastic conception of substantial form, see the discussion in Pasnau 2004. Pasnau documents the increasing emphasis in later scholastic thought
on the efcient cause role of substantial forms.
84. In his argument for mindbody distinctness in the Sixth Meditation, Descartes emphasizes that the question of what kind of power is required to produce the separate existence

46

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

over the use of the term substance. Rather, the real question is whether something
that can be educed from the potentiality of matter is in fact a res distinct from matter.
And when Descartes says in his letter to Regius that forms that merely emerge from
the potentiality of matter . . . should not be regarded as substances (AT 3:505), he
can be seen as making the defensible point that something that is a res distinct from
matter cannot be contained in the potentiality of matter. For Descartes, what can be
educed from matter as res extensa is only local motion and, consequently upon that,
different sizes and shapes.85 Since res extensa is itself a substance, it is something that
only God can create.
In rejecting any res in matter distinct from divinely created res extensa,
Descartes rejects as well the accidental forms that Surez took to be res distinct
from composite material substance that serve as efcient causes of natural accidental change. However, Surez had a complex theory of the efcient causality of
accidental forms that raises additional questions regarding Descartess conception
of causation. Surezs theory starts from Aristotles list of predicamental accidents, which, as we saw in 1.2.1, distinguishes quantity, quality, relation, action,
passion, time, place, position, and having.86 Of these categories, Surez held that
only qualities, and neither quantity nor relation nor the six minor accidents, can be
principles of action. Among the qualities, principles of action include active (as
opposed to merely passive) potentiae, habits and dispositions that yield specic
actions (as opposed to general states), and sensible qualities. Among the sensible
qualities, some such as colors can produce intentional species of themselves but
not qualities similar to themselves, whereas others such as heat and light can produce both intentional species of themselves and qualities similar to themselves.
Surez in fact explicitly denied that either shapes (in the category of quality)87 or
local motions (as well as alteration in quality, augmentation in quantity, and substantial generation) can serve as per se principles of action (see MD XVIII.4,
1:62427).
In Surezs view, then, Descartess claim in the Principles that his consideration
of the material world involves absolutely nothing apart from these divisions [in
quantity], shapes and motions (PP II.64, AT 8-1:79) requires the denial that anything in matter can serve as a principle of efcient causality. He therefore would take
Descartess radical alternative to the scholastic ontology of the material world to lead

of two objects does not affect the claim that they are really distinct (AT 7:78). For a discussion of the relation of this view to that of the scholastics, see Rozemond 1998, 13033.
85. Descartes claims in the Principles that any variation in matter or diversity of its many
forms depends on motion (PP II.23, AT 8-1:5253). For him, the forms intrinsic to the
parts of matter can involve only modes of extension such as size and shape.
86. In his Disputations, Surez devotes the following disputations to each of the categories: XLXLI to quantity, XLIIXLVI to quality, XLVII to relation, XLVIII to action, XLIX
to passion, L to time, LI to place, LII to position, and LIII to habit.
87. On Surezs view that shape is a mode of quantity rather than a res distinct from it, see
1.2.1. As indicated in that section, this Surezian view is reected in Descartess characterization of the scholastic position.

The Scholastic Context

47

back to some form of occasionalism, at least with respect to the explanation of


purely material change.
Whether Descartes would accept this implication of his ontology of the material
world is a question we will address in due course. Even if Descartes were committed to some form of occasionalism in the case of bodybody interactions, however,
it would be a mistake to see medieval Islamic occasionalism, rather than scholastic
anti-occasionalism, as providing the proper context for a consideration of the
account of causation in his physics. For one thing, Islamic occasionalism simply was
not a live option during Descartess time in the way in which scholastic antioccasionalist accounts of bodily causation were. Moreover, Descartess rejection of
the scholastic ontology of the material world did not prevent him from adopting certain general features of the account of causation that we nd in Surez. I have
already mentioned his endorsement of a version of the axiom in Surez that a cause
must be at least as noble as the effect. Given this endorsement, Descartes could not
have been sympathetic to the view in Islamic occasionalism, which Hume later
accepts, that causal correlations can hold between any two distinct events.88 But as
will become evident in what follows, it is also the case that Descartess view of
Gods causal activity draws on claims in Surez concerning the relation between
divine creation and conservation. I will be concerned to argue that this connection to
Surez provides a reason to reject the view of those who take Descartess theory of
causation to include a form of temporal atomism that is similar to that of the Islamic
occasionalists (see 2.2). This connection to Surez is signicant for Descartess
theory of causation given the fact, which I emphasize in chapter 3, that his account
of divine conservation is a central element of the metaphysical foundations that he
provides for his anti-scholastic physics.
The importance of the anti-occasionalist scholastic context is not restricted to
Descartess account of causation in physics. In addition to the general metaphysical
principles in the work of the scholastics that I have emphasized in this chapter, there
are further specic claims concerning causation in Surez and other scholastics that
we must consider if we are to understand what Descartes has to say about forms of
causation other than bodybody interaction. In what follows, I note in particular the
relevance of such claims for Descartess account of the action of body on mind (see
4.2.1) and of the action of mind on body (4.3.1). The scholastic context will allow
us to appreciate certain problems in Descartes for mindbody interaction that go
beyond the problem of the interaction of objects with differing natures that has tended
to dominate recent discussions of his theory of causation. Moreover, it will become
clear in the nal chapter that this context is essential for an adequate understanding
of the sort of causation that Descartes takes to be involved in the free acts of our will.

88. For this view in Ghaza-l-s Incoherence, see 1.1.1. For a discussion of the relation of
Ghaza-l-s position to Humes account of causation, see Nadler 1996. My view that Descartes
differed from the Humean line on this point has been disputed in Della Rocca (forthcoming).
According to Della Rocca, Descartes does not take the causal axiom he inherited from
the scholastics to show that causes explain their effects. I defend my different reading of
Descartess axiom in 2.1.3.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Admittedly, as in the case of physics, so Descartess accounts of mindbody interaction and free human action presuppose a basic ontological framework that differs,
sometimes radically, from a traditional scholastic framework. However, these undeniably important differences should not blind us to the extent to which the problems
concerning causation that Descartes confronts, and even aspects of his responses to
those problems, were bequeathed to him by his scholastic predecessors.

Two Causal Axioms

In contrast to Surez, Descartes did not bequeath to posterity an extended treatise on


the nature of causality. Nevertheless, his remarks on causation in the Third Meditation
provide a natural starting point for a consideration of his theory of causation. For in
this text, Descartes emphasizes two conclusions regarding causation that he took to
be evident. The rst, which is central to the main proof in the Third Meditation of
the existence of God, is that there must be as much in the efcient and total cause
as in the effect of that cause (AT 7:40). This is alternatively expressed by the claim
that the effect cannot begin to exist unless it is produced by something in which
there is formally or eminently all that is found in the effect (AT 7:41). Elsewhere
Descartes labels this as the axiom or common notion that whatever there is of
reality or perfection in some thing, is formally or eminently in its rst and adequate
cause (AT 7:165). Drawing on this label, as well as the claim in this passage that
the reality or perfection is contained in the cause, I call this constraint on causation
the containment axiom. 1 In addition to this axiom, there is Descartess argument
toward the end of the Third Meditation that since conservation differs solely in reason
from creation, there must be some cause that as it were creates me at this moment,
that is, conserves me (AT 7:49). Descartes also expresses this claim as the axiom that

1. In contrast to the English-language secondary literature on this topic (see note 7),
Descartes typically speaks of causal axioms or notions rather than of causal principles. But he
does indicate in correspondence that the term principle can be used for a common notion
that is so clear and so general that it can serve as a principle for proving the existence of all
the beings, or entities, to be discovered later, as well as for a Being, the existence of which
is better known to us than any other, so that it can serve as a principle for knowing them
(To Clerselier, June/July 1646, AT 4:444).

49

50

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

no less a cause is required to conserve a thing than to produce it at rst (AT 7:165).
I call this additional constraint on causation the conservation axiom.
Both of these axioms have a clear scholastic precedent in Surez. Indeed, there is
a suspicion among some commentators that the containment axiom, in particular, is
merely a scholastic holdover that has no real justication in Descartess system. For
instance, Jonathan Bennett has concluded that after decades of intermittently brooding over this axiom, the axiom itself is without value and seems not to reect any
deeply considered views about the nature of causation (Bennett 2001, 1:89).2 As we
will discover, however, other commentators have insisted that this axiom is signicant
for Descartes insofar as it precludes the causal interaction of objects with natures that
he takes to be heterogeneous, most notably the interaction of mind as res cogitans and
body as res extensa.3
There is less disagreement in the literature over the value of Descartess conservation axiom. However, there is an interpretation of this axiom that distances it from its
scholastic counterpart. Here again Bennett illustrates the point, claiming that the conservation axiom leads Descartes to the position that the continual preservation of
things through time . . . is really the continual creation of successors to them (Bennett
2001, 1:98). This claim of course reects the earlier interpretation of Descartess view
of divine conservation, mentioned in the introduction, that Norman Smith offered in
1902.4 But this interpretation is perhaps developed most completely in the later work
of Martial Gueroult.5 What neither Gueroult nor Smith nor Bennett emphasizes, however, is that a re-creationalist account of the conservation axiom conicts with the view
in Surez and other scholastics that conservation requires not distinct acts of recreation, but merely the continuation of the very same act by which God created in the
rst place.
A different view of the metaphysics of Descartess two causal axioms emerges, however, once we take seriously their source in scholastic thought. The scholastic context
not only allows us to understand the import the containment axiom had for Descartes,
but also reveals that this axiom does not create the sort of difculties for mindbody
interaction that critics have tended to emphasize. Moreover, Surezs version of the
conservation axiom in fact provides a basis for rejecting the claim that Descartes identied the conservation of the world with its continual re-creation. I noted in 1.3 that
Descartes offers a radical alternative to the sort of scholastic ontology that underlies
Surezs account of causality. But this departure from scholasticism turns out to be

2. Bennett calls the containment axiom the causal resources principle. For further discussion of Bennetts treatment of the issue of causation in philosophers from Descartes to
Hume, see my review of Bennett 2001 in Schmaltz 2002b.
3. See the views of Radner discussed below. See also the comments in the introduction
concerning the so-called scandal of Cartesian interaction.
4. However, Bennett himself cites in defense of his re-creationalist interpretation of
Descartes a passage from Smith 1952, 218. For more on this interpretation, see note 92.
5. Where Bennett goes beyond Gueroult is in attributing to Descartes the position that God
does not conserve the very same object over time, but rather creates a series of nonidentical
successors. I think that Bennett is correct in holding that this is an implication of the recreationist reading of conservation, at least on one account of identity, but I argue in 2.2.2
that such an implication reveals that this reading cannot reect Descartess own views.

Two Causal Axioms

51

compatible in the end with the dependence of Descartess understanding of the metaphysics of causation on the views of his scholastic predecessors.
In 2.1, I begin my consideration of this account by focusing on Descartess containment axiom. My statement above that this axiom expresses the claim that the
cause contains at least as much reality as its effect actually begs the question against
the view in the literature that there are two distinct constraints on causation here. So
I need to start by arguing that there is in fact only one axiom. Then I consider the
signicance of the fact that Descartes restricted his containment axiom to the efcient and total cause of an effect, as well as the precise meaning of the claim in this
axiom that the effect is contained in the cause formally or eminently. Throughout
it proves useful to take into account remarks in Surez, who anticipated Descartess
statement of the containment axiom and the technical terminology used therein.
In 2.2, I turn to the conservation axiom as explicated in the Third Meditation.
Descartes indicates there that this axiom follows from the nature of time, and that
it yields the result that conservation is distinct only in reason, and not in reality,
from creation. This result seems to be drawn straight from Surez, though I have mentioned the claim in Bennett, anticipated in Gueroult, that for Descartes divine conservation consists in a series of discrete creative acts rather than, as Surez would have
it, in a continuation of Gods original creation of the world. But though there are some
differences in the arguments for divine conservation in Surez and Descartes, I understand both to agree that God conserves creatures by means of the continuation of the
same act by which he created them ex nihilo.
Even though the Surezian context is essential for understanding Descartess containment and conservation axioms, I claim in 2.3 that these axioms do not take him
the full way to Surezs own concurrentist position. The containment axiom leaves
unresolved some basic issues concerning how an effect is actually produced. The conservation axiom goes further in revealing that divine conservation plays an essential
background role in causal interactions. But there remains the metaphysical question
central to scholastic discussions of causalityof the precise nature of the creaturely
contribution to causality in nature. To address Descartess stance on this issue, we
must shift from a consideration of his abstract causal axioms to an exploration of the
details of his accounts of various forms of causal interaction.

2.1. THE CONTAINMENT AXIOM


The main topic of the Third Meditation is the existence of God, and in the course
of offering his main proof there of Gods existence, Descartes appeals to the following as manifest by the light of nature, which I divide into two parts:
[1] There must be at least as much in the efcient and total cause as in the effect
of that cause. For I ask, where could the effect receive [assumere] its reality,
unless from the cause? And how could the cause give this to it, unless it also has
[this]. For thus it follows that something cannot come from nothing, nor that what
is less perfect, that is, what contains more reality in itself, from what has less. . . .
That is [Hoc est], [2] in no way can some stone, for example, which was not
before, now begin to be, unless produced by another thing in which there is all
either formally or eminently that is found in the stone; nor can heat that was not

52

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION
previously in a subject be induced, unless from a thing that is of at least the same
order of perfection as heat, and so for the rest. (AT 7:4041)

Both (1) and (2), as well as the view that they are intimately connected, are drawn
straight from the scholastic tradition. For instance, in his Disputations Surez proposes that especially in the case of efcient causality, the following principle holds,
which I divide into corresponding parts:
[1'] [A]n effect cannot exceed in perfection all of its causes taken together. It is
proved that nothing of perfection is in the effect that it does not have from its
cause; therefore [ergo] [2'] the effect can have nothing of perfection that does not
pre-exist in any of its causes, either formally or eminently, because causes cannot
give what they in no way contain. (MD XXVI.1, 2, 1:916*)

Surezs (1') requires that all causes taken together contain everything of perfection in their effect on the grounds that the effect can have its perfection only from
these causes. Similarly, Descartess (1) requires that the efcient and total cause
of an effect contain at least as much reality as its effect contains on the grounds
that the effect must receive its reality from its cause. And just as Surezs (2')
requires that the perfection of the effect preexist in all of its causes formally or
eminently, so Descartess (2) requires that the total cause contain in this way all
that is in its effect.6
One important difference derives from the indication in Descartes that his causal
constraints apply not only to the actual or formal reality that an effect has from its
cause, but also to the objective reality that his idea of that effect has. In the case
of (2), in particular, the causal constraint is said to require that the idea of heat, or
of the stone, could not be in me unless it is placed there by some cause in which there
is at minimum as much of reality as I conceive to be in heat or the stone (AT 7:41).
This extension of the causal constraint to the case of objective reality is of course
central to the Third Meditation argument that God must exist as the cause of
the objective reality of our idea of God. I will have more to say presently about
Descartess views on objective reality in relation to the very different views on this
type of reality in Surez. But my main concern will be to address the following questions concerning the passage above from the Third Meditation. First, there is the
question of whether the constraints introduced in (1) and (2) amount to the same
or are distinct constraints. A second question concerns the import of Descartess
restriction of the constraint in (1) to the efcient and total cause. Finally, there is
the question of what precisely Descartes meant by the claim in (2), anticipated in
Surez, that a cause must contain its effect formally or eminently.

2.1.1. How Many Causal Constraints?


Surez links his two causal constraints by the term ergo, thus indicating that the fact
that all perfections of an effect are contained formally or eminently in the total set
6. Whereas Descartes followed Surez in holding that a cause need contain at least as much
reality or perfection as its effect, the version of the containment principle in the work of Proclus
and other Neoplatonists requires the stronger condition that the cause contain more reality or perfection than its effect. For a discussion of the Neoplatonic version of the principle, see Lloyd 1976.

Two Causal Axioms

53

of its causes (2) follows from the fact that such causes together contain at least as
much perfection as is present in this effect (1). Indeed, the suggestion in Surez is
that the two constraints come to the same thing. For a cause to contain at least as
much perfection as its effect just is for it to contain formally or eminently everything
in its effect. Surez took formal and eminent containment to exhaust the ways
in which perfection can be contained. This same view seems to be reected in
Descartess remarks in the Third Meditation. For by introducing (2) by the term Hoc
est, he suggested that this constraint comes to the same as (1).
Nevertheless, there is the view in the literature that Descartess (1) and (2) are distinct constraints insofar as (1) requires much less of the cause than does (2). For
instance, Daisie Radner argues that whereas (1) explicates a relatively weak reality
principle, which requires the containment in the cause of only at least as much reality as is found in the effect, (2) introduces a stronger containment principle, which
requires further the containment in the cause formally or eminently of the specic
features of the effect (Radner 1985a, 41).7
When pressed to explain the sort of reality that he had in mind in asserting (1),
Descartes explains that substance is a greater thing than mode, and that if there is
an innite and independent substance, it is a greater thing than nite and dependent
[substance] (AT 7:185).8 What is suggested here is the following simple ontological
hierarchy:
God

innite substance

minds
bodies9

nite substances

thoughts
shapes/sizes/motions

modes of nite substances10

7. I take the labels from the discussion of Radners position in ONeill 1987, 23132.
Radner calls the reality principle the at least as much principle, and the containment principle the pre-existence principle. ONeill is inclined to Radners view that Descartes offered
two distinct causal constraints; see ONeill 1987, 232. Radner also takes Descartes to offer a
distinct communication principle on which the cause literally transfers to the effect what it
contains in itself. In 3.2.1 (iii), I consider the claim in Broughton 1986 that Descartes was
led by his views on causation to accept such a principle in the case of bodybody interaction.
8. Descartes also includes in this hierarchy real accidents, or incomplete substances that
are greater things than modes, but less than complete substances (AT 7:185). But he
famously rejects the existence of scholastic bodily accidents that can (at least miraculously)
subsist apart from corporeal substance.
9. There is some dispute in the literature over whether Descartes allowed that particular bodies
are substances at all. On a view that Martial Gueroult defends, there is only one material substance,
with particular bodies serving as modes; see Gueroult 1953, 1:10718, and Gueroult 1968, 54055.
Cf. the recent development of this interpretation in Lennon 2007. However, Descartes himself
speaks of the parts of corporeal substance as distinct substances (e.g., in PP I.60, AT 8-1:2829),
and he distinguishes between parts of a body and its modes (Sixth Replies, AT 7:43334), thus suggesting that particular bodies are substantial parts of matter rather than modes of it. For an appeal
to these considerations in response to Gueroults interpretation, see Hoffman 1986, 34749.
10. In a letter to Arnauld, Descartes emphasizes that one must distinguish between
thought or extension insofar as it constitutes the nature of a substance and the variable

54

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

In terms of this hierarchy, the claim that a cause must have as much reality as its
effect requires only that the cause be on at least the same level of the ontological
hierarchy as its effect. This seems to fall short of the requirement that the cause
contain everything in the effect formally or eminently. According to Radner, the
requirement here is that the cause possess not merely the general type of reality in
the effect, but the specic nature of the effect itself.11
In response to Radner, however, Louis Loeb denies the distinction between the
two principles Radner claims to nd in Descartes on the grounds that what is said
to be contained formally or eminently in the cause is simply the perfection or reality that the reality principle concerns. In Loebs view, to say that the cause must
contain formally or eminently everything in the effect is just to say that the cause
must contain something on either the same ontological level as its effect (in the case
of formal containment) or a higher ontological level than its effect (in the case of
eminent containment). Thus, the containment principle requires not that the cause
contain modes of the same kind as it produces in the effect but merely that it contain the reality of the effect qua degree of perfection (Loeb 1985, 228).
According to Loeb, then, the containment principle requires that in the case of the
production of a mode, say, bodily motion, the cause that formally contains this
effect possess not motion itself, but only something on the same ontological level
as this mode.
Loebs claim that the two causal principles are not ultimately distinct may seem
to be supported by the fact that when attempting to formalize his system in the
Second Replies, Descartes offers only the one causal axiom, and explicates that
axiom in terms of his simple ontological hierarchy. The causal axiom, which I cited
at the outset, is that the rst and adequate cause contains formally or eminently
whatever there is of reality or perfection in the effect.12 But this axiom is followed
by a further axiom that explains the notion of reality or perfection by appealing to
the fact that substance has more reality than accidents or modes, and innite substance, than nite (AT 7:165). So the suggestion here is that the reality that the
cause formally or eminently contains is simply the reality of the effect as innite
substance, nite substance or mode.

modes of that attribute, such as particular acts of thinking or particular shapes, sizes, or
motions (29 July 1648, AT 5:221). On his ofcial view, the thought or extension that constitutes the nature of a substance is an invariable attribute that is only distinct by reason
from that substance (see PP I.62, AT 8-1:30). This kind of attribute thus belongs on the
same level of reality as the substances to which they are attributed. In 2.2.2, I note the view
in Descartes that there is only a distinction of reason between a substance and its invariable
attribute of duration.
11. As Radner puts the point, the further constraint on causation requires that in the case
where the effect is a mode, the cause communicates this something that pre-exists in itself
and that what gets communicated is not merely just modality or modeness but rather a particular kind of mode (Radner 1985a, 41).
12. I address presently the restriction of the axiom to the adequate or, what is the same
for Descartes, total cause.

Two Causal Axioms

55

Loebs deationary version of the containment axiom sufces for the purposes of
the main argument for the existence of God in the Third Meditation. As I have indicated, the central premise of this argument is that the cause must contain formally or
eminently the reality that is present objectively in our idea of innitely perfect substance.13 But to contain something at the same level of reality as innitely perfect
substance just is to contain formally innite perfection itself.
Nonetheless, a more robust sort of formal containment seems to be required for
the proof of the existence of the material world in the Sixth Meditation. After ruling out the possibility that his mind has an active faculty ( facultas activa) that
produces the objective reality of his sensory ideas, Descartes notes that there must
be another substance distinct from me, in which all the reality must inhere
[inesse] either formally or eminently, which is objectively in the ideas produced by
this faculty. Either the substance is body, in which case the reality inheres formally, or it is God or some creature more noble than [nobilier] body, in which
case the reality inheres eminently (AT 7:79). In terms of the simple ontological
hierarchy, the claim that one created substance is more noble than another would
seem to amount to the claim that the former is on a higher level in the hierarchy
than the latter. But this claim is problematic given the implication of the simple
ontological hierarchy that all substances other than God are on the same ontological level. As I indicate in my discussion below of Descartess view of eminent
containment, this consideration reveals the need for a revised version of his ontological hierarchy. However, the relevant point here is that the mere containment of
something with the same amount of reality does not sufce for formal containment
in the Sixth Meditation proof. For other nite minds do contain something with the
same amount of reality as the bodily modes present objectively in our sensory
ideas, namely, its own modes. But the proof makes clear that nite substances
more noble than bodies contain the objective reality of the sensory features of bodies eminently rather than formally (AT 7:79). More needs to be said about the
exact nature of the formal containment that Descartes has in mind here; we will
return to this point presently. Yet even an initial consideration of the Sixth
Meditation proof of the material world indicates that formal containment requires
not merely that what is contained be on the same ontological level as the effect,
but also that it have the same nature as the effect. So at a minimum, that which formally contains the objective reality of our sensory ideas of bodies must have the
same nature as body.
My proposal is that Descartes offers a single causal axiom that requires that the
cause contain the reality of the effect formally or eminently. Any apparent distinction of causal constraints derives from the fact that he sometimes needed to consider
the reality or perfection of the effect only abstractly in terms of his simple ontological hierarchy, as in the case of the Third Meditation proof of the existence of God,

13. I have more to say in 2.1.3 (i) about Descartess account of objective reality and of
its distinction from formal reality.

56

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

whereas at other times he needed to consider the reality or perfection as reected in


the particular nature of the effect, as in the case of the Sixth Meditation proof of the
existence of the material world. In the end, there seems to be no difference between
Descartes and Surez on the relation between the two causal constraints. For both,
the requirement that the (total or adequate efcient) cause contain at least as much
perfection as its effect is to be understood in terms of the requirement that the (total
or adequate efcient) cause contain everything it produces in the effect formally or
eminently.
To this point I have spoken only in general terms about the requirement in the
containment axiom that the cause contain formally or eminently what is found in
the effect. We will discover that the notions of formal and eminent containment are
not entirely straightforward for Descartes. Before puzzling over the complications,
however, we need to consider briey the import of Descartess claim to Mersenne
that when he said in the Third Meditation that there is nothing in the effect not contained formally or eminently in its EFFICIENT and TOTAL cause, I added these
two words on purpose (AT 3:274). At least initially, total causes are most usefully
contrasted with partial causes, and efcient causes with formal and nal causes. The
scholastic context, particularly as provided in Surezs work, turns out to be crucial
for Descartess own understanding of these contrasts.

2.1.2. EFFICIENT and TOTAL Cause


(i) Total/Adequate versus Partial Causes
The theologians and philosophers gathered by Mersenne who wrote the Second
Objections argue that since living things are produced by the sun, rain, and earth,
which lack life and therefore are less noble than what they produce, it is the case,
contrary to what Descartes claimed in the Third Meditation, that an effect may
derive from its cause some reality that is nevertheless not present in the cause
(AT 7:123). Descartes initially responds by insisting that life is a perfection that can
be explained in terms of the operations of inanimate bodies. Here he appeals to his
argument that it is only reason, particularly as manifested in language use, that cannot be so explained.14 Yet in his Second Replies, as well as in a related letter to
Mersenne, Descartes also allows for the possibility that living organisms include
perfections not present in the sun, rain, and earth, but concludes that if this is so, then
it shows only that these elements are not the total or adequate causes of what they
generate.15
Descartes nowhere provided an analysis of total or adequate causes, or indicated
the sense in which objects such as the sun, rain, and earth could be causes without
being total or adequate causes. Yet at one point in the Third Meditation he does refer
to the possibility that several partial causes (causes partiales) contribute to his cre-

14. This is the argument in DM V, AT 6:5559.


15. Cf. AT 7:134, in which Descartes denies that they are adequate causes, and AT 3:274,
in which he denies that they are total causes.

Two Causal Axioms

57

ation (AT 7:50). Moreover, there is in Surez an analysis of the distinction between
total and partial causes. In the Disputations, he denes the total cause as that which
provides the whole concursus necessary for the effect in its order, and the partial
cause as that which per se alone does not contribute a sufcient and wholly necessary concursus (MD XXVI.3, 1, 1:92596*).16 In failing to contribute a sufcient
concursus, partial causes may seem to be similar to instrumental causes that, in his
view, must be subordinated to and act with other causes of the same order to produce
effects more noble than themselves (see 1.2.3 (ii)). Surez cautions that though
partial causes also must act with other causes of their same order to produce their
effects, they are not subordinated to those other causes, and so are principal rather
than instrumental causes (MD XVII.2, 18, 1:591). However, his claim that partial
causes require assistance from other causes of the same order allows him to hold that
secondary causes can be total causes of their effects even though they can produce
these effects only with the help of the concursus of the primary cause.
In terms of this analysis, Descartes could say that the sun, rain, and earth are not
total or adequate efcient causes of living organisms because they do not provide
everything needed in the order of secondary efcient causes to produce their effect.
The concursus of other organisms or, in the case of the original production of the
organism, of other kinds of bodies are required for this production. Since they are
only partial causes, the sun, rain, and earth need not contain formally or eminently
everything present in the organisms they produce.17 But given his containment
axiom, Descartes must hold that the total efcient cause of the organisms, consisting of these partial causes together with the other organisms or bodies that contribute
to their production, must so contain the effect. And on this point Descartes agrees
with Surez, who asserts as certain that the effect cannot exceed in perfection all of
its causes taken together. For Surez, as for Descartes, such a certainty reveals that
the effect can have nothing of perfection that does not pre-exist in some of its
causes, either formally or eminently (MD XXVI.1, 2, 1:916*).
There is, however, one interesting complication for the view that Descartes can
accept the conclusion in Surez that creatures as well as God can be the total cause
of an effect. This complication derives from the so-called Conversation with
Burman, a record of a 1648 interview that Descartes had in his country retreat in
Egmont with the Dutch theological student Frans Burman. One portion of this conversation concerned Descartess claim in the Third Meditation that given the fact that
God has created him there is a strong reason to believe that I have been made in

16. Surez further distinguishes partial causes, which are principal causes that bring about
effects with other causes of the same kind and order, from instrumental causes, which are not
principal causes, since they bring about effects with other secondary causes of a higher order
to which they are subordinated; see MD XVII.2, 1619, 1:59091. For more on his view of
instrumental causes, see 1.2.3 (ii). Here I focus on his account of principal causes.
17. Elsewhere, Descartes refers to the sun as a universal cause of its effects that requires
the contribution of other particular causes; see To Elisabeth, 6 Oct. 1645, AT 4:314. In
2.2.1, I discuss Descartess view in this letter that the action of the sun as a universal cause
must be distinguished from Gods action as universal and total cause of all effects.

58

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

some way in his image and likeness [imaginem et similtudinem], and that I perceive
that likeness, which includes the idea of God, by the same faculty that enables me to
perceive myself (AT 7:51).18 Burman objects to this claim that surely God could
create you, and yet not create you in his own image. Descartes is reported to
respond, after citing the principle that the effect is similar to the cause, that since
God is my cause, I am His effect, it follows directly that I am similar to him.
When Burman rejoins that the builder who produces a house is not similar to it,
Descartes notes that the fact that the builder only applies activity to the passive
shows that the work as a work is not itself similar. He then claims that in the contrasting case of the total cause and [the cause] of being itself, which produces
something else ex nihilo (which is the mode of production that pertains to God
alone), the effect must be similar to the cause. Thus since the total cause of being
is itself being and substance, it follows that what it produces must at a minimum
be being and substance, and so in any case be similar to God and bear His image
[imaginem] (AT 5:156).
If the total cause and the cause of being itself means the total cause, that is, the
cause of being itself, then only God could be a total cause given the remark to
Burman that the mode of producing being itself ex nihilo belongs to God alone.19 On
this reading, the containment axiom could apply only to God. However, one could
read the total cause and the cause of being itself as referring to something that is
the total cause and in addition the cause of being itself. The response to Burman may
be that a thoroughgoing similarity of effect to cause can be derived only in the case
of a total cause of that effect that is also the cause of the being of that effect.20 In the
cases of total causes that bring about their effects by applying their activity to passivity, one cannot argue to a similarity in being, since such causes do not produce the
being of the patient, but merely alter a patient that already has its own being. To be
sure, Descartes must take the alteration to be contained in its total cause formally or
eminently. Yet one cannot assume that the being of what is altered must be similar
to the being of what alters it. The builder must (eminently) contain the plan of the
house he will build, but the passive materials to which he applies his activity need
not be similar to himself. We will return in 2.2.1 to the question of whether Gods
total causality of the world precludes any other sort of causal input. But at least the
argument in the Burman report that the similarity between cause and effect is
required only in the case of the cause of being itself does not require the restriction
of total causality to God alone.21

18. Also at issue is Descartess claim in the Fifth Replies that divine [creation] is closer
to natural production than to articial [production] (AT 7:373).
19. Cf. Descartess remarks at AT 7:111. But see also the discussion in 1.2.3 (i) of reservations in Surez of demonstrating on the basis of natural reason alone the conclusion that
God alone can create ex nihilo.
20. I overlooked the possibility of this alternative reading in my analysis of the Burman
passage in Schmaltz 2000.
21. There is a similar reading of the Burman passage in Pessin 2003, 43. Cf. the discussion of this passage in 2.2.1.

Two Causal Axioms

59

(ii) Efcient versus Formal and Final Causes


Previously we have considered the view in Surez that since form and matter are
intrinsic causes, they differ in kind from two kinds of extrinsic causes, namely, nal
causes that cause by means of a metaphorical motion insofar as they merely
incline other causes, and efcient causes that are the true source of effects through an
action (see 1.2.2). Though Surez emphasized that efcient causality is the primary
case of causation, he was also willing to appeal to material, formal, and nal causality in his explanations of natural change. Descartess restriction of his containment
axiom to efcient causality indicates this unwillingness to extend the notion of
causality in a similar sort of way. Even so, he allows at times for something akin to
formal causes, and he admits not only a rational teleology in the case of the actions
of created minds, but also a kind of natural teleology in the case of the soulbody
union.22 What we need to understand is how Descartess concessions are compatible
with his emphasis on the exclusivity of efcient causality. Let us consider intrinsic
formal causality rst, then extrinsic nal causality.
(ii.a) Descartes admits a kind of formal causality analogous to though distinct from
efcient causality in the course of commenting on his suggestion in the Third
Meditation that God derives his existence from himself. The Dutch critic Johan de
Kater, or Caterus, protested in the First Objections that God can derive his existence
from himself only in a negative sense, or not from another, and not in a positive
sense, or from a cause (AT 7:95). In response, Descartes insists that it is legitimate
to assume that everything requires a cause of its existence, and to inquire into its
efcient cause. He adds that even though the fact that God has great and inexhaustible power reveals that he does not require an external cause for his existence,
still since it is he himself who conserves himself, it does not seem too improper
for him to be called sui causa (AT 7:109). Since God can be called a sui causa,
we are permitted to think that he stands in the same relation to himself as an efcient cause does to its effect, and hence to be from himself positively (AT 7:111).
Dissatised with this explanation, Arnauld notes in the Fourth Objections that we
are to understand the source of Gods existence not in terms of an efcient cause, but
in terms of the fact that since his existence is identical to his essence, God requires no
efcient cause. Arnauld adds that since nothing can stand in the same relation to itself
as an efcient cause does to its effect, God cannot stand in this relation to himself
(AT 7:21314).23
Though Descartes protests that Arnaulds complaint seems to me to be the least
of all his objections (AT 7:235), he nonetheless responds to it at some length. He
begins by insisting that he never said that God is an efcient cause of his own existence, but only that he in a sense stands in the same relation to his existence as an

22. I take the terms rational teleology and natural teleology from Simmons 2001.
23. Arnaulds objection is relevant also to Descartess axiom in the Second Replies that
no thing exists of which it cannot be asked what is the cause why it exists (AT 7:164). I discuss this axiom in 5.1.2.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

efcient cause does to its effect.24 To explain more precisely the sense in which God
is the cause of his existence, Descartes appeals to the claim in Aristotle that the
essence of a thing can be considered as a formal cause of certain features of that
thing (AT 7:242). He concedes to Arnauld that the fact that Gods existence is identical to his essence reveals that it does not require an efcient cause, but he notes that
Gods essence provides a formal cause of his existence that has a great analogy to
the efcient [cause], and thus can be called an efcient cause as it were [quasi causa
efciens] (AT 7:243).25
Even though he emphasizes the analogy to efcient causality, Descartes also suggests that there must be some room in his ontology for a species of causation distinct
from efcient causation. After all, Descartes tells Arnauld that there is between an
efcient cause and no cause the positive essence of a thing (AT 7:239). To be sure,
he continues by allowing that the concept of an efcient cause can be extended to
the concept of a formal cause, in the same way that the concept of a rectilinear polygon can be extended to the concept of a circle (AT 7:239). But just as a rectilinear
polygon remains something distinct in nature from a circle, so an efcient cause
seems to remain something distinct in nature from a formal cause.26
In the exchange with Arnauld, the discussion of formal causality is limited for the
most part to the special case of Gods existence. However, I have noted Descartess
appeal to an understanding of formal causality in Aristotle that is not restricted in this
manner. Descartes cites in particular Aristotles claim in Posterior Analytics that the
dening form of a right angle is the cause of the fact that an angle in a semicircle is a
right angle (II.11, 94a2535, Aristotle 1984, 1:155). Given this citation, Descartes
could extend the notion of formal causality to cover any case in which a feature of an
object derives from that objects nature or essence. Though he himself does not speak
in these terms, he could say that the extension that constitutes the essence of a body is
the formal cause of that bodys capacity to have certain kind of modes, in particular,
modes of extension. Of course, this appeal could not explain why the body has certain
modes rather than others. In contrast to the case of Gods existence, such an explanation would need to invoke the efcient causes of the bodily modes. But also in contrast
to the case of Gods existence, an explanation of these modes in terms of their efcient
causes seems to be perfectly compatible with an explanation of the ability of body to
possess such modes in terms of the formal cause of the modes.

24. Descartes is not entirely innocent, though, since he does deny in the First Replies that
he said that it is impossible for something to be the efcient cause of itself, and he suggests
that efcient causes need not be either prior to or distinct from their effects (AT 7:108). It is
understandable that Arnauld takes this text (to which he had access when composing his
Fourth Objections) to indicate that Descartes wanted to apply the notion of efcient causality
to the derivation of Gods existence from himself.
25. For a helpful discussion of Descartess exchange with Arnauld on this point, see
Carraud 2002, 26688. Carraud draws on the discussion of Descartess conception of God as
causa sui in Marion 1996, 14382.
26. Thus, there seems to me to be some reason to qualify Carrauds conclusion that for
Descartes the expression cause efciente is henceforth redundant (Carraud 2002, 179).
Carraud cites the similar conclusion in Marion 1991, 28687.

Two Causal Axioms

61

Thus, there may be no reason for Descartes to dispute the consequence in Surez that
the fact that an effect has a total efcient cause does not preclude the fact that it also has
a formal cause. Moreover, Descartess claim in the Fourth Replies that we conceive of
formal causality in the case of God by analogy with the notion of efcient causation
(AT 7:241) recalls the view in Surez that formal causes can be called causes only by
analogy to efcient causes (see 1.2.2 (i)). Nevertheless, it is clear that the account of
formal causality that I derive from the remarks in the Fourth Replies differs fundamentally from the account of such causality in Surez. Descartess ofcial doctrine in the
Principles is that there is only a distinctio rationis, and not any distinction in reality,
between the principal attribute of extension and the corporeal substance whose nature
it constitutes (see PP I.62, AT 8-1:30).27 According to Descartes, then, anything that
inheres in matter can be only a mode of extension.28 Here he is of course concerned to
reject the substantial and accidental forms that schoolmen such as Surez took to be the
source of formal causality in the case of material substances.29 But Descartes is
committed to rejecting as well the view in Surez that formal causality involves an
intrinsic and formal union of a form that is distinct in re from that with which it unites.
Descartes therefore could not take formal causality to enter into an account of the
composition of corporeal substance; at most, he could appeal to this kind of causality
merely to anchor bodily modes in the extension that constitutes the essence of body.
But though a Surezian account of the causal role of the forms of material
composites cannot provide a model for Descartess conception of formal causality,
such a model is provided by something in Surez that we have not yet considered,
namely, the metaphysical form that he identied with the form of the whole, nothing other than the whole essence of the substantial thing (MD XV.11, 3, 1:558). For
if anything is a formal cause in a body, according to Descartes, it is the extension that
constitutes the whole nature of that body. Yet Surez himself denied that metaphysical
forms are formal causes in the case of material objects insofar as they already include
both the matter and form of such objects and thus do not issue in actualizing some
other subject (MD XV.11, 7, 1:559). Given this scholastic context, it is understandable that Descartes felt no need to leave room in his physics for a kind of formal
causality that differs from the efcient causality governed by the containment axiom.
(ii.b) Descartes is famous for his rejection of appeals to Gods nal causality. In the
Fourth Meditation, he argues for such a rejection by claiming that
since I now know that my own nature is weak and limited, whereas the nature of
God is immense, incomprehensible and innite, I also know without more ado
that he is capable of countless things whose causes are beyond my knowledge.

27. Here Descartes is drawing on the theory of distinctions in Surez. For a discussion of
this theory, see 1.2.1.
28. In 3.2.2, I consider whether this implication of the doctrine is consistent with
Descartess claim that bodies possess forces to persist in or to resist motion.
29. In a 1638 letter, for instance, Descartes asks his correspondent to compare the suppositions of others with mine that is to say all of their real qualities, their substantial forms,
their elements and similar things, the number of which is nearly innite, with this alone, that
all bodies are composed of some parts . . . (To Morin, 13 July 1638, AT 2:200).

62

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION
And for this reason alone I consider the customary search for nal causes to
be totally useless in physics; there is considerable rashness in thinking myself
capable of investigating the purposes of God. (AT 7:55)

This argument seems to allow for the possibility that God in fact has purposes, and
indeed in the Fifth Replies Descartes granted his critic Gassendi that one may
conjecture about Gods purposes in ethics (AT 7:375). But in other places he was
concerned to deny that God has at least a certain sort of purpose. Thus, in connection
with his doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths, Descartes insists that God is completely indifferent with respect to the question of what to create, to such an extent that
no good, or truth, no believing, or acting, or omitting can be feigned, the idea of
which was in the divine intellect before his will determines itself to produce such
an effect. And I do not speak here of temporal priority, but whatever is of order, or
nature, or ratione ratiocinate, as they call it, such that this idea of good impelled
God to choose one rather than another. (AT 7: 432)

Given this view of divine indifference, it cannot be said that God had any purpose
that led him to create as he did.30
It may be possible to reconcile this consequence with the suggestion in Descartes
that God can have hidden purposes by distinguishing between antecedent and consequent purposes. God has no purposes antecedent to the act of creation that lead
him to create in a certain way, but the act of creation itself could produce an idea of
the good that conditions creatures. Divine purposes could perhaps be understood in
terms of this created idea of the good.
In any event, it is clear that for Descartes, we have no access by natural reason to
any idea that would render intelligible the specic purposes deriving from Gods
act of creation.31 It may seem, however, that this consideration does not rule out
Aristotelian nal causes. For as we saw in 1.2.2 (iii), the orthodox Aristotelian view
is that that the forms even of beings that lack cognition and appetite are internal
sources of nal causality in nature. Given such a view, it might appear that
Descartess argument that we have no access to divine purposes is simply irrelevant
to the issue of whether we are entitled to appeal to nal causes. However, I also
noted in this earlier section the clear position in Surez that natural agents lacking
cognition and appetite can be said to be nal causes only insofar as their action
derives from God. This aspect of Surezs account of nal causality reveals the depth
of the confusion involved in Descartess persistent objection that in taking various
real qualities and substantial forms to be responsible for various effects in nature, the
schoolmen illicitly suppose that bodies have tiny souls that cognize the effects

30. Cf. the comment attributed to Descartes in the Conversation with Burman that we go
astray when we think of God as some great human being [magnum hominem], who proposes
to himself such and such, and strives by such and such means, which certainly is most unworthy of God (AT 5:158). See 5.1.2 for further discussion of Descartess doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths.
31. I say specic purposes to allow for Descartess claim, in the passage from his correspondence quoted toward the end of 1.2.2 (iii), that God created the world for his own sake.

Two Causal Axioms

63

they bring about.32 Far from holding that qualities and forms are quasi-mental causes
that cognize their ends, it is a consequence of the view of scholastics such as Surez
that the notion of nal causality has no application when nature is considered in
abstraction from the ends that direct divine concurrence. So such a scholastic would
in fact grant Descartes that were we not entitled to appeal to divine ends in physics,
we could not speak of nal causality in that realm.33
In fact, it seems that there is one respect in which Descartes is closer to the original Aristotelian stance than was Surez. Whereas Descartes holds that divine ends are
inscrutable to the philosopher of nature, he nonetheless insists that we do have access
to a kind of nality in the special case of the soulbody union. In the Sixth
Meditation, for instance, he takes experience to reveal that the sensations that derive
from motions in the brain are most especially and most frequently conducive to the
conservation of the health of the human being (AT 7:87). Here, it seems, the sensory
system has the function of conserving the health of the soulbody composite.
Descartes could not, consistent with his prohibition of the appeal to divine ends, conclude that this function reects Gods own purpose in creating the composite as he
has.34 But the function also cannot be referred to any other mind that cognizes the end
of conservation. Thus we appear to havewhat scholastics such as Surez could not
allowan appeal to a kind of nality that is not grounded in a cognition of ends.35
But though Descartes seems to have allowed for a kind of nality in the case of the
soulbody composite, it is not clear that he allowed for the activity of nal causes in
that case. After all, he took brain motions to be the source of the various sensations
that serve the purpose of conservation of health, and he indicated repeatedly that these
motions are efcient causes of the sensations.36 For Surez, nal causes could be
involved in this case only by means of Gods concursus with the action of secondary efcient causes. But Descartes eliminated this route to nal causality when he

32. See To Mersenne, 26 Apr. 1643, AT 3:648; Sixth Replies, AT 7:44142; PP III.56, AT
8-1:108.
33. In 2.1.3 (ii), however, I suggest that Descartess charge that the scholastics posit tiny
souls may derive in part from his distinctive conception of eminent containment.
34. Admittedly, in the Sixth Meditation passage Descartes may seem to attribute the purpose of the sensory system to God. After all, he is concerned there to counter the objection
that the fact that we are subject to true errors of nature in sensation conicts with Gods
goodness (AT 7:85). But though this point requires further consideration than I can provide
here, I would simply suggest that Descartes can be read as arguing not that God had good
intentions in creating the sensory system, but merely that the worthiness of this system shows
that true sensory error is not obviously incompatible with Gods goodness. In terms that
Laporte has introduced, the vindication of divine goodness requires an appeal only to the
internal nality of the operation of the sensory system, and not to an external nality
involving the ends that move God to create in a particular manner (Laporte 1928, 388).
35. For a further defense of the claim that this passage commits Descartes to a kind of natural teleology, see Simmons 2001; cf. Laporte 1928, 38596. There is a further discussion in
4.1 of the nature of the union in Descartes.
36. As indicated in 4.2, however, there are some important complications for his account
of the efcient causality of the motions in this case.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

eliminated the appeal to divine ends. From Surezs perspective, then, he left us with
efcient causes that exhibit a natural teleology ungrounded in nal causes.
There is still rational teleology, which covers rational agents that act in accord with
ends they cognize. Though Descartes denies that we can explain divine action in this
way, he explicitly allows for this sort of explanation in the case of our own action. In the
Second Replies, for instance, he cites as an axiom that the will of a thinking thing is carried [ fertur] voluntarily and freely (for this is the essence of the will), but nevertheless
inevitably, toward a clearly known good (AT 7:166). This carrying would seem to
correspond to the sort of nal causality that Surez took to be present in cases where the
will of a created intelligent agent is inclined to act in a particular way by a cognized
end.37 However, it is important to recall the view in Surez that the cognized object produces in the will only a kind of metaphorical motion, and that strictly speaking it is
only the will itself that produces the actual volitional act as an efcient cause (see, again,
1.2.2 (iii)). For this reason, Gilles Olivo concludes that in the view of Surez, the
causality of the nal cause is absorbed ultimately, that is to say, in its efcacy [effectivit],
into that of efcient causality (Olivo 1997, 99).38 Once more, Surez provides the justication for excusing Descartes from providing room in his system for causes in his
natural philosophy other than the efcient causes governed by the containment axiom.

2.1.3. Formal and Eminent Containment


We have considered the requirement of the containment axiom that the reality of the
effect be contained in the total and efcient cause. Now we are in a position to consider the requirement of that axiom that such a cause contain this reality formally or
eminently. Descartess language in the Third Meditation can suggest that he was led
to this requirement merely by the light of nature, with no dependence on previous
teaching. But setting aside complications concerning objective reality (on which
more presently), the requirement is straight from the scholastic tradition. As we have
already seen, Surez afrmed prior to Descartes that all causes taken together must
formally or eminently contain the perfections they produce in their effect. We have
also seen Bennetts claim that Descartes had no deep understanding of the notion of
causal containment. In contrast, it is a central thesis here that Descartes offered the
material for a conception of formal and eminent containment on which they differ in
important respects from the corresponding kinds of containment that Surez posited.

(i) Formal Containment


In the Third Meditation, Descartes illustrates his containment axiom by noting that heat
cannot be induced in a subject unless from a cause of at least the same order of perfection as heat (AT 7:41). Similarly, Surez earlier used the case of re when gener-

37. However, the case emphasized in the Second Replies passage seems to involve what
for Surez is merely voluntary rather than free action (see chapter 1, note 66). In 5.2, I
consider further the relation of the accounts of free human action in Descartes and Surez.
38. Cf. Carraud 2002, 159.

Two Causal Axioms

65

ating re as an example of a univocal cause, that is, one that effects an effect of the
same kind (efcit effectum ejusdem rationis) (MD XVII.2, 21, 1:591). Yet the specic
accounts that Surez and Descartes offer of the sort of containment present in this particular case are signicantly different. Whereas Surez held that the heat of both the
generating and generated re is a real accident that is a res distinct from the re itself,
Descartes rejects the containment of any such res in a purely material being. In
Descartess view, the physical heat (as opposed to the sensation of heat) that the body
contains and produces can be only a certain kind of local motion of parts of matter.39
Descartess ofcial explication of formal containment reveals an even deeper disagreement with Surez. In the list of denitions that he provides in his synthetic
presentation of his system in the Second Replies,40 Descartes includes the stipulation
that objects contain formally all that is such as [talia . . . qualia] we perceive them
(AT 7:161). This follows his denition of the objective reality of an idea as the entity
of the thing [entitatem rei] represented by an idea, insofar as it is in the idea; . . . For
whatever we perceive as in the objects of ideas, they are in the ideas themselves objectively (AT 7:161). For Descartes, then, the paradigmatic case of formal containment
is one in which the object as it exists outside of our idea of that object conforms to
the objective reality of that idea.
Descartess understanding of this case of course relies on his account of the distinction between formal and objective reality. According to the Second Replies, an
object formally contains what is present objectively in our idea of that object just in
case it is such as we perceive it. What is odd, from a certain scholastic perspective,
is the reference here to the correspondence of what is in the object to a distinct sort of
reality in the idea. Caterus protested in the First Objections that objective being is
merely the act of intellect itself terminating through a mode of the object, and thus
is merely an extrinsic denomination, and nothing real (AT 7:92).41 This understanding admittedly reects a Thomistic view, and Scotists were more inclined to posit an
objective concept as a tertium quid between the act of intellect and the cognized
object.42 But on this particular point Surez sided with the Thomists, holding that there
is only a distinctio rationis between an act of intellect and its objective concept.43

39. See, for instance, Descartess account of heat in W II, AT 11:710.


40. Descartes distinguishes a synthetic presentation that involves demonstrations with definitions, postulates, and axioms from an analytic presentation, illustrated in the Meditations,
in which a method for discovering the truths is employed (AT 7:15556).
41. Cf. the discussion of Cateruss position in Armogathe 1995.
42. On the difference between Thomists and Scotists on this point, and the relevance of
this disagreement to Descartess understanding of objective reality, see Dalbriez 1929. This
work is a critique of Gilsons claim that in scholastic thought, objective being is not a real
being, but a rational being (Gilson 1925, 321). For a reconsideration of this debate that is
sympathetic to Dalbriezs position, see Ariew 1999, ch. 2. Cf. the Scotistic interpretation of
Descartess account of objective reality in Normore 1986.
43. Surez was responding to the position of Durandus, which was defended by Surezs
contemporary Vasquez. For discussion of this debate, with references, see, again, Dalbriez
1929. But cf. Renault 2000, which takes Ockham to be the source of the anti-Cartesian understanding of objective reality.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

For Surez, then, the reality that exists in an idea (or, as he put it, in an objective
concept) is just the reality as it exists in the object. This precision might not seem to
be so important; after all, it appears that Surez could agree with Descartes on the
basic point that an object formally contains all that which is such as we perceive it.
But the differences are signicant in one case where Descartess explication of the
relation between objective reality and formal containment is most problematic,
namely, the case of sense perception.
As we have seen, Descartes argues in the Sixth Meditation that bodies must exist
as causes that formally contain what is present objectively in our sensory ideas. But
there is scholarly disagreement over whether Descartes even allowed that bodily features are present objectively in sensory ideas.44 I myself take the argument in the
Sixth Meditation to indicate clearly enough that he did intend to allow for such containment. Without the assumption that sensory ideas have an objective reality that
requires a cause, this argument could not even get off the ground.45 Nonetheless, it
must be admitted that Descartess claim in the Second Replies that features that exist
formally in objects are such as we perceive them seems to fail in the case of sensory ideas. For Descartes himself warns after presenting the Sixth Meditation proof
of the material world that bodies may not exist in a way that is entirely such as
[talia omnino . . . qualia] the senses comprehend them, insofar as the comprehension of the senses is in many cases very obscure and confused (AT 7:80). It would
seem that bodies cannot formally contain the qualities that we sense in a confused
and obscure manner, and thus that there is no need for an external cause in the case
of such sensations.46
I think we can go some ways toward reconciling the proof in the Sixth Meditation
with the subsequent comment concerning the confused and obscure comprehension
of the senses by emphasizing the following claim elsewhere in this text:
[F]rom the fact that I sense diverse colors, sounds, odors, tastes, heat, hardness
and the like, I correctly conclude that there are other things in bodies from which
these various sensory perceptions come [adveniunt], variations corresponding
to them [i.e., to the variations among the sensations], though perhaps not
similar to them. (AT 7:81)

44. The disagreement is most evident in the massive literature on Descartess account in
the Third Meditation of material falsity. For a representative discussion, see Kaufman 2000.
45. That is, the argument as presented in the Sixth Meditation. Interestingly, Descartes
offers a version of this argument in the 1644 Principles that does not appeal to the objective
containment in sensory ideas of what is formally contained in bodies; see PP II.1, AT 81:4041. Even so, there is the point in this latter text that we know by means of sensory stimulation that matter has variously different shaped and variously moving parts that give rise to
our various sensations of colors, smells, pain and so on. This point is connected to the
account of objective containment in sensory ideas that I offer on Descartess behalf presently.
Thanks to Marleen Rozemond for discussion of the signicance of the differences between
the two versions of Descartess proof of the existence of the material world.
46. Here I draw on and further develop the position I proposed in my discussion of this
problem in Schmaltz 1992b.

Two Causal Axioms

67

This passage indicates that sensory ideas that do not resemble bodily qualities
nonetheless are systematically correlated with them. Because of these correlations,
particular ideas can direct the mind to certain bodily qualities rather than others. Of
course, we cannot know, simply by introspection, which qualities these ideas represent; that is why Descartes calls the ideas confused and obscure. Nonetheless, the
ideas can represent the qualities in the broad sense just indicated. In virtue of the fact
that the ideas so represent, they possess some sort of objective reality. Bodies formally contain what is in the sensory ideas objectively, then, in the sense that they
possess the qualities to which these ideas direct the mind.47
Admittedly, this reading stretches thin the claim in the Second Replies that features
contained objectively in the mind are contained formally in bodies only when they exist
outside of the mind in a way that is such as we perceive them. But I take Descartess
own remarks concerning confused and obscure sensory ideas to suggest a thin notion of
being such as these ideas reveal. Moreover, this thin notion allows for the passage from
the Second Replies to be reconciled with the suggestion in the Sixth Meditation that even
though the objective reality of sensory ideas corresponds to the formal reality of bodily
qualities, these qualities are often not entirely such as they are comprehended by sense.48

(ii) Eminent Containment


I have mentioned Descartess stipulation in the Second Replies that objects contain
formally all that is such as we perceive them. He continues by noting in that same
passage that objects contain eminently what indeed is not such [as we perceive], but
greater, so that it is able to take the place of such a thing [that is as we perceive] (AT
7:161). This explication is less than transparent, to say the least. Indeed, critics such
as Radner have objected that Descartes offered no clear account of eminent containment, and thus had no clear explanation of a case in which a cause produces an effect
that differs in nature from it.49 This is behind the charge in Radner and others that
Descartess containment principle rules out the causal interaction of objects with different natures. To evaluate this charge, we need to determine whether we can make
some sense of Descartess claim that objects eminently contain what is not such as we
perceive but is greater than and able to take the place of what we do perceive.

47. I take the account of the objective reality of sensory ideas that I attribute to Descartes
to be similar to Lockes view in Essay II.xxxi.2 that whether our simple sensory ideas be only
constant Effects, or else exact Resemblances of something in things themselves, still they
are all real and true, because they answer and agree to those Powers of Things, which produce them in our Minds, that being all that is requisite to make them real, and not ctions at
Pleasure (Locke 1975, 373). Lockes claim that nonresembling sensory ideas agree to the
bodily powers that produce them seems to me to be functionally equivalent to the view, which
I attribute to Descartes, that such ideas objectively contain the bodily qualities to which they
direct the mind.
48. See 4.2 for further discussion of Descartess account of the action of body on mind.
In 3.2.1 (iii), I consider complications for formal containment connected to Descartess
account of bodybody interaction.
49. Radner 1985b, 232, 23334.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

On one understanding, what is greater and able to take the place is simply the
power to produce the existence of the object we perceive. This understanding
informs the analysis of eminent containment that Eileen ONeill has offered. On this
analysis, Descartes held that
a property is eminently contained in X if and only if: is not formally contained
in X [i.e., X does not contain at least n degrees of ]; X is an entity displaying a
greater degree of relative independence than any possible Y which could contain
formally (i.e., higher up in the ontological hierarchy than any such Y); and X has
the power to bring about the existence of . (ONeill 1987, 235)50

There is a weaker reading of the second clause, on which X is an entity displaying a


greater degree of relative independence than , that is, is higher up in the ontological hierarchy than , as opposed to any possible Y that could contain formally. This
weaker reading may seem to be supported by Descartess comment in the Third
Meditation that since extension, shape, position, and motion are merely modes of
a substance, they can be contained in him eminently given that he is thinking substance (AT 7:45).51 As we have seen, however, Descartes indicates in the Sixth
Meditation that certain nite creatures can contain bodily effects eminently in virtue
of the fact that they are more noble than corporeal substance (AT 7:79). Here it is
not just the fact that the effects are mere modes that allows for eminent containment
in these other substances; in addition, there is the fact that these substances are more
noble than the corporeal substances that contain the effects formally.52
An initial problem for this analysis of eminent containment derives from the implication of Descartess simple ontological hierarchy that mental and bodily substances
have the same reality as nite substances. Given this hierarchy, it would seem that bodily effects cannot be contained eminently in a nite mind, contra the remarks in the Sixth
Meditation.53 However, we could get around this problem by appealing to Descartess
own comment in correspondence that our soul is much more noble [beaucoup plus
noble] than body (To Elisabeth, 15 Sept. 1645, AT 4:292).54 One way in which mind is
more noble is indicated in the Sixth Meditation, which includes the claim that there
is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by its very nature
divisible, whereas mind is utterly indivisible (AT 7:8586). This difference indicates the

50. To my mind, ONeills analysis marks an advance over Clatterbaughs view that
is eminently contained in X if and only if X contains greater than n degrees of ; see
Clatterbaugh 1980, 391.
51. Thanks to David Ring, who pressed me to consider this point a number of years ago.
52. Descartes could not have made this point that his mind is more noble than body in the
Third Meditation because he had not yet provided an account of the nature of body and of its
distinction from mind.
53. On Gueroults interpretation of Descartes (see note 9), there would be no problem here
for eminent containment in mind insofar as particular bodies, as modes, are lower on the ontological hierarchy than mental substances. But in the Sixth Meditation, the stress is on the fact
that certain substances, presumably mental, are more noble than the corporeal substances that
formally contain what is present objectively in our sensory ideas.
54. Thanks to Michael Della Rocca for drawing this passage to my attention.

Two Causal Axioms

69

greater nobility of mind given Descartess claim in the Second Replies that it is known
per se that it is a greater perfection to be undivided than to be divided (AT 7:138).
The implication in Descartes, then, is that though created minds are below God
insofar as they are nite, still they are above bodies insofar as they are indivisible.
This implication yields the following enhanced ontological hierarchy:
God

innite indivisible substance

minds

nite indivisible substances

bodies

nite divisible substances

thoughts
shapes/sizes/motions

modes of nite substances

Given this enhanced hierarchy, ONeills analysis is consistent with the claim that
particular bodies and their modes can be contained eminently in nite minds.55
Even so, there remains a problem with the consequence of the last clause of
ONeills denition that something can eminently contain only if it has the power
to bring about the existence of . In defense of this clause, ONeill appeals to Surez,
and in particular to his claim that what is said to contain eminently has a perfection
of such a superior nature that it contains by means of power [virtute] whatever is in
the inferior perfection, where this power is said to be the power that can produce
[ potest . . . efcere] the effects of inferior perfection (MD XXX.1, 10, 2:63*; cited
in ONeill 1987, 239).56 But though Descartes was obviously inuenced by the
scholastic view that the effect must be contained formally or eminently in its total
efcient cause, there are reasons to think that he did not adopt Surezs particular
account of eminent containment. When he claims in the Third Meditation that his
mind contains material things eminently, for instance, Descartes does not suggest
that he has the power to create the material world. Indeed, in a 1641 exchange with
his critic Hyperaspistes, Descartes makes clear his rejection of the claim that our
mind has such a power. This critic objected that in Descartess view, since a corporeal thing is not more noble than the idea that the mind has of it, and mind contains
bodies eminently, it follows that all bodies, and thus the whole of this visible world,
can be produced by the human mind (AT 3:404). Such an implication is said to be

55. For complications concerning the eminent containment of matter in nite minds, see
note 57. Descartes also speaks of material things as being eminently contained in Gods mind
(as in the Sixth Meditation proof of the existence of the material world, at AT 7:79). As I note
in 5.1.2, however, Descartess doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths renders this sort
of containment problematic.
56. As ONeill notes, Surez went on to claim that formally speaking the power to bring
about an effect cannot dene eminent containment, since a cause is said to be able to produce
an effect in virtue of the fact that it eminently contains it (MD XXX.1, 10, 2:63*; cited in
ONeill 1987, 239). But Surez also indicated that we cannot understand eminent containment
other than by its causal relation to the effect. In any event, it seems that having the power to
cause an effect could be a necessary condition for eminent containment without being
denitionally equivalent to it.

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problematic insofar as it undermines our condence that God alone created the visible world. In response, Descartes protests that we can produce not, as objected, the
whole of this visible world, but the idea of the whole of things that are in this visible world (AT 3:428). The suggestion here is that even though the whole visible
world is contained in our mind eminently, we do not have the power to produce its
extra-mental existence.57 Eminent containment would seem to be a necessary but not
a sufcient condition for something to be able to produce features it does not formally contain.58
Nevertheless, it seems that we could substitute for ONeills last clause the claim
that X has at least the power to bring about the reality of as present objectively in
Xs idea of . It is this power that, in the terms of the Second Replies, is not such
as we perceive but greater, so that it is able to take the place of what we perceive.
This power is able, in particular, to produce bodily qualities insofar as they are present objectively in the mind.59 We therefore have the following alternative to ONeills
analysis of eminent containment:
A property is eminently contained in X if and only if: is not formally
contained in X; X is an entity displaying a greater degree of relative independence
than any possible Y which could contain formally (i.e., higher up in the
ontological hierarchy than any such Y); and X has a power that sufces to
produce the objective reality that is present in Xs idea of .

This alteration of ONeills account may seem to be minor, but in fact it serves to
highlight an important difference between the accounts of eminent containment in
Surez and Descartes. Surez had no difculty applying the notion of eminent containment to the case of bodily causes, as for instance when he held that a heavy body
(unum grave) that moves another heavy body to a particular place contains that place

57. The eminent containment of the whole of matter in nite minds is more problematic
given Descartess view that this matter is an indenite rather than a nite substance. Indeed,
he tells Regius in correspondence that he could not think of indenite extension unless the
magnitude of the world also was or at least could be indenite (24 May 1640, AT 3:64). But
the could be perhaps suggests that there need not be anything indenitely extended in order
for our mind to think it. Moreover, there is the claim in the Fourth Meditation that our will is
in some sense unrestricted, and that it is in fact in virtue of our possessing such a will that we
understand ourselves to bear in some way the image and likeness of God (AT 7:5657). Given
this feature of mind, we could perhaps be said to contain even indenite extension eminently.
For discussion of the complications here, see Wilson 1999a.
58. Cf. the critique of ONeills account of eminent containment in Gorham 2003, 1113.
Beyond objecting to the explication of eminent containment of an effect in terms of a causal
power to produce that effect, however, Gorham rejects in general any account on which the
eminently contained effect is to be reduced to other features that the cause formally contains.
The alternative to ONeills account that I offer presently is reductionist in this sense.
59. It is important to hold that it is the power that takes the place rather than the objective reality itself, given that Descartes emphasizes the difference between eminent and
objective containment when he notes that an effect must be contained in its cause not merely
objectively or representatively [objective sive repraesentative], but formally or eminently
(PP I.23, AT 8-1:11).

Two Causal Axioms

71

virtually or eminently, but not formally, since that place is contained only in the
active principle that brings about the downward motion (MD XVIII.9, 10, 1:671).
I mentioned above Descartess ridicule of the scholastic attribution of tiny souls to
bodies, and at one point he expresses his objection in terms of the very example of
the action of gravitas that Surez used here. Thus, in the Sixth Replies Descartes
notes the misguided thought he had in his youth that heaviness [gravitas] carried
bodies toward the center of the earth, as if it contained in itself some cognition of
this (AT 7:442).60 We have seen that the accusation that the scholastics attributed
cognition of ends to natural beings is misplaced. But what is interesting is
Descartess apparent assumption that a future effect not actually present in the cause
can be contained in that cause only by means of cognition. Implicit in this assumption is the rejection of the view in Surez that there can be qualities or powers in bodies more noble than bodily effects that eminently contain those effects.61 Descartes
held that all alterable features of body have the same kind of reality as modes of
extension, and that only innite or nite indivisible minds can be more noble than
bodily substances and their modications. For Descartes, then, the bodily principle
that Surez posited as eminently containing its effect could be conceived only on the
model of a mind that acts in accord with its cognition of an end. In the case of all
other total bodily causes, only formal containment can be at issue.62

2.2. THE CONSERVATION AXIOM


After concluding in the Third Meditation that it is manifest by the light of nature that
God must exist as the cause of the objective reality of his idea of God as innitely perfect substance, Descartes notes that once his concentration on the argument for this
conclusion relaxes he no longer can remember why his idea of a being more perfect
than himself must be caused by such a being (AT 7:47). To remedy the uncertainty,

60. For further discussion of Descartess use of the heaviness analogy, see 4.3.2.
61. But see also the discussion toward the end of 4.2.1 of one way in which Surezs
notion of eminent containment is more restrictive than Descartess.
62. This implication of the view of eminent containment that I attribute to Descartes can
be contrasted with the position, which the English malebranchiste John Norris attributed to
the Modern Reformers of Philosophy, that all Bodies that we call Hot, [are] so only
Eminently and Potentially, as they are productive of Heat in us. This is said to be a replacement for the Old Distinction between heat as a quality formally contained in certain objects
and heat as eminently contained in bodily causes of this quality that eliminates the rst part
of this distinction (Norris 1693, 3:2122). It is likely that Norris counted Descartes among the
modern reformers, since he went on to say that Malebranche alone rejected this position in the
moderns. But we have seen that Descartes himself took bodies to formally contain what is
present objectively in our sensory ideas. And I know of no passage where he referred to the
eminent containment of effects in bodily causes. I suspect that Norris simply assumed that
Descartes accepted the scholastic view that a quality that is present in a bodily power to produce that quality is eminently contained in the body that has that power. Thanks to Eileen
ONeill for drawing my attention to the passage from Norris.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

he proposes another argument for the conclusion that he could not exist if God did
not. The new argument is not entirely distinct from the rst argument, since it too
relies on an application of the containment axiom to the case of the objective reality
of his idea of God. Descartes recognizes this point when he admits that the second
argument is not so much a new argument as a more thorough examination of the
original argument (First Replies, AT 7:106).63 But there is a distinctive element of
the second argument that is crucial for our purposes. This element is introduced after
the rst portion of the proof, in which Descartes claims that he cannot have derived
his existence from himself, since in that case he would have produced in himself all
of the perfections he desires but lacks. He then considers the objection that he may
not need any cause of his existence now given the assumption that he has always
existed. Descartes responds:
[S]ince the whole time of life can be divided into innumerable parts, each single
one of which depends in no way on the remaining, from the fact that I was shortly
before, it does not follow that I must be now, unless some cause as it were creates
me anew at this moment [me quasi rursus creet ad hoc momentum], that is
conserves me. For it is perspicuous to those attending to the nature of time that
entirely the same force and action [eadem . . . vi et actione] plainly is needed to
conserve a thing at each single moment during which it endures, as would be
needed to create it anew, if it did not yet exist; to the extent that conservation
differing solely by reason from creation is also one of those things that is manifest
by the natural light. (AT 7:49)

The claim here that the same force and action is needed to conserve a thing . . . as
would be needed to create it anew is reected in the axiom in the Second Replies
which I have called the conservation axiomthat no less a cause is required to conserve a thing than to produce it at rst (AT 7:165). In the Third Meditation, the
conservation axiom is said to be perspicuous to those who consider the nature of
time, and is said to yield the result that conservation differs solely by reason from
creation.
In what follows I consider three aspects of the position indicated in the Third
Meditation passage. The rst is the nature of the conservation that Descartes takes to
be required for the continued existence of any creature. His ultimate view is that God
alone can conserve the being of created substances. The second aspect is Descartess
understanding of the nature of time. It turns out that he offers an account of temporal parts of duration that is incompatible with the temporal atomism that some commentators have attributed to him. Finally, there is Descartess argument that given the
nature of time, conservation can differ from creation solely by reason. Though this
argument seems to conict with an argument in Surez for the lack of any real difference between creation and conservation, in the end Descartes embraces the basic

63. Cf. Descartess letter of 2 May 1644, at AT 4:112. In the synthetic presentation of his
system in the Second Replies, however, Descartes presents the two arguments as distinct; see
propositions II and III at AT 7:16768.

Two Causal Axioms

73

Surezian conclusion that the created world depends continually on the original divine
act that resulted in the creation of that world.

2.2.1. Divine Conservation


In the Fifth Objections, Gassendi challenged the use of the conservation axiom in the
Third Meditation by claiming that Descartes could have a power to conserve himself
that is not a power to create himself anew, but rather a power that sufces to guarantee that you are preserved unless a corrupting cause intervenes (AT 7:302). The
suggestion here is that the presence of such a power is revealed by the fact that continuation in existence is the default condition. What requires an external cause is not
this continuation, but only the initiation or cessation of existence.
I argue in the next chapter that Descartes invokes something very much like the
tendency to persist in existence in his explanation in the Principles of his rst law of
motion (see 3.2.1 (i)). In his response to Gassendi, however, he insists that the claim
that conservation requires the continual action of the original cause is something
that all Metaphysicians afrm as manifest. Drawing on remarks from Thomass
Summa Theologiae noted in 1.1.2, Descartes appeals in the Fifth Replies to the distinction between causae secundum eri, or causes of becoming, and causae secundum esse, or causes of being.64 Indeed, Descartes follows Thomas in illustrating the
distinction between these two kinds of causes by noting the difference between the
builder as the causa secundum eri of the house and the sun as the causa secundum
esse of the light.65 His claim in the Fifth Replies is that just as the continuing action
of the sun is required for the light to remain in existence, so the continuing action of
God is required for creatures to remain in existence (AT 7:369).66
The example of the sun landed Descartes in some trouble, since in correspondence
with him the pseudonymous Hyperaspistes attempted to defend Gassendi by noting
that the Bologna spur, a phosphorescent rock, can retain light in a closed room (July
1641, AT 3:405). But Descartes responds that the light of the rock is perhaps not the
same as the light that constantly depends on the sun, and in any case that even if the
sun example fails, it is more certain that nothing can exist without Gods concursus,

64. Descartes indicates in a 1639 letter to Mersenne that he brought with him from France
a Bible and une Somme de S. Thomas (AT 2:630).
65. See also the example of the builder in the passage from the Conversation with Burman
cited in 2.1.2 (i), at note 18.
66. Descartess conclusion that light requires the continuing action of the sun is no doubt
connected to his own view that light is not a motion but rather the instantaneous effect of pressure deriving from the source of illumination (see, for instance, PP III.64, AT 8-1:115).
Whereas a motion could perhaps endure apart from the action that initially produces it, an
instantaneous effect could not. Interestingly, Thomas agreed that light cannot involve motion,
since its diffusion is instantaneous (ST I.67.2). However, his insistence that light requires the
action of the sun derives rather from his view that the quality of light depends essentially on
the action of the substantial form of a self-luminous body (see chapter 1, note 21). This line
of argument obviously would not have been attractive to Descartes. Thanks to Andrew Janiak
for discussion of this point.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

than no light of the sun without the sun (Aug. 1641, AT 3:429). Here Descartes was
moving toward the version of the Thomistic secundum eri/secundum esse distinction
in Surez, according to which God alone can be a cause secundum esse.67 In a
Surezian context, it is admittedly odd that Descartes refers to Gods concursus rather
than his act of conservation. We will discover in the next chapter that there is in fact
some question whether Descartes follows scholastics such as Surez in thinking that
divine conservation differs from Gods concurrence with the actions of secondary
causes. Even so, his use of the language of concursus in the passage above is supposed
to indicate primarily that God must make a causal contribution for any dependent
being to exist.
However, why not conclude with Gassendi that a being, once created, can persist
on its own? To put the point in terms of Hyperaspistess example, why not hold that
objects can continue to subsist without Gods concursus in the same way that the
Bologna spur can continue to glow without the inuence of the sun? The answer in
Descartes is connected to his version of the principle of sufcient reason, reected in
the axiom in the Second Replies that every existing thing, including God, requires a
cause or reason (causa sive ratio) of its existence (AT 7:16465).68 I have mentioned his conclusion that in the case of God, the reason is provided by Gods essence,
which serves as the formal cause of his existence (see 2.1.2 (ii.a)). But since essence
is distinct from existence in the case of every other existing object, the cause or reason of beings other than God must be provided by some efcient cause. Because this
cause provides the reason for the existence of the object at any time, it is required not
only for the initial creation of the object but also for its subsequent conservation.
In addition, Descartes holds that the cause of an object secundum esse must be
active at each moment that object exists. Aquinas had concluded that just as something
cannot be in the process of becoming without the action of its cause secundum eri, so
that thing cannot subsist in being without the action of its cause secundum esse. If an
object needs the activity of a cause secundum esse at all, it needs the activity of this
kind of cause throughout its existence (ST I.104.1; see 1.1.2). As we know, Surez
also accepted this Thomistic conclusion, arguing that a creature depends on God for its
existence at each moment, since God is its cause directly and per se with respect to
its esse. He held that there would be such a dependence even ifas Descartes
supposes in the Third Meditationthe object were not created in time but existed from
eternity. For even in this case, since the object is not God, it must have its being from
another, and ultimately from God (see 1.2.3 (i)).
This line of argument in Surez is reinforced by his analysis of efcient causality.
In opposition to the view of some Thomistsbut, he insisted, not of Thomas

67. See the discussion in 1.2.3 (i) of Surezs revision of the Thomistic distinction.
68. For the link between this axiom and the principle of sufcient reason, see Carraud
2002, especially ch. 2. As Carraud emphasizes, however, Descartess version differs from the
more familiar version in Leibniz insofar as Descartes insisted on the unintelligibility of
the divine creation of eternal truths (Carraud 2002, 28893). In 5.1.2, I consider this doctrine
and its relation to Descartess axiomatic requirement that there be a cause or reason for
everything that exists.

Two Causal Axioms

75

himselfthat a cause can remain efcacious even after its action has ceased, Surez
held that an effect can depend on an efcient cause only insofar as that cause is
active (MD XVIII.10, 8, 1:682). Applied to the case of conservation, the consequence is that created objects that depend essentially on God for their being can continue to so depend only insofar as God continues to produce that being through an
action.69 Descartes in effect adopts Surezs anti-Thomistic (though, for Surez, not
anti-Thomas) premise when he appeals in the First Replies to the fact, revealed by
the light of nature, that something does not properly have the reason of a cause,
unless for as long as it produces the effect, and thus is not prior to it (AT 7:108).
For Descartes, no less than for Surez, an object cannot depend for its being on God
unless God is active as an efcient cause of that being at each moment it exists.70
In his letter to Hyperaspistes, Descartes offers a further Surezian argument for
the necessity of divine conservation. Descartes insists there that if God ceased his
concursus, at once all that he has created would go into nothingness, because, before
they were created, and he offered his own concursus, they were nothing. He continues by noting that it is not possible that God destroy other than by ceasing his
concursus, because otherwise he would tend to non-being through a positive action
(AT 3:429). These remarks are reminiscent of Surezs argument that God cannot
conserve the being of an object merely permissively, through not depriving them of
their being, rather than positively, by means of his efcient causation of that being
that derives from an action. The argument is that since God is omnipotent, he can
annihilate any creature, and since every action by its nature tends toward some positive being, he can annihilate only by omitting some action (MD XXI.1, 14, 1:789).
Thus, divine conservation must consist in the continuation of that action by which
God gave being to creatures.71
Admittedly, Descartess claim in the passage from the Third Meditation concerning the nature of time is only that there must be some cause that quasi creates
anew at each moment, not that God must be the cause. In the First Replies, however, Descartes notes, [W]hat I have not written before, that [conservation] can in
no way come from any secondary cause, but altogether from that in which there is
such great power that it conserves a thing external to itself, so much the more conserves itself by its own power, and thus is a se (AT 7:111). The need for divine conservation in the case of substances is clear from a passage from a 1642 letter to
Regius, cited in 1.3, in which Descartes insists that God alone can create a substance de novo (AT 3:505). According to Descartes, then, God alone can be the cause
secundum esse of the initial existence of a substance, and thus he is the only being
who can conserve this substance in existence through the continuation of the act of
creating it.

69. I think this line of argument is implicit in Surezs discussion in MD XXI.1, 615,
1:78779; see 1.2.3 (i). In this earlier section, Surez presents himself as correcting and
developing Thomass argument in ST I.104.1.
70. For this point, see also Secada 1990, 4951.
71. Cf. Thomass invocation of the claim in Augustine that nature is annihilated once God
withdraws his ruling power (ST I.104.1).

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

But a central question, given the scholastic rejection of occasionalism, is whether


Descartes allows for any causes other than God. In the passage from the
Conversation with Burman that I considered in 2.1.2 (i), he is said to hold that God,
in producing the being of something ex nihilo, acts as a total cause, and thus produces something similar to himself. I noted in that section that if the containment
axiom requires that total causality involve creation ex nihilo, then given the remarks
in this passage the axiom would be restricted to divine action. Indeed, Jean-Luc
Marion has suggested recently that Descartes restricts true efcient causality to God
alone.72 In addition to the remarks to Burman,73 Marion cites Descartess claim in a
1645 letter, in defense of the conclusion that God is the cause of all effects of human
free will, that
the distinction of the Schools between universal and particular causes is out of
place here: because what makes the sun, for example, the cause of owers is not
the cause of the fact that tulips differ from roses, [since] their production depends
also on other particular causes to which they are not subordinated; but God is such
a universal cause of all that he is in the same way the total cause. (To Elisabeth, 6
Oct. 1645, AT 4:314)74

However, the claim here is not that God is the universal and total cause in such a way
as to exclude all other causes. Rather, it is simply that the universality of Gods
causality differs from the universal causality of the sun insofar as the former does
not involve the contribution of particular causes not subordinated to it. All derivative
causes, whether universal or particular, are subordinated to Gods distinctive sort of
universal and total causality. Some combination of universal and particular derivative causes can still be sufcient in their order to bring about their effect, and thus
are still subject to the containment axiom. But this sort of total cause nonetheless is
dependent on Gods total causality, which unlike derivative causes includes an act of
conservation not distinct from the act of creation ex nihilo.
We have seen the implication in Descartes that only Gods universal causality can
create and conserve substantial being. However, there still seems to be room in his
system for a derivative sort of causation of the modications of substance. This causation of modes must be subordinated to Gods causation of the substances the
modes modify, since the existence of the modes themselves depends on the existence
of these substances. In this sense, God can be said to be the total causes of the effects
produced by derivative causes. Even so, it seems that these causes could produce
effects that do not derive immediately from God. In terms of the Thomistic distinction that Descartes employs, derivative causes could be causes secundum eri
of modes that God does not directly produce as the cause secundum esse of the

72. Thus Marion speaks of the reduction of all kinds of causalities to the efcient causality as only divine (Marion 1991, 288).
73. Cited in Marion 1991, 289 n.24, in support of the conclusion that God alone can exercise total causality.
74. Cited in Marion 1991, 287. I will return in 5.3.1 to a consideration of the ramications of this passage for Descartess account of human freedom.

Two Causal Axioms

77

substances the modes modify.75 Descartes of course rejected the scholastic view that
derivative causes can educe from matter forms that are res distinct from matter. But
since he follows Surez in thinking that modes are not res distinct from the substances they modify, Descartess rejection of this view does not prevent him from
holding that such causes educe from material substance modes that are contained in
it merely potentially. Whether Descartes can allow for this sort of derivative causation of modes depends on whether his metaphysical system allows for the attribution
of causal power to beings other than God; this is an issue that remains to be resolved.
Even so, it seems clear enough that his view of Gods universal and total causality
of the created world does not straightforwardly commit him to occasionalism.76

2.2.2. The Nature of Time


In the Third Meditation passage that introduces the conservation axiom, Descartes
claims that careful attention to the nature of time, and in particular to the fact that
time is divisible into innumerable parts, each independent of the others, reveals
that conservation differs solely by reason from creation. 2.2.3 will be devoted to the
argument that this feature of temporality provides support for the conservation
axiom. Here our concern will be to consider Descartess view of the nature of temporal parts and of their mutual independence.
In the Principles, Descartes holds that when time is considered in general, apart from
the duration of particular objects, it is a mere mode of thinking, a mental abstraction
(PP I.57, AT 8-1:2627). What is mind-dependent here is a particular measure of duration, such as when we measure our life in days and years by comparing it with other
regular motions. In line with a view that Surez offered previously, however, Descartes
holds that the duration that is measured is itself distinct only in reason, and not in reality, from the enduring object. In particular, he claims that we cannot distinctly conceive
of a substance apart from its duration, and also cannot so conceive the duration, as it
exists in the substance, apart from the substance itself (PP I.62, AT 8-1:30).77

75. Cf. the discussion in 3.1.3 of the distinction between modal and substantial causes
that Garber attributes to Descartes.
76. On the basis of these considerations, I would dispute Gorhams conclusion that the
remarks in the letter to Elisabeth reveal that God does not leave it to other causes to produce
our diverse volitions and bodily movements, nor rely on them for assistance. Rather, he brings
about all of the particular volitions and movements directly and by himself (Gorham 2004,
41213). I think Descartes would agree that God produces the being of everything directly
and by himself. But in the case of becoming, his claim in the letter to Elisabeth seems to be
merely that his universal causality does not involve the causal contribution of particular causes
that are not subordinated to him. Gorham stresses the claim in Descartess letter that God
would not be perfect if there were something in the world that did not come entirely from
him (AT 4:314, cited in Gorham 2004, 412, n.104), but in light of the remarks that follow
I would read the claim that an effect comes entirely from God as saying that there is no
cause of the effect that is not subordinated to a divine causality that is both universal and total.
77. See Surezs claim that there is merely a distinctio rationis between duration and the
existing object (MD L.1, 5, 1:914*).

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So much for time and duration. What about their parts? Descartes notes in the
Principles that the parts of an extended substance are themselves really distinct substances, since each can exist on its own apart from the others (PP I.60, AT 8-1:28).78
If temporal parts are to be conceived in the same manner, however, we have the
strange result that all substances are composed of distinct substantial time-slices. For
we have seen that when it is considered in objects, time is nothing other than an
attribute that is distinct only ratione from the enduring substance. And if the duration is composed of distinct substantial parts, the substance itself must be composed
of distinct substantial parts over time, just as extended substance is composed of distinct substantial parts at any one time.
There is reason to think that this result would be unacceptable for Descartes. In
the conservation passage from the Third Meditation, he considers his own temporal
duration as a thinking thing. Yet Descartes is clear in the Meditations that it is one
and the same mind that wills, that senses, that has intellectual perceptions
(AT 7:86). Here it seems that the mind not only is utterly indivisible at a particular
time, but remains one and the same unied substance over time.79
There is an exchange relevant to this point in the Conversation with Burman.
When confronted with the objection that it follows from the temporality of thought
that thought itself is extended and divisible, Descartes is reported to claim that
though thought is extended and divisible as far as duration, which can be divided
into parts, nonetheless it is not extended and divisible as far as its nature, insofar
as it remains unextended (AT 5:148). The view here is that even though the mind
has an extended and divisible duration, it always remains unextended and indivisible by its very nature, insofar as it is an immaterial res cogitans.80
I have suggested that given that the mind is indivisible by nature, the parts into
which its duration can be divided cannot be substantial parts. What sort of parts,
then? Of the three kinds of distinction that Descartes borrowed from Surez
namely, the distinctiones realis, modalis, and rationis (see 1.2.1)it would seem
to be the modal distinction that is applicable to the case of temporal parts. Descartes

78. As Descartes makes clear elsewhere, the three-dimensional parts of body are distinct
from its two-dimensional modes; see Fourth Replies, AT 7:25051; Sixth Replies, AT
7:43334.
79. Descartess talk of extended substance taking on different modes over time suggests
that he thinks that even though such a substance is divisible, it too can remain the same substance over time.
80. This passage is admittedly suspect. Descartes is reported to continue by claiming that
God similarly is an unextended being who has a duration that is divisible into parts, and that
since we can now divide Gods duration, we can divide that duration as it was prior to his creation of the world (AT 5:14849). In his own correspondence around the same time of his
meeting with Burman, however, Descartes denies both that God has a successive duration (To
Arnauld, 4 June 1648, AT 5:193), and that there was any such duration prior to the creation
of the world (To More, 15 Apr. 1649, AT 5:343). But even though there may well be a corruption in the report of Descartess remarks to Burman, I claim presently that Descartes can
accept a sense in which the duration of his indivisible mind is divisible into parts (though, in
contrast to the case of the extension of a body, not into substantial parts).

Two Causal Axioms

79

indicates that a modal distinction holds between two modes of the same substance,
since we can know one mode without the other, and vice versa, but neither however without the same substance in which they inhere (PP I.61, AT 8-1:29). My
proposal is that in contrast to the case of the parts of extended substance, he takes
the different parts of the duration of a substance to be modally distinct from each
other.
A clear counterexample to this proposal may seem to be provided by Descartess
claim in the Principles that in created things, that which never has in itself diverse
modes, such as existence and duration in the thing existing and enduring, must be
called not qualities or modes but attributes (PP I.56, AT 8-1:26). Isnt the indication here that duration is not subject to modication?81 However, we need to remember Descartess position that thought and extension are also attributes that are not
subject to modication considered as such. As he notes in correspondence with
Arnauld,
[A]s extension, which constitutes the nature of body, differs greatly from various
shapes or modes of extension that it assumes, so thought, or thinking nature, in
which I take the essence of the human mind to consist, is much other than this or
that act of thinking. (29 July 1648, AT 5:221)

In the same way, he could say that invariable duration differs greatly from the various modes that it has at different moments. Just as Descartes can distinguish the continuing attributes of thought and extension from the varying modes that it assumes,
then, so he can distinguish the duration of thinking and extended substances from the
varying modes that constitute its distinguishable parts.82
Thus far I have emphasized the importance of distinguishing Descartess view of
the parts of time or duration from his view of the parts of extended substance. But there
is a reading of Descartesmore popular in the past, perhaps, than currentlyon
which the difference seems to be even greater than I have indicated. Descartes argues
explicitly that there can be no indivisible atoms on the grounds that any portion of
extension can be divided into smaller parts.83 Yet Gueroult, most prominently, insists
that he takes temporal duration to be a discontinuous collection of indivisible parts.84

81. In 3.2.2, I consider an objection along these lines that Alan Gabbey has offered.
82. I will return to this interpretation of Descartess account of duration and its parts in the
course of my discussion in 3.2.2 of his view of bodily force.
83. See, e.g., PP II.20, AT 8-1:5151; To Gibieuf, 10 Jan. 1642, AT 3:47577; To More, 5
Feb. 1649, AT 5:27374.
84. The prominence of Gueroults interpretation in the earlier literature is reected in
Yvon Belavals remark that it is common knowledge that for Descartes time is discontinuous
(Belaval 1960, 149). There is documentation of the relevant literature in Arthur 1988. For a
more recent defense of an atomist interpretation of Descartess account of time, see Levy
2005. Cf. Leibnizs claim in a 1699 letter to De Volder that since the Cartesians hold that
God creates all things continually and that moving a body is nothing but reproducing it in
successively different places, they are committed to the conclusion that motion in its essence
is nothing but a succession of leaps through intervening intervals, which ow from the action
of God (Leibniz 1978, 2:193/Leibniz 1969, 521).

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He argues that even though Descartes grants that time can be viewed as continuous
from the point of view of created things, or in the abstract (Gueroult 1953,
1:28081), still he holds that there is the point of view of creation and of the concrete from which time is conceived as a repetition of indivisible and discontinuous
creative instants (1:275). In Gueroults view, then, Cartesian conservation consists in
the successive creation of independent atemporal instants, the atomic parts of duration.
I have mentioned the emphasis in the work of Maimonides on the temporal atomism of the occasionalistic Mutakallimun (see 1.1.1). Even so, scholastic opponents
of occasionalism, represented most notably by Thomas, rejected this account of
time.85 Gueroults critics insist that Descartes also rejected the view of conservation
as continual re-creation, arguing that he took durationless instants to be boundaries
of temporally extended temporal parts rather than distinct temporal parts of time.86
However, the debate on this issue has tended to bog down on the interpretation of
technical terminology in particular passages in Descartes, and there is the view in the
recent literature that the texts do not decisively favor the thesis that instants are ultimate parts over the thesis that they are mere boundaries of parts.87
As will become clear in 2.2.3, my sympathies are with Gueroults critics. But I
think that there are considerations against his interpretation of Descartess account
of temporality that do not rest solely on the issue of how he understood his technical terminology. These considerations are related to the debate in contemporary
metaphysics between endurantists, who hold that persisting objects endure by
being wholly present at different times, and perdurantists, who hold that persisting objects perdure by being composed of distinct temporal parts.88 The main issue
here concerns not the status of instants, but rather the nature of persisting objects.
And on this point, Descartes seems to me to be clearly in the endurantist camp.89
For on the view that I have proposed above, he holds that there is an important difference between spatial and temporal extension. The indication in Descartes is that
spatial extension is composed of parts that can exist on their own as substances. But
on my proposal, he was committed to denying that temporal extension is such a
composite. The sort of distinction that applies to temporal parts is not a real
distinction, as in the case of spatial parts, but rather a modal distinction. Insofar as
they are only modally distinct, however, temporal parts are modications of the

85. Thomas accepted the Aristotelian view that time is the measure of the continuous
motion of the heavens, and so is itself continuous; see, e.g., ST I.10.6. Cf. Surezs endorsement of the view in Aristotle that time has its extension from motion and that there is no
other extension of time than the continuity of its succession (MD L.8, 4, 1:949*).
86. See Beyssade 1979, ch. 3 and conclusion, and Arthur 1988, 37375. This position is
anticipated in Laporte 1950, 15860.
87. See, for instance, Secada 1990 and Garber 1992, 26673.
88. For a helpful discussion of the various issues involved in the debate over endurantism
and perdurantism, see Haslanger 2003.
89. Gorham 2006 defends a reading on which Descartes understood the different parts of
time to be substantially distinct, and thus was committed to perdurantism. As Gorham admits,
however, this sort of perdurantism is incompatible with Descartess insistence on the simplicity of the soul. I take this conict to provide reason to reject Gorhams reading.

Two Causal Axioms

81

same underlying attribute of duration, that is, for Descartes, the same enduring substance. Gueroults interpretation requires that there is for Descartes an important
difference between spatial and temporal extension insofar as only the latter can be
composed of independent atomic parts. I agree that Descartes took these two kinds
of extension to be fundamentally distinct, but I understand the relevant difference
to be between a spatial extension divisible into distinct substantial parts, on the one
hand, and a temporal extension divisible only into distinct modes of a single attribute of duration, on the other. As I argue presently, the persistence of this attribute is
coupled with a single act of divine conservation identical to the act by which God
originally created the substance that is only distinct by reason from that attribute.

2.2.3. Conservation and Creation


We can now turn to Descartess argument in the Third Meditation that it is evident
from the fact that the different parts of his life are independent of each other that conservation differs solely by reason from creation (AT 7:49). In the Second Replies, this
connection is reected in the axiom that the present time does not depend on the proximate preceding [time], and thus no less a cause is required to conserve a thing than to
produce it at rst (AT 7:165). We need to consider rst how the fact that temporal
parts are independent shows that the same sort of cause is required to conserve as to
create, and then how this latter result is connected to the conclusion that conservation
differs solely by reason from creation.
With respect to the rst point, recall Descartess Surezian conclusion that the
activity of the cause must be simultaneous with the production of its effect. Given
that distinct parts of time are not simultaneous, it cannot be the case that causal activity at a previous portion of time sufces for the existence of an effect at a subsequent
portion of time.90 The conclusion that the simultaneous cause that sufces for the
existence of the effect during that portion of time must be of the same sort as a creative cause depends on Descartess claim that any object that has an existence distinct from its essence requires an efcient cause secundum esse that produces the
existence of this object at each moment it exists (see 2.2.1). In the case of a cause
secundum eri, the cause acts on preexisting material, and what is produced can continue to exist after the cause has acted. But in the case of the cause secundum esse,
there is no preexisting material, since the very being of the object is produced. This
object must therefore be produced ex nihilo, and in that respect this production does
not differ from the initial creation of the object ex nihilo.

90. Here I follow the summary of Descartess line of argument in Gorham 2004, 391400.
Gorham considers the claim in Secada 1990 that Descartes cannot take the causal independence of different parts of time to derive simply from the condition of causal simultaneity, since
causal activity at an earlier portion of time could produce an effect at a later portion of time by
producing something during an overlapping interval that produces that effect. As Gorham indicates, the counterexample does not succeed, since the overlapping interval can itself be divided
at just the point where the initial points of time are distinguished, and that nothing prior to that
point can sufce for the production of something after that point (Gorham 2004, 398).

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One problem, however, is that this conclusion seems to fall short of the doctrine that
conservation differs solely by reason from creation. For Descartes himself indicates that
when applied to God, this doctrine requires not only that conservation is the same type
of act as creation, or is merely type-identical to it, but also that it is the very same act,
and so is token-identical. Thus, in the Discourse he notes that it is an opinion commonly received among the Theologians that the action by which [God] now conserves [the world] is entirely the same as [toute la mesme que] that by which he has
created it (DM V, AT 6:45). This same theological opinion backs his later claim in the
Principles that the world now continues to be conserved by the same action [eadem
actione] as created it then (PP II.42, AT 8-1:66).
In fact, this theological opinion can be found in Surez. Recall his conclusion in
the Disputations that the creation of an object does not differ in reality from the
direct and immediate per se conservation of that object (see 1.2.3 (i)). Surez did
note the objection that conservation seems to differ from creation insofar as they
occur at different times. Far from making manifest that conservation does not differ
from creation, as Descartes claims, the distinction of the parts of time is here presented as an obstacle to recognizing this conclusion. Surezs response to this objection is that since the time of creation is joined continuously with the subsequent time
of conservation, we can hold that there is a single continuous effect deriving from a
single action. It is due to this sort of continuity, he concluded, that Saint Thomas
said that conservation is as it were continued creation [quasi continuatam creationem] (MD XXI.2, 4, 1:791).
This last point is linked to Descartess claim in the Third Meditation that there
must be some cause that as it were creates me anew at this moment (me quasi rursus creet ad hoc momentum) (AT 7:49). The reference here to creation rursus may
seem to suggest that the creation that conserves is not merely a continuation of the
act of creation, as in the case of Thomas and Surez, but rather an entirely new act.
Indeed, I noted at the outset of this chapter that Bennett takes Descartes to embrace
this suggestion. But if we follow Bennetts view on this issue, then the premise in
Descartes that the parts of time are distinct not only cannot lead to the common theological opinion that initial creation and subsequent conservation are the same act,
but actually conicts with that opinion insofar as it requires that at each moment an
object must be created anew by a distinct act.
As in the case of Thomas, however, I think we must take seriously Descartess
qualication that he is only quasi created anew.91 Descartess main point in
speaking of new creation is that God does not conserve by acting on preexisting
material. Rather, he conserves by producing the being of an object ex nihilo. In
this respect Descartes is simply following the Surezian line, albeit by using language that may suggest an anti-Surezian conclusion. Moreover, Descartess
argument in the letter to Hyperaspistes that God annihilates only by ceasing his
concursus indicates that he accepted the Surezian view that God conserves this
being by continuing the initial act by which he created it. Whatever separation

91. Or, as Descartes puts it in other texts, veluti reproduced; see Fourth Replies, AT 7:110;
PP I.21, AT 8-1:13.

Two Causal Axioms

83

there may be of distinct temporal parts, it is not a separation that requires conservation by a series of distinct creative acts.92
Though Bennett does not address this point about distinct acts, Gueroult accepts
that there is for Descartes only a single indivisible creative act in God.93 But it is
unclear how this single act could result in the series of distinct creations that
Gueroult (anticipating Bennett) takes Descartes to posit. Since there is only one creative act, it would seem that there should be only one effect. I submit that in the case
of Descartes, this single effect is simply the attribute of duration in the persisting
substance. Since this attribute is not distinct in reality from the substance itself, God
produces this attribute in initially producing the substance as a cause secundum esse.
Conservation is just the continued production of the substance that yields the continuing presence of its attribute of duration.
I have mentioned the possibility that Descartes could allow for derivative causes
secundum eri of the modes of the substances that God alone can create and conserve. Perhaps then there could be such causes of the modal features of the duration
that constitute the different parts of time.94 But even if Descartes grants that there are
such causes, he still must hold that they depend essentially on Gods activity as cause
secundum esse. For the production of the relevant modes of duration presupposes
the existence of the attribute that these modes modify. But God alone can be the
cause that produces this attribute given Descartess claim both that the attribute is not
distinct in reality from the substance to which it is attributed, and that God alone can
produce the existence of the substance as a cause secundum esse.
According to Descartes, then, the cause of the duration of a substance is just the
same as the cause that gives that substance its existence in the rst place. Here we
have an endorsement of the received scholastic position in Surez that God conserves the world by means of the very same act by which he created it. This similarity to Surez is admittedly obscured somewhat by Descartess references to
independent parts of time and to conservation as renewed creation. But Descartess
view of the nature of time militates against the view that temporal parts are separated
in such a way that their production requires a separate divine act. And his talk of
renewed creation merely reects his position, which Surez had anticipated, that
conservation as well as creation involves a production of being from nothing. This
is why his conservation axiom says that the cause that conserves is as great as the

92. Thus I stand in opposition to Gabbey, who endorses the view in Gilson that Descartes
and Aquinas differ in their respective interpretations of Gods conservation of the world: for
Aquinas the conservation is a simple continuation of the initial creative act, whereas for
Descartes it is a re-creation at each (independent) instant (Gabbey 1980, 302, n.40, citing
Gilson 1925, 34042). As indicated in the introduction, this re-creationalist interpretation
of Descartes is found also in Smith 1902. Cf. the more recent claim in Secada 2000 that for
Descartes God initially created and then recreates at every instant all that there is (105).
93. And certainly, the various creations are really only one, since the creative act of God
is in itself one, and since it would be inconceivable for them to be separated by intervals of
time (Gueroult 1953, 1:280).
94. Indeed, my suggestion in chapter 3 is that we can conceive of the forces that Descartes
attributes to bodies in terms of such causes.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

cause that creates. And it is clear that Descartes himself takes this axiom to show that
the power by which God conserves is not merely the same type as, but also tokenidentical to, the power by which he creates. This further result turns out to be central to Descartess argumentto be considered in the next chapterthat God
conserves the total quantity not only of the substance of matter but also of the motion
of its parts.

2.3. FROM AXIOMS TO CAUSATION


I hope it is clear from what I have said in this chapter why I would resist saying of
Descartess account of the causal axioms, what Bennett has said about his account
of the containment axiom, that it seems not to reect any deeply considered views
about the nature of causation. Indeed, I think that what Descartes has to say shows
that his account is backed by a rich view of causation that is profoundly conditioned
by, though also departs on important matters of detail from, the scholastic account
of efcient causality that Surez articulated with great sophistication. Now, however,
I want to make the more deationary pointmore congenial, perhaps, to Bennett
that Descartess axioms do not provide an adequate basis for attributing to him the
sort of concurrentist position that Surez offered against his competitors. This is
because the axioms themselves are easily rendered compatible not only with a
certain form of occasionalism, but also with a mere conservationist position in
Durandus that was an important scholastic alternative to concurrentism.
To show the conceptual exibility of the axioms, I start with the containment
axiom. I have mentioned the objection to this axiom in the literature that there is in
Descartes no clear account of how causes that do not formally contain the reality of
their effects can contain them eminently. In contrast, the main problem for this axiom
that I have stressed concerns formal containment. Recall that this problem derives
from the conclusion in the Sixth Meditation that bodies formally contain what is present objectively in our sensory ideas. Given Descartess emphasis in this text on the
fact that bodies are often not entirely such as we sense them, it seems that they do
not satisfy his ofcial denition of formal containment, according to which an object
is such as we perceive. My solution was to offer on Descartess behalf the view that
bodies are such as we sense them insofar as they possess those features with which
our sensory ideas are systematically correlated. Descartes assumes that causal relations between the bodily features and the ideas make this correlation possible. But it
is not entirely clear that the solution requires a causal relation. For it seems that the
correlations could be present even if bodies were causally inefcacious; an occasionalist could explain them, for instance, by appealing to the nature of divine action. The
main point here is not that Descartes should be tempted by this occasionalist alternative. Rather, it is that showing that bodies satisfy the requirement of formal containment in the problem case of the objective reality of sensory ideas does not sufce to
reveal that bodies have the power to cause this objective reality. To draw this conclusion, we must consider issues concerning the nature of body and of its connections to
the mind that go beyond the containment axiom. Even if we assume that bodies have
such a power, moreover, the containment axiom itself does not reveal whether the

Two Causal Axioms

85

effect derives from this power alone, or rather, as on Surezs concurrentist view,
requires a special divine concursus (see 1.2.3 (ii)). What needs to be sorted out here
is how precisely Descartess suggestion that bodies are total causes of the objective
reality of sensory ideas is related to his conclusion that everything derives from God
as a total and universal cause.
In contrast, the conservation axiom takes a clear stand on the nature of divine causality. In particular, this axiom requires that Gods conservation of the world involve an act
that does not differ in kind from his act of creating that world. Descartess application
of that axiom reveals further his commitment to the stronger conclusion, previously
accepted by Surez and other scholastics, that there is only a distinction in reason, and
no distinction in reality, between Gods conservation of an object and his creation of that
object. Whatever Descartes thought about secondary causation, then, he clearly indicated that the continued existence of the world requires that God act in a particular way
as the primary cause.
But though it says more about Gods causal role than the containment axiom says
about the role of secondary causes, the conservation axiom is nonetheless neutral on
issues regarding divine causality that were central to earlier medieval and later
scholastic debates over causality. All of the main parties to these debates agreed that
divine conservation is necessary for the continued existence of the created world.
The differences concern the precise nature of Gods continuing causal contribution.
Surez characterized the occasionalist as arguing that since God brings a creature
into existence by determining all of its features, God alone can be a real efcient
cause (MD XVIII.1, 2, 1:593). We have seen that to avoid this occasionalist conclusion, Durandus sharply distinguished the conservation of the being of the created
world from the production of changes in that world. He held that whereas God alone
can bring about the former, the created powers that God conserves sufce to bring
about the latter (see 1.1.3).95 However, we also know that in response to Durandus,
Surez offered the compromise position, previously proposed by Thomas, that
though created powers cannot produce effects without divine assistance, God can act
with those powers in a manner that allows them to make a genuine causal contribution to the effect (see 1.2.3 (ii)).
In this chapter I have argued that Descartess claim that God is the universal and
total cause does not preclude the view that creatures can be total causes, and thus
does not rule out Surezs concurrentist position. But though this claim may seem to
rule out Duranduss mere conservationism, it is not evident to me that this is the case.
In the passage from the letter to Elisabeth cited in 2.2.1, Descartes emphasizes that
Gods universal causality differs from the universal causality of the sun, since
whereas there are particular causes of the effects of the sun that are not subordinated
to the sun, there are no particular causes of effects in the created world that are not
subordinated to God. The notion of subordination could be understood in a concurrentist manner, as indicating a dependence on a divine concursus that acts with
the created cause. But the notion also could be given a weaker sense that is more in
line with Duranduss mere conservationism. That is, subordination could be taken to

95. For a contemporary statement of the mere conservationist position, see Quinn 1988.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

indicate only a dependence on Gods creation/conservation of substantial being.


Gods total causality extends to this kind of being as the causality of creatures does
not, and since there could be no secondary causality if there were no substances,
such causality depends essentially on Gods action as a cause secundum esse. But
this sort of subordination does not require a concursus with the action of secondary
causes that goes beyond Gods act of conservation. It thus allows for the view in
Durandus that divine conservation exhausts Gods causal contribution to the production of effects by secondary causes. In terms of the Thomistic distinction we have
considered at several points, the view here is that though God alone is the cause
secundum esse of such effects, only the secondary causes cause them secundum eri.
The previously noted comment in Descartess letter to Hyperaspistes that nothing
can exist without Gods concursus may seem to put him on the side of the concurrentists. However, it is not evident that he sharply distinguished this concursus from
the divine act of conservation. Moreover, there is even the possibility of understanding the concursus in an occasionalist manner, as the exclusive locus of causal activity. On this understanding, the contributions of creatures with which God concurs
are restricted to merely passive aspects of the causal situation. The conservation
axiom alone cannot determine which of these readings is correct, since the axiom
could be acceptable to occasionalists as well as to concurrentists and mere conservationists. As in the case of the containment axiom, so here we must descend from the
abstract heights of the conservation axiom to Descartess treatment on the ground of
particular kinds of causal interaction to determine whether he intended to allow for
real secondary causes and, if so, how he thought such causes produce their effects.
The account of the causation of motion in Descartess physics would seem to be
a good place to start. After all, we will discover that the account that Descartes provides in the Principles relies explicitly on the consideration, connected to the conservation axiom, that Gods act of conserving the material world is identical to his
initial act of creating it. Moreover, Descartes indicates the importance of the containment axiom for his account in this same text of the communication of motion
when he insists there that such a account be governed by the rule that we never
attribute to a cause any effect that exceeds its capacity [potentiam] (PP II.60,
AT 8 1:76). It turns out that Descartess discussion in the Principles of bodybody
interaction provides the material for a response to the argument in the literature that
he could not have taken the communication of motion to involve real bodily causes
given that his spare ontology requires the reduction of matter to mere extension. But
even if it is granted that Descartes rejects an occasionalist view of bodybody interaction, there remains the questionwhich a consideration of the scholastic context
of his theory of causation serves to highlightof whether he intends to side with
concurrentism against mere conservationism.

Causation in Physics

Surez offered a fairly luxuriant ontology of the material world, with corporeal substances composed of really distinct matter and substantial form, in which inhere the
really distinct forms of quantity and various qualities along with their modications
(see 1.2.1 and 1.3). I have noted the attempt on Descartess part to impose ontological austerity by identifying corporeal substance with extension and by reducing
all additional features of the material world to modes of extension. Since the scholastics appealed to the various qualities and forms to provide causal explanations of
change in the material world, however, Descartess eliminativism leaves him with
the burden of providing an alternative explanation of such change. One possibility,
which Daniel Garber has proposed, is that Descartes turns to God, using him to do
what substantial forms did for his teachers. In this respect, according to Garber,
Descartes is in fact the last of the schoolmen (Garber 1992, 305).
When we turn to Descartess Principles, we see that he does indeed claim that God
is the universal and primary cause of motion. However, he emphasizes in this text
that there are in addition particular and secondary causes of motion, which he identies with rules or laws of nature (PP II.3637, AT 8-1:6162). The immutability
of God as universal and primary cause is supposed to explain the fact that the total
quantity not only of matter but also of the motion and rest of its parts is conserved. In
contrast, the laws as particular and secondary causes are supposed to explain why particular changes in the distribution of motion follow on collisions among these parts.
In 3.1, I begin my consideration of Descartess account of causation in physics
with his treatment in the Principles of Gods universal and primary causality. I have
mentioned his view in other texts that all effects depend on God as universal and
total cause. But in the Principles Descartes holds that the conservation of specic
features of the material world follows from the immutability of Gods ordinary concursus. Descartes adopts the position, found also in Surez, that the quantity of
87

88

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

matter is constant through all natural change. However, he further defends the position, rejected by Surez and other scholastics, that such change does not alter the total
quantity of motion and rest. The discussion in the Principles focuses most on the conservation of motion, and in later correspondence with the Cambridge Platonist Henry
More, Descartes develops the position that what is conserved in this case is the
force that the quantity of motion measures.1 Though Descartes has less to say about
the conservation of rest, his suggestion is that it is only the quantity of matter at rest,
and not the force involved in rest, that is conserved. Thus, he cannot treat the conservation of rest in precisely the same way that he treats the conservation of motion.
Even so, Descartes insists that in both cases the conservation of the total quantity follows from the premise that Gods act of conservation does not differ in reality from
his initial act of creation. Drawing on my discussion of this premise in the previous
chapter, I argue that Descartes ultimately takes the conservation of the various quantities to involve a continuation of Gods creation of matter with the motive force he
initially infused into it.
There remains the tangled problem of the ontological status of the various bodily
forces that Descartes posits in his physics. In 3.2, I attempt to unravel this problem
by considering the meaning of Descartess claim in the Principles that his three laws
of nature serve as particular and secondary causes of motion. I offer a reading of this
claim on which these laws are grounded in bodily forces that are themselves the
causal source of changes in motion. If this reading is correct, Descartess considered
view is that the nature of bodies is not exhausted by the purely geometric and kinematic aspects of extension. Rather, this nature consists in an extension that has a
duration that serves to ground the various forces and inclinations that causally determine the particular motions that bodies possess. An understanding of force in terms
of these durational tendencies reinforces the account of divine conservation considered in 3.1. For on that account God conserves the total quantity of motive force
simply by creating various parts of matter with various tendencies to continue to
exist that together have a constant measurable quantity. There are admittedly difculties for an explanation of bodily force in terms of features of bodily duration, but
the difculties derive not from Descartess doctrine that the nature of body consists
in extension, but from his account of the specic kind of force associated with the
bodily state of rest.
In defending this reading of Descartess view of bodybody interaction, I side
with commentators who reject an occasionalist interpretation of his physics of the
sort that Garber offers. Given Descartess own reference to the conservation of
motion and rest by means of Gods ordinary concursus, it is tempting to think that
he models his account of the relation of divine activity to bodily causes on the main
scholastic alternative to occasionalism, which appeals to Gods concurrence with the
operations of secondary causes. However, I argue in 3.3 that we need to resist this
temptation. A scholastic account of concurrence of the sort that we nd in Surez
simply does not t the view in the Principles of the relation between the universal

1. For a discussion devoted to Descartess exchange with More on this issue, see Cottingham
1997.

Causation in Physics

89

and particular causes of motion. In Descartess text, Gods universal causation of


motion is to be understood in terms not of a divine concursus that varies with the
particular actions of bodily causes, but rather of Gods continuous conservation of
the same total quantity of the motive forces responsible for particular changes in
motion. Ultimately, Duranduss mere conservationist position provides a more suitable model than Surezs concurrentism for the causal realism Descartess physics
requires.

3.1. GOD AS UNIVERSAL AND PRIMARY CAUSE


In the second part of the Principles, Descartes offers an account of motion that relies
on the distinction between motion in the strict sense (motus) and the force or
action (vis vel actio) that is the cause of motion. Whereas in earlier writings he
ridiculed the attempt to dene motion,2 he here takes motion, as opposed to the force
that brings it about, as the transference [translationem] of one part of matter, or one
body, from the vicinity of bodies immediately contiguous to it and considered as
being at rest in the vicinity of others (PP II.25, AT 8-1:53).3 Though it has been
claimed that this denition of motion is purely relativistic insofar as it does not allow
for a genuine distinction between motion and rest,4 it seems fairly clear that
Descartes himself recognizes such a distinction, and indeed that his account of collision in the Principles depends on it. For on the rules that this text offers, the outcomes of collisions differ in particular cases depending on whether one of the
colliding bodies is in motion or at rest.5 The need for a nonrelativistic understanding
of motion is even more evident given the interpretation in 3.2 of Descartess account
of motive force.

2. See, for instance, RM XII, AT 11:42627; To Mersenne, 16 Oct. 1639, AT 2:597. In these
texts, Descartes ridicules the scholastic denition of motus as an actus entis in potentia, prout
in potentia est (act of being that is in potency, insofar as it is in potency). Cf. W VII, AT 11:39.
3. Cf. his earlier view in The World that motion is that by which bodies pass from one
place [lieu] into another, successively occupying all the spaces [espaces] in between (W VII,
AT 11:40). In the Principles, Descartes intentionally avoids dening motion in terms of place,
which he there distinguishes into the internal place (locus internus) that is identical to the
extension of a part of matter and the external place (locus externus) that is an abstractly
considered relation among parts of matter; see PP II.10 and 13, AT 8-1:45 and 47.
4. See, for instance, Blackwell 1966 and Prendergast 1972.
5. In particular, in the case where a larger body collides with a smaller body, the outcomes
differ depending on whether the larger or smaller body is at rest. According to the fourth rule,
in the former case the smaller body is reected with its original speed while the larger body
remains at rest, whereas according to the fth rule, in the latter case both bodies move together
in the direction of the motion of the larger body (cf. note 28). For the point that these rules are
incompatible with the view that the distinction between motion and rest is arbitrary, see Garber
1992, 24041. See also the conclusion in Blackwell 1966, 22627, that the rules are inconsistent with Descartess relativistic account of motion. Whereas Blackwell takes this inconsistency
to tell against the rules, I take it to tell against the attribution of such an account to Descartes.

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After the discussion in the Principles of the nature of motion as mere translatio
(though, I would claim, a real bodily mode), Descartes turns to a consideration of
the cause of the separation of parts of matter. He begins by noting that whereas
God is the universal and primary cause that is responsible for all motions in the
world, there are particular causes that are responsible for the fact that singular
parts of matter acquire motion they did not have previously (PP II.36, AT 8-1:61).
We know that the distinction between primary and secondary causes is a traditional one, reected in Surezs distinction between a rst principal cause that
operates altogether independently, namely, God, and a secondary principal cause
that is dependent, even if it operates by a principal and proportionate power [virtute] (MD XVII.2, 20, 1:591; see 1.2.3 (ii)). As we will discover, however,
Descartess use of this distinction is anything but traditional. In 3.2, I consider his
distinctive account of the secondary and particular causes of specic changes in
motion. At present, though, the focus is on his understanding of the manner in
which God serves as the universal and primary cause of matter as well as of its
motion (and rest).

3.1.1. Universal and Total Causes


In the previous chapter, I noted the claim in Descartes that God is the universal and
total cause of everything that occurs in nature (see 2.2.1). There I defended a reading on which such a claim endorses not the occasionalist conclusion that God is the
only cause of natural effects, but rather the more modest conclusion that all other
causes of natural effects are essentially subordinated to Gods universal causality.
This modest conclusion would have been acceptable even to someone as critical of
occasionalism as Surez, who allowed that all secondary causes depend on Gods
activity as primary cause.
It is perhaps tempting to think that when he refers in the Principles to the fact that
God is the universal cause responsible for all motions, Descartes has in mind the fact
that as in the case of all other natural effects, motions depend on Gods universal and
total causality. There is indeed one signicant point of contact. I indicated previously
that for Descartes, Gods universal and total causality involves his exclusive production of substantial being ex nihilo. One sense in which all other causes are subordinated to God is that the activity of all such causes depends on Gods creation and
conservation of this kind of being. Likewise, Descartes stresses in the Principles that
by means of Gods universal causality the world is now continuously conserved by
the same action that created it then (PP II.42, AT 8-1:66). This universal causation,
like the universal and total causality that Descartes elsewhere ascribed to God,
involves the divine creation/conservation of the world.
Even so, it is clear from the discussion in the Principles that Descartes has in
mind a thicker notion of universal causality than the notion employed in other texts.
For elsewhere his claim is merely that all other effects are subordinated to God. In
the Principles, however, he needs to derive the stronger conclusion that specic features of the material world are conserved. In particular, Descartess claim is that the
universal cause of motion is

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nothing other than God himself, who in the beginning created matter at the same
time with motion and rest [cum motu et quiete], and now, by his ordinary concursus [concursum ordinarium] alone, conserves the total quantity of motion and rest
[motus et quietis . . . tota quantum] as he placed in it then. (PP II.36, AT 8-1:61)

The result here that there is a constant total quantity of motion and rest could not
follow simply from the fact that these quantities derive from Gods universal and
total causality. For all that follows from this fact is that whatever quantities there
are depend essentially on Gods independent action. Nor does the fact that God is
wholly immutable by itself show that the quantities are conserved. For Descartes
holds that there is always a single identical and perfectly simple act by means of
which [God] simultaneously understands, wills and accomplishes everything
(PP I.23, AT 8-1:14). Since this one immutable act produces a changing temporal
world, why could it not also produce changing quantities of motion and rest?
What Descartes actually argues is that the conservation of the quantity of motion and
rest follows not simply from the fact that God acts immutably, but rather from the further assumption that God always acts on the material world by his ordinary concursus
alone. We will need to puzzle about the precise nature of this ordinary concursus. But
rst let us consider precisely what sorts of quantities this divine action is supposed to
conserve.

3.1.2. Conserved Quantities


In the Principles, Descartes claims that God moved parts of matter in various ways
when he rst created it, and now conserves the whole of this matter in the same way
and with the same plan [eademque ratione] by which he rst created it (II.36, AT
8-1:62). There are three sorts of quantities that Descartes takes to be conserved in
this text: rst, the total quantity of matter; second, the total quantity of motion in this
world, which involves also the total quantity of the force associated with motion; and
third, though not as obviously from the passage just cited, the total quantity of rest,
which ultimately cannot include the force associated with rest. Let us consider these
quantities in turn.

(i) Quantity of Matter


Prior to his discussion in the Principles of Gods universal causation of motion,
Descartes argued that there is only one kind of matter that occupies all imaginable
space, and that this matter is simply extended substance itself (PP II.22, AT 8 1:52).
Earlier in this text he also had noted that there is no distinction in reality between
this extended substance and its quantity (PP II.9, AT 8-1:45).6 The fact that this
quantity is naturally conserved follows further from Descartess claim that any sort
of natural change in this quantity can occur only in virtue of the divisibility and

6. Cf. the view in the Fifth Meditation that matter can be clearly and distinctly conceived
only when conceived as identical to quantity, which the common philosophers call continuous (AT 7:63).

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mobility in respect of its parts, and its resulting capacity to be affected by all the
ways that we perceive to be possible following the motion of its parts (II.23, AT
8-1:52). So whereas quantity can be divided into different parts that can be transferred from each other in different ways, such changes in division and motion do
not involve any absolute creation or annihilation of quantity itself.
For reasons indicated below, I take Descartess claim that the quantity of matter is conserved when God acts by his ordinary concursus to indicate that it is conserved in all natural (i.e., nonmiraculous) interactions. The issue of whether such
a conclusion is acceptable in a scholastic context is complicated by the fact that
among the scholastics, all but the nominalists departed from Descartess ofcial
position that these two are distinct only by reason and not in reality.7 For scholastic realists, including Surez, quantity is an accident that can exist apart both from
the material substance composed of prime matter and substantial form, and from
prime matter itself. However, most scholastics could agree that prime matter cannot be produced or destroyed by natural means. For they took this matter to be the
substrate presupposed by all material processes, including the generation and corruption of material substances, and so not something that can be produced or
destroyed by these processes. Among the Thomists, this argument for the conservation of prime matter could not be extended to the case of quantity. Given their
view that quantity is an accident that naturally inheres in, and thus is bound to, a
particular material substance, the replacement of one such substance by another
(for instance, in the case where a living body becomes a corpse) involves the
replacement of one quantity by a qualitatively identical but numerically distinct
quantity.8 However, Surez departs from Thomistic orthodoxy in holding that
quantity inheres directly in prime matter rather than in the composite material substance.9 Moreover, he insists that quantity cannot be per se produced de novo, or
concomitantly, so that what was not now begins to be through the actions of natural agents insofar as quantity is coeval with matter (MD XVIII.4, 3, 1:624).
This is so because quantity is a fundamental and radical property that results
directly from the being of the prime matter itself (MD XIII.14, 1516,
1:45960*). Despite disagreeing with Descartess view of the relation of quantity
to material substance, then, Surez, at least, could accept his conclusion that
quantity can be neither produced nor destroyed by natural means.

7. As Suarez describes it, the nominalist position is that bulk quantity (quantitas molis)
is not a thing distinct from substance and material qualities. Rather, the being [entitas] of
each of them by itself has that bulk and extension of parts that is in bodies; that being is called
matter insofar as it is a substantial subject, and quantity insofar as it has extension and a
distinction of parts (MD XL.2, 2, 2:533*). Surez lists as advocates of this position Peter
Aureoli, Ockham, Gabriel Biel, Adam of Wodenham, John Major, and Albert of Saxony.
8. For discussion of the Thomistic position on this point, see Des Chene 1996, 14647.
9. The main point at issue was whether prime matter has some sort of reality apart from
form, as Surez claimed, or whether such matter is purely potential and has no such reality, as
the Thomists insisted; see MD XIII.4, 1:40914*. Cf. the metaphysical differences between
Surez and the Thomists considered in 1.2.1.

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(ii) Quantity of Motion


Though the result in Descartes that quantity is conserved was not entirely foreign to
Surez, there is no analogue in his thought of Descartess position in the Principles
that the total quantity of motion remains constant in all natural change.10 Even
Descartes recognizes that the case of the conservation of the quantity of motion
seems to differ from the case of the conservation of the quantity of material substance insofar as motion is a mere mode and not an ultimate subject of change. He
nonetheless insists that each token of the modal type of motion has a certain quantity that combines with the quantities of all the other tokens of that type to constitute
a total quantity of motion in the universe as a whole (PP II.36, AT 8-1:61). For
him, there is as good an argument for the conservation of this modal quantity as there
is for the conservation of quantity as such.
The Jesuit order in effect rejected the equivalence of these two cases in a formal
prohibition of various Cartesian propositions that its general, Michelangelo
Tamburini, issued in 1706 (Rochemonteix 1899, 4:8993). Among the thirty condemned propositions, the tenth asserted that in order to admit that some quantity of
motion that God originally impressed on matter is lost, one would have to assume
that God is changeable and inconstant, whereas the sixteenth claimed that there is,
in the world, a precise and limited quantity of motion, which has never been augmented or diminished. Thus it became ofcial Jesuit doctrine that a natural change
in the quantity of motion is possible, and that such a change is perfectly compatible
with divine immutability.
As is often the case with formal condemnations, there is room to argue that the
propositions condemned do not match precisely the views of the condemned
author.11 Particularly in the case of the sixteenth proposition, there are certain claims
that go beyond what Descartes actually says in the Principles. For instance,
Descartes never claims in that text that the total quantity of motion is limited. More
important, he argues there not that there has been no change in the quantity of
motion, but merely that there can be no such change given the assumption that God
acts only by his ordinary concursus. Indeed, Descartes explicitly allows in this section of the Principles for changes in the quantity of motion that evident experience
or divine revelation renders certain (PP II.36, AT 8-1:61). Presumably, Descartes

10. For a discussion of the novelty of Descartess views concerning the quantity of
motion, see Dubarle 1964. But see note 25.
11. Admittedly, some of the propositions listed in the Jesuit condemnation most likely were
drawn more from certain followers of Descartes than from Descartes himself. This is so, for
instance, in the case of the nineteenth proposition that only God can move bodies; angels,
rational souls, and bodies themselves are not the efcient causes, but the occasional causes of
motion, and in the case of the twentieth proposition that creatures do not produce anything as
efcient causes, but God alone produces all effects, ad illarum praesentiam. There is reason to
think that Descartes was not the main target here, but rather later Cartesian occasionalists, and
most especially Malebranche, who made claims very close to those found in these propositions.
Even so, the seventh and sixteenth propositions seem clearly to be drawn from Descartess discussion in the second part of the Principles of Gods universal causation of motion.

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does not want to claim that either evident experience or divine revelation compromises divine immutability.12
Nevertheless, from a Jesuit perspective even the more modest implication in
Descartes that divine immutability is incompatible with natural change in the quantity of motion is bad enough. To be sure, most Jesuit scholastics accepted the view
that the circular motions of the celestial spheres are constant.13 However, such
scholastics, including Surez, insisted that sublunar motion can be corrupted by natural means.14 Indeed, on the traditional Aristotelian view this sort of corruption is
inevitable given that the natural state of body is to be at rest in its proper place. Thus,
all bodies naturally resist motion from such a place, and this resistance is the source
of the corruption of motion. Nor, for Surez and other scholastics, does this sort of
corruption bespeak some inconstancy in God, for the change derives from the
natures of the bodies that God immutably creates and conserves.
There is the inuential claim in the work of Pierre Duhem that the modern emphasis on the conservation of motion has its roots in scholastic thought. In particular,
Duhem takes scholastic discussions of projectile motion to provide the basis for the
conclusion in Descartes and other seventeenth-century mechanists that motion is conserved in all natural change (Duhem 1955, vii, 49). Aristotle claimed that the mover
of the projectile imparts a portion of its motive force to the medium, with the imparted
force keeping the projectile in motion until it is depleted. However, fourteenthcentury scholastics developed the view of earlier Aristotelian commentators that the
mover impresses an impetus on the projectile itself. What Duhem emphasizes as
the decisive moment on the road to the modern thesis of the conservation of motion
is the proposal in the work of the scholastic master John Buridan that impetus in bodies is something permanent by nature (see Duhem 1955, 3453).15
So do we not have here in the scholastics something akin to Descartess permanent
quantity of motion? Anneliese Maier shows that we do not. In response to Duhem,
she notes that Buridan proposed the permanence of impetus only in the case of celestial motion, where there is no resistance to the impetus. Buridan allowed that in the
case of terrestrial motion, impetus is opposed by contrary tendencies in bodies, which
later scholastics identied with natural resistance to any violent motion (Maier 1982,
8991).16 Surez was among those who accepted the theory of impetus, but also

12. It is true, however, that in the earlier World Descartes suggested that no change in
nature can be attributed to God given the immutability of his action; see W VII, AT 11:37. For
further discussion of the clause in the text from the Principles that exempts changes revealed
by evident experience or divine revelation, see 4.3.3.
13. For a discussion of scholastic views on this matter, which derive from the work of
Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, see Menn 1990, 21826.
14. Thus, at one point Surez argued that the motion of a projectile can be corrupted by
the weakening of its quality of impetus due to the resisting action of the heaviness of that
object (MD XXI.3, 27, 1:801). I discuss presently the nature of this quality.
15. The proposal, from the twelfth question of Buridans Questiones octavi libri physicorum, is cited in Duhem 1955, 44.
16. For the Aristotelian, violent motion is simply motion that does not have as its terminus rest in the natural place of the body that is moving.

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stressed that when an impetus is impressed on a body, there is no requirement that it


be conserved there permanently and that because in other respects the subject of the
quality is always resisting it and its action, the nature of such a quality requires that
it should stop being conserved little by little (MD XXI.3, 27, 1:801).17
Descartess view in the Principles that the total quantity of motion cannot be
altered by natural means thus involves a marked departure from the view of a
scholastic such as Surez. Descartes introduced such a view already in The World
when he referred to Gods conservation of the quantity of motions (quantit des
mouvemens) (W VII, AT 11:43), though he did not indicate there what sort of quantity he had in mind.18 By the time of the Principles, however, he settled on the view
that motion is a state that has a quantity measured by the product of the size (i.e.,
volume) of a moving body and the scalar speed of its motion.19 The argument in this
text is that not only the total quantity of matter but also the total quantity of all of the
motions of its parts are conserved insofar as God acts by his ordinary concursus.
Nevertheless, there is a complication for Descartess account of the quantity of
motion that is relevant to scholastic impetus theory. For Surez and other scholastic
proponents of this theory, the impetus of a projectile is a quality that is distinct from
the motion of this object insofar as it is the cause of that motion. But Descartes also
seems to allow that there is more to conserved motion than its quantity. Thus he
writes in 1641 that one must consider a rock that collides with the earth as having
motion, or the force to move itself [la force a se mouvoir] as a quantity that is neither augmented nor diminished (To Mersenne, 17 Nov. 1641, AT 3:451).20 There is
also the view in the 1644 Principles that there is a certain quantum of force [quantum . . . virium], either to move, or to resist motion (PP II.45, AT 8-1:67). Finally,
Descartes claims in his 1649 correspondence with More that strictly speaking it is
not the various changing modes of matter that remain constant, but only the force
impelling its parts (vis eius partes impellente), a force that applies itself now to
one part of matter, now to another (To More, Aug. 1649, AT 5:405).21
There is the question whether Descartess conserved force, like scholastic impetus, is a cause of motion that is distinct from the motion it produces. I need to

17. It is worth noting that in this passage Surez spoke of the reduction of impetus as
involving a reduction not in its quantity, but rather in its intensity (intensio). This serves to
distinguish impetus from quantity strictly speaking given his ofcial position that quantity as
such cannot have intensity (MD XLI.5, 6, 2:601*).
18. For the suggestion that the use of the plural indicates that Descartes is thinking here
that God conserves the number of motions or the number of bodies in motion, see Costabel
1967, 25051.
19. See his claim that if one part of matter moves twice as fast as another that is twice as
large, we consider that there is the same quantity of motion in each part (PP II.36, AT
8 1:61). Prior to this time Descartes corrected his reference in The World to the quantity of
motions by speaking of a certain total quantity of all motions; see To Debeaune, 30 Apr. 1639,
AT 2:543; To Mersenne, 17 Nov. 1641, AT 3:451.
20. Even earlier, he wrote in The World that the ability [vertu] or power [puissance] to
move itself that is found in body cannot entirely cease to be in the world (W III, AT 11:11).
21. See the discussion in 3.2.1 (iii) of this passage from the More correspondence.

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postpone consideration of this question until the discussion below of his account of
secondary and particular causes. But at least it can be said at this point that in
Descartes, the measure of the total quantity of motion, namely, the sum of the products of the sizes and speeds of each moving part of matter, also serves to measure
the total quantity of the force impelling these parts. Moreover, his assumption seems
to be that if the total quantity of the force is conserved, then so is the total quantity
of the motion associated with the force.22
Though the result that the total quantity of motion and its force are conserved is
radical enough given the scholastic context, it is important to recognize how limited
this result is. For instance, such a result does not by itself preclude action at a distance. As long as this kind of action does not produce an increase or decrease in the
total quantity of motion, the principle of conservation is satised.23 Moreover, the
result that quantity of force/motion is conserved says nothing about the directionality
of the bodily motions. Several incompatible scenarios concerning changes in directions of bodies subsequent to collision, or even to action at a distance, seem to be
consistent with this result. I do not think that Descartes himself has any illusions concerning the robustness of his conclusions regarding the conservation of motion/force.
Indeed, I argue in 3.2 that he invokes particular and secondary causes precisely to
underwrite claims concerning the necessity of contact action and the constraints on
the direction of motion that his conservation principle alone does not yield.

(iii) Quantity of Rest


In his discussion of Gods universal causality in Principles II.36, Descartes emphasizes
the conservation of motion. He begins this article by referring to the general cause of
all motions that are in the world, and he ends it by insisting that God always conserves just as much motion in [matter] as he created in it initially (AT 8-1:6162).
Even so, he makes a passing reference in this same article to the fact that God conserves the total quantity of rest (tota quantum quietas). Unfortunately, in contrast to the
case of motion, he does not specify how the relevant quantity is to be measured. It is
perhaps tempting to think that he takes the same formula that applies to the case of
motion, namely, size times speed, to apply to the case of rest as well. But if we apply
the formula in this way, the result of course is that the quantity of rest is nill.24

22. As Garber observes, there is the suggestion in a note from Descartes, dating perhaps
from the 1630s, that the uniform application of force (vis) results in uniform acceleration (AT
11:62930*, cited in Garber 1992, 35455, n.17). I concur in Garbers judgment that this suggestion is not in line with Descartess later account of force (though in 3.2, I provide an interpretation of this later account that differs from the one that Garber defends).
23. As Des Chene notes, Descartess conservation principle seems to allow for God to
produce changes that to us would look like action at a distance, providing no reason why
bodies in motion and about to collide should not be brought to a standstill, and their motion
distributed to others (Des Chene 2000b, 149).
24. In his Search after Truth, Malebranche offers an account of rest on which it is this sort
of limiting case of motion, though he does so in direct opposition to Descartess account of the
force of rest; see bk. VI-2, ch. 9, Malebranche 195884, 2:42829/Malebranche 1997, 515.

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A more promising proposal is that the total quantity of rest is the same as the total
quantity of the parts of matter at rest. To conserve the total quantity of these parts is
therefore to conserve the total quantity of their rest. On this understanding, the claim
that the total quantity of rest is conserved would be simply a corollary of the doctrine of the conservation of the total quantity of matter. The clearest evidence that
Descartes himself understood conservation of rest in this manner is found not in the
Principles but rather in his correspondence with More. More initially asked if
matter, whether we imagine it to be eternal or created yesterday, left to itself and
receiving no impulse from anything else, would move or be at rest? (More to
Descartes, 5 Mar. 1649, AT 5:316). Descartes at rst ignored the question, but when
More repeated it (More to Descartes, 23 July 1649, AT 5:381), he is forced to
respond. Descartes writes, with respect to Mores reformulation of his query, that
I consider matter left to itself and receiving no impulse from anything else, as
plainly at rest. But it is impelled by God, conserving as much motion or transference
[translationem] in it as he put there from the rst (To More, Aug. 1649, AT 5:404).
So the suggestion is that God produces a particular quantity of rest simply by producing a particular quantity of the matter and then leaving it to itself. This is in
contrast to his production of a particular quantity of motion, which involves not only
his producing a particular quantity of matter but also his adding to that quantity a
particular amount of impulse, that is to say, force.25
So far, then, the quantity of the rest of a body seems to reduce to the quantity of
the matter of that body. But there is a joker in the deck. Just as Descartes posits a
force or impulse in the case of motion, so he holds that there is a force associated
with rest. Thus, in a 1640 letter to Mersenne, he notes that
from the fact alone that a body begins to move, it has in itself the force to
continue to move [il a en soy la force de continuer se mouvoir]; just as, from the
fact alone that it is stopped in a certain place, it has the force to continue to
remain there [la force de continuer y demeurer]. (To Mersenne, 28 Oct. 1640,
AT 3:213)

Later, in the Principles, he holds that the effects of bodily collisions are determined
not only by a force for acting (vis ad agendum) in parts of matter that are in
motion, but also a force for resisting (vis ad resistendum) that is found in any
material parts in such collisions that are at rest (PP II.43, AT 8-1:6667).26 So just
as motion is not simply a mode with a certain quantity but also involves force, so, it
seems, rest must involve a force in addition to its quantity. Even in the letter to More
in which he suggests that God produces motion by simply producing matter without

25. The view here that motion requires a continually conserved impulse from God shows
the need to qualify Dubarles claim that Descartess originality lies in his conception of
motion as a fact of the nature of the universe, no longer as an action deriving causally from
a mover external to the thing moved (Dubarle 1964, 121). Even so, I argue in 3.2 that there
is a sense in which motion is grounded in something internal to the moving body (even if originally impressed and subsequently conserved there by God). I owe the point about the need
for qualication, though not the more concessive point, to Garber 1992, 362, n.28.
26. In 3.2.2, I propose an account of the nature of these bodily forces.

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impulse, Descartes notes that the resting thing, from the fact alone that it rests, has
this effort [renixus], [but] this effort is not therefore rest (To More, Aug. 1649, AT
5:403). The effort that Descartes mentions here, which More identied with resistance to motion,27 therefore is something that he took to be distinct from rest itself.
If, as seems likely, Descartes identies this effort with the force for resisting that he
posited in the Principles, then he has good reason to distinguish it from the state of
rest. For whereas he claims in this text that the total quantity of rest is conserved, it
turns out that his account there of the force for resisting precludes him from holding
that the quantity of this force is conserved as well.
To see that Descartes cannot hold that this force is conserved, we need to consider
his discussion in the Principles of the seven rules governing the effects of bodily collisions.28 The force for resisting comes into play only in the case of the fourth and
sixth rules, which concern the collision of a moving body with a body at rest that is
either larger than or equal in size to it.29 The suggestion in the Latin edition of this
text, at least, is that this force is to be measured by the product of the resting body
and the speed of the moving body that collides with it.30 Such a force is present only
in the case of collision, and it ceases to exist after it has acted. In this sense, it is akin
to the vis impressa that Newton later introduces in his Principia, which consists
solely in the action exerted on a body to change its states and that does not remain
in the body after the action has ceased (Newton 1999, 405). In contrast, the force
for acting in the moving body not only acts in collision, but also maintains the body
in its motion. This force therefore has aspects of Newtons vis inertia, which explains

27. More understood Descartes to hold that rest is an action, truly a certain effort or
resistance [renixum sive resistemtiam] (23 July 1649, AT 5:380*).
28. The original version of the seven rules is set out in the Latin edition of the Principles
(PP II.4652, AT 8-1:6870). The rules there are as follows: the rst covers the collision of
bodies moving in opposite directions with equal sizes and speeds, the second covers the collision of a body with a smaller body moving in the opposite direction with the same speed, the
third covers the collision of bodies moving in opposite directions with equal sizes but different speeds, the fourth covers the collision of a moving body with a larger body at rest, the fth
covers the collision of a moving body with a smaller body at rest, the sixth covers the collision of a moving body with a body at rest that is equal in size to it, and the seventh covers the
collision of bodies with varying sizes or speeds that are moving in the same direction.
29. There is a much-expanded version of the rules that cover collisions involving bodies
at rest (viz., the fourth, fth, and sixth rules) in the 1647 French edition of the Principles, at
AT 9-2:9092, which was preceded by a reconsideration of such collisions that Descartes
offered in a 1645 letter to Clerselier, at AT 4:18387. For more on the evolution of Descartess
views concerning such collisions, see Garber 1992, ch. 8. See also note 30.
30. Cf. Gabbeys view, drawing on the version of the collision rules in the 1647 French
edition of the Principles, that the force for resisting is proportional not to the speed of the
moving body but rather to the quantity of motion that the resting body would receive from the
moving body were the later able to impose it on the former (Gabbey 1980, 26970). I concur
in Garbers judgment that this account of resisting force cannot be found in the original Latin
edition of this text (Garber 1992, 358, n.16). Even so, I think that the points I want to make
go through even on the account of the force for resisting that Gabbey attributes to Descartes
(as Gabbey himself seems to recognize; see note 32).

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the fact that a body perseveres in its state (Newton 1999, 404).31 Whereas Descartes
can hold that the force for acting has a quantity that is continuously conserved, he
cannot say the same about the force for resisting. As I argue below, this difference
reveals that the metaphysical foundations for his physics are much less amenable to
forces for resisting than they are to forces for acting.32

3.1.3. Conservation and Ordinary Concursus


We can now turn to the claim in the Principles that the conservation of the total
quantity of matter, along with the total quantity of the motion and rest of its parts,
follows from the assumption that God acts subsequent to creation by his ordinary
concursus alone (PP II.36, AT 8-1:61). I claimed previously that the reference here
to ordinary concursus indicates that there is conservation in all natural change. This
implication pertains less to the fact that God acts by concursus than to the fact that
this concursus is ordinary. There was a common scholastic distinction between
Gods absolute and ordinary (or ordained) power. Drawing on the account of
this distinction in Thomas, Surez held that Gods absolute power (potentia absoluta) is his power to affect anything apart from any respect toward the nature of
things or toward other causes, whereas his ordinary power ( potentia ordinaria) is
involved in his action according to the common laws and causes that he has established universally (MD XXX.17, 32, 2:216*, citing ST I.25.5, ad 1). It is because
Gods power is absolute in this way that he can miraculously produce logically possible effects that do not follow from the natures of objects in the created world. In
contrast, God produces all effects that follow from these natures by means of his
ordinary power. By excluding from consideration any changes in the material world
guaranteed by divine revelation (PP II.36, AT 8-1:61), Descartes indicates as well
that Gods ordinary concursus excludes miraculous action.33

31. Newton adds that inertial force explains perseverance of the body in its state quantum
in se est. We will discover presently that this qualication is important for Descartess own
conception of bodily force.
32. Cf. Gabbeys claim that whereas the force maintaining a moving bodys motion is the same
as the force with which it resists change of direction or acts to change the state of other bodies, the
force maintaining rest must differ from resisting force, since the former appears to have no meaningful measure analogous to that of the force maintaining motion, but resisting force does have a
measure in terms of the motion that the striking body tries to impart to it (Gabbey 1980, 26768).
Though I emphasize the difculties of accommodating resisting force within Descartess account of
Gods conservation of motion and rest, Gabbey himself takes the collision rule that introduces this
force to be the most seminally valuable of the seven and the force itself to take us half-way to the
fully Newtonian conception [of resisting force] (Gabbey 1980, 26970).
33. The further exclusion of changes guaranteed by our own experience most likely
indicates a bracketing of changes in motions produced by nite minds. See, for instance,
Descartess claim to Arnauld that the fact that an incorporeal mind can set body in motion is
revealed by the most certain and most evident experience [certissima & evidentissima experientia] (29 July 1648, AT 5:222). In 4.3.3, however, I indicate that he has problems
allowing for the production of a new quantity of motion by nite minds.

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The fact that a consideration of the scholastic context sheds some light on the ordinary nature of the concursus that Descartes takes to underwrite divine conservation
may lead us to believe that this same context can help in the explication of his concept
of concursus. After all, we know that concursus was a scholastic term of art. I argue
in 3.3 that there are in fact good reasons to resist an interpretation of Descartess
account of Gods causation of motion in terms of a standard sort of scholastic concurrentism. However, it is worth noting here that from the perspective of a traditional
scholastic concurrence theory, there are initial difculties with aspects of his discussion of concursus.34 The structure of Surezs Metaphysical Disputations makes clear
that divine conservation and concursus involve different aspects of the creature.
Disputation XXI is devoted to the essential dependence of the being of creatures on
Gods conservatio, whereas disputation XXII is devoted to the essential dependence of
the operation of creatures on Gods concursus (see 1.2.3). Even though creatures
could not act without Gods concursus, in Surezs view, they could continue to exist.
He indicated that in the biblical miracle of the three men in the ery furnace, God continued to conserve the re but prevented it from burning the men by withholding his
concursus with the action of the re (MD XXII.1, 11, 1:804). To annihilate the re,
God would need to withhold not only this concursus but also the conservatio by means
of which the re remains in existence.
In the article of the Principles that concerns Gods universal causation of motion,
however, there is no corresponding distinction between conservatio and concursus.
Descartes indicates in this article that Gods ordinary concursus is to be explicated
in terms of his conservation of matter in the same manner and according to the same
reason that he rst created it (PP II.36, AT 8-1:62). Moreover, Descartes emphasizes in a later article that a portion of his third law of nature is demonstrated by the
immutability of the operation of God, now continually conserving the world by
the same action with which he created it then (PP II.42, AT 8-1:66). As indicated
previously, Descartes adopts the Surezian position that the divine conservatio is
identical to Gods initial creation of an object (see 2.2.3). In suggesting that ordinary concursus is identical to Gods initial act of creation, then, he seems to indicate
that it is identical as well to continued divine conservation.
The identity of conservation and concursus is further reinforced by Descartess
remarks on concurrence outside of the Principles.35 Thus, in a 1641 letter to

34. Cf. the claim of J. A. van Ruler that the fact of Descartes commitment to the scholastic concept [of concurrence] cannot conceal the ambiguous way in which he uses it (Ruler
1995, 271).
35. Here I draw on the argument in Ruler 1995, 27178. Cf. the response to this argument
in Pessin 2003, 3639. But though Pessin is correct that Descartes sometimes used the term
concursus when speaking of causal contributions of partial causes that do not involve conservation (e.g., in the Fourth Meditation, at AT 7:50 and 56), his point that Descartes linked
divine concursus to the laws of nature does not seem to me to establish a concurrentist reading of his account of Gods causation of motion (see note 88). I take this same point to apply
to the different version of concurrentism attributed to Descartes in Hattab 2000 and 2007 (see
note 73). In 3.3, I argue more explicitly against the view that Descartess physics can be
explicated in terms of scholastic concurrentism.

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Mersenne, he protests that he never held that God does not concur immediately
[concourt immediatement] in all things, and notes that he even expressly asserted
the contrary in his response to the theologian Caterus (To Mersenne, 21 Apr. 1641,
AT 3:360). But this response, from the First Replies, explicitly concerns the conservation axiom discussed in the previous chapter. In the Replies Descartes repeats
the conclusion in the Third Meditation that he could not continue to exist unless
some cause as it were causes anew [quasi rursus efciat] at each moment and adds
that I do not hesitate in calling this cause, which conserves me, efcient (AT
7:109). Given this background information, we are to take the immediate concourse that Descartes mentions in his letter to Mersenne to be a continued conservation of the world that is identical to the efcient causal act by which God initially
created it.36
Descartes suggests the identication of concursus with conservation as well in passages that concern the nature of substance. In the Synopsis to the Meditations, he
notes that all created substances are by their nature incorruptible, and cannot ever
cease to be unless they are reduced to nothing by God denying his concursus to them
(AT 7:14). The implication here is that the divine concursus is not only necessary but
also sufcient for the continued existence of created substances. The claim concerning the necessity of the concurrence is picked up in the Latin edition of the Principles,
where Descartes claims that whereas God is substance in the primary sense since he
depends on no other thing to exist, created substances cannot exist unless by the
work of the concursus of God (PP I.51, AT 8-1:24). However, the claim concerning
sufciency is reected in the comment added in the later French edition of this text
that created substances need only the ordinary concourse [concours ordinaire] of
God to exist (AT 9-2:47).
We do not have to speculate that the use of the notion of concursus in these passages would have been objectionable to those with a scholastic sensibility. One of
Descartess Dutch critics, Jacobus Revius, the author of Suarez repurgatus,37 took
issue with the remarks concerning substance in the Principles when he announced
in a 1650 text that I am ashamed for the love of God, I am ashamed about your
ignorance, Descartes. That such a great philosopher as yourself has not learned to
distinguish between conservation and concursus!38 Revius made what for
scholastics would be the crucial point that an object that is nothing apart from the
divine act of conservation cannot be said to concur in that act.39 In the scholastic
view, creatures concur not in the conservation of their substantial existence, which

36. See also Descartess repeated reference to Gods concursus in his discussion of divine
conservation in To Hyperaspistes, Aug. 1641, AT 3:42930.
37. See Revius 1643. In this text, Revius attempted to present a Surezian system purged
of what to his Calvinist sensibility was Surezs own pelagian emphasis on our freedom to
reject divine grace.
38. From Reviuss Statera philosophiae cartesianae (Revius 1650), cited in Ruler 1995,
276. Here I follow Rulers translation. For an overview of Reviuss critique of Descartess system, see Verbeek 1992, 4046, 7881.
39. See the passage from Revius 1650, 73, cited in Ruler 1995, 277, n.51.

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God alone brings about,40 but only in the production of their effects, to which their
operations contribute.
Revius also raised the question of how Descartes could speak of concursus at all in
the context of his physics given that there can be no vis agendi in his world of mere
extension, and so no acting with in the case of bodies.41 Such a question of course
broaches the issue of Descartess views on the efcacy of secondary and particular
causes, an issue that I will address in 3.2. At this point, though, it is worth considering why Descartes would even use the language of concursus when discussing matters
pertaining to conservation. One answer suggested by the text of the Principles is that
what God contributes to bodybody interaction is the conservation of the total quantity both of the matter of the parts that compose the material world and of the motion
of these parts. This contribution therefore goes beyond the mere conservation of the
quantity of matter, and so in this sense can be said to involve an additional concursus.
However, this concursus is nothing beyond the act of conserving the total quantity of
motion, an act that is identical to the act by which God created this quantity ex nihilo.
It is important to distinguish this suggestion of the identity of concursus with creation of motion from what Garber has called the cinematic view of Gods causation of motion.42 As Garber describes it, such a view holds that motion is simply
the divine recreation of bodies in different places with respect to one another in different moments; God, on this view, moves bodies by his recreation alone (Garber
1992, 275). Though others, such as Gueroult, attribute the cinematic view to
Descartes, Garber is careful to note that such a view is something to which Descartes
never explicitly commits himself (Garber 1992, 27576).43 On the basis of my earlier argument against Gueroult (see 2.2), I think we can go further by claiming that
Descartes in fact rejects the view of divine conservation as continual re-creation and
offers in its place the more traditional position that such conservation consists in the
continuation of the initial act of creation. But an additional point is that the identication of divine concursus with conservation of matter in motion need not entail the
lack of a distinction between the creation of matter simpliciter and the causation of
its motion. In the Principles itself, Descartes emphasizes that God not only originally created a certain quantity of matter but also moved the parts of matter
diversely, when he rst created them (PP II.36, AT 8-1:62). The divine concursus
to changes in motion consists in a continuation of Gods act not only of creating the

40. Surez allowed that certain accidents can depend on secondary causes for their conservation (as light depends on the sun, or motion on a mover), but concluded that God alone
can immediately conserve a sort of being that can be created only ex nihilo; see MD XXI.3,
1:794801. As indicated in 1.2.3 (i), however, Surez acknowledged the difculty in providing a demonstration that God cannot communicate to creatures a derivative sort of power
to create ex nihilo.
41. Again from Revius 1650, 73, cited in Ruler 1995, 277.
42. Following Bergson, who labels this the conception cinmatographique of motion; see
Bergson 1907, 295, 356, 373, cited in Gueroult 1953, 1:274.
43. Though Garber does say that it is quite possible that the cinematic view is a correct
representation of [Descartess] thought in The World or the Principles (Garber 1992, 276).

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matter, but also of initially moving its parts.44 In contrast, on the cinematic view the
difference between these two acts can be revealed not in the initial moment of creation but only at later moments, when material parts are re-created either with the
same relations of distance or different relations.
Though Garber himself is skeptical that we can nd any clear repudiation of the cinematic view in the Principles, he takes such a repudiation to emerge in Descartess late
correspondence with More. On the account that Garber nds in this correspondence,
which he calls the impulse view, Gods causation of motion consists not in his conservation of matter, but rather in his producing a divine shove that serves to impel
matter (Garber 1992, 278). Garber nds such a view to be indicated in the remark in
an August 1649 letter to More, cited previously, that though matter is at rest when it is
left to itself and receives no impulse from anything else, in fact it has been
impelled by God, conserving as much motion or transference in it as he put there from
the rst (AT 5:404). The divine shove is simply that by which God introduced motion
in the rst place, and to conserve this motion he merely needs to keep shoving.
One reason to take the impulse view to depart from the Principles is that it seems to
distinguish Gods causation of motion more radically than this text does from his creation/conservation of the material world. Garber explains this difference in terms of the
distinction between causes that produce the modes of a thing, or modal causes, and
causes that produce the substantial being of a thing, or substantial causes (Garber
1992, 277). The suggestion in the Principles is that Gods activity as a substantial cause
in creating and conserving the material world also explains his conservation of the total
quantity of motion. As Garber sees it, however, the view in the More correspondence
is that God acts merely as a modal cause in initially impelling matter and in conserving
this impulse. As evidence that Descartes thought in his later writings that God is merely
a modal cause of motion, Garber cites his claim in an April 1649 letter to More that
although I believe that no mode of acting belongs univocally to God and
creatures, I confess, however, that I can nd no idea in my mind that represents
the mode by which God or an angel can move matter different from that which
exhibits to me the mode by which I am conscious that I can move my own body
through my thought. (AT 5:347)

In moving our body, it seems evident that we act as a modal and not a substantial
cause. But if we do not conceive of the mode of Gods action in moving matter as
differing from the mode of our action in moving our body, then it would seem that
we must conceive of God as moving matter as a modal rather than a substantial
cause. Garber conclusion is that on Descartess view in the More correspondence,
there would appear to be a distinction between God as sustainer of the world, as a
substantial cause, keeping things in existence, and God as cause of motion, a modal
cause, causing bodies to have the particular motion they have, determining, at least
in part, their modes (Garber 1992, 277).

44. Of course, Descartess ofcial view is that there is a single act of creation here.
However, the point is that in the cases of creating matter without motion and creating matter
with motion, the acts must differ given the differences in the objects.

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It can be noted initially, in response to Garbers claim here, that Descartes prefaces his April 1649 remark to More by saying that it is not a defect for a philosopher to hold that God can move body, even though he does not hold that God is
corporeal; so also it is not a defect to judge the same of other incorporeal substances (AT 5:347). It seems that Descartess main concern in comparing the conception of the way we move bodies to the way God does is to counter the position
that God could move bodies only if he were corporeal. But we also need to take
seriously his warning in this passage that no mode of acting belongs univocally to
God and creatures. Even if we as well as God move by an impulse of some kind,
it must be recognized that both the effect of the impulse and its causal source are
very different in the two cases. Descartes suggests in his correspondence with
Elisabeth that we have a primitive notion of the union of mind and body on which
depends [our idea] of the force [force] that our soul has to move the body (21 May
1643, AT 3:665).45 But as Descartes admits to More, this force must differ from the
sort of force involved in Gods causation of motion. Our force is a mere mode of
our mind, whereas there can be no modes in God (Aug. 1649, AT 5:404).46 In addition, Descartes notes in this same letter, in a passage cited earlier, that it follows
from the laws proposed in articles 45 and following of the Second Part of the
Principles that God moves body by conserving the force impelling its parts, which
force applies itself now to one part of matter, now to another (AT 5:405). However
it is that we move our body, it surely is not the case that we act by continuing to
conserve the force we originally placed in it.
We can understand the distinction here between the cases of God and nite
minds in terms of the familiar Thomistic distinction between causes secundum
eri and secundum esse. I have noted the claim in Descartes that God alone can be
the cause secundum esse of substances. But whereas nite minds could perhaps be
causes secundum eri of certain changes in motion, God himself cannot be characterized as such a cause, principally because he is not a cause of change. Rather,
he is the cause of a constant quantity of motive force in the world. So though
motive quantity is a mode, God can be considered as the cause secundum esse of
this quantity insofar as he creates/conserves a quantity that is the subject of various modications.47
In 4.3, I consider Descartess account of the forces in nite minds that account
for changes in the material world. What is relevant here, however, is his conception
of the various bodily forces that he posits in his physics. With respect to such forces,
there would seem to be only three options: either these forces exist in bodies, or they

45. For further discussion of Descartess account of the union and its primitive notion, see 4.1.
46. This view follows from the claim in the Principles that since no variation is intelligible
in him, God can possess only invariable attributes and no variable modes (PP I.56, AT 8-1:26).
47. In his 1704 Use of Reason (see chapter 1, note 77), the Cartesian Regis claims that God
produces the substance of formal motion, whereas the modes of this motion . . . depend
immediately on creatures (I-2.15, Regis 1996, 296). Though Regiss account of the production
of motion is idiosyncratic in certain respects (see note 87), he allows for the basic view, which
I nd in Descartes, that God does not produce motion in the way in which other causes do.

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exist in God, or they do not exist at all.48 The claim that they exist in God is presumably ruled out by the fact that the various forces for acting and for resisting
posited in the Principles vary, whereas again, as Descartes emphasizes to More,
there can be no variation in God. But the claim that the varying forces exist in bodies seems to involve an appeal to something akin to the scholastic forms and qualities that Descartes wanted to banish from his physics. This would seem to leave us
with the last option, which Garber attributes to Descartes, that force is nowhere,
strictly speaking, not in God, who is the real cause of motion in the inanimate world,
and not in bodies, which are the recipients of the motion that God causes (Garber
1992, 298).49
To determine Descartess own intentions with respect to this issue, we need to
reect on his account in the Principles of the ways in which secondary and particular causes contribute to Gods universal causation of motion. I take this account to
support a version of the rst option, namely, that variable forces exist in bodies. Here
I draw on the view in the seminal work of Gueroult and Gabbey that the bodily
forces that Descartes posits in this text are to be understood in terms of the existence
or duration of the bodies that God continuously conserves.50 In contrast to these
commentators, however, I explicate the differences among bodily forces in terms of
the differences among the modes of the duration of the bodies that possess the
forces. Moreover, my position is distinctive in emphasizing that an account of bodily force in terms of duration better accommodates the forces for acting in moving
bodies than it does the forces for resisting in resting bodies. I do not take this problem with forces for resisting to constitute an objection to my interpretation of
Descartes sinceas will become clearI think that such forces are not easily incorporated into his own view in the Principles of the ordinary concursus involved in
Gods continued creation of the material world.

3.2. LAWS AS PARTICULAR AND SECONDARY CAUSES


Descartess claim in the Principles that rules or laws of nature (regulae sive leges naturae) are particular and secondary causes no doubt strikes the contemporary reader as
odd. From our post-Humean perspective such rules or laws would seem to be mere

48. As I indicate presently, Gueroult and Gabbey are the main representatives of the position
that Descartes takes the rst option, whereas Garber is the main representative of the position that
he accepts the third option. The second option is often attributed to Hateld on the basis of his
discussion in Hateld 1979, but he has indicated to me in conversation that when he said that
force is in God, he meant only that God is the sole efcacious cause in bodybody interactions,
and not that varying forces are literally in God. Hatelds account of his original intent is
reinforced by the discussion of his position in Garber 1992, 63637, n. 41.
49. See also the view in Des Chene 1996, which he presents as a reconciliation of the rst
and third options, but which I take to be a variant of the third, on the basis of his claim that
if by force one means a mode whose intensity would be measured by the quantity Mv (in a
moving body), then there is no such thing (Des Chene 1996, 340).
50. Cf. Gueroult 1980, 198, and Gabbey 1980, 25358.

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empirical generalizations, hardly the sort of thing that could serve as a cause. One question that we need to address, then, is what Descartes could mean when he speaks of rules
or laws as causes. Yet there is a further puzzle concerning the relation of the laws to
Gods action as the universal and primary cause of motion. As we have seen, this divine
action consists in the conservation of the total quantity of motive force by means of the
continuation of Gods initial act of creating the material world. But in the Principles, only
the third law of nature, concerning the distribution of motion subsequent to collision, is
derived explicitly from Gods action as primary cause of motion. The rst law, which
requires the conservation of the state of an object quantum in se est, is not restricted to
the case of motion, and the second law, which concerns the rectilinear determination of
motion, does not concern the quantity of motion at all.51 It turns out that the heterogeneity of the three laws cannot be eliminated entirely. It also is the case that the third law of
motion reveals most directly Descartess view of the nature of the particular causes of
motion; indeed, we will discover that this law introduces some interesting complications
for his containment axiom in the Third Meditation. Even so, a closer consideration of
each of the three laws will put us in a better position to understand why Descartes takes
all of them to be grounded in the divine conservation of the material world.

3.2.1. Three Laws of Nature


(i) Perseveret quantum in se est
In the article of the Principles that follows the one in which he discussed Gods
activity as primary cause of motion, Descartes offers the following as the rst of the
three laws of nature that serve as particular and secondary causes of motion:
[E]ach and every thing, insofar as it is simple and undivided, remains, insofar as it
has it in itself, always in the same state, and never changes unless by external
causes [unamquamque rem, quantus est simplex et indivisa, manere, quantum in
se est, in eodem semper statu, nec unquam mutari nisi causeis externis].
(PP II.37, AT 8-1:62)

This law has an earlier counterpart in The World. In this text, Descartes introduces
the law that each part of matter, in particular [chaque partie de la materiere, en particulier], continues always to be in the same state, so long as its encounter [le rencontre] with others does not force it to change (W VII, AT 11:38). This law itself
derives from Descartess early work on free fall. Thus, he notes in a 1629 letter to
Mersenne that he will try to demonstrate the principle that what is once in motion
will, in a vacuum, always remain in motion in his treatise, presumably, The World
(18 Dec. 1629, AT 1:90).52 But what is found in The World, as well as the Principles,
is not a law restricted to motion, but one that applies to any state of a part of matter in particular or to a thing, insofar as it is simple and undivided.

51. I am indebted here to the clear statement of this problem in Des Chene 2000b, 153, n.5.
52. The principle itself dates from a 1618 note on free fall that Descartes wrote for Beeckman,
in which he claims that in a vacuum, what is once moved always moves (AT 10:78*).

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It is difcult to know whether it was signicant for Descartes that the later formulation of his law applies to any res, and not just to material parts. Though the suggestion in the Principles is that the law applies to minds as well as to matter, to my
knowledge Descartes never discussed its applicability to the case of mind, which
surely for him is a simple and undivided object.53 We will discover in chapter 5,
moreover, that he allowed that the mind can be a cause of changes in its internal
states through acts of will. It is not clear how such immanent action could be consistent with the requirement that even minds will persist in their states unless altered
by external causes.54 For our purposes here, we can ignore the broader scope of the
version of the rst law in the Principles and apply it only to the case of bodies.
But what can it mean to say that bodies are simple and undivided things? Here
the simplicity cannot be the same as the simplicity of mind given Descartess view
that any body is divisible, as no mind is, into really distinct parts. However, it is signicant that he says in the Principles only that the thing is undivided, and not that it
is indivisible. In this text he distinguished between the division of a body into parts
that occurs simply in our thought and its division into parts by means of actual
motions (PP II.23, AT 8-1:5253). The simplicity of the bodies that the rst law concerns would not be the metaphysical simplicity that the mind has in virtue of lacking any really distinct parts, but only the physical simplicity of a body that lacks any
internal parts distinguished by motions. Such a body has no actual internal complexity to compromise its tendency to persist in its state quantum in se est.
Descartes refers in Principles II.36 to the fact that particular causes bring it about
that singular parts of matter acquire motion they did not have previously (AT
8 1:61). With respect to the rst law, however, the focus is not on the external cause
of a bodily state, but rather on the internal source of the persistence in that state.55
This is indicated by the appeal in the rst law to persistence quantum in se est. As
I. B. Cohen has shown, this phrase, which has a long history dating back to

53. On the indivisibility and simplicity of mind, see the Sixth Meditation, at AT 7:8586,
and PS I.47, AT 11:36466.
54. For more on this issue, see chapter 5, note 42. Interestingly, later Cartesians held that
even in the cases of minds, changes in state require an external cause. A case in point is provided by an exchange between Regis and his critic Jean Du Hamel. In response to the axiom
in Regiss 1691 System of Philosophy (Systme de philosophie) that each thing persists in
itself to remain in the state it is in, the Paris academic Jean Du Hamel objected that we know
by faith that angels turn themselves, some toward the good, others toward evil (Du Hamel
1692, 56). Regis rejoined that the axiom holds even in the case of mind, since all changes in
will derive from changes in intellect, and since there can be changes in intellect only if the
mind is acted on by a body to which it is united (Regis 1692, 2829). Regis was following the
view here of the French Cartesian Robert Desgabets that any pure mind not united to any
body must think indivisibly and irrevocably. For further discussion of this position in
Desgabets and of its relation to Regiss views, see Schmaltz 2002a, ch. 4.
55. See Spinozas helpful gloss on this passage in Descartess Principles of Philosophy
(Renati Descartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I et II ): [I]f we attend to no external, i.e.,
particular causes, but consider the thing by itself, we shall have to afrm that insofar as it can
it always perseveres in the state in which it is (IIp14dem, Spinoza 1985, 277).

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Lucretius, was often understood as being equivalent to sua sponte, ex natura sua,
and sui vi, that is, from the internal power or nature of a thing (Cohen 1964, 148).
So the main claim in the rst law is that there is something in an object, in est, that
explains the fact that that object persists in its state. There is the derivative claim that
such persistence holds except in the case of changes due to external causes.
However, nothing is said about how such causes operate. It is consistent with the rst
law, as expressed in the Latin edition of the Principles, that the causes bring about
their changes through action at a distance. The counterpart of this law in The World
may seem to preclude this option when it refers to changes forced by an encounter
(le rencontre) with other parts of matter. But it is not clear how from the result that
an unimpeded body continues in its same state that only an impediment that involves
actual contact can produce a change in that state.56 As in the case of Gods universal
causality, so the particular internal cause of persistence does not require by itself that
bodybody interaction take place only by means of contact action. This requirement
in fact depends on further considerations introduced by the other two laws of nature.

(ii) Motus ex se ipso rectus


In Principles II.39, Descartes summarizes his second law of nature as follows:
[E]ach and every part of matter, taken separately, never tends to move so that it
perseveres according to oblique lines, but only according to straight lines
[unamquamque partem materiae, seorsim spectatem, non tendere unquam ut secundm
ullas lineas oliquas pergat moveri, sed tantummodo secundum rectas]. (AT 8-1:63)

This law seems to be connected to Descartess investigations during the late 1620s of
the nature of the propagation of light.57 But whereas one can nd formulations of the
rst law that predate The World, the second law is introduced in that text, though as
the third of the three laws (for reasons I indicate below). In The World, it is said that
when a body moves even though its motion is made most often along a curved line,
and even though it can never make any that is not in some manner circular, as was
said earlier, still each of its parts in particular tends always to continue its [motion]
in a straight line. And thus their action, that is to say the inclination [linclination]
that they have to move, is different from their motion. (W VII, AT 11:4344.)

56. In the French edition of the Principles, the reference in the Latin edition to being changed
by external causes by external causes (a causis externis) is replaced by the reference to being
changed by encounter with others (par la rencontre des autres) (PP II.37, AT 9-2, 84). But
though this change brings the position in this text into line with what Descartes said in the World,
there is no more of a justication here than in that earlier text for the limitation to collision.
57. As proposed in Garber 1992, 210. In the early unnished Rules for the Direction of the
Mind (abandoned in 1628), there is an appeal to the nature of light with respect to the problem
of how light passes through a transparent body (RM VIII, AT 11:39495). Later, in the Dioptrics
(1637), Descartes emphasizes that rays of light must be held to be propagated in a straight line when
they pass through a uniform and transparent body (AT 6:8889). Finally, Descartes applies the second law explicitly to the case of the propagation of light in the Principles (PP III.55, AT 8-1:108).

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In both The World and the Principles, there is an emphasis on the fact that a moving
body has a tendency to move in a straight line even in the case where it is always
constrained to move along a curved line. In the earlier work, Descartes takes this fact
to show that the action or inclination that bodies have to move (laction, cest
dire linclination quelles ont se mouvoir) differs from the motion itself. Even in
the case of circular motion, the body has an inclination at each instant (instant) to
have the simplest motion, namely, motion in a straight line (AT 11:4445). The distinction between motion and inclination at an instant is also present in the Principles,
where Descartes notes that although no motion takes place in a single instant (in singularis instantibus), still at each instant the moving body is determined to continue
its motion [determinatum esse ad motum suum continandum] toward another part
according to a straight line (PP II.39, AT 8-1:64).
The language in the Principles is a bit confusing, since the sort of determination
referred to here differs from the determination of motion in a certain direction that
is important to the third law of nature in that text (see PP II.41, AT 8-1:6566).
Descartes holds that this latter sort of determination is a modication of an actual
motion (see To Mersenne for Hobbes, 21 Apr. 1641, AT 3:35556). In contrast, the
instantaneous determination to motion, or what he calls in The World the inclination
to motion, is not a mode of motion but only a rst preparation for motion that can
be present even in something, such as the pressure of light, that does not involve
actual motion (PP III.63, AT 8-1:14).
In The World, Descartes argues that since at each instant God can conserve only
the inclination to motion that is present at that instant, and since it is only the inclination to move in a straight line that is entirely simple, and the whole nature of
which is comprised in an instant, God must conserve at each instant the inclination
to move in a straight line (W VII, AT 11:4445). His later claim in the Principles is
that Gods immutable and simple action can conserve nothing unless in the precise
form it is at the moment of time that he conserves it (PP II.39, AT 8-1:64). Dennis
Des Chene takes this claim to deviate from the position in The World insofar as it
attributes the simplicity to the divine operation rather than to the motion itself (Des
Chene 1996, 28384). However, the view in the Principles that God conserves
motion in the precise form it is at the moment he conserves it indicates that the
form intrinsic to the motion at an instant involves the inclination to rectilinear
motion. The argument here, consistent with that in The World, is that since at each
instant motion can have only the inclination the whole nature of which is comprised
in an instant, and since only the inclination to rectilinear motion has such a nature,
a simple and immutable divine concursus can result only in the conservation at each
instant of the inclination to rectilinear motion.58

58. It might be thought that Descartess remarks here favor the view of Gueroult, criticized
in 2.2, that God conserves the world by re-creating it at each instant. But Descartes himself
indicates that the fact that moving bodies have durations composed of instants does not interrupt the continuity of their motions (PP III.63, AT 8-1:115). For God to conserve the rectilinear inclination of a motion at an instant is just for him continuously to conserve the motion that
has such an instantaneous inclination. Thanks to Andy Pessin for pressing me on this point.

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I leave for 3.2.3 a consideration of the assumptions in this argument regarding the
simplicity and immutability of the divine concursus. For now, I want to consider the
claim that rectilinear motion itself is the simplest in form. Such a claim went against
the traditional Aristotelian positionwhich inuenced even critics of Aristotelianism
such as Galileothat circular motion is the most basic found in nature.59 In the
Principles, Descartess argument against this position relies on the assumption that
only the inclination to rectilinear motion can be comprised in an instant, since any other
inclination requires a comparison to motion that was a little while earlier (PP II.39,
AT 8-1:64). If a point lies on a curved path, one needs information about previous (and
subsequent) points on the path to determine its nature. But in the case of a straight path
from a point, any direction of the path from that point will yield such a line.60
Just as the rst law emphasizes what follows from an object quantum in se est, so
the second law focuses on the results of an instantaneous inclination internal to
motion itself. As I have noted, however, the rst law had little to say about the external causes that disrupt persistence. We are now in a position to see the implication
of the second law that in the case of bodies, at least, only something that blocks the
path of a moving body could frustrate the inclination to rectilinear motion. The rejection here of any change in motion produced by action at a distance is even clearer in
the case of Descartess third law.

(iii) Quantum motus transfert


In Principles II.40, Descartes offers the following as the third law of nature:
[W]here a body that moves encounters another, if it has less force for persevering
according to a straight line than this other has to resist it, then it is deected in
another direction, and, retaining its motion, gives up only its determination [to
continue its motion in a particular direction]; but if it has more, then it moves the
other body with it, and whatever it gives of its motion to [the other body] it loses
just as much [ubi corpus quod movetur alteri occurrit, si minorem habeat vim ad
pergendum secundum lineam rectam, qum hoc alterum ad ei resistendum, tunc
deectitur in aliam partem, & motum suum retinendo solam mots

59. Aristotles argument in De Caelo is that since the simplest bodies have the most perfect motion, and since circular motion is the most perfect insofar as it has a starting point that
is identical to its ending point, and so is complete in itself, circular motion is natural for the
simplest bodies (I.2, a1730, Aristotle 1984, 1:44849). In the Two Chief World Systems
(Dialogo Sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo) Galileos spokesman Salviati attacks the
Aristotelian view of the rectilinear motion of the elements by insisting that uniform circular
motion is most natural to terrestrial objects, since they share in the Earths rotation (Galileo
1967, 28, 148). Even Descartess Dutch mentor Beeckman, who was a critic of Aristotelian
physics, argued that motion along a curved path continues along this path if unimpeded, just
as unimpeded motion along a straight path continues along that path (Beeckman 1939, 1:253).
60. My summary of Descartess argument here has been inuenced by the discussion in
Des Chene 1996, 28386. But see also the reservations concerning Des Chenes reading indicated in the previous paragraph.

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determinationem amitti; si ver habeat majorem, tunc alterum corpus secum


movet, ac quantum ei dat de suo motu, tantundem perdit]. (AT 8-1:65)

In contrast to the rst two laws, this law directly concerns the case where a body
brings it about that singular parts of matter acquire motion they did not have previously, and so serves as a particular cause in the sense dened in Principles II.36.
What is central here to the causality of colliding bodies is either the force for resisting that produces a change in the determination of motion, or the force for acting that
produces a redistribution of motion.
The reference to the determination of the motion in a certain direction explains
why this law is presented in the Principles after the second law. For though I have
indicated that the instantaneous inclination to motion to which the latter refers must
be distinguished from the determination that modies motion, this determination
nonetheless derives from that inclination. It is in virtue of that inclination, after all,
that an unimpeded moving body is determined to move along a straight path. The
counterpart of the third law in The World, however, makes no mention of determination. There the law is simply that when a body pushes another it can give it no
motion without losing as much of its own; nor take away any without augmenting its
own by the same amount (W VII, AT 11:41). This is the second law in that text, presented before the law concerning the inclination to rectilinear motion. And it could
be so presented, since, in contrast to the case of the third law in the Principles, it
refers only to the quantity of motion and not to its directionality.
As I indicated previously, the Principles also differs from The World insofar as it
relies on a specic measure of the quantity of motion (see 3.1.2 (ii)). It follows from
the account in the former text of Gods action as universal cause that there is a global
conservation of the quantity of motion. What the third law adds is that this quantity is
locally conserved in cases of collision. Since this law is supposed to govern all the
particular causes of changes that happen to bodies, . . . at least those which themselves
are corporeal,61 it follows from conservation of the quantity of motion in cases of collision that particular causes do not bring about a change in the total quantity of motion.
Even so, both The World and the Principles include an appeal to bodily forces in
the explanation of transfers of motion in collision. The suggestion in the earlier work
that bodies retain or transfer [motions] one to another, as they have the force [ force]
to do so (W VII, AT 11:43) becomes the more specic position in the later text that
a resting body has a force for resisting (vis ad resistendum) that inclines it toward
persevering in its state of rest, whereas a moving body has a force for acting (vis
ad agendum) that is responsible for its tendency for persevering in its motion,
that is, in motion with the same speed and toward the same part (PP II.43, AT

61. The Cottingham translation has this passage say that the third law covers all changes
which are themselves corporeal (Descartes 198485, 1:242), thereby taking the changes
rather than the causes to be corporeal. Though the Latin is ambiguous on this point, it would
not seem to be necessary to emphasize that a law concerning changes in motion governs only
corporeal changes. For a criticism of the Cottingham translation along these lines, see Della
Rocca 1999, 5254.

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8 1:6667). According to the third law in the Principles, these forces are supposed
to explain the redistributions of motion that occur in collision.
The claim in the Principles that the third law governs all particular causes that are
corporeal, coupled with the claim there that such causes produce changes only in the
case of collision, yields the further result that all bodybody interaction occurs by
means of contact action. Thus the third law makes explicit, what was merely implicit
in the second law, that no corporeal causes can produce changes in motion at a distance.62 We have discussed the requirement in Descartes that an efcient cause must
be simultaneous with its effect, since it cannot act at a time distant from that of its
action (see 2.2.1). Now we have the requirement that in the case of particular bodily causes, at least, an efcient cause must be contiguous with body it acts on, since
it cannot act at a place distant from that action.63
Both the third law in the Principles and its counterpart in The World suggest the
further requirement that a particular corporeal cause acts by giving to its effect a
portion of its quantity of motion that it loses. We seem to have here an endorsement of what Janet Broughton has called the migration theory of motion,
according to which motion is transferred in collision by means of the migration of a
particular mode of motion from one body to another. Broughtons proposal is that
Descartes was led to this theory by the fact that the containment axiom from the
Third Meditation requires that in cases of formal containment, the cause not only
contains something similar to what is found in the effect, but also imparts the very
same thing it formally contains to its effect (Broughton 1986, 12021).
If Descartess containment axiom required the migration theory of motion, there
would be good reason to challenge his claim that such an axiom is revealed to be
evident by the natural light (AT 7:40).64 But though there is no doubt that
Descartess language in certain texts clearly suggests such a theory,65 it is not evident
62. Cf. the discussion of Descartess rejection of action at a distance in Suppes 1954. Here
I agree with Suppes conclusion that Descartes has a priori grounds for restricting bodybody
interaction to contact action, though my account of Descartess derivation of the restriction
goes beyond what is found in his article. Cf. Clarkes argument that Descartes did not derive
his laws of nature from metaphysical principles (Clarke 1982, 100104). In contrast to Clarke,
however, I take Descartess appeals to experience in his discussion of the laws to be an attempt
to illustrate rather than to justify the laws.
63. In 4.3.2, we will consider whether Descartes held that some version of the requirement of contiguity applies to the case of mind-to-body action.
64. For the suggestion that Descartess containment principle requires a transmission
view of causation, see Lloyd 1976. Bennett objects to Descartess treatment of the containment axiom (or what he calls the causal resources principle) on the grounds that it equivocates between the unacceptably strong view of causing as giving and the trivial view of a
cause as having the power to produce its effect (Bennett 2001, 1:8889). I argued in the previous chapter that there is more to Descartess axiom than this trivial view. Presently I argue
that this axiom does not require an implausible version of the strong view.
65. Besides the passages already cited, see the claim in The World that the virtue or
power to move itself, which is found in a body, can well pass wholly or in part into another
[passer toute ou partie dans un autre], and thus no longer be in the rst, but it cannot no
longer be at all in the world (W III, AT 11:11).

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that his containment axiom requires it. With respect to this last point, it is worth considering the case of Surez. As I noted in the previous chapter, Surez accepted a version of Descartess containment axiom. Yet we also saw in the rst chapter his
emphasis on the fact that an efcient cause is extrinsic insofar as it produces in the
effect a being distinct from its own (see 1.2.2). His basic point is that the efcient
cause that formally contains its effect does not pass on the very same feature that it
contains; rather, it only produces a feature of the same type.
For Surez, the type here is the kind of form or quality that the cause induces in
its effect. A paradigmatic case would be one in which re generates the same kind
of real quality of heat in something else that it itself possesses.66 Surez also
allowed that there can be cases of bodily interaction where the principal67 efcient cause does not possess the same kind of quality, but is an equivocal cause
that contains the quality it induces only eminently. He held, for instance, that heated
water contains the quality of coldness virtually insofar as it has by its nature the
active power to cool.68 Descartes of course rejected the whole category of real qualities and active powers that informs Surezs account of efcient causality on the
grounds that all bodily accidents are mere modes of extended substance.69 As I indicated earlier, however, he in effect rejected as well the claim that there can be qualities or power in bodies more noble than bodily effects that also eminently
contain these effects (see 2.1.3 (ii)). Descartes therefore could not accept Surezs
position that there can be adequate bodily causes that eminently contain their
effects.
Even so, Surezs analysis of efcient causation serves to counter Broughtons
suggestion that Descartess containment axiom, when applied to the case of
bodybody interaction, requires a migration theory of motion. It seems that
Descartes could hold that a body that is an efcient cause of motion itself contains
a motion that is similar to, but nonetheless numerically distinct from, the motion it
induces in another body. Indeed, in a passage from his correspondence with More
that Broughton herself cites, Descartes explicitly rejects the migration theory of
motion. No doubt prompted by the passage from the Principles that is suggestive of
the migration theory, More protested that a mode of motion cannot pass over

66. As I indicate toward the start of 3.2.2, Surez had a complex view both about which
accidental features of bodies could be causes and what sort of effects the causally efcacious
features could produce.
67. Recall here the distinction in Surez, considered in 1.2.3 (ii), between instrumental
and principal causes.
68. MD XVIII.3, 4and 7, 19, 1:616 and 63536. For Surezs account of equivocal
causality, see MD XVII.2, 21, 1:59192.
69. See, for instance, Descartess claim in a 1643 letter to Mersenne, cited in 1.2.1, that
I do not suppose any real qualities in nature, which are joined to substance, as little souls to
their bodies, and which can be separated from it by divine power, and thus I attribute no more
reality to motion or to all the other varieties of substance that one calls qualities no more reality than the philosophers commonly attribute to shape, which they call not real quality but
only mode (AT 3:64849).

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(transet) or migrate (migret) from one corporeal subject to another (23 July 1649,
AT 5:382*). Descartess response, a portion of which I cited previously, is as follows:
[T]his is not what I have written; indeed I think that motion as a mode continually
changes. . . . But when I said that the same motion always remains in matter,
I understood this to concern the force impelling its parts [de vi eius partes
impellente], which force applies itself now to one part of matter, now to another,
in accord with the laws proposed in articles 45 and following of the Second Part
[of the Principles]. (30 Aug. 1649, AT 5:405)

In light of his talk in the discussion in the Principles of the third law of a body as
giving to another the motion that it loses, it seems somewhat disingenuous for
Descartes to claim that he never wrote that motion can be passed from one body to
another. But his main point is perhaps that when he wrote that, he meant only that
force is applied to a body in a manner that produces an alteration in its motion. And
in the Principles itself, Descartes emphasizes that changes in the speed or direction
of motion derive from the quantum of force [quantum . . . virium] in [bodies], either
to move, or to resist motion (PP II.45, AT 8-1:67/CSM 1:244). The indication here
is that the communication of motion is to be understood in terms not of the migration of the very same mode of motion, but rather of the production of a numerically
distinct mode of motion by means of the application of a force.
Nevertheless, there remains the requirement of Descartess containment axiom that
the total or adequate bodily cause of changes in motion contain formally or eminently
all of its effects in other bodies. If my analysis above of Descartess relation to Surez
is correct, eminent containment cannot be at issue here. So the question is whether the
formal containment requirement is satised in cases of bodybody interaction. In most
of the basic cases of such interaction that he considers, Descartes in fact can allow that
the efcient cause actually contains something similar to what it produces in its effect.
In his discussion in the Principles of the seven collision rules that supplement the third
law, he indicates that in all cases where a moving body collides either with a moving
body smaller than or equal to itself or with a smaller body at rest, the bodily cause contains modes of the same type as those it produces.70 Matters are less straightforward,
however, in cases where a moving body collides with a body at rest that is either larger
than or equal in size to it. Descartess fourth and sixth rules of collision require that the
body at rest produce an instantaneous reversal of the direction of the motion of the
moving body in such cases, even though the resting body does not actually possess any
motion, and thus does not possess the particular directional determination it produces
in the moving body. So in these cases, the resting body that serves as the efcient and
apparently total or adequate cause of the reversal of the moving body71 seems not to
contain formally or eminently everything that it produces in the effect.

70. For a summary of the rules, see note 28. My comment applies to the rst, second,
third, fth, and seventh rules.
71. With respect to bodies, at least; here I bracket Gods contribution as universal and
primary cause to changes in motion.

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As I have indicated, however, the third law requires that both the resting body that
causes a change and the moving body that is changed possess forceforce for
resisting, in the former case, and force for acting, in the latter. Even though the resting body does not formally contain motion with a certain speed and directional
determination, it does formally contain a force that is at least as great as the force
responsible for such motion. The resting body could therefore be understood to formally contain that motion in this attenuated sense.72 This sense would be all that
Descartes required to adhere to his rule in the Principlescited in the course of his
discussion there of the implications of the third lawthat one must never attribute
to a cause any effect that exceeds its capacity [potentiam] (PP II.60, AT 8-1:76).
The notion of bodily force that is so prominent in the version of the third law in the
Principles serves to connect it directly to the rst law in that text. For Descartes
emphasizes that the force of any given body to act on another, or to resist the action
of another, consists in this one thing, that each and every thing tends, quantum in se
est, to persist in the same state it is in, as posited in the rst law (II.43, AT 8-1:66). It
is in virtue of the fact that a body has a tendency to persist in the same state quantum
in se est that it has the force either to remain at rest or to persist in its motion.
According to the second law, moreover, the persistence of the moving body involves a
tendency toward rectilinear motion that derives from the instantaneous inclinations to
motion in that body. The indication here seems to be that the efcacy of the laws as
particular causes is to be explained in terms of the internal bodily forces and inclinations that are themselves responsible for changes in the distributions of motion.73 To
be sure, Descartes claims in the Principles that both the second and the third laws follow from the divine attributes.74 It is certainly possible to read Descartess talk of inherent forces and inclinationsas Garber has, for instanceas a mere faon de parler, a
way of describing the changes that God alone produces by means of his continuous

72. In 4.2.2, I propose that the innate mental faculty that Descartes posited in the 1647
Comments as a cause of certain features of sensory ideas must also be understood to formally
contain those features in an attenuated sense.
73. In contrast, Hattab offers a reading on which Descartes holds that the laws themselves,
and not any features of bodies, are secondary and particular causes (see Hattab 2000 and
2007). She claims that this seems to be the only reading that does not contradict Descartess
ontology, and in particular his purported view that the nature of body consists in extension
alone (Hattab 2000, 116; cf. 98100). It is difcult to see how on this reading the causal efcacy of the laws could have a source distinct from Gods action. Such a reading therefore
seems to be simply a version of an occasionalist interpretation of Descartes. In 3.2.2,
I address the objection in Hattab and others that the attribution of causal efcacy to the bodies themselves conicts with Descartess ontology of the material world.
74. In PP II.43 Descartes claims that the demonstration of the part of the third law concerning transfer of motion is provided by the immutability of the operations of God, now
continuously conserving the world by the same action with which he created it then (AT
8 1:66), whereas in PP II.39 he holds that the cause (causa) of the second law is the
immutability and simplicity of the operations by which God conserves motion in matter (AT
8-1:63). In The World all three laws are said to depend only on the fact that God conserves
each thing by a continuous action (W VII, AT 11:44).

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conservation of the material world. However, Gueroult and Gabbey also suggest on
Descartess behalf that the bodily forces that ground the laws of nature are explicable
in terms of the existence or duration of bodies and their motions. There is of course the
question of whether such a view is compatible with the reduction of matter to extension that Descartess ontology requires. But there is also the question whether he
offered a notion of force that applies equally to the cases of rest and motion.

3.2.2. The Ontology of Bodily Force


Toward the end of 3.1.3, I mentioned that the various forces that Descartes posits
in his physics can be attributed either to bodies, or to God, or to nothing at all.
I also noted that the second option is ruled out by the implication in Descartes that
the various forces for acting and for resisting can change through time, given his
rm position that nothing in God can be subject to change. But the rst option
would seem to be ruled out as well. For on Descartess ofcial position in the
Principles, extension in length, breadth and depth constitutes the nature of corporeal substance, and thus everything else that can be attributed to body presupposes extension, and is merely a mode of an extended thing (PP I.53, AT 8-1:25).
Whatever forces for acting and for resisting are, it seems that they cannot be mere
modes of extension akin to various shapes, sizes, and motions. But then it appears
that such forces would be akin to the real qualities that the scholastics posited as
secondary causes in nature and that Descartes himself wanted to banish from
physics. We apparently are forced to the nal option that the forces Descartes
posited in his physics are mere ctions.
Before acquiescing in this ctionalist interpretation of Descartess view of bodily
force, however, it is worth pausing to consider the comparison to scholastic real qualities. I indicated in 1.3 the view in Surez that among the predicamental accidents, only
certain qualities, and not quantity, shape (in the category of quality) or local motion, can
serve as principles of efcient causality. Clearly, Descartes rejected the assumption in
Surez that there are principles of action in bodies other than quantity, shape, and local
motion. But did he accept the Surezian position that these bodily features could not be
principles of action? If so, Descartes would be forced to conclude that there are no such
principles in bodies. However, it seems to me that the claim that Descartes in fact drew
this conclusion is often based less on the textual evidence than on intuitions about what
his identication of body with extension requires. In particular, the guiding intuition is
that bare extension is something that is purely passive, the mere instantiation of a purely
geometrical essence, and not something that can ground causal activity.
Some of Descartess statements may seem to indicate that he conceived the extension that constitutes the nature of bodies that actually exist in the material world in
just this manner. There is, for instance, his claim in the Principles that I admit no
other principles in physics but those in geometry or abstract mathematics (PP II.64,
AT 8-1:78), as well as his earlier remark in a letter to Mersenne that my physics is
nothing but geometry (27 July 1638, AT 2:268). But Descartess own account of the
laws of nature belies this simple identication of physics with geometry. For the
objects of geometry, as present objectively in the mind that considers them, do not
have either the tendency to persist in a particular state quantum in se est (as required

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by the rst law), the instantaneous inclinations to rectilinear motion (as required by
the second law), or the particular forces that require changes in the speeds and determinations of motions (as required by the third law). The reason that purely geometrical objects lack these features seems to be that they lack any sort of existence
external to mind. But could Descartes hold that they possess the features simply in
virtue of possessing this additional extra-mental existence?
The answer to this question is yes, according to the most sophisticated argument
in the literature for the view that Descartes attributes real causal efcacy to bodies.75
Thus, Alan Gabbey urges that he distinguishes between a bodys essence as an idea,
that is as existing objectively in the intellect, and the bodys existence outside the
mind, and that force depends on extension in the sense that extension is presupposed in saying that something corporeal exists or endures (Gabbey 1980, 238).
Here Gabbey is drawing on the claim in Gueroult that according to Descartes,
in reality, force, duration, and existence are one and the same thing (conatus) under
three different aspects, and the three notions are identied in the instantaneous
action in virtue of which corporeal substance exists and endures, that is, possesses
the force which puts it into existence and duration. (Gueroult 1980, 197)

The difference between a purely geometrical object and an actually existing body is
that only the latter possesses an existence or duration that, on Descartess ofcial
view in the Principles, is distinct merely in reason and not in reality from the substance that exists and endures (see PP I.62, AT 8-1:30). If force is simply identied
with the attribute of existence or duration, then it seems to be something that concretely existing bodies, but not abstract geometrical objects, possess.
There is the question, however, whether the forces that Gueroult identies with the
durational existence of bodies can themselves be identied with the various forces for
acting and resisting that Descartes posits in the Principles. It may seem that they in
fact cannot be so identied for the simple reason that whereas Descartes provides the
example of existence or duration as something that always remains unmodied, and
so is an attribute in the strict sense (PP I.56, AT 8-1:26), his view that the forces of
particular parts of matter constantly change due to collision indicates that they are
variable, and so must be considered as modes rather than attributes.
Gabbey attempts to supplement Gueroults interpretation in a manner that addresses
this problem. He retains the view in Gueroult that there is a sense in which force can
be identied with the invariable bodily attribute of duration. However, Gabbey introduces an additional sort of force that is present in bodies as a variable mode rather than
an attribute. He explains this distinction between the two kinds of bodily force in terms

75. Cf. the causal realist interpretations of Descartess physics in Westfall 1971, ch. 2, and
Cottingham 1997. However, Westfall emphasizes the problematic nature of dynamical concepts in Descartes, and Cottingham concludes that when talking about impact, impulse and
transfer of motion between bodies, [Descartes] seems not to have given any serious attention
to the precise meaning of the concepts he used (Cottingham 1997, 164). But see the concurrentist interpretations of Descartes in the literature cited in the introduction, note 11,
which tend to emphasize the coherence of Descartess account of causation.

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of the Thomistic distinction in Descartes between causes secundum eri and secundum
esse (see 1.1.2 and 2.2.1). On Gabbeys reading of Descartes, force as causa secundum esse is . . . an attribute of body, in the sense that qua cause it is necessarily entailed
by a bodys duration, viewed simpliciter and irrespective of mode, whereas when the
forces are viewed as quantiable causes of change in the corporeal world, or as reasons . . . explaining absence of change of a certain kind in particular instances, they are
causae secundum eri that are clearly in body diverso modo, and so are modes of
body, rather than attributes (Gabbey 1980, 236, 237).
But when forces are present in bodies diverso modo, what sort of modes are they?
Gabbey does not say, but there is an answer that is connected to the interpretation
I offered earlier of Descartess account of temporal parts (see 2.2.2). I took
Descartess considered position to be that these parts are modally distinct features of
the attribute of duration. It might seem natural, on Gabbeys view, to identify the
variable forces that serve as the quantiable causes secundum eri with the various
modal parts of the duration of interacting bodies. Gabbey himself indicates that he
would reject this sort of move on the grounds that a body cannot have more or less
duration: either it exists or it does not, and if it does exist, in whatever modal disposition, it necessarily endures without existential variation (Gabbey 1980, 237).
But I previously anticipated this line of objection when I noted that whereas duration is not subject to variation when considered just as an attribute, Descartes indicates clearly enough that this attribute nonetheless has various distinguishable parts.
I have already proposed that we take Descartes to hold that God is the cause secundum esse of the constant quantity of motion (see 3.1.3). My suggestion now is that we
read him as saying that the various modes of bodily duration are causes secundum eri
of changes in the distribution of this quantity among the parts of matter. But this way of
putting the suggestion is perhaps too abstract and disconnected from Descartess discussion in the Principles of forces for acting and resisting. To make this suggestion more
concrete, let us start with the point in this text at which the third law of nature makes contact with the rst. I have noted the claim in Principles II.43 that the forces that the third
law posits as responsible for changes in motion due to collision consist simply in this
one thing, that each and every thing tends, quantum in se est, to persist in the same state
it is in, as posited in the rst law (AT 8-1:66). What is in est, according to the rst law,
is simply the tendency to continue in the same state. What the later reference to this law
makes clear is that this tendency is not constant but varies depending on the nature of the
mode involved. The measure of the tendencies to persist in motion and rest is just the
same as the measure of the forces involved in those states. Thus, in the case where one
body is double the size of another body moving at the same speed, the rst body has double the tendency to persist in its state of motion that the other body has to persist in its
state. In the case where a moving body collides with a body at rest, the strength of the
tendency of the latter to persist in its state of rest is measured by the product of the size
of that body and the speed of the body that collides with it.76 These tendencies can be

76. At least this is so with respect to the 1644 Latin edition of the Principles. As indicated
in note 30 above, the 1647 French edition of this text provides a more complicated measure
for the force for resisting.

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said to be something in est insofar as they are simply varying modal features of the durations of moving and resting bodies.
As we know, Descartes claims that duration, considered as an attribute, is distinct only
ratione, and not in re, from the substance that endures (PP I.62, AT 8-1:30). On the view
I propose, he also holds that the strength of duration, or force, is only rationally distinct
from the features of motion and rest that possess that sort of duration. One reason that it
seems that force is not intrinsic to these modes is that the modes themselves can be considered abstractly as purely mathematical objects, the nature of which is exhausted by
their geometric and kinematic aspects. In this respect, these modes are similar to the triangle that, as Descartes writes in a letter to an unknown correspondent, can be considered merely with respect to its essence, in abstraction from its existence. In this case,
according to Descartes, the thought of the essence of a triangle differs modally from the
thought of the existence of that triangle. But he continues in this letter by noting that outside of thought the essence of a triangle and its existence are in no way distinct (1645
or 1646, AT 4:350). Descartes could allow similarly that the thought of force, that is, of
strength of duration, is modally distinct from the thought of the modal feature that has
that force. However, it still seems open to him to say that the force or strength of duration is in no way distinct from that duration as it exists external to mind.
In light of this distinction between the two ways of considering the modes of motion
and rest, we can discern an important ambiguity in Descartess ofcial position that all
bodily modes must be conceived through extension. For as Gabbey emphasizes, extension itself can be conceived merely abstractly, as present objectively in the intellect, or
concretely, as something not distinct from its durational existence in reality. If the
modes are understood in terms of abstract extension, then force cannot be conceived
through the nature of body. This nature would be exhausted by purely mathematical
features. But if the modes are understood in terms of concrete extension, force can be
conceived through the nature of body insofar as this force is identied with the strength
of the duration that does not differ from the modes in reality.
I have mentioned in passing Descartess claim in correspondence that determination is a mode that inheres in motion. There he is addressing Hobbess objection that
determination cannot so inhere given that motion is a mode and not a subject. But
Descartes insists that determination can inhere as in a subject even though that in
which it inheres is a mode rather than a substance (To Mersenne for Hobbes, 21 Apr.
1641, AT 3:35536). As other commentators have emphasized, determination is for
Descartes a composite mode involving two further modal features of motion, namely,
direction, on the one hand, and quantity of motion (scalar speed size), on the other.77
77. See Gabbey 1980, 24850; Garber 1992, 18893; McLaughlin 2000, 8797.
Descartes indicated that the nature of determination is xed not only by the direction of the
motion but also by the quantity of the motion determined. A component of the determination
of a particular quantity of motion can be shared by motions that have different quantities, but
the composite determination can belong only to a motion with a particular motive quantity.
Thus, to take an example from Descartess Dioptrics (at AT 6:97), though a tennis ball can
have the same horizontal determination before and after a refraction that involves a change in
speed, it cannot have the same overall determination in these two cases. For documentation of
this point in Descartes, see McLaughlin 2000, 9497.

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The force for acting in the moving body would be simply the strength of the duration
of the motive quantity that modies the motion in that body. As long as this quantity
continues to endure, so does the force that is bound up with that duration.
Matters are less straightforward in the case of rest. As I noted in 3.1.2 (iii), there
is the implication of Descartess remarks in his correspondence with More that
force for resisting is distinct from the state of rest itself. And there is in fact good reason for him to refrain from identifying this force with the duration of the rest, since
the force is supposed to be proportional to the speed of a body that collides with it.
Thus, the resting body seems to have this force only at the instant of impact. It is difcult to see how the force could be identied with the duration of features of the mode
of rest. I argue below that this difculty in turn renders problematic an account of
Gods conservation of the quantity of rest in terms of this force.
The case of the instantaneous inclinations posited in the second law raises different
problems. As we have seen, Descartes sharply distinguishes the quantity that measures
the force of motion from the directionality of that motion. Since the inclinations concern
the direction of motion exclusively, they cannot be folded into motive force. Moreover,
Descartes holds that though motions can have varying forces, there is no difference in
the strengths of the rectilinear inclinations of those motions. Nevertheless, it is clear that
the inclinations can change over time. This is shown by Descartess own example of the
stone in a sling, which at different instants of its circular motion has inclinations to move
off in straight paths at different tangents from the circle (PP II.39, AT 8-1:6465).78
Inclinations are therefore as much variable modes of a motion as the forces deriving
from its various quantities. The fact that the inclinations are instantaneous precludes any
explication of them in terms of the duration of motion. Even so, the inclinations seem
to be as much internal features of motion as the forces tied to its duration.
It might be thought that Descartes himself offered a different account of inclination that is more in line with Garbers ctionalist interpretation. There is for instance
Descartess point in the Principles, also found in The World, that the claim that bodies recede from the center of a circle indicates only that they are so situated, and so
incited to motion, that they will really go [away from the center] if they are impeded
by no other cause (PP III.56, AT 8-1:108; cf. W XIII, AT 11:84). The suggestion
here seems to be that the inclination is not a real feature of the motion, but merely a
disguised counterfactual conditional of the form that if there were no impediment,
bodies in circular motion would recede from the center.79 However, notice that in the
Principles the inclination is said to explain not only what would happen in certain
counterfactual circumstances, but also what does happen at the actual instant the
bodies possess this inclination. Thus, Descartes observes in his discussion of the second law in this text that our hand can experience this in the stone itself while

78. Admittedly, there is little in the way of an explicit argument in this section for the conclusion that the motion must be at a tangent from the circle as opposed to some other straight
path. For a criticism of an argument for this conclusion in The World, see Garber 1992,
22123. See also the discussion in Des Chene 1996, 28182, of different arguments for this
conclusion in the work of later Cartesians.
79. A similar view of this passage is suggested in Garber 1992, 219.

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we turn it in the sling, since we feel the stone pulling away from us (PP II.39, AT
8-1:64).80 So just as forces are real modes in bodies that produce changes in motion
due to collision, so inclinations are real modes of motion that produce the pull of a
body in circular motion away from the center.
If this account is correct, then for Descartes the bodies in motion that God continuously conserves have as modes of their duration various forces that determine the
outcomes of collisions, just as the motion that he conserves has as modal features of
itself various inclinations that determine not only how it would proceed if unimpeded, but also certain effects that a moving body actually does have. These forces
and inclinations are therefore true causes secundum eri that produce the particular
changes due to contact among bodies. But if the three laws of nature are grounded
directly in such bodily causes, it might seem odd that Descartes consistently presented them as deriving from Gods activity as universal cause of motion. On the
view that there are no causally efcacious inclinations or forces in bodies, this
appeal to God would seem to be straightforward, since God would be required as the
true cause of the effects attributed to these bodily features. However, if one takes
seriously the persistent suggestion in Descartes that inclinations and forces are
causally efcacious features of bodies and their motions, there is a need to reconsider his account of the manner in which the activity of such features as particular
causes is related to the universal causality of Gods ordinary concursus.

3.2.3. Divine and Bodily Causes


In 1678, the French Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche criticized those who attributed
to Descartes the view that bodies can move each other, against what he says
expressly in articles 36 and 37 of the second part of these Principles of Philosophy
(Malebranche 195884, 3:238/Malebranche 1997, 677). More recently, Garber
claims that it seems to me as clear as anything that, for Descartes, God is the only
cause in the inanimate world of bodies, that bodies cannot themselves be genuine
causes of change in the physical world of extended substance (Garber 1993, 12).
An initial consideration of the articles that Malebranche cited seems to conrm an
occasionalist reading of Descartess account of bodybody interaction. For in article
36 of the second part of the Principles Descartes holds that the conservation of the
total quantity of motion (and rest) follows simply from the divine attribute of
immutability. Though he also refers in article 37 to laws of nature as secondary and
particular causes of motions in particular bodies, it is understandable that some have
taken these laws as well to follow directly from divine immutability. After all,
Descartes holds that the reason for the second law is the same as the reason for the
rst, namely, the immutability and simplicity of the operation by which God conserves motion in matter (PP II.39, AT 8-1:63). And he notes that the proof of the
second part of the third law, concerning the transfer in collision of a quantity of
motion from a stronger body to a weaker one, consists in the immutability of the

80. The last point about the pull of the stone is made explicitly in the version of this passage in the French edition, at AT 9-2:86.

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operations of God, now continually conserving the world by the same action with
which he created it then (PP II.42, AT 8-1:66). For Garber, the clear indication here
is that God stands behind the world of bodies and is the direct cause of their
motion (Garber 1993, 14). As I indicated at the outset of this chapter, he takes
Descartes to substitute God for the substantial forms that the scholastics posited to
explain natural change in the material world.
It is beyond doubt that Descartes rejects the appeal to material substantial forms
and real qualities to explain natural change. What is less clear is that his alternative
account of bodybody interaction in the Principles takes God alone to stand in for
such forms and qualities. For as we have seen, there is an explicit reference in the
discussion of the three laws of nature to internal features of bodies and their motions
that provide the basis both for certain kinds of persistence and for changes in motion
due to collision. The immutability of Gods ordinary concursus is of course always
in the background, but the ofcial view in this text is that this action is only a
universal cause that requires supplementation by the particular causes of motion.
We can understand the division of labor suggested here by drawing on Descartess
view in the Principles that Gods ordinary concursus consists simply in the fact that
he diversely moved parts of matter when he rst created it, and now conserves this
whole matter with the same plan [eademque ratione] by which he rst created it (PP
II.36, AT 8-1:62). Given my reading above of Descartess account of the ontology of
bodily force, we can take the claim here to be that God originally created moving
parts of matter with durations that have degrees of strength measured by the quantity
of their motions. Just as these parts are modied by a quantity of motion, so the whole
of matter is modied by a quantity that is the sum of the quantities of motion that
modify its parts.81 The object of Gods act of creation/conservation is simply the total
quantity of matter as modied by the total quantity of the motion of its parts (see
gure 3.1). God conserves the total quantity of motive forcethe superadded
impulse mentioned in the correspondence with Moresimply by conserving the
total quantity of the durational strength of the moving parts that he infused into matter at the start.82 But this act of determining the total quantity itself underdetermines
the precise manner in which the quantities are distributed across the parts over time.
The determination of this distribution requires further the action of the motive forces
of the individual parts, which produce changes only in the case of collision.
Interestingly, a similar sort of division of labor in the production of motion is
found in the critique of Malebranches occasionalist physics in Fontenelles Doubts
81. The quantities of the parts are therefore modes of the total quantity that is itself a mode
of matter as a whole. In contrast, as we have seen, the parts themselves are substantial parts
rather than modes of the whole matter (see chapter 2, note 9). The result here is that moving
parts are substances that possess as modes quantities that are themselves modications of the
total quantity of motion that modies the material substance that includes these parts.
82. Cf. Clarkes view that according to Descartes, God imparted a real quality called force
or power to physical bodies, and that the amount of this power is xed by the immutability of
his creative action (Clarke 1996, 335). Clarke characterizes this quality as a mode of body, but
does not indicate precisely what sort of mode it is. My identication of forces with modal features of the durations of bodily motions can be seen as a friendly amendment to his view.

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Total Quantity of Matter


( = sum of quantities of parts)

Total
Quantity of
Motion
( = sum of quantities
of motion in moving
parts)

FIGURE 3.1 Object of Divine Concursus

concerning . . . Occasional Causes (1686), a work that I cited at the outset of chapter 1. In this text, Fontenelle proposes that the moving force of God is that by which
he produces a motion that was not, whereas the moving force of creatures is that
by which they pass a motion that is already there from one body to another
(Fontenelle 19892001, 1:562). We have seen that in his correspondence with More,
Descartes attempts to distance himself from the view that motion is literally passed
from one body to another in collision. However, I think he could accept Fontenelles
suggestion that God creates and conserves a certain total quantity of motion in matter by means of his universal causality, whereas particular bodies change the distribution of this total quantity among themselves by means of collision.83
According to Descartes, however, God continuously conserves not only the total
quantity of motion, but also what is essential to particular motions. More specically, he so conserves the instantaneous inclinations to rectilinear motion. These
inclinations in turn explain the presence of the centrifugal pressure involved in
circular motion. In a striking passage from The World, Descartes attempts to illustrate the differences between the contributions of the universal and particular causes
of determination by drawing an analogy to Gods role in the production of sinful
action. He notes there that the theologians teach that God is also the author of our
actions, insofar as they exist and insofar as they have some goodness, and that it is
the various dispositions of our wills that can render them evil. Just so, according to
Descartes, God is the author of all the motions in the world insofar as they exist and

83. See also the claim in Regiss Use of Reason, cited in note 47, that whereas God produces the substance of motion, secondary causes produce various modications of this
motion.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

insofar as they are rectilinear, whereas it is the various dispositions of matter that
render them irregular and curved (W VII, AT 11:4748).84
Toward the start of 3.2, I noted the puzzle that Descartess three laws of nature
seem to be too heterogeneous to be grounded in the same way in Gods conservation
of the quantity of motion by means of his ordinary concursus. We now have the
material for a solution to this puzzle. God conserves motion or motive force simply
by continuing his act of creating matter divided into parts with motions that possess
collectively a certain total strength of duration, and that possess individually instantaneous inclinations to motion along a straight path. The continuation of the initial
act of creation results in the continuing presence of the forces and inclinations that
provide the foundation for the three laws of nature. The laws therefore follow from
Gods immutability in the sense that they follow from the matter in motion that he
immutably creates/conserves as universal and primary cause. The laws are particular causes, moreover, in the sense that they reect the nature of the inclinations and
forces that are themselves the particular and secondary causes of changes in
motions. Contrary to what one might think initially, then, Descartes does not hold
that God directly creates the laws, which in turn condition matter in motion. Rather,
the view that I nd in him is that God directly creates matter in motion, and that the
laws merely reect the natures of what God has created.
To this point I have emphasized the case of Gods conservation of the quantity
of motion through his conservation of the total quantity of acting forcesthe vires
ad agendum posited in the Principles. As I have indicated, however, there are serious complications in the case of Gods conservation of the quantity of rest.
Whereas motive forces have a quantiable strength even prior to collision, the
resisting forces in resting bodies have such a strength only at the instant those bodies collide with other bodies. Thus, the activity of these resisting forcesthe vires
ad resistendum of the Principlescannot depend solely on Gods conservation of
a quantiable tendency in bodies to persist in a certain state. Rather, what is
required is some additional impulse from God at the moment of impact that serves
to resist the action of the moving body in cases where this body is equal to or
smaller than the body at rest. As we will discover, however, the suggestion that
there is a special sort of divine concurrence with the action of the resting body is
out of line with the strongly conservationist character of Descartess account in the
Principles of the ordinary concursus that exhausts Gods natural contribution to
bodybody interaction.

84. In the rst volume of his Search after Truth (1674), Malebranche appeals to a similar
analogy in holding that just as all motions make a straight line and deviate from this only
due to some foreign and particular causes that determine them and that change them into
curved lines by their oppositions, so all inclinations that we have from God are straight
insofar as they are directed toward the good in general, but only if they have no foreign
cause that determines the impression of nature toward evil ends (bk. 1, ch. 1, Malebranche
195884, 1:45/Malebranche 1997, 4). For discussion of Malebranches use of this analogy to
explain human freedom, and some indication of the problematic nature of this use, see
Schmaltz 1996, 22022.

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3.3. DESCARTESS CONSERVATIONIST PHYSICS


It is clear from several passages cited in 3.1.3 that Descartes helps himself to the
scholastic notion of divine concursus in describing Gods activity as universal cause.
I also noted in this section, however, that in a majority of these passages Descartes
tends to conate Gods concursus with his act of conservation. The question I now
want to address is whether his account of Gods universal causality of motion systematically conates the two, or whether there is room in his physics for something
like a traditional form of scholastic concurrence.
We know that Surez distinguished sharply between Gods conservation of the
being of creatures, which does not differ in reality from his act of creating that being,
and his concursus with secondary causes, which varies with the actions of those
causes (see 1.2.3 (ii)). Given this Surezian position, our question now is whether
Descartess physics requires an act of concursus on Gods part that differs from his
act of conservation and that varies with the action of the secondary cause. But once
the question is put in this manner, the answer would seem to be clearly in the
negative. For Descartes consistently indicates that there is only a single unvarying
action that God contributes as universal cause of motion. Just as he insists in The
World that the laws of nature depend only on the fact that God conserves each thing
by a continued action (W VII, AT 11:44), so he claims later in the Principles that
the law governing transfers of motion is demonstrated by the immutability of the
action of God, continually now conserving the world by the same action by which
he created it then (PP II.42, AT 8-1:66).
Of course, it was a theological commonplace that God himself is wholly immutable.
Moreover, Surez allowed that divine concursus can be said to be always the same if
one is speaking of the internal concursus or volition by which God concurs (MD
XXII.4, 8, 1:831). What changes is only the external concursus, the action that resides
in the patient. However, Descartes insists not only that the principle of action in God is
immutable, but also that what he produces is always the same. Thus, he claims in The
World that it follows from divine immutability that God always produces the same
effect, and in particular always produces a certain quantity of motions in matter
in general (W VII, AT 11:43).85 And though Descartes seems to allow in the Principles
that God could produce changes by means of acts that go beyond his ordinary
concursus, he continues to hold that this concursus itself yields a constant effect.
This argument for the constancy of the effect of divine activity appears to be
problematic. After all, Descartes allows, with Surez, that an eternal principle in
God can yield temporal effects. Why not grant, with Surez again, that an immutable
divine principle can yield an inconstant concursus? Here I think it is best to understand Descartess line of argument in terms of Surezs account not of the divine
concursus, but rather of divine conservation. Surez argued that Gods creation of an
object cannot be distinguished from his subsequent conservation of it, since in both
cases the agent is producing in the same way, namely, ex nihilo, the very same effect,

85. On the possible signicance of the fact that this passage refers to motions rather than
simply to motion, see note 18.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

namely, the esse of the object. We can derive the sameness of the act from the fact
that the mode of production and the terminus remain the same (MD XXI.2, 3,
1:791). Descartes assumes that God produces motion as a universal and primary
cause by means of a single concursus identical to his creation of matter in motion.
Drawing on Surezs view of conservation, however, we can infer that since this act
remains the same, it must have some common terminus, which for Descartes, as I see
it, would be the existence of a constant total quantity both of matter and of the durational strength (i.e., force or impulse) of its moving parts.
If my reading of Descartes is correct, then there can be in his physics no difference
between Gods ordinary concursus and his continuous conservation of matter in
motion. Since this continuing action must have a constant effect, the changes in motion
produced by bodily collisions must be due not to that action, but ratheras Descartes
himself indicatesto the particular and secondary causes of motion. We are far here
from the concurrentist position in Surez that the diverse actions that produce such
changes are identical to Gods action. Instead, Descartes seems to me to be closer to
the mere conservationism of Surezs opponent Durandus. Recall that in Duranduss
view, though God is the immediate cause of the being of secondary causes, his only
contribution to the action of secondary causes is his conservation of such causes (see
1.1.3). In Descartess case, the view is that Gods ordinary concursus is exhausted by
his continuous conservation of matter with the forces of its parts and inclinations of its
motions. These forces and inclinations, rather than the divine concursus itself, are the
immediate causes of changes due to collisions among these parts.
Thus, far from placing Descartes with the occasionalists, I see him as advocating
an alternative to this position that departed from occasionalism more radically even
than Surezs concurrentism. There is admittedly one passage in which Descartes
seems to favor the view, directly opposed to Duranduss mere conservationism, that
God is in fact the immediate cause of our actions. This passage is from a 1641 letter
to Regius in which Descartes offers his Dutch correspondent a response to the objection of their common critic Gisbertius Voetius that mental faculties rather than our
mind itself must be the immediate principle of volitional and intellectual acts.
What Voetius marks down here of you in no way opposes you. For since
theologians indeed say that no created substance is the immediate principle of its
operation, they understand this as follows: that no creature can operate without the
concursus of God; not, however, that it ought to have a certain created faculty,
distinct from itself, through which to operate. For it would be absurd to say that
such a created faculty could be the immediate principle of a certain operation, but
the substance itself could not. (May 1641, AT 3:372)86

But notice that his main conclusion here is merely that it does not follow from the
fact that no created substance is the immediate principle of its operation that every
substance acts through a faculty that is distinct from it. There is no requirement that
the divine concursus on which all effects in the created world depend is in fact

86. This is one of the passages that Pessin cites in support of his view that Descartes
accepted a kind of nomic concurrentism (in Pessin 2003, 37). See note 88.

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identical to the operations through which creatures produce those effects. We therefore cannot assume that Descartess talk of Gods immediate concursus indicates a
preference for Surezs concurrentism over Duranduss mere conservationism. And
given his emphasis on the constant nature of the product of Gods ordinary concursus, there is even reason to think that Descartes could not distinguish concursus from
conservation in the manner Surez required.87
But though Descartes himself did not sharply distinguish Gods conservation of
the world from his concursus with secondary causes, we can reconstruct such a distinction in terms of the contrast in his correspondence with More between Gods creating matter at rest and leaving it to itself and his creating matter with an
impulse that involves the motion of its parts. In the former case there would be no
motive forces or inclinations with which God could concur, whereas in the latter case
Gods initial shove of matter would yield forces and inclinations with which God
must concur. Even so, on Descartess ofcial view this concursus involves nothing
more than Gods conservation of matter with a total quantity of durational strength
and of motions with their instantaneous inclinations.
Des Chene has proposed an alternative manner of distinguishing between conservation and concurrence in Descartess physics.88 In his view, Gods concurrence
consists in the moving force by which he causes a moving body to change the
states of other bodies with which it collides, whereas his conservation consists in the
resisting force by which he resists changes in collision to the state of rest in a resting body (Des Chene 1996, 33436). Since Des Chene takes Descartes to deny that

87. In his Use of Reason, Regis follows Descartes in speaking of Gods concours with secondary causes (see chapter 1, note 77), but also indicates that in the case of bodybody interaction, this concourse involves only Gods creation of motion simpliciter, and not the particular
determinations of motion that secondary causes produce (I-2.32, Regis 1996, 38485; cf.
I 2.11, 27174). Regiss position admittedly requires the conclusion, not to be found in
Descartes, that the motion that God produces is an atemporal nature that particular motions
express in a temporal manner (see the discussion of this position in Schmaltz 2003). Despite
this important difference from Descartes, the case of Regis serves to reinforce the lesson that
we cannot simply assume on the basis of the fact that Descartes used concurrentist terminology that he is committed to a traditional scholastic understanding of divine concursus.
88. See also Pessins attribution to Descartes of a nomic concurrentism on which God
concurs with bodies in their effects on each other via willing the laws of motion; but these
laws produce their effects only in conjunction with the relevant initial conditions, such as
states of matter (Pessin 2003, 40). In contrast to conservation, concurrence involves not only
Gods willing the laws, but also a contribution on the part of the material conditions. Given
Pessins insistence on the intrinsic passivity of the matter Descartes posited (40), however, the
material conditions would seem to serve merely as occasions for divine action. Pessins view
therefore seems to be a version of an occasionalist reading of Descartes. Moreover, there is no
reference in Descartes to a separate willing of the laws of nature on the part of God. The indication in the Principles is rather that Gods contribution to the laws is exhausted by his continued conservation of the matter and motion that he rst created in the world. The fact that
these particular laws hold is simply a consequence of this divine action, and not something to
be explained by divine volitions that have these laws as their content.

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bodies can be real efcient causes, he admits that in concurring God is not genuinely
acting with secondary causes (33637). Nevertheless, he insists that Descartes can
preserve some sort of distinction between conservation and concurrence that has
been refashioned to suit a physical world without active powers (341).
I have already argued that Descartess intention is to allow for a physical world
that has an internal source of activity. But even apart from this point, the suggestion
that moving force in Descartes pertains to concurrence rather than to conservation
seems to me to be problematic. For Descartes indicates in the Principles that both
the total quantity of matter and of the motion (and rest) of its parts are conserved by
a single divine act, namely, the ordinary concursus that is merely a continuation of
the original act by which God created the material world. Indeed, if any additional
act of concurrence be involved at all, it would seem to pertain to the case of resisting force. In the case of moving force, it can be said that there is a modal quantity
that is continuously conserved in all natural interactions. As I have noted, however,
the resisting force that Descartes posits in his fourth and sixth collision rules is not
a conserved quantity, but rather something that enters the scene only at the moment
of collision and that is not conserved after that moment. Thus this force cannot be
referred solely to the ordinary concursus by which God produces a constant effect.
But the clear view in the Principles is that this concursus provides the sole divine
foundation for the laws of nature. It therefore seems to me that far from providing a
basis for a conception of divine conservation, as Des Chene suggests, resisting forces
cannot be explained in terms of the sort of conservation that Descartes took to constitute Gods activity as universal cause of the material world.
Even if Descartes can conceive of Gods concursus with the motive forces of
material parts in a conservationist manner, however, special problems seem to arise
when one considers his views on mindbody interaction. For one thing, there is the
objection, from Descartess time to our own, that he is not entitled to the claim that
there is such interaction given the implication of his dualism that minds and bodies
have radically heterogeneous natures. I argued in the previous chapter that
Descartess containment axiom does not preclude such interaction. However, I also
conceded toward the end of this chapter that this axiom does not provide much help
in explaining precisely how unextended minds and extended bodies produce changes
in each other. In the case of bodybody interactions, Descartes at least can appeal to
bodily forces that have comparable degrees of strength. But what sort of forces could
bring objects as dissimilar as mind and body into causal relation with each other?
And what precisely is Gods role in bringing about this sort of interaction? It turns
out that Descartes has even less to say about mindbody interaction than he does
about bodybody interaction. Nevertheless, we will discover that he says enough to
indicate that it is his considered position that though mind-to-body action is in some
respects less problematic than body-to-mind action, even the latter is possible with
the help of divinely instituted natures. And as was the case with his accounts of
bodybody interaction and the causal axioms, we will discover that we cannot fully
comprehend the details of his views on mindbody interaction in abstraction from
their scholastic context.

Causation in Psychology

Scholastic psychology, as the science of the soul (in Greek, psuche-), was a study of life
in general. Guided by the procedure in Aristotles De Anima, the scholastics posited
souls to explain not only the rationality of human beings or the sentience of animals, but
also the vegetative functions of plants.1 Descartes rejects this sort of science of the soul,
as indicated by his protest in a 1641 letter to Regius (then a friend; see 4.2.2) that the
vegetative and sensory souls of the scholastics are nothing more than locomotive powers that consist in certain arrangements of bodily parts, and that are thus distinct in kind
from the rational soul (May 1641, AT 3:371). It is true that Descartes at times helps himself to the scholastic view that the rational soul is the substantial form of the human
composite.2 However, he could not accept, in the manner scholastic traditionalists did,
the project of showing how the rational soul provides the foundation for all the functions of the living human body.3 As he insists to Regius, no actions can be reckoned
human unless they depend on reason (3:371). More accurately, Descartess view is that
only those actions that involve some kind of thought can be the subject of human
psychology. What is new to his psychology is the exclusive focus on the relation of
thought to the motions in the machine that for him constitutes the human body.

1. The best recent discussion of the scholastic science of the soul is found in Des Chene
2000a. Des Chene 2001 is a companion volume that considers the alternative in Descartes to
the portions of this scholastic science that concern living bodies.
2. See, for instance, To Regius, Jan. 1642, AT 3:503, 505.
3. I say traditionalist because there were scholastics who deviated from the standard
Thomistic line, to which Surez adhered, that there is only one substantial form of the human
composite. In the letter I have quoted, Descartes tells Regius that his claim that human beings
have a threefold soul is a heretical thing to say (May 1641, AT 3:371).

129

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We will discover that Descartes often speaks as if thoughts and corresponding


motions casually interact. It would appear that given the restriction of his containment
axiom to efcient causes and their effects (see 2.1.2 (ii)), this interaction involves
efcient causality. Notoriously, however, it has seemed to many that the claim that
mind and body are real efcient causes of changes in each other is particularly problematic for Descartes. I mentioned at the outset of the rst chapter the claim in
Fontenelles Doubts that the system of occasional causes arose from the extreme disproportion that Descartes introduced between mind and body. Robert Richardson
has dubbed the view that such a disproportion renders mindbody interaction problematic the problem of heterogeneity (Richardson 1982), or what I call, for short,
the heterogeneity problem. The assumption central to this problem is that causal interaction requires a kind of likeness between cause and effect that is in fact missing in
the case of objects as heterogeneous in nature as Descartes took mind and body to be.
Sometimes Descartess way with the allegedly scandalous heterogeneity problem
is short. In response to Gassendist questions concerning the intelligibility of the union
of mind and body, for instance, Descartes notes curtly, in a section added to the 1647
French edition of the Meditations, that the whole difculty that [such questions] contain proceeds solely from a supposition that is false and cannot in any way be proved,
namely that, if the soul and the body are two different substances with diverse natures,
this prevents them from being able to act on each other (AT 9-1:213).4 This line of
response is supported to some extent by the result of our discussion in chapter 2 that
Descartess containment axiom is consistent with at least some forms of mindbody
interaction. Even so, when Princess Elisabeth raises the question in 1643 of how an
immaterial soul can determine the bodily animal spirits so as to perform voluntary
actions, Descartes replies that this question seems to me to be that which one can ask
me most properly in view of the writings I have published (21 May 1643, AT 3:664).
He then attempts to address this question by appealing to the primitive notion of the
soul-body union. But though the suggestion here is that this primitive notion is
required to explain any sort of mindbody interaction, Descartess considered position is more complicated than this. For reasons that are intelligible in light of the
scholastic context of his thought, Descartes never admits the possibility of bodily
action on a mind not united to it, but explicitly allows that disembodied minds not
only can but actually do act on body.
To explain Descartess complex views on mindbody interaction, I begin in 4.1
with his account of the soulbody union, starting with the one he provides in his
1643 correspondence with Elisabeth. It turns out that both Elisabeths objections and
Descartess response in this correspondence address difculties concerning
mindbody interaction and the union that differ from those deriving from the
heterogeneity problem.
In 4.2, I consider Descartess account of that portion of the union involving
body-to-mind action. The difculties with this account can be understood in terms
of the scholastic problem of the relation of the bodily senses to intellectual cognition. Such difculties are reected most clearly in a famous passage in which

4. See also To Hyperaspistes, Aug. 1641, AT 3:42526.

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Descartes refers to motions in the brain as occasions for the formation of sensory
ideas by an innate faculty of mind. But though it is tempting to take the occasioning
here to be noncausal, there is evidence that Descartes wants to make room for the
position that brain motions serve as a special sort of efcient cause.
In 4.3, I turn to Descartess account of mind-to-body action. Here again, there is
a link to earlier scholastic discussionsin this case, concerning the action of incorporeal spirits on corporeal objects. What is particularly relevant to Descartess various comments regarding mind-to-body action is the insistence in scholastics such as
Surez that spirits must be present to bodies to move them. This scholastic background helps to make sense of Descartess attempts to explicate the action of mind
on body in terms both of the action of the quality of heaviness and of an extension
of power found in minds. What is not anticipated in the scholastic discussions, however, is the problem in Descartesto which Leibniz most notably drew attention
of the compatibility of mind-to-body action with the basic principle in Cartesian
physics of the conservation of the total quantity of motion. In fact, Descartes himself never explicitly endorsed the positionwhich Leibniz attributed to him and
which later Cartesians clearly embracedthat nite minds can only change the
direction of moving bodies, and not create new motion. Even so, there are reasons
deriving from his conservationist physics for him to adopt such a position.

4.1. MINDBODY INTERACTION AND UNION


When addressing the issue of mindbody interaction, Descartes often emphasizes
his position that our soul is united in a special way to the human body. This is understandable given the implication of this position that the union involves a special sort
of interaction. However, in considering his views on this topic, it is important not to
conate the issues of union and interaction. After all, we will discover that Descartes
insists on the possibility that certain immaterial entities, such as God and angels, can
act on bodies even though they are not united to any of them in the way in which the
human soul is united to a body. I also nd in his writings the implication that disembodied minds can have no sensory states. On my reading, then, the problem in the
case of the human soul of how the body to which it is united can cause its sensations
simply does not arise for such minds.
In contrast to the heterogeneity problem, which yields a single problem with
mindbody interaction, there are in Descartes several different problems with such
interaction, only some of which concern the union. In what follows, I attempt to distinguish various issues concerning mindbody interaction and union and to show how
such issues are or are not related to Descartess account of the union. I begin with his
important exchange with Elisabeth, which broaches both issues. Then, following the
lead of Descartess remarks to Elisabeth, I focus on the issue of the union. Though his
writings may seem at times to suggest that the union merely consists in a certain set of
connections between mental and bodily states, I take his more considered position to
be that the union also involves something underlying those states that serves to explain
their connections. Finally, I consider Descartess view that our sensory and volitional
states reect the special sort of interaction that occurs in the case of the union.

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4.1.1. Elisabeths Objections and Descartess Response


Perhaps Descartess most famous comments on the issue of mindbody interaction
occur in his 1643 correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. Elisabeth was
the daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, electress Palatine and queen of Bohemia (and sister of Charles I), and Frederick V of Bohemia. Elisabeths family went into exile in
The Hague after Frederick was deposed, and there is a report that Descartes spent
some time at the house of Elizabeth Stuart during 1634/35 (Frederick had died in
1632). He may have met the daughter Elisabeth at that time, but his rst mention of
her is in a 1642 letter to their mutual friend Alphonse Pollot (also Pallotti), in which
he noted her interest in his work on metaphysics (6 Oct. 1642, AT 3:57758). In May
1643 Descartes made an unsuccessful attempt to meet with Elisabeth in The Hague.
Touched by the effort, and heartened by good wishes that Pollot had passed from
Descartes to her, Elisabeth sent Descartes a letter of thanks a few days later.5 In that
letter, she also broached a particular problem concerning the relation of the soul to
the body. She expressed this problem as follows:
I ask you to tell me how the human soul can determine [determiner] the bodily
spirits, to make voluntary actions (it being only a thinking thing). For it seems that
all determination of motion takes place by the moved object being pushed, by the
way in which it is pushed by what moves it, or by the qualication and shape of
the surface of the latter. Touch is required for the rst two conditions, extension
for the third. You entirely exclude the latter from your notion of the soul, and the
former seems to be incompatible with an immaterial thing. (6/16 May 1643,
3:661*)

It is sometimes claimed that the heterogeneity problem lies behind the difculty
that Elisabeth raised here concerning interaction.6 Notice, however, that her difculty concerns not the general question of whether substances with distinct natures
can causally interact, but the more specic question of whether the soul is able to act
on the body. In particular, the question is whether something that lacks extension is
able to determine the motion of a body by pushing it. What seems to render this
sort of determination problematic is the assumption that only something that can be
in contact with a body can move it.7

5. For more on Elisabeth and her interactions with Descartes, see Nye 1999; Shapiro
1999b; and Hutton 2005.
6. See, for instance, Margaret Wilsons identication of the difculty of rationalizing
causal relations between distinct sorts of substances with the difculty on which Elisabeth
insisted (Wilson 1978, 215). Cf. Radner 1971; Mattern 1978; and Broughton and Mattern
1978. But cf. the claim in Shapiro 1999b that Elisabeths questions of Descartes go beyond
this problem of the causal interaction of really distinct substances (506).
7. There is a question here whether Elisabeth had in mind here the technical understanding of determination in Descartes, according to which it is a modal feature of motion that can
be changed apart from any change in the speed of that motion (see 3.2.1 (ii)). For the claim
that she did have such an understanding in mind, see Tollefsen 1999. However, as I indicate
presently, Elisabeth restated her original objection without appealing to the notion of determination, asking instead about how the soul can move [peut mouvoir] the body (June 10/20,

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In a subsequent letter to Descartes, Elisabeth again mentions the problem of


how the soul (nonextended and immaterial) can move the body. However, she
also introduces a new problem concerning the action of body on the soul, noting
that it is very difcult to comprehend that the soul, as you have described it, after
having had the faculty and habit of reasoning well, can lose all that by some vapors,
and that, being able to subsist without the body and having nothing in common with
it, it is so ruled by it (10/20 June 1643, AT 3:68485*). Elisabeths claim here that
the soul has nothing in common with the body that acts on it may seem to suggest that the heterogeneity problem is behind her new concern with interaction.
Nonetheless, her worry is not merely that soul and body have distinct natures, but
rather that the soul has a power of reasoning that is superior to bodily vapors, and
thus should be unaffected by them. This superiority is indicated by the fact that
the soul is able to subsist without the body in virtue of possessing this power.
Elisabeths remarks recall Descartess argument in the Discourse that an immaterial soul must be invoked to explain language use. The argument appeals to the fact
that we can provide the appropriate verbal responses in innumerable different circumstances in support of the claim that our language use derives from reason as
a universal instrument rather than from the limited dispositions of our bodily
organs.8 Descartes concludes that it is in virtue of possessing reason that our soul
is of a nature entirely independent of the body, and consequently is not bound to die
with it (DM V, AT 6:5661). Elisabeths challenge to Descartes is to show how the
reasoning of the soul can be affected by bodily vapors given that the rational soul
is so superior to anything found in body. What seems to create difculty here is the
underlying assumption that an object cannot act on, and thus rule over, another
object more perfect than it.
In Elisabeths two letters, then, we have two different problems regarding the
causal interaction of soul and body. The rst is that the soul, as an unextended thing,
does not have the sort of contact with body required to act on it, whereas the second
is that the body, as more imperfect than a soul capable of reason, does not have the
sort of perfection required to act on the soul. As we will discover, both of these difculties with interaction have analogues in scholastic discussions, particularly in the
work of Aquinas and Surez, concerning the causal interaction of immaterial and
material beings. The rst difculty is linked to the issue in scholasticism of whether
a spiritual presence is required for spirits to move bodies (see 4.3.1), and the second to a problem in scholastic thought concerning the relation of bodily phantasms
to intelligible species in the incorporeal intellect (see 4.2.1).
Descartess response to Elisabeth focuses not so much on these particular difculties, however, but more on the nature of the union of our soul with body. This emphasis on the union is somewhat surprising. Though Elisabeth mentioned the human soul

AT 3:684). Moreover, none of Descartess responses to Elisabeth appeal to this notion. As


indicated in 4.3.3, however, Descartess views on determination are important for later
Cartesian discussions of the causation of motion by nite minds.
8. Chomsky has emphasized this argument as an early version of the poverty of stimulus argument for innatism; see Chomsky 1966.

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in particular when expressing the problem in her initial letter concerning the action of
the soul on body, the problem itself does not appear to be restricted to this particular
case. For the question of whether an unextended thing can push a body would seem
to apply also to God or, if an appeal to divine omnipotence solves the problem in
this case, to nite spirits distinct from human souls, such as angels. Nevertheless, in
his reply to Elisabeths initial letter, Descartes focuses on the fact that there are two
things concerning the human soul on which depend all the knowledge that we can
have of its nature, the rst that it thinks, the other, that being united to a body, it
can act and be acted on by it [peut agir et patir avec lui] (21 May 1643, AT 3:664).
He acknowledges that he said almost nothing (quasi rien) in his writings about
the second feature of the human soul,9 but adds that we have a primitive notion of
the union that is distinct from the primitive notion of the body alone and of the soul
alone. In the case of body, we have the notion of extension, from which follows
those of shape and motion, and in the case of the soul, we have the notion of
thought, in which are included the perceptions of the understanding and the inclinations of the will. The notion of the union is distinctive, however, since it is that on
which depends that of the force [force] that the soul has to move [mouvoir] the body,
and the body to act [dagir] on the soul, in causing [causant] its sensations and passions (AT 3:665).
Though this passage mentions both the action of body on soul and the action of
soul on body, in this letter Descartes follows the lead of Elisabeths initial query in
focusing on the latter form of action. Thus, he emphasizes the need to refrain from
conceiving the manner in which the soul moves the body by that in which a body is
moved by another body (AT 3:666). In particular, he holds that we must refrain from
thinking that the soul moves a body by means of a real contact of surfaces (AT
3:667). Even so, when Elisabeth subsequently protested that it seems to me easier to
concede matter and extension to the soul, than the capacity to move a body . . . to an
immaterial being (10/20 June 1643, AT 3:685*), Descartes invites her to attribute
matter and extension to the soul, since to conceive of the soul as having this sort of
extension is nothing other than to conceive it as united to body. Yet he also warns
that the extension of thought that is attributed to the soul must be distinguished
from the extension of matter, which unlike the extension of thought is determined to
a particular place, from which it excludes all other extension of body (28 June 1643,
AT 3:694).
I will return in 4.3.2 to the positive account that Descartes offers in the correspondence with Elisabeth and elsewhere of the extension of thought, or what he elsewhere calls the extension of power. For the moment I restrict myself to a couple of
observations concerning his response to Elisabeth. The rst is that in attributing
extension to the soul, he directly addresses Elisabeths initial objection that an immaterial thing does not have the sort of contact with a body required to move it. Such an
attribution allows him to hold that there is in fact some sort of contact between the
two, albeit not a real contact of surfaces. Though some of Descartess language in his

9. One puzzle, which I address in 4.1.3, is how Descartes could say that he said almost
nothing about the union even though he previously argued in the Sixth Meditation that nature
teaches him that he is very closely joined and as if intermixed with a body (see AT 7:81).

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correspondence may seem to indicate that he was merely patronizing the princess,10
on this issue, at least, he seems to me to take her objection to heart.
My second observation is related to the initial impression of a confusion in
Descartes of the distinct issues of the union and interaction. It seems that Descartes
cannot simply claim, as he does in his letter to Elisabeth, that the conception of the
soul as having a special sort of extension simply amounts to the conception of it as
united to a body. For again, Elisabeths original objection concerns the intelligibility
of the conception of the action of any immaterial thing on a body, whether or not that
thing is akin to a human soul in being united to a body. If an extension of thought
must be attributed to an immaterial substance to conceive its action on body, then
such an extension must be attributed to all immaterial substances that can so act,
including God and angels as well as human souls.
Once the notion of the extension of thought has been distinguished from the
notion of the union, though, it is natural to wonder what real work the latter is doing
for Descartes. To see what work it is doing, I think it is important to deviate from
Descartess procedure in his correspondence with Elisabeth by addressing issues that
go beyond the intelligibility of interaction per se. A good place to start is with the
question that Margaret Wilson has raised concerning the nature of the union that
Descartes posited. Wilsons question is whether he accepted a natural institution
theory, on which the union simply consists in a particular kind of interaction, or
rather a different sort of co-extension theory, on which the union involves an
intermixture that makes possible certain correlations of mental and bodily states
(Wilson 1978, 20420). Whereas Wilsons judgment is that the natural institution
theory is most plausible for Descartes, I hope to show that despite its problems, there
is at least one important respect in which the co-extension theory is superior.

4.1.2. Two Accounts of the Union


As Wilson denes it, the natural institution theory holds that what we call the close
union or intermingling of this mind with this body is nothing but the arbitrarily
established disposition of this mind to experience certain types of sensations on the
occasion of certain changes in this body, and to refer these sensations to (parts of)
this body (Wilson 1978, 211).11 One piece of evidence for the attribution of this
theory to Descartes is drawn from his remarks concerning the union in the Sixth
Meditation. There Descartes claims that even though human nature could have been
so constituted by God that the same motion in the brain would exhibit something
else to the mind, still God so constituted this nature that

10. See especially his suggestion that it would be best for her to refrain from too much
metaphysical meditation and to give herself over to use of the imagination and the senses (28
June 1643, AT 3:69294).
11. Cf. the view of Baker and Morris that for Descartes our nature as a soul-body union
consists in a strict correlation between thoughts and movements of the pineal gland (Baker
and Morris 1996, 172). In opposition to the emphasis in Wilson, discussed below, of the arbitrary or contingent nature of the correlation, however, Baker and Morris insist that the correlations are necessary (167).

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when the nerves in the foot are moved violently and more than is usual, that
motion of them, passing through the medulla of the spine to the innermost parts of
the brain, there gives a sign to the mind to sense something, namely pain as if
existing in the foot, by which the mind is excited to remove the cause of pain, as
harming the foot, so far as it can. (AT 7:88)

The view that the union is an arbitrarily established disposition is supposed to


reect Descartess position that God could have constituted human nature differently than he has. Moreover, Wilson nds nothing here to indicate that the union is
something more than the set of correlations between mental and bodily states that
God has arbitrarily established. For a mind to be united to a body is nothing more
than for it to have certain sensations follow from certain bodily signs, as in the
case of pain, and also, presumably, to have certain motions in the brain follow from
certain volitions.
There is an initial question whether the evidence supports Wilsons claim that
Descartes took the correlations that constitute the union to be arbitrary.12 To be
sure, his admission that it was within Gods power to change the connections suggests that they are contingent in some sense. However, Descartess emphasis in the
Sixth Meditation is on the fact that the connections that God has established are
conducive to the well-being of the body (AT 7:88). Descartess rejection of divine
teleology commits him to the conclusion that (apart from revelation, at least) we cannot know Gods purposes for establishing the union.13 However, he seems to allow
that experience can reveal the purposes that the connections involved in the union
serve. In some signicant sense, then, these connections are not arbitrary but are rendered intelligible by the end of the preservation of the union.14
In Wilsons view, Descartess claim that motions in the brain are mere signs to
the mind to have certain sensations indicates further the arbitrariness of the connections involved in the union.15 Below I offer a reading of this claim on which issues
concerning the arbitrariness of the causal connections, or even concerning the possibility of any causal relation, do not play a central role (see 4.2.2). For the moment,
though, I want to turn from the issue of the nature of the causal connections involved
in the union to the implication of the natural institution theory that the union consists
in nothing over and above these connections. As Wilson notes, this implication
seems to conict with Descartess view in the Sixth Meditation that various internal
sensations are nothing other than certain confused modes of thought arising from
[ab . . . exorti] the union and the intermixture as it were [quasi permixtione] of the
mind with the body (AT 7:81). The suggestion here is that confused thought is not

12. In addition to Wilson 1978, 209 and 211, see Wilson 1999b, 43 and 57; and Wilson
1999c, 480.
13. See my discussion of this point in 2.1.2 (ii.b); cf. chapter 2, note 34.
14. For a similar criticism of Wilson, see Loeb 2005, 6769. In 4.2.3, however, I criticize Loebs concession to Wilson that the connections involved in the union are brute. See
Simmons 2001 for an emphasis on the teleological nature of Descartess explanation of
sensation.
15. Cf. Wilson 1978, 207, and Wilson 1999b, 43.

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merely a constituent feature of the union, but also something that, as arising from the
union, is an effect of it.16
Wilson takes this suggestion to lead us to what she has called the co-extension theory, on which the mind has a special sort of presence in the body that is a prerequisite for the production of states of the union. With respect to this theory, Wilson
highlights Descartess claim, cited previously, that his correspondent Elisabeth should
feel free to attribute extension to the soul, since to do so is nothing other than to conceive it as united to body (AT 3:694). So also, in a passage from the Sixth Replies
related to this claim, Descartes draws an analogy between the human soul and the
scholastic real quality of heaviness that while it remained coextensive with the heavy
body, it could exercise its power at any part of it (AT 7:442; see 4.3.2). According
to the co-extension theory, then, the experience of the union is not restricted to the
experience of certain states associated with it. Rather, as Wilson notes, we experience the co-extensiveness of mind throughout the body . . . and (perhaps by this very
fact) experience something called the mindbody union (Wilson 1978, 216).
I have some sympathy for Wilsons conclusion that the co-extension theory is problematic for Descartes. Whereas the problem that she emphasizes is that co-extension
does not seem to render mindbody interaction intelligible (Wilson 1978, 215),17 the
problem I nd is that the sort of co-extension he posits in the correspondence with
Elisabeth is not clearly relevant to the special intermixture that he takes to be present
in the union. As indicated in 4.1.1, Descartes there invokes the extension of thought
to address Elisabeths worries about how any immaterial thing could move a body.
Neither these worries nor the purported solution seems to concern the distinctive sort
of connection present in the case of the relation of the human soul to its body.18
Moreover, the implication of the heaviness analogy that the soul is present
wherever it can act on the body does not support the view that it is co-extended with
the whole of the body to which it is united. For Descartes makes clear in the Passions
of the Soul that there is a certain part of the body where [the human soul] exercises
its functions more particularly than in others, namely, the pineal gland (PS I.31, AT
11:352). It seems to follow from the fact that the soul is extended only where it can
act that it is co-extended merely with this specic part of the brain, and not with the
human body as a whole.19

16. See also the claim in the Sixth Replies that sensations arise from (oriri ex) the union
(AT 7:437). But cf. Loeb 1981, 13132, n.9, for an attempt to argue that there is no serious
suggestion in Descartes that mind and body interact in a certain manner in virtue of the union.
Here I follow Wilson in thinking that there is evidence of such a suggestion in Descartes. The
implications of my interpretive differences with Loeb on this point are revealed in 4.2.3.
17. Cf. Rozemond 2005, 36062.
18. For a similar objection, see Rozemond 2005, 350, 356.
19. It is possible that Descartes simply confuses the co-extension required for the souls
direct action on the body with the co-extension that derives from the fact that the body with
which the soul interacts has parts that must be interconnected to sustain the union. In fact, the
article containing the passage from the Passions just quoted is immediately preceded by an
article in which Descartes emphasizes the sort of co-extension that involves the unied nature
of the human body (PS I.30, AT 11:351).

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Finally, the heaviness analogy appears to be irrelevant to the portion of the union,
to which Descartes himself draws Elisabeths attention, that concerns the force of
the human body to act [dagir] on the soul, in causing [causant] its sensations and
passions (AT 3:665). But this sort of force seems to be essential for the kind of intermixture posited in the Sixth Meditation insofar as Descartes is concerned in this passage with the fact that the human soul has certain confused sensations of its body. To
be sure, he does note, in comments on this passage in the Sixth Replies, that such sensations arise from the fact that the mind is so intimately conjoined with the brain
[cerebro] (AT 7:437). As in the case of the action of the soul on body, so too, it
seems, the action of body on soul requires that the agent be in some sort of contact
with the patient. Nevertheless, Descartes emphasizes that the conception of the action
of the quality of heaviness is drawn from the conception of the action of the soul on
body (see 4.3.2). Given this emphasis, the former conception cannot contribute to an
explication of the force of the body to act on the soul in sensation.
In spite of its very real drawbacks, the co-extension theory does reect what I take
to be Descartess considered view that the union consists in more than a certain set of
correlations between mental and bodily states. The extension of the human soul is
supposed to allow it to have the sort of presence required for it to move the body. So
also, it seems, the union of the soul with the brain is needed for certain motions there
to be able to cause certain sensations in the soul. Even if the extension of thought that
Descartes mentions in his letter to Elisabeth cannot be identied with the union, then,
at least it is similar to the union in being a prerequisite for interaction.
Admittedly, Descartes is not entirely clear on what precisely the union is supposed to be when it is distinguished from the particular states it produces. The claim
in the correspondence with Elisabeth that we have a primitive notion of the union
akin to primitive notions of thought and extension may seem to indicate that the
union is similar to thought and extension in being a principal attribute of a substance.
This impression is strengthened by Descartess comment in a 1642 letter to Regius
that the mind is united in a real and substantial manner to the body so that it
forms with the body a true ens per se (Jan. 1642, AT 3:493).20 But though it is tempting to think that Descartes at least entertained a trialism on which the union is a
created substance along with mind and body,21 ultimately it seems that he cannot
accept such a position. Perhaps the most serious problem for trialism derives from
Descartess claim in the Synopsis to the Meditations that all created substances are

20. In an earlier letter, Descartes advises Regius to hold in his dispute with Voetius that
body and soul are incomplete substances in relation to the human being and thus constitute
an ens per se when joined (Dec. 1641, AT 3:460). See also Descartess remarks in the Fourth
Replies at AT 7:22223.
21. Indeed, I succumbed to this temptation in Schmaltz 1992a. For a trenchant critique of
my view in this article, see Rozemond 1998, 191203. But cf. the defense of the view that
Descartess union involves a unied substance in Hoffman 1986 and 1999. I borrow the term
trialism from Cottingham 1985, though Cottinghams claim is that Descartes added the third
category of the union without proceeding to reify it as a separate substance (Cottingham
1985, 229).

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incorruptible, and cannot cease to be unless they are reduced to nothing by Gods
withholding his concursus from them (AT 7:14).22 The problem is that he indicated
in the same passage that the human body, and thus the union, can very easily perish by natural means. But since Descartes claims that everything produced naturally
derives from Gods ordinary concursus, the implication here is that the union can be
destroyed even when God continues to offer this concursus, and so cannot properly
be said to constitute a substance.
If Descartess union does not constitute a substance, however, in what sense is it
something that is distinct from and explains the correlations between mental and bodily states of the human being? A clue to the answer is provided in the Passions, in a
section entitled how the soul and the body act on each other. There Descartes claims
that whereas the union involves a soul whose nature is such that it receives . . . as
many different perceptions as different motions occur in [the pineal] gland, it also
involves a body the mechanism of which is so constructed that simply by the glands
being moved in any way by the soul . . . it drives the surrounding spirits toward the
pores of the brain, which direct them through the nerves to the muscles; and in this
way the gland makes the spirits move the limbs (PS I.34, AT 11:355). In the case of
the union, the correlations between mental and bodily states are to be explained in
terms of the coordinated natures of the human soul and the bodily mechanism to
which that soul is united. Given that the soul and body possess these natures, certain
motions in the brain can produce certain sensations in the soul, and certain volitions
in the soul can produce certain motions in the brain.
This explanation of the correlations involved in the union may seem to conict
with Descartess occasional suggestion that there is not much that can be said about
the union itself. There is, for instance, his claim to Elisabeth that what belongs to
the union of the soul and the body is known only obscurely by the intellect alone or
even by the intellect aided by the imagination, but is known very clearly by the
senses. Thus the conception of the union derives from the ordinary course of life
and conversation, and abstention from meditation and from the study of things that
exercise the imagination (28 June 1643, AT 3:692). Moreover, he writes later to
Arnauld that the fact that a mind united to a body can act on it is shown us not by
reasoning or comparison with other things, but by the most certain and most evident
everyday experience (29 July 1648, AT 5:222). So isnt Descartess view that there
is no need for an explanation of the union apart from an appeal to the fact that we
just feel it?
The problem here, I think, is that Descartes is not always careful to distinguish
the fact of the union from the explanation of this fact. Certainly his view is that
immediate sense experience is the best source of our knowledge of the fact of the
union. But though he presented this experience as yielding a full primitive notion of
the union, in the correspondence with Elisabeth, or a complete understanding of the
action of our mind on our body, in the letter to Arnauld, his remarks elsewhere in

22. As I indicated in 3.1.3, this claim is related to the position, added to the French edition of the Principles, that created substances are such that they need only the ordinary concourse [concourse ordinaire] of God to exist (PP I.51, AT 9-2:47).

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these same texts indicate that more is required. For in the correspondence with
Elisabeth, he appeals to the fact that the notion of the union include the notions of
the force that the soul has to move the body and the force of the body to act on
the soul, in causing its sensations and passions (AT 3:665), and it would seem that
these forces are theoretical posits that go beyond what it revealed in immediate sense
experience. Likewise, in the letter to Arnauld, Descartes follows up on his claim that
the action of mind on body is immediately evident by attempting to explain this
action in terms of the heaviness analogy that he had used previously for this same
purpose (AT 5:22223). Such an explanation seems to go beyond our immediate
experience of our action insofar as it concerns the underlying source of that action.23
Even so, some of Descartess remarks draw attention to the distinctive nature of
the states of the union that are immediately evident in our sense experience. Thus, in
his proof of the union in the Sixth Meditation there is an emphasis on the fact that
the intermixture of mind and body yields confused sensations such as hunger
and thirst that differ phenomenologically from the clear perceptions that a pure intellect would have of the body (AT 7:81). Though to my knowledge Descartes never
characterized the volitions by which the human soul moves its body as confused in
a similar manner, the passage from the Passions quoted previously suggests that
there is something distinctive about them insofar as they depend for their efcacy
on the construction of the bodily mechanism. Before turning to the details of
Descartess account of the kinds of interaction that the union involves, I want to consider his view of how the union is reected in the sensory and volitional states to
which we have access in basic sense experience.

4.1.3. Sensation and Human Volition


In response to Arnaulds objection that his dualism suggests the Platonic opinion
that a human being is a soul using a body (Fourth Objections, AT 7:203), Descartes
claims that the argument that he used in the Sixth Meditation to show that the human
mind is substantially united with the body is as strong as any I have read (Fourth
Replies, AT 7:228). In this argument he appeals to the teaching of nature that he has
sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., and so is not only present in my body as a
sailor in a ship, but most closely conjoined and as it were intermixed with it, so that
I form a unit with it (AT 7:81). The image of the sailor in the ship derives from
Aristotle, who used it to characterize a Platonic view of the relation between the soul
and body.24 Descartes therefore indeed attempted to distance himself from a Platonic
conception of the human being. What is supposed to show that he is not merely using

23. Cf. Wilsons observation that the senses could hardly be supposed to tell usin the
ordinary course of life, as Descartes addsthat brain states give rise to mind states according to correlations instituted by nature (Wilson 1999b, 58). Wilson is here criticizing
Richardsons view that Descartess remarks in the Elisabeth correspondence indicate that
mindbody interaction is an irreducible theoretical primitive (see Richardson 1982, 2526;
see also Richardson 1985).
24. See De Anima II.1, 413a8, Aristotle 1984, 1:657.

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a body is that when his body is damaged or needs food or drink, he does not merely
expressly understand that this is so, but rather perceives it by means of the confused sensations of pain, hunger, and thirst. As he indicates in a letter to Regius, the
inference here is that these sensations are not pure thoughts of a mind distinct from
a body, but rather confused perceptions of a mind really united to a body (Jan.
1642, AT 3:493).
In this same letter, Descartes illustrates the difference between a purely intellectual mind and the embodied soul by noting that if an angel were in a human body,
it would not have sensations as we do, but would simply perceive the motions that
are caused by external objects, and in this way would differ from a real man (AT
3:493). Though this passage may seem to leave open the possibility that the angelic
perception of the motions, as well as the motions themselves, have bodily causes, in
fact Descartes is committed to the conclusion that bodies cannot act on disembodied
minds. His ofcial position in the Principles is that everything in the mind that does
not pertain to it solely as an intellectual thinking thing must be referred to (ad . . .
referri) the close and intimate union of our mind with the body (PP I.48, AT
8-1:23).25 Moreover, he makes clear in the Fifth Replies that the brain cannot in any
way be employed in pure understanding [pure intelligendum], but only in imagining
and sensing (AT 7:358).26 For him, a mind not united to a body could have only
pure intellect, and thus would have no perceptions that derive from the force of the
body to act on the mind.
Despite Descartess claim in the Principles that all of his confused sensations
must be referred to the union, his Sixth Meditation proof of the union emphasizes
only a certain class of such sensations, namely, his internal sensations of states of
his own body. One natural question is why this argument focuses on these sensations
to the exclusion of external sensations of sensible qualities such as colors, sounds,
and tastes.27 As Alison Simmons has shown, the answer is that internal sensations
such as those of pain, hunger, and thirst lead the soul to regard a particular body as
its own.28 Descartess emphasis in the Sixth Meditation passage is on the fact that a
pure intellect that had merely an explicit understanding of the body could not associate itself with the body in the same way. But it seems that even a soul that had
in addition to such an understanding confused external sensations of the sensible

25. The French edition says that such mental elements must be attributed to (atribues
) the union (AT 9-2:45).
26. As Wilson notes, this feature of Descartess dualism distinguishes it from versions of
Cartesian dualism in contemporary discussions that require only that mental states are not
identical to bodily states, and thus allow for the thoroughgoing correlation of such states
(Wilson 1978, 180).
27. For the distinction between internal and external sensation, see PP IV.19098, AT
8-1:31623. In this text internal sensations are lumped together with the passions and distinguished from external sensations, whereas in the later Passions there is a threefold distinction
of perceptions referred to external bodies (external sensations), perceptions referred to our
own body (internal sensations), and perceptions referred to our own soul (passions) (PS
I.2225, AT 11:34548).
28. See Simmons forthcoming.

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qualities of its body could no more become attached to this body than it could to any
other body it perceives by means of such sensations. Thus it is not only the fact that
the internal sensations are confused that reveals the union with a body, but also the
fact that they are confused in a way that produces in the soul a sense that it forms
a unit with that body.
It is important that the teaching of nature is here restricted to our sense that we
form a unit with a body. There is no claim that nature teaches us how it is so united.
The absence of such a claim helps to explain Descartess admission to Elisabeth that
he said almost nothing in his previous writings, including his Meditations, about
our knowledge that our soul is such by nature that being united to a body, it can act
and be acted on by it (AT 3:665). Though we have seen that he was not always clear
on this point, his suggestion in this passage is that he has provided no explanation of
how the mind is able to be united with the body so as to have the states revealed by
his immediate sense experience.29 Such an explanation requires a further analysis of
the kind of forces that underlie the union.
Though the Sixth Meditation proof of the union emphasizes the importance of our
internal sensations, Descartes indicates in his letter to Elisabethin line with his ofcial doctrine in the Principlesthat all sensations and passions derive from the union.
Moreover, he claims in this letter that the primitive notion of the union includes
the notion of the force of the soul to move the body. Yet there is the suggestion in the
Discourse that the volitions that produce bodily motions are not as clearly connected to
the union as the sensory states that the body produces. Descartes writes in this text that
it does not sufce that the [rational] soul is lodged in the human body as a pilot in
a ship, except perhaps in order to move its limbs, but it must be joined and united
to it more closely in order to have, in addition, sensations and appetites similar to
ours, and thus compose a true man. (DM V, AT 6:59; emphasis mine)

As noted below, Descartes insists in his late correspondence with More that God
and angels, as well as human souls, can move bodies (see 4.3.2). Since he extends
the power to move bodies to disembodied minds, Descartes has reason to conclude
that the mere fact that the soul can move its limbs does not clearly reveal that it is
closely joined to the body it moves. And given that he denies that disembodied
minds have the confused sensations that derive from bodily action on the mind, he
has reason to take our experience of such states to reveal the close union of our
soul with our body.
Nevertheless, the volition to move bodies that Descartes posited in the case of
human souls seems to have a feature that distinguishes it from the corresponding
kind of volition in disembodied minds. To see the difference, consider again his view
in the Passions that though it is united to the whole body, the human soul exercises
its functions more particularly in the pineal gland (PS I.31, AT 11:352). To move

29. See also Descartess claim, added to the 1647 French edition of the Meditations, that
his response to Gassendist objections to the possibility of the interaction of human souls with
bodies presuppose an explication of the union of the human soul with the body, with which
I have not yet dealt (AT 9-1:213).

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any part of our body, then, we must act on this gland in a particular manner.30 But it
is no part of Descartess view that this action is brought about by a volition that has
the change in the gland as part of its intentional content. He indicates that we move
our arm by willing this motion, not by willing a change in our pineal gland. In contrast, presumably, a disembodied mind would need to will that a change occur in this
gland to produce that same effect.
The implication in Descartes that human volition need not include its immediate
effect in its intentional content tends to undermine Bernard Williams puzzling argument that Cartesian interactionism is unsatisfactory given that ones control over
ones body could not be understood as internal, localized psychokinesis (Williams
1978, 289). Williams assumption is that Descartess view that we can move our arm
only by acting on our pineal gland commits him to the conclusion that we can produce this internal action directly by a kind of psychokinesis.
However, Williams himself admits that Descartes allowed that there are certain
changes that I cannot produce by directly willing, such as the dilation of my pupils
(290). Why couldnt Descartes hold that changes in the pineal gland are among those
that I cannot produce by directly willing? Indeed, it seems that this is just what
Descartes does hold, and so he is not committed by his account of human volition to
the existence in the case of our voluntary motion of a kind of psychokinesis.31
We have considered the view in Descartes that the union gives rise to sensory
representations of states of our own bodysuch as those present in the cases of our
sensations of pain, hunger, and thirstthat are confused in the sense that they fail to
yield an explicit understanding of the nature of those states. Though he did not
speak in these terms, it seems that he also could say that the union includes volitions
to move our body that are confused in a related sense, since their content does not
reveal the nature of their immediate effects in the brain. These confused volitions
can nonetheless produce their intended effects in virtue of the special nature of the
human body. As Descartes tells Arnauld, although we are conscious of the action by
which our soul brings about a certain change in the brain, the fact that it produces
this change is due to the appropriate way in which the body is constructed, of which
the mind may not be aware (29 July 1648, AT 5:222). And even if we were aware
of this construction through the study of anatomy, we still could not produce the
change in the brain by willing it directly (thus the impossibility in our case of internal psychokinesis). Given that our soul is united to a body, according to Descartes,
the only way in which we can bring about the right sort of change in our brain is by
producing a volition for some effect, such as the motion of our arm, which volition
itself brings about that change due to the nature of the union.

30. As we will discover in 4.3.3, there is some dispute over whether Descartes held that
we act on the gland by moving it or merely by determining its motion.
31. Williams claim that for psychokinesis to be possible it must be possible for mind to
inuence matter separate from it (Williams 1978, 289) suggests that he takes psychokinetic
action to involve action at a distance, or at least action without any sort of immediate presence
of the mind to that on which it acts. As indicated in 4.3.2, however, there is reason to think
that Descartes would deny that any sort of mind-to-body action is psychokinetic in this sense.

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Later occasionalists cite the fact that we often do not know how we produce the
bodily effects we will in support of the conclusion that we do not have the power to
move our body. Thus, Malebranche argues as follows in his 1674/75 Search after
Truth:
For how could we move our arms? To move them, it is necessary to have animal
spirits, to send them through certain nerves toward certain muscles in order to
inate and contract them, for it is thus that the arm attached to them is moved.
And we see that men who do not know that they have spirits, nerves, and muscles
move their arms, and even move them with more skill and ease than those who
know anatomy best. Therefore, men will to move their arms, and only God is able
and knows how to move them. (Bk. VI-2, ch. 3, Malebranche 195884,
2:315/Malebranche 1997, 44950)

Here the insistence that causal power requires knowledge of its exercise is limited to
the case of mind-to-body action. But in True Metaphysics (Metaphysica vera), published posthumously in 1691, the Flemish Cartesian Arnold Geulincx cites as a
general causal principle that it is impossible that one make what one does not know
how to make (impossible ese, ut is faciat, qui nescit quomodo at) (Geulincx
189193, 2:150). It also seems to be in line with Geulincxs position that there must
be, in addition to knowledge of how to make the effect, an efcacious volition to produce what is necessary to bring about that effect. In the case of our action on the
pineal gland, though, we have no such volition. And according to Geulincxs principle, if we cannot have this sort of volition (either because we do not know the means
or because we could not directly will them if we did know them), we cannot produce
the effect.
However, Descartes takes it to be a distinctive feature of human volition that it can
immediately produce an effect in a body that it does not know how to make, or at least
that is not included in its intentional content, due to the fact that the human soul is
united to that body. This union is supposed to confer a special sort of force on this
volition that it would not have apart from the union. It is this sort of force, presumably, that the volition of a disembodied mind would lack. Of course, one could take
Geulincxs principle to show that the human soul cannot possess a force of this kind.
But Descartess comment to Arnauld that our most certain and most evident experience proves that such volitions in fact move our body indicates that he would take
this experience to reveal as well the falsity of Geulincxs principle.
This is not the end of the matter, however, since we still have Elisabeths worry
that an unextended thing does not have what is required to move a body. As I have
emphasized, this worry concerns not just the special sort of volitions involved in the
union, but mind-to-body action as such. If I am correct in thinking that Descartes is
committed to denying that body can produce perceptions in a disembodied mind,
there is no problem for body-to-mind action that extends beyond the union. But there
is still the worry, again from Elisabeth, that something as imperfect as body could
not have an effect on any mind capable of rational thought. To reinforce the purported dictate of experience that the human soul interacts with its body in a special
manner, Descartes needs to address these different problems concerning body-tomind and mind-to-body action.

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4.2. BODY-TO-MIND ACTION


I have noted the claim of Descartess critics that his troubles with mindbody interaction derive from a heterogeneity problem that applies equally to the cases of bodyto-mind and mind-to-body action. In contrast, I start here with a problem with
interaction in the work of the scholastics, and more specically the writings of
Aquinas and Surez, that pertains exclusively to the case of body-to-mind action.
Then I turn to the version of this scholastic problem in Descartess account of the
causation of sensation. Here I emphasize his startling claim in a late text that motions
in the brain merely give occasion to the mind to form its own sensory ideas by
means of a faculty innate to it. In contrast to commentators who see this passage as
deriving from a recognition in Descartes of the impossibility of the action of body
on mind, however, I argue that Descartes attempts to retain the view that body is
some (albeit special) sort of efcient cause of sensation. In so doing, I set myself
apart not only from occasionalist readings of Descartess account of body-to-mind
action, but also from Steven Nadlers recent claim that he posited an occasional
causation distinct in kind from efcient causation. Whereas Nadler sees Descartes
as denying that occasional causation derives from any real power in the occasional
cause, I nd in the Cartesian texts the suggestion that the occasional connection
between motions and sensations is grounded in divinely instituted natures. The fact
that I nd such a suggestion in Descartes explains my resistance to the view in the
literature that he took mindbody interaction to involve brute psychophysical laws
that lie outside the scope of natural philosophy. On my reading, then, Descartes does
not in the end entirely reject the scholastic understanding of psychology as a science
of the soul.

4.2.1. The Scholastic Problem


In a discussion of Descartess views on the action of body on mind in sensation,
Marleen Rozemond has drawn attention to the importance of a scholastic problem
with interaction that I wish to emphasize here.32 As Rozemond indicates, this problem pertains not to the case of sensation as such, but rather to the relation of sensation to intellectual acts. To be sure, in his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas broached
a possible problem for the conclusion that the body acts on the mind in sensation when he noted the view, which he attributed to Plato, that the soul is somehow excited so as to form sensible species in itself. He further noted, cautiously,
that Augustine seems to touch on the opinion of Plato, citing his claim that the
body does not feel, but the soul through the body, which it uses as a kind of messenger to form [ad formandum] in itself what is announced from without (ST
I.84.6).33 However, Thomas countered with the Aristotelian position that sensation
is a passive feature of the soul-body composite, rather than an activity of the human
soul. Since the sensible object actually possesses the sensory form that the bodily

32. Rozemond 1999; cf. Rozemond 1998, 17879.


33. This passage, cited in ST I.84.6, is from Augustines De Genesi ad litteram, pt. XII, ch. 24.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

senses possess only potentially, this object is able to actualize this form when it acts
on the senses.34
This is not the end of the story, however, insofar as Aquinas also endorsed the
argument, which he took to be common to Plato and Aristotle, that since the intellect has an operation more perfect than anything found in a body, and thus is more
noble than body, nothing bodily can act on it (ST I.84.6).35 Bodily operations can
produce sensible species in the sense organs, and these species can lead to the production of phantasms in the imagination. But on their own, those phantasms cannot
produce corresponding intelligible species in the intellect. The problem here, as
Aquinas expressed it, is that in order to cause an intellectual operation, according
to Aristotle, an impression of sensible bodies is not enough, but something more
noble is required, because what acts is more noble than what is passive, as he himself says (ST I.84.6). In opposition to the view in Plato that these more noble elements are the separate intelligible Forms that illumine the intellect, Aquinas posited
an agent intellect, a power of the intellect to impress intelligible species in itself
(ST I.79.3). Because the activity of the agent intellect is required to produce the intelligible species, it cannot be said that sensible knowledge is the total and perfect
cause of intellectual knowledge (ST I.84.6).
Even so, Aquinas insisted that intellectual knowledge must be caused by the
senses, and thus that the phantasms must be at least in a way the matter of the cause
(ST I.84.6). This requirement derives from Aquinass commitment to the position that
human intellectual knowledge, as opposed to the knowledge of separate intellects
such an angels, depends essentially on sensory operations. In particular, this dependence is reected in the fact that the agent intellect can produce species only by a
process of abstracting intelligible content from phantasms. Phantasms are thus the
matter of the cause in the sense that they provide the material for abstraction. As he
expressed the point in Questions on Truth (Qustiones de Veritate), a phantasm is an
instrumental and secondary agent (agens instrumentale et secundarium) that provides a model for the production of intelligible species by the agent intellect as principal and primary agent (agens principale et primum) (QT X.6, ad 7, TA 14:554).
In effect, then, Aquinas was trying to nd a middle way between the position that
phantasms are total causes of intelligible species and the view that they play no
causal role in the formation of these species. This was only one of a number of
accounts of intellectual cognition offered in the later medieval period, which ranged
from the Platonist view of James of Viterbo, on which phantasms merely trigger the
34. There is a debate in a series of articles in Philosophical Review over whether Aquinas
took the reception of the sensible species to be merely a physical event, or whether it
involves in addition some spiritual change; see Cohen 1982, which defends the former position; Haldane 1983, which defends the latter position; and Hoffman 1990, which attempts to
split the difference.
35. In ST I.75.2, Thomas argued that intellectual cognition cannot be an operation of a
bodily organ, since such cognition has universal scope whereas the bodily operations have a
more determinate nature. This line of argument is strikingly similar to Descartess argument
in the Discourse, mentioned in 4.1.1, that since the reason involved in language use is a universal instrument, it cannot be explained in terms of the limited dispositions of bodily organs.

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production of inborn intelligible species, to the nominalist view of Durandus, on


which phantasms produce intellectual cognition directly, without the mediation of
agent intellect or intelligible species.36 However, Thomass inuence seems to be
reected in the position of our main scholastic, Surez, that a phantasm instrumentally attains to the production of an intelligible species (MD XVII.2, 11, 1:586).
Since this text denes an instrumental cause as an efcient cause that concurs in or
is elevated to the effecting of something more noble than itself (17, 1:590), the
suggestion here, as in Aquinas, is that the phantasm is a real though subordinate efcient cause of the species.
However, Rozemond draws attention to the much less causally robust role that
Surez attributed to the phantasm in his commentary on De Anima.37 In this text, he
did allow that the phantasm concurs in some mode in the production of the [intelligible] species (DA IV.2, 4, Opera 3:716*). Yet Surez also emphasized therein
direct opposition to the views of Thomas and the Thomists38that since the phantasm is corporeal, and thus cannot act on something spiritual, it concurs not effectively [effective] but materially to the production of the species, and the agent intellect
alone effects it (10, Opera 3:719*). Earlier in this text Surez had described the
phantasm as only a prerequisite, or as the exciting occasion [occasio excitans], or as
exemplar, or at most, as instrument elevated by the spiritual light of the same soul
(DA I.11, 21, Opera 3:550*). This passage does leave open the possibility of describing the phantasm as an instrument for the production of the species. Yet the more
dominant suggestion there is that it is an exciting occasion that serves merely as a
prerequisite for the efcient causal activity of the agent intellect.39
Interestingly, Surez distanced himself from Thomas even when purporting to be
hewing to the Thomistic line. Thus, after citing with approval Thomass denial that
the phantasm is a total and perfect cause of intellectual cognition, Surez noted his
own view that the phantasm is related to the intelligible species as the inner senses
are related to the appetitive power. Yet earlier he had claimed that apprehension is

36. On Viterbo, see Spruit 199495, 1:23840; on Durandus, see Spruit 199495, 1:28183.
37. See the discussion in Rozemond 1999, 44044; cf. Spruit 199495, 2:301305.
Neither Rozemond nor Spruit notes the apparent tension between the views in De Anima and
the Metaphysical Disputations. Though De Anima was rst published in 1622, twenty-ve
years after the Disputations, it is based on work that predates the later text. It may be, then,
that Surezs thought shifted toward a more Thomistic position. Or it might be that the view
in the Disputations is less in line with such a position than it initially appears to be, and thus
that Surezs thinking on this issue was more consistently anti-Thomistic than I have allowed.
Thanks to James South for discussion of this issue.
38. See, for instance, his critique of the view of Cajetan and the Thomistae that phantasms are united with the agent intellect as an instrument with its principal agent (DA IV.2,
6-7, Opera, 71718*), and his critique of the view in Thomas that the phantasm must serve
as some sort of efcient cause of the species (DA IV.2, 13, Opera 3:720*). For discussion of
various later Thomistic developments of Thomass account of the relation of the phantasm to
intelligible species, see Spruit 199495, 1:36085, and 2:11128, 27493.
39. For a comparison of the uses of occasionalist terminology in the work of Descartes
and various scholastic authors, see Specht 1966, chs. 13, as well as Specht 1971 and 1972.

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required, not as an efcient cause, but as an application to the object (DA V.3, 8,
Opera 3:760*).40 Moreover, just prior to the citation of the passage from Thomas,
Surez insisted that the contribution of the phantasm to intellectual cognition does
not occur by way of any inux of the phantasm itself, but by providing the matter
and as it were an exemplar to the agent intellect in virtue of the union that they both
have in the same soul (DA IV.2, 12, Opera 3:719*). But Surezs ofcial view is
that causation is nothing other than that inux, or concursus by which each cause
in its kind actually ows being into the effect (MD XII.2, 13, 1:387*). Given his
denial of any inux of the phantasm in the production of the intelligible species,
Surez is committed to the conclusion, not to be found in Thomas, that the phantasm
plays no efcient causal role in this production.41
Though Aquinas and Surez agreed that the phantasm cannot be the total efcient
cause of intelligible species, then, they offered different accounts of the manner in
which it is related to the intellect. For Thomas, the phantasm is still a true efcient
cause, albeit a secondary and instrumental one, that determines the content of the
intelligible species. At least in De Anima, however, Surez gave the impression that
the phantasm is a noncausal occasion for the production of the species and that the
agent intellect is their sole secondary efcient cause.
The scholastic problem of the relation of the phantasm of the soul-body composite to intellectual cognition does not arise for Descartes. He replaces the phantasm
with two distinct grades of sensation, the rst of which consists in nothing but the
motion of the particles of the [sense] organs, and any change of shape and position
resulting from this motion, and the second of which consists in all the immediate
effects produced in the mind as a result of its being united with a bodily organ that
is affected in this way (Sixth Replies, AT 7:437). Nonetheless, the scholastic problem is similar to a problem that arises for Descartess account of the immediate
effects of the union. For just as Aquinas and Surez had to explain how changes in
an incorporeal intellect are related to a corporeal phantasm, so Descartes has to
explain how sensory modes of an immaterial mind can result from bodily motions.
Moreover, we will discover presently that Descartes speaks at times of motions as
giving occasion to the mind to form sensory ideas, thus recalling Surezs talk of
phantasms as the exciting occasion for the production of intelligible species by the
agent intellect.
The link to the scholastic problem is reinforced by the fact that Descartess containment axiom seems to create difculties for body-to-mind action that do not apply
to the case of mind-to-body action. The Platonic axiom in Thomas and Surez that
the less perfect cannot act on the more perfect precludes only the action of body on
intellect, not the action of intellect on body. Similarly, Descartess requirement that
the total or adequate cause must contain its effects formally or eminently
applies asymmetrically to the cases of mind and body. As I noted in chapter 2,

40. Surez cites Aquinass account in ST I.82.4 of how the intellect moves the will, though
there is no indication in the cited text that the apprehension of an object cannot serve as an
efcient cause of an appetite.
41. For this point about Surez, I am indebted to the discussion in Rozemond 1999, 44044.

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Descartess account of eminent containment allows for minds to so contain bodily


effects, but not for bodies to so contain mental effects (see 2.1.3 (ii)). Thus, total
bodily causes must formally contain their mental effects. I also suggested in this
chapter that there is a sense in which bodily causes could formally contain the
objective reality of sensory ideas. However, it seems that they cannot so contain
everything in sensations, and in particular not those features of the sensations that do
not resemble what is in bodies (see 2.1.3 (i)). So just as the scholastics had to confront the question of how intellectual aspects of the intelligible species that go
beyond the corporeal can derive from the phantasm, so Descartes has to confront the
question of how mental aspects of sensations that go beyond what can be found in
bodies can nonetheless result from motions in the brain. But though Descartess use
of occasionalist terminology may seem to indicate an afnity to Surezs more radical views, I hope to show that he is in fact closer to Aquinas in attempting to make
room for a genuine causal role for body in sensation.

4.2.2. Sensation in the Comments


Perhaps Descartess most provocative remarks on the causation of sensation are
found in his 1648 Comments on a Certain Broadsheet (Notae in Programma quoddam). The broadsheet in question is that of Henricus Regius (15981679), once
the primary exponent of the new Cartesian philosophy at the University of Utrecht.
Though Descartes had previously befriended Regius, their relationship took a turn
for the worse with the publication in 1646 of Regiuss Fundamenta physices.42
Descartes complained in the preface to the French edition of the Principles that in
the Fundamenta his former disciple erred in denying certain truths of metaphysics
on which the whole of physics must be based (AT 9-2, 20). Regius responded in
1647 by publishing anonymously a pamphlet, entitled An account of the human
mind, or rational soul, where it is explained what it is, and what it can be, in which
he outlined his position on the nature and knowledge of mind and body. The
Comments is Descartess point-by-point response to the twenty-one theses offered in
this pamphlet.43
Regius declared in the twelfth thesis of his pamphlet that the mind is devoid of
ideas, or notions, or axioms that are innate, and he concluded in the thirteenth that
all common notions that are engraved in the mind have their origin in observation

42. Regius held a chair in medicine at the University of Utrecht. Descartes had defended
Regius when Gisbertius Voetius, the rector of the university, attempted to remove him from
his chair on the grounds that his views were heretical. In an open letter to Voetius, published
in 1643, Descartes said that he was so condent of Regiuss intelligence that any view of
Regius could be attributed to him (AT 8-2:163). This contrasts sharply with the charge of plagiarism, and inaccurate plagiarism at that, in the preface to the Principles (AT 9-2:19), in a
1646 letter to Mersenne (AT 4:50811), and in the Comments (AT 8-2:365). For more on the
exchange between Regius and Descartes, see Verbeek 1993.
43. In this work, Descartes responded also to some of the objections to his system provided in Consideratio theologica, a pamphlet published by a theologian at Utrecht, Jacobus
Revius, whose critique of Descartes is discussed in 3.1.3, at note 37.

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of things or in verbal instruction (AT 8-2:345). In response, Descartes takes exception, in particular, to the purported suggestion in Regius that the faculty of thought
is not able to accomplish anything by itself, could never perceive or think anything
except what it receives [accipit] from observation or tradition, that is, from the
senses. He adds that
whoever correctly considers how far our senses extend, and what it is precisely that
is able to come [pervenire] to our faculty of thought from them, must admit that in
no case do they exhibit to us ideas of things, just as we form them in thought. So
much so that nothing is in our ideas which is not innate to the mind, or to the
faculty of thinking [nihil sit in nostris ideis, quod menti, sive cogitandi facultati,
non fuerit innatum], except only those circumstances that pertain to experience:
such as that we judge that these or those ideas, which we now have present to our
thought, are referred to certain things placed outside us. (AT 8-2:359)

The material for judgments relating to experience does not consist of ideas that the
sense organs transmit to our mind through the sense organs (nostrae menti per
organa sensuum immiserunt). Rather, these organs transmit something that gives
occasion to itself [i.e., the mind] to form [the ideas], at this time rather than another,
by means of a faculty innate to it (aliquid immiserunt, quod dedit occasionem ad
ipsas, per innatum sibi facultatem, hoc tempore potius quam alio, efformandas).
Descartes explains that nothing approaches [accedit] our mind from external objects
through the sense organs, except certain motions. Citing the discussion in the 1637
Dioptrics, he asserts that the gures arising from bodily motions are not conceived
by us just as they are in the sense organs, and concludes from this fact that
the ideas of motions and gures themselves are innate to us. And so much the
more must the ideas of pain, colours, sounds and the like be innate, so that our
mind is able, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions [occasione quorundam
motuum corporeorum], to exhibit them to itself; for they have no likeness
[simultudinem] to corporeal motions. (AT 8-2:359)

Before considering the precise import of the claim that bodily motions merely
give occasion for an innate mental faculty to form sensory ideas, we need to confront the objection that such a claim is inconsistent not only with Descartess views
elsewhere, but also with other remarks in the Comments itself. Let us start with the
charge of an inconsistency internal to the Comments. In response to Regiuss twelfth
article, Descartes endorses the distinction in the Third Meditation of adventitious,
factitious, and innate ideas (AT 8-2:358; cf. AT 7:5758). The implication here
seems to be that adventitious sensory ideas are distinct from innate ideas. But how,
then, could Descartes say in the very next paragraph that sensory ideas are innate?44
We can easily dispel this tension by appealing to the suggestion in Descartes that
sensory and intellectual ideas are innate in different ways. The production of innate
sensory ideas follows immediately on the transmission of motions to the mind. In

44. This same problem applies to the claim, attributed to Descartes in the Conversation
with Burman, that the author of the Comments says not that all ideas are innate in him, but
that some are also adventitious (AT 5:165).

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contrast, Descartes indicates in the Comments that the formation of innate intellectual ideas, such as the idea of God, is much less tightly linked to the motions
involved in sense experience. In particular, he claims there that the motion that gives
rise to verbal instruction or the observation of things is a remote and merely accidental cause that induces us to give some attention to the idea that we can have of
God. In this respect the motion is similar to the orders for certain work, which
merely give occasion to the workers to produce the work as its proximate and
efcient cause (AT 8-2:360). Not only are the orders remote in the sense of being
temporally prior to the actual production of the work; they also are accidental in the
sense that the workers might have produced the work without the orders. But
motions are neither remote from nor accidental to the production of sensory ideas in
this way. They are not remote, since the ideas are formed at the exact moment that
the motions approach the mind, and they are not accidental, since, it seems, the
presence of the motions is required to prompt the activity of the innate sensory faculty. The Comments thus includes the suggestion that though sensory ideas are
innate in the sense that they derive from an innate mental faculty, still they are adventitious insofar as they possess a tight connection to bodily motions that is missing in
the case of innate intellectual ideas.45
More recalcitrant, however, is the impression that the account of sensation in the
Comments is in tension with the Sixth Meditation argument for the existence of the
material world. Recall from a previous discussion the conclusion in the latter text
that bodies possess an active faculty that is the cause of the objective reality of sensory ideas (see 2.1.1). Descartes also notes there that God would be a deceiver if
these ideas were emitted [emitterentur] by something other than corporeal things
(AT 7:80). The language here, as well as in other texts,46 seems to indicate that sensory ideas are not formed by an innate mental faculty, as in the Comments, but rather
are emitted from the bodies that formally contain what they produce objectively in
the ideas.
It would not do here to dismiss the view in the Comments as aberrant, since
Descartes offers a similar position elsewhere, most notably in a 1641 letter to
Mersenne in which he wrote that all ideas that involve no afrmation or negation
are innate in us; for the sense organs do not bring [rapportent] us anything that is

45. Cf. the response to this problem of consistency in Schmaltz 1997, 40, which does not
emphasize the point that occasioning causes are remote and accidental only in the case of
innate intellectual ideas. Nadler takes Descartes to have held in the Comments that occasional
causes in general are remote and accidental causes distinct from the proximate and efcient
cause of their effects (Nadler 1994, 48). Although I suggested a similar position in Schmaltz
1992b, I now read the Comments as indicating that the motions that occasion sensory ideas
are not merely remote and accidental. See 4.2.3 for further reservations concerning the
account of occasional causation that Nadler attributes to Descartes.
46. See, for instance, the claim in the Principles that whatever we sense undoubtedly
comes [advenit] to us from something that is distinct from our mind (PP II.1, AT 8-1:40),
and the claim in the Passions that various perceptions, including sensations, are passions
because it is often not our soul that makes them such as they are, and the soul always receives
[reoit] them from things that are represented by them (PP I.17, AT 11:342).

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such as the idea that arises in us [se reveille en nous] on their occasion, and thus this
idea must have been in us previously (22 July 1641, AT 3:418).47 So we do need to
confront the apparent conict between the accounts of the causation of sensation in
the Sixth Meditation and the Comments. One way to lessen the conict would be to
emphasize that the discussion in the Sixth Meditation concerns the manner in which
bodies external to us cause sensory ideas in us, whereas the Comments is concerned
with the manner in which motions internal to our brain give rise to these ideas. The
active faculty in bodies could produce sensory ideas in us by producing those
motions in our brain that trigger the operation of our innate sensory faculty. In this
sense, sensory ideas could still derive from the active faculty of an external body
without arising solely from motions in the brain. Indeed, in the version of the proof
of the existence of the material world in the French edition of the Principles,
Descartes speaks of the idea formed in us on the occasion of bodies from without
(lide se form en nous loccasion des corps de dehors) (PP II.1, AT 9-2:64). Yet
he claimed in this same article that everything we sense comes [vient] from something other than our thought and that our sensation depends on that thing that
affects [touche] our senses (AT 9-2:63).48 The indication here is that the claim
that motions in the brain give occasion for the production of sensory ideas is consistent with the claim that such ideas come from external objects insofar as they
depend on such objects for their production.49
Even so, the passage from the Comments does say that with the exception of judgments pertaining to experience, there is nothing in our ideas that was not innate to
the mind or the faculty of thinking (AT 8-2:358; my emphasis). Given this claim,
there seems to be no room for anything in the sensations to come from external
bodies.50 I indicate presently that Descartes seems to have been most concerned here
to deny that the mind literally sees anything in the brain. Yet it is also signicant that
he continued to claim in this text that brain motions transmit something to the
mind that triggers the formation of sensory ideas by the innate mental faculty (AT
8-2:359). Even here, then, he wanted to allow that the body makes some sort of contribution to what is produced in the mind in sense experience.51

47. As I indicate presently, Descartess position in the Comments is related to the view in
his earlier writings that the relation between motions and sensations can be understood in
terms of the relation between signs and what they signify.
48. This additional claim supports Scotts rejection of Garbers tentative suggestion that
the French edition of the Principles indicates a shift in Descartess thought away from the
position that bodies cause sensations; cf. Garber 1993, 22, and Scott 2000, 50810.
49. Cf. the defense of the consistency of the accounts of sensation in the Sixth Meditation
and the Comments in Schmaltz 1997, 4144.
50. Thanks to Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra for this objection.
51. For the point that Descartes allowed in the Comments for some sort of causal transmission from bodily motions to mind in sensory experience, see Scott 2000, 51620. Scott is particularly concerned to counter Nadlers account of occasional causation in Descartes. In contrast
to the view I offer against Nadler in 4.2.3, however, Scott claims that transmission is to be contrasted with efcacious or productive agency and that it occurs at a pre-efciency stage

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But what sort of contribution, exactly? My suggestion above, based on the remarks
in the Sixth Meditation, was that bodies contribute the objective reality of the sensory
ideas, that is, the bodily features the ideas represent insofar as these features are contained objectively in the mind (see 2.1.3 (i)). To be sure, Descartes does not refer in
the Comments passage to the objective reality of sensory ideas. However, I take his
strange talk in this text of brain motions approaching or being transmitted to the
mind to reect his earlier view that bodies send or emit the features that are contained
objectively in our sensory ideas. Even if the ideas do not resemble the motions in our
brain that external bodies cause, and even if there is nothing that is literally transferred
into the mind from the motions, still these motions bring it about (albeit with the assistance of the activity of an innate mental faculty) that the mind has sensory ideas that
direct it to certain bodily features rather than others. What the motions contribute, then,
is the link between the ideas and the features of bodies that these ideas represent.
Admittedly, the claim in the Comments that sensory ideas are formed by an innate
mental faculty seems to add something to the more spare account of the causation of
sensation in the Sixth Meditation. Indeed, I think that the Comments in fact reects
some sort of development in Descartess view of how bodily motions bring about
sensory ideas.52 So the question I need to address is why Descartes is concerned in
this text to distance himself from the view encouraged by some of his own remarks
that bodies serve as the total efcient cause of sensory ideas.
In addressing this question, Janet Broughton proposes that it was Descartess
commitment to the containment axiom that led him away from the view that bodies
serve as such causes. More than this, her view is that this axiom led him to the conclusion, which she nds in the Comments, that the mind alone causes sensations.
Broughton reconstructs Descartess argument in this text as follows:
[T]he formal containment principle [i.e., the containment axiom as it concerns
cases where eminent containment is ruled out] applied to brain movements as the
cause of sensation yields this requirement: Brain movements must contain exactly
what is in the objects of sensation. Thus Descartes has shown in the [Comments]
passage that a necessary condition for causation, as well as origination, has not
been met. By showing that sensations do not originate from brain movements,
Descartes has also shown that they are not caused by brain movements.
. . . The formal containment principle plus the [Comments] argument entail a
denial that brain movements cause sensations. (Broughton 1986, 11819)53

immediately prior to the actual production of ideas by the mind (Scott 2000, 520). For yet
another interpretation of the Comments passage, on which Descartes held that the motions
serve as causal triggers but do not produce the content of sensory ideas, see Rozemond 1999,
45662.
52. See Wilsons claim that her proposed reconciliations of Descartess various remarks
on the causation of sensation do not fully accommodate Descartess actual statements and
do not at all resolve the problem about how the mind if truly passive in sensation, can help
to bring about sensory ideas (Wilson 1999b, 52). In moving closer to this claim, I am here
moving away from the more rmly reconciliationist position in Schmaltz 1997.
53. See the similar reading of the argument in the Comments in Secada 2000, 1037, and
Gorham 2002.

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There are two immediate questions that Broughtons reconstruction of the argument raises: (1) Does Descartess containment axiom plus his argument in the
Comments commit him to the denial that motions in the brain cause sensations?; and
(2) is there even an implicit appeal in the Comments to the containment axiom?
First question rst. We can understand this question in terms of our discussion in
4.2.1 of the scholastic problem of the connection between phantasms and intelligible species. We have seen that though Thomas indicated that the phantasm can be a
secondary and instrumental cause of the species, Surez used occasionalist terminology in a manner that indicated that (apart from the divine concursus, of course)
the agent intellect is the sole efcient cause of the species. What we need to ask is
whether Descartess claim in the Comments that brain motions merely serve as the
occasion for the formation of sensory ideas reveals that such motions are similar to
Surezian phantasms in lacking any sort of efcient causality, or whether such a
claim allows for something akin to the derivative causality of Thomistic phantasms.
I noted earlier the suggestion in Descartes that there can be efcient causes that are
not total or adequate causes, and so are not fully subject to the containment axiom (see
2.1.2). In light of this suggestion, one could argue on Descartess behalf that though
brain motions do not formally contain everything that comes about in the mind, they
are still partial efcient causes of sensory ideas. Perhaps the total and efcient cause
in this case is the combination of the motions and the innate mental faculty.
An initial worry, however, is that Descartess account of the activity of the innate
mental faculty conicts with his containment axiom. In particular, the concern is that
the mental faculty responsible for forming sensory ideas can contain neither formally nor eminently those features of sensory ideas not contained formally in brain
motions. For Descartes indicates in the Comments that prior to their formation intellectual ideas exist merely potentially in the faculty that forms them (AT 8-2:361),
and he presumably thinks that prior to their formation sensory ideas exist in the same
way in the innate sensory faculty in the mind. So if formal containment requires the
actual presence of what is formally contained, sensory ideas cannot be formally contained in the faculty that forms them. But on the account of eminent containment that
I have attributed to Descartes (see 2.1.3 (ii)), they cannot be eminently contained in
that faculty either, since they are not features of objects lower on the ontological
scale than minds.
One option would be for Descartes to allow for a weaker sort of formal containment than actual possession. Even if those features of sensory ideas that derive from
the innate mental faculty are not actually present prior to their formation by the
mind, the reality of those features could be contained in the reality of the innate mental faculty that forms them. It might seem that Descartes precludes this option when
he insists in the Third Meditation that the objective being of [an] idea can be produced not only by potential being [esse potentiali], which strictly speaking is nothing, but only by actual or formal [actuali sive formali] (AT 7:47). Given the claim
here, it may appear as if the reality of sensory ideas as present potentially in the
innate mental faculty could not play a role in the causation of the ideas themselves.54

54. Thanks to Dan Kaufman for this objection.

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In this particular passage, however, what is strictly speaking nothing are divine
perfections that cannot be contained in a nite mind. What worries Descartes is that
there would be certain features of the reality contained in the idea of God that would
have no foundation in the reality of its cause. But it does seem that the reality of the
sensory ideas that the mind has a faculty to form does have a foundation in an actual
being, namely, in that very faculty. If so, then the mind could be said to formally contain the reality of those features of its sensory ideas that do not derive from motions
in the brain.55 The total and efcient cause of these ideas, consisting of motions in
the brain and the innate mental faculty, could be said to formally contain all of the
effect produced, and thus the containment axiom would be satised.
One might well protest at this point that the innate mental faculty all by itself
could be the total cause of sensory ideas, in just the way that Surezs agent intellect
is said (in his commentary on De Amina, at least) to be the total (secondary) efcient
cause of intelligible species. What reason would Descartes have to resist the positionin line with one of Surezs views of the role of phantasms in the production
of intelligible speciesthat brain motions merely occasion rather than genuinely
cause the formation of sensory ideas? One motivation for resistance emerges from
the alternative in Surez to a causal explanation of the link between the presence of
the phantasm and the formation of the intelligible species. In De Anima, Surez
appealed to the fact that the phantasm and the intellect of a human being are rooted
in one and the same soul, and thereby have a wonderful ordering and harmony
[mirum ordinem et consonantiam] in their operation (DA IV.2, 12, Opera 3:719).
Thus instead of invoking God as the direct cause of the harmony of operation, in a
manner out of line with his anti-occasionalist sensibilities, Surez held that the coordination of phantasm and intelligible species derives from the fact that the same soul
is the efcient cause of both.56
An analogous explanation of the coordination of brain motions and sensory ideas
is not open to Descartes. For unlike Surez, he cannot say that it is the same soul that
underlies the formation both of the motions and of the ideas. His dualism requires
that he attribute the rst two grades of sensation to radically different substances. To
be sure, he does claim, in the passage from the Sixth Replies cited in 4.2.1, that sensations are a result of the minds being united with a bodily organ. As indicated
in 4.1.2, though, Descartes cannot take this union to involve the formation of a single substance that encompasses both the motions in this organ and the sensations
in the mind. There remains the occasionalist option that God directly brings it about
that the motions are coupled with the sensations. Signicantly enough, however, there

55. In contrast, Surez claimed that in all cases of immanent action, the cause that produces the effect is an equivocal one, and thus only eminently contains the effect; see MD
XVIII.9, 10, 1:671.
56. Similarly, Surez held that though a cognition of an object by means of external or
internal senses cannot be an efcient cause of the act of appetite that constitutes the desire for
that object, the sympathy between cognition and desire can be explained by the fact that the
relevant faculties all are rooted in the same soul (DA III.9, 10, Opera 3:649*; V.3, 6, Opera
3:759*). I am indebted here to the discussion of Surezs position in Rozemond 1999, 441.

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is no appeal to God in the Comments.57 What Descartes claims there is rather that a
mental faculty forms the ideas at the same time that certain motions approach the
mind. One way of reading this claim, which is left open by his containment axiom, is
that the approaching motions and the mental faculty work together as partial efcient
causes of the same sensory effects.
But is there even an implicit appeal to this axiom in the Comments? This was the
second question we asked of Broughtons analysis of the Comments. To answer this
question, it is important to follow up on the reference in this text to the account of
sensation Descartes explicated at length in Dioptrics. In this earlier text, appended
to the 1637 Discourse, he argues that we do not perceive an object by viewing pictures of it in the brain, as if there are other eyes in our brain with which we could
perceive it (AT 6:130). The concern here therefore is to argue that the mind does
not come to have the perception by viewing pictures composed of motions in the
brain.
The argument in the Dioptrics is in fact linked not to considerations involving
the containment axiom, but rather to an account of sensation in even earlier writings,
in which Descartes invokes an analogy to signs. In The World, which he abandoned in 1633, Descartes responds to the claim that sensory ideas must be similar to
the objects from which they proceed by noting that words need not be similar
to what they signify.
Now if words, which signify nothing except by human institution, sufce to make
us conceive of things to which they bear no resemblance, then why could nature
not also have established a certain sign which would make us have the sensation
of light, even if this sign has nothing in itself similar to the sensation? Is it not
thus that nature has instituted laughter and tears to make us read joy and sadness
in the face of men? (W I, AT 11:4)

On the view presented here, bodily images that give rise to sensations are nonresembling signs, rather than perfect images, of external objects. Sensations are linked
to the world by virtue of being linked to bodily signs of objects.
In using the sign analogy, Descartes appears to suggest that the mind is aware of
those bodily motions that are responsible for sensation. After all, the mind is aware
of the laughter and tears by means of which it reads joy and sadness. More generally, signs seem to be able to function as signs in virtue of the fact that they are read
or comprehended. Yet as I have mentioned, Descartes indicates in the Dioptrics that
he does not wish to take the analogy this far when he ridicules the position that one
is aware of something in the brain, as if there were yet other eyes within our brain
with which we could perceive [appercevoir] it. To avoid this implausible position,

57. As admitted in Garber 1993, 2324. However, Garber also sees Descartes as moving
in his later writings away from the view in the Sixth Meditation that bodies are genuine causes
of sensation and toward something closer to what his occasionalist followers held, that God
is the true cause of sensations on the occasion of certain motions in bodies (24). For a
detailed argument against this hypothesis in Garber that I take to be decisive, see Scott 2000,
50415. See also note 48.

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he offers the alternative view that motions in the brain are instituted by nature to
make [the soul] to have such sensations (AT 6:130).58
However, there is another aspect of the sign analogy that Descartes at least sometimes explicitly embraces. This analogy can be seen as implying that the mind is
active in sensation. Just as the mind actively interprets written or spoken signs, so it
responds actively to corporeal motions by forming sensations. Descartes indicates
that mental activity is a consequence of the sign analogy when he states in The World
that it is our mind which represents to us the idea of light each time our eye is
affected by the action which signies it. The fact that the mind is active is linked
with the fact that bodily motions serve as signs. He continues this remark by claiming that because physical processes merely signify sensory ideas, the latter are
formed in our mind on the occasion of our being touched by external bodies (W I,
AT 11:4-6). This view, recorded in a relatively early work, is retained in the
Comments, for in the latter the occasional connection between the presence of certain motions and the formation of sensory ideas, on the one hand, and the possession
by mind of a productive faculty, on the other, are afrmed in the same sentence.
What we have in the Comments, then, is not the recognition of restrictions that
the containment axiom places on body-to-mind action, but rather the development of
an account of sensation present in more primitive form in the Dioptrics and even earlier discussions of sensation. The concern throughout is to provide a replacement for
the view that the mind senses objects by viewing resembling images of them in the
brain. The alternative proposed is that what is present in the brain merely provides a
sign to the mind to form nonresembling ideas of the objects in itself. Moreover, there
is no indication that providing a sign is to be contrasted with causing the mind to
form the ideas. In fact, Descartes speaks in The World of the mind as forming the
idea of light when it is affected by the action that signies it (AT 11:4), just as he
speaks in the Dioptrics of the brain motions being instituted to produce sensations
as acting directly on the soul (AT 6:130). This context of the argument in the
Comments reveals that it is removed not only from considerations involving the containment axiom but also from the conclusion that bodily motions play no causal role
in the formation of sensory ideas.

4.2.3. Occasional Causation and Psychophysical Laws


On my interpretation, the nal position in the Comments is that brain motions are
real efcient causes of sensory ideas, albeit causes supplemented by the activity of
the innate mental faculty. There is the argument, however, that Descartes takes
these motions to be in a class of causes distinct from efcient causes. In particular,
Steven Nadler nds in the Comments the position that by some means other than
efcient causality, the motions induce the innate mental faculty to be the efcient
cause of sensory ideas. More generally, his proposal is that Descartes takes there to

58. Even so, in this same text Descartes suggests the position that the mind sees something
in the body when he claims that we sense the size of an object by comparing our knowledge
of the distance to the size of the images they imprint on the back of the eye (AT 6:140).

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be a class of occasional causes that provide the occasion for something else to be
the efcient cause of an effect. Nadler emphasizes that this sort of occasional causation is to be distinguished from occasionalism. Occasionalism is a species of
occasional causation, on which all causes other than God are occasional causes that
induce God to be an efcient cause of their effects. However, occasional causation
does not require occasionalism. Indeed, on Nadlers view Descartes endorses occasional causation in the Comments but also holds in this text that the innate mental
faculty rather than God is the proximate efcient cause of our sensory ideas (Nadler
1994, 3644).59
Nadler insists that though Descartess occasional causation is distinct from efcient causation, it is still a real causal relation, albeit an inferior or secondary
variety.60 In contrast to the case of efcient causes, the relation of an occasional
cause to its effect is not grounded in some ontically real power in that cause.
However, this relation is not just a Humean relationship of succession, but involves
genuine nomological correlations. In Descartess case, according to Nadler, the laws
are grounded not in the nature of the occasional causes but in Gods will (Nadler
1994, 4243).
Nadler takes the suggestion in the Comments to be that motions in the brain are
able to elicit the efcient causal activity of the innate mental faculty due to the fact
that God, in establishing the union of mind and body, has ordained that . . . particular motions in the body should occasion the mind to produce particular ideas
(Nadler 1994, 50). He cites in this connection Descartess claim in his early work,
the Treatise on Man, that
when God unites a rational soul to this machine . . . he will place its principal seat
in the brain, and will make its nature such that the soul will have different sensations
corresponding to the different ways in which the entrances to the pores in the
internal surface of the brain are opened by means of the nerves. (AT 11:14344)

Though God is invoked as an explanatory principle here, he is supposed to establish


the occasional causal relation between body and mind not by means of his continual
activity, as the occasionalist would have it, but once and for all. Nadlers nal judgment on Descartess account of occasional causation is: Deus ex machina? Yes.
Occasionalism? No (Nadler 1994, 51).
I have noted the admission in Descartes of formal causes and (perhaps, with
respect to rational teleology) nal causes distinct from the efcient causes governed
by the containment axiom (2.1.2 (ii)). Given Nadlers view, we would need to add

59. Cf. the discussion of Descartess various uses of the term occasio in Specht 1966,
4156, and 1972, 1227. Along with Nadler (see Nadler 1994, 40 n. 13), Specht is critical of
the claim in Henri Gouhier that Descartes did not in fact use this term in a philosophically rigorous manner (Gouhier 1926, 8388). However, Specht differs from Nadler in taking
Descartes to adopt the view in late scholasticism that occasional causes are efcient causes
that are accidental, indirect, or assisting causes (see, e.g., Specht 1972, 19).
60. As Nadler notes, however, this claim causes problems for his view that occasionalism
is a species of occasional causation, given that occasionalists have typically been concerned
to deny that occasional causes have any sort of causal efcacy (Nadler 1994, 42, n. 16).

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occasional causes as another sort of nonefcient cause.61 However, I am not persuaded that Descartes takes occasional causes to produce effects by some means
other than efcient causality. Nadler nds in Descartess account of bodybody
interaction the suggestion that in the case of efcient causation, something literally
passes from cause to effect, either because the cause gives up something to the effect
or because it multiplies something of its own to share with the effect (Nadler 1994,
38). But though Descartes does suggest at times what Broughton calls the migration theory of motion, I have argued that his more considered view is that a body
serves as an efcient cause of motion not by transferring its own mode of motion,
but rather by applying its force in a manner that results in the production of a numerically distinct mode of motion (see 3.2.1 (iii)). Thus, the fact that motion cannot literally transfer a sensory idea into the mind does not show that it cannot serve as an
efcient cause of such an idea.
Moreover, there is reason to doubt Nadlers claim that the psychophysical laws
that Descartes posited to explain the formation of sensory ideas are not grounded in
the natures of the objects these laws relate. Indeed, in the passage from the Treatise
on Man that Nadler cites, Descartes appeals to the fact that God made the nature of
the human soul such that it has sensations corresponding to different states of the
body to which it is united. To be sure, it is the nature of the soul that is mentioned
here rather than the nature of the body that acts on it. However, the indication is that
the nature of the soul is such that it is affected in particular ways by the action of
body on it. Likewise, in a 1647 letter Descartes claims that motions can be connected
to thoughts they do not resemble since
our soul is of such a nature that it can be united to a body, it also has this property
that each of its thoughts can be associated with certain motions or other
dispositions of this body so that when the same dispositions recur in the body,
they induce [induisent] the soul to have the same thought. (To Chanut, 1 Feb.
1647, AT 4:604)

This passage has been read (though not by Nadler) as a foreshadowing of a Humean,
constant conjunction, or regularity analysis of causation.62 However, the reference to
the fact that the mind has a nature that explains the connection of its thoughts to
bodily motions and to the fact that these motions induce the thoughts in the mind
indicates that Descartes was thinking of a causal relation grounded in the natures of
the interacting entities. In particular, the human soul has a nature that explains how
motions in the human body can cause it to have various sensations. In light of the

61. Cf. the view in Baker and Morris 1996 that Descartes took occasional causation to
lack the sort of intelligible connection between causes and effects that is present in the case
of efcient causation (see, for instance, 15556). In suggesting that Descartess appeals to
occasional causes lack the sort of rigor present in the case of causal explanations in his
physics, Baker and Morris offer a view that is similar to the interpretation of Descartes in Loeb
and Alanen that I consider presently.
62. This reading is found in Loeb 1981, 137. See the discussion below of Loebs more
recent view of the mindbody relation in Descartes.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

remarks in the Comments, we can take Descartess position to be that the soul has an
innate faculty that forms certain sensory ideas when certain motions in the body to
which that soul is united act on it. Insofar as God connects motions and sensations by
creating human souls and their bodies with particular natures that themselves carry
the causal load, we have some reason to conclude, with respect to Descartess account
of occasional causation: Deus ex machina? No.
In fact, the account of body-to-mind action that I nd in Descartes is similar in
important respects to the conservationist account of bodybody interaction that
I have attributed to him (see 3.3). In particular, I have argued that he takes Gods
ordinary concursus with such interaction to consist in his continued conservation
of the matter in motion that, given certain initial conditions, itself determines subsequent changes in the distribution of motions. Likewise, the suggestion in the
Comments is that God brings about body-to-mind action by creating the human mind
with a faculty that itself responds to the action of certain bodily motions by forming
particular sensory ideas. In the case neither of bodybody interaction nor of bodyto-mind action does God bring about the relevant connections by directly producing
the corresponding states or by instituting the governing laws by means of a separate
law volition. Rather, in both cases he simply creates and conserves objects with
natures that themselves determine the laws that are followed.
It is true that Descartes does not emphasize that the laws connecting motions to
sensations derive from Gods immutability, as he did in the case of the laws governing bodybody interaction. But there is one intriguing passage that appeals to divine
constancy in the case of body-to-mind action. In the Conversation with Burman,
Descartes is reported to have responded to the question of why God allows for sensory deception by claiming that
God fabricated our body as a machine, and willed that it act as a universal
instrument, which always operates in the same manner according to its laws. And
thus when it is well disposed, it gives [dat] to the soul a correct thought; when
poorly [disposed], it nonetheless still affects [afcit] the soul according to its laws,
so that there must result a thought by which it is deceived; for if the body did not
supply [the deceptive thought], it would not act uniformly [aequaliter] and
according to its universal laws, [and] there would be a defect in Gods constancy,
since he would not be permitting [the body] to act uniformly, when there are
uniform laws and modes of acting. (AT 5:16364)

I am reluctant to stake too much on this passage, since it is not from Descartess own
hand. However, the claim here that God makes the human body such that it affects
the soul in accord with its universal laws complements Descartess view elsewhere
that God makes the nature of the soul such that motions in its body regularly induce
it to have certain sensory thoughts. Divine constancy would seem to ensure that
human souls and their bodies retain their same natures, and thus that they continue
to follow the laws that those natures determine.
In contrast to Nadlers claim that Descartes takes the occasional causation
involved in mind-to-body action to derive from laws that are not grounded in ontically real powers in objects, I nd in the texts the suggestion that these laws have a
foundation in the natures that God creates and conserves. The depth of my interpre-

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tive dispute with Nadler is indicated by his remark in a note that the ontological
status of the power of an occasional cause
can be compared to the ontological status of force in Descartess physics: force is
nothing really (i.e., ontically) in bodies . . . , but rather is simply the conformity of
bodies in motion and at rest to certain laws of nature due to the way they are
moved by God (whose will is, in a sense, the real locus of force). Likewise, As
power to occasion e is simply the lawlike correlation between A and e, as
established by God. (Nadler 1994, 43, n.18)

Now I agree with Nadler that the powers of occasional causes can be compared to
the ontological status of force in Descartess physics. But whereas Nadler attributes
to Descartes the view that these powers, like the forces, are nothing real in objects
but are due solely to divinely imposed laws, I take him to offer the position that the
powers, like the forces, derive from natures in objects that reect the relevant laws.
It is true that in contrast to the case of bodybody interaction, Descartes holds that
motions are merely occasional causes of sensory ideas. But this is not because bodies cannot be real efcient causes of ideas. Rather, whereas bodily forces can be
total causes of changes in motions, such forces can bring about the formation of
sensory ideas only due to the distinctive nature of the mind on which they act.
Without the presence of an innate mental faculty that is sensitive to these forces, the
motions would not be able to act on the mind at all. Insofar as this faculty pertains
particularly to the union, this account of the manner in which motions serve as
occasional causes is in line with Descartess remark to Elisabeth that it is only by
means of the primitive notion of the union that we can conceive the force . . . of
the body to act on the soul, in causing its sensations and passions (21 May 1643,
AT 3:665).
In taking the remarks to Elisabeth to indicate that there is an ontological ground
for psychophysical laws, I deviate not only from Nadler but also from commentators
who nd in Descartes the position that these laws are brute facts that, in contrast
to laws governing motion, are incapable of yielding true scientic explanation. For
instance, Louis Loeb claims that in Descartess view, the mindbody union consists
in a set of connections between specic types of brain states and specic types of
thoughts . . . that are not themselves subsumed under more general connections from
which they can be derived (Loeb 2005, 70). He notes the similarity of this claim to
the conclusion in the work of Lilli Alanen that there is in Descartes no room . . . for
a scientic . . . psychology accounting for the laws of our mental life as embodied,
human persons (Alanen 1996, 6).63
Is it so clear, however, that Descartes has no room for a scientic psychology?
After all, in a famous passage from the preface to the French edition of the Principles,

63. Cited in Loeb 2005, 85, n.70. Alanen develops her position further in Alanen 2003.
See also the conclusion in Della Rocca forthcoming that the causes involved in mindbody
interaction do not render their effects intelligible. But cf. Hatelds thesis, closer to my own
view, that Descartes included (at least some functions and states of) mind as part of nature,
[and] despite his dualism he continued an established tradition of treating the operations of the
senses as open to empirical investigation (Hateld 2000, 631).

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he claims that the tree of philosophy that has metaphysics as its roots and physics
as its trunk yields as branches the three principal sciences of medicine, mechanics,
and morals. Moral science in particular is presented as the most important of these
sciences, which presupposes a complete knowledge [connoissance] of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of Wisdom (AT 9-2:14). This highest science of
morals seems to depend on the systematic classication Descartes later offers in the
Passions of the perceptions of the human soul that derive from certain motions in the
body to which it is united. In this same text, he insists that the soul has a nature such
that it receives as many different impressions, that is, it has as many different impressions as there occur different motions in the pineal gland (PS I.34, AT 11:354). It
seems that the psychophysical laws that Descartes invokes are not brute or unsubsumed, but rather are to be explained in terms of the special nature of the human soul.
We know from the Comments that this nature consists in part in the presence of an
innate mental faculty for forming sensory ideas.64
There is admittedly the troubling appeal to ends in Descartess account of the
union. Here we would seem to have an important difference from his nonteleological physics.65 Even so, an appeal to ends need not preclude an investigation of the
various efcient causes responsible for the fact that human beings have the various
states that serve the natural end of the preservation of the union. In particular, the
ends could be hardwired into the innate mental faculty responsible for the formation of sensory ideas. The nature of this faculty could be such that it forms just those
sensory ideas that serve this end when the appropriate motions in the brain act on the
human soul.66 Even given this view, both the motions and the faculty remain efcient
causes that jointly explain the presence of the sensory connections governed by psychophysical laws. For Descartes, of course, God must be in the background here, for
it is he who must create and conserve human souls and their bodies with the natures
that make such connections possible. Even so, it is important to emphasize that he
took God to be in the background, and that he related psychophysical laws most
immediately to the conserved natures.

64. Loeb objects to the related proposal in Rozemond that Descartes can explain sensation
in terms of innate causal capacities in the mind on the grounds that investing the mind with
a plethora of ne-grained causal capacities does not secure an explanation of the specic connections in terms of the minds essence (Loeb 2005, 85, n.64, citing Rozemond 1999,
45556, 46465). But even if there is no explanation here in terms of minds essence as a
purely intellectual substance, there does seem to be an explanation in terms of the innate mental faculty responsible for the formation of sensory ideas.
65. See Loebs claim that Descartess appeals to teleology in his explanation of the union
reveal that he exempted his account of the mind and its relationship to the body not only from
mechanism, but also from the sorts of explanatory requirements he himself regards as proper
to physical science. Just prior to making this claim, however, Loeb admits that this feature of
Descartess thought conicts with the fact that he aspired to a scientic treatment of a wide
range of broadly mental phenomena (Loeb 2005, 79).
66. Cf. the argument in Simmons 2001 that Descartess appeal to the ends of the union is
consistent with his restriction of causal explanations of the states of the human being to efcient causes.

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4.3. MIND-TO-BODY ACTION


Just as we have had to overcome a xation on the heterogeneity problem to understand Descartess struggles with body-to-mind action, so we will need to look beyond
this problem to discern the issues he was concerned to address with respect to action
in the other direction, namely, mind-to-body action. Our consideration of Descartess
account of body-to-mind action started with a scholastic problem concerning interaction that pertains exclusively to this sort of action. The treatment here of his account
of mind-to-body action will start with a different scholastic problem concerning interaction that derives from the Aristotelian prohibition of action at a distance. For many
scholastics, this prohibition precluded the possibility of any action of spirits on bodies that does not involve their spatial presence to those bodies.
This scholastic position provides the proper context for Descartess two main
attempts to defend his position that an immaterial substance can act on an extended
thing. The rst involves his claim in the Sixth Replies and the 1643 correspondence
with Elisabeth, among other places, that we can understand this action in terms of the
action of the scholastic quality of weight or heaviness. The second involves the claim
in the Elisabeth correspondence as well as in his later correspondence with More that
we can understand an immaterial substance that acts on a body to have a special sort
of extension, which he calls in the More correspondence an extension of power. In
both cases, I take the claims to indicatein line with a traditional scholastic view
that minds are indeed spatially present to the bodies on which they act.
However, Descartess discussion of mind-to-body action broaches issues that go
beyond not only the heterogeneity problem, but also scholastic accounts of the action
of spirits on bodies. One notable example is the issuewhich Leibniz popularized
of the compatibility of the action of mind on body with the principles of Descartess
physics, and in particular with his principle of the conservation of total quantity of
motion in the material world. Here I enter a debate in the literature over Leibnizs view
that Descartes was led by the constraints of his conservation principle to limit the action
of mind on body to changing the direction of motion. In the end I side with the conclusion of critics of this view that Descartes in fact never endorsed the change of direction account of such action, but also with the conclusion of Leibnizs defenders that
the constraints of Descartess physics provide good reason for him to endorse it.

4.3.1. Scholastic Spiritual Presence


Descartes of course was not the rst to claim that the mind is immaterial, and so to
broach the problem of how the mind can act on something that is material. The doctrine of the immateriality of the intellect goes back at least to Plato, and was standardly accepted by the scholastics. Thus, Aquinas insisted that purely spiritual
substances, and even the rational souls that serve as the form of human composites,
are incorporeal entities that can or do exist apart from body.67 However, the principles

67. See, for instance, his argument in ST I.75.2 for the conclusion that the human soul is
something that can subsist by itself apart from body, and thus is an incorporeal substance.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

underlying his account of the action of the immaterial on the material emerge most
clearly in his discussion not of the action of nite spirits on body, but rather of Gods
presence in the material world. Aquinas argued that God must be present in every
place in this world by appealing to the axiom in Aristotle that no action of an agent,
however powerful it may be, acts at a distance, except through a medium.68 Given
his conclusion that every being and every action depends immediately on Gods
action (see 1.1.2), it follows from the no distant action axiom that nothing is distant from him, as if it could be without God in itself (ST I.8.1, ad 3).
It may seem that in attributing ubiquitous material presence to God, Thomas also
attributed to him extension, and thus divisibility. Yet he attempted to avoid the heterodox implication of divine divisibility by holding that God does not inhabit places
in the way in which bodies do. To illustrate the special sense of spiritual presence
involved in the case of God, Thomas turned to the case of the presence of the rational
soul in the human body. As a perfect form, this soul is so present whole in whole
and whole in each part (tota in toto et tota in singulis partibus).69 Since it does not
have parts spread out in the parts of the body, the soul remains indivisible even while
being present throughout the body. Likewise, according to Thomas, God is wholly
in all things and in each one (ST I.8.2, ad 3).
In this very same text, however, Aquinas explained the distinctive nature of Gods
spiritual presence by appealing to something other than the manner in which the rational
soul serves as the form of the human body. In particular, he appealed to the fact that
incorporeal beings are present where they act not by contact of dimensive quantity, as
bodies are, but by contact of power (ST I.8.2, ad 1). This notion of presence by contact of power is prominent also in the question of the Summa Theologiae devoted to
the relation of angels as purely spiritual substances to place. There it is said that an angel
is in a corporeal place by application of the angelic power in any manner whatever to
any place (ST I.52.1).
Admittedly, Aquinas went on to compare this sort of presence to the presence of
the rational soul in a human body, noting, for instance, that an incorporeal substance
that is in a place by contact of power contains but is not contained by a place, as the
soul is in the body as containing it, not as contained by it (ST I.52.1). It thus may
appear that the difference between the presence of the human soul in its body and
the presence of an angel by contact of power is not signicant after all. However,
some sort of distinction is required by his admission that both a human soul and an
angel can be co-present in a body.
To see why this admission requires such a distinction, we need to consider
Aquinass argument that two angels cannot exist in the same place at the same time.
This argument begins with the premise that an angel can be present in a place only

68. In ST I.8.1, Thomas cited Aristotles discussion in Physics VII as the source for this
axiom.
69. The contrast here is with imperfect forms, such as those plants and lower animals, or
bruta, which have parts that are distributed in the parts of the body to which it is united that
can exist apart from the whole (as in cases of plant cutting or the division of a worm). On later
scholastic accounts of divisible souls, see Des Chene 2000a, ch. 9.

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if it perfectly contains it, and it can so contain such a place only if it is a total cause
of what occurs at that place. But Aquinas rejected the possibility of the sort of causal
overdetermination that occurs when an effect has two different total causes of the
same order.70 Thus his conclusion is that there can be only one angel present in a
place at a time. However, he noted as a possible counterexample to this conclusion
theadmittedly quaintcase of demonic possession. The problem in this case is
that we seem to have the co-presence of two spiritual entitiesnamely, the demon
and the possessed soulin the same body at the same time. However, Aquinas
responded that the demon and the soul do not have the same relation of causality
to the body insofar as the soul serves as the substantial form of the body whereas the
demon does not (ST I.52.3, ad 3).71 Though the demon and the possessed soul are
co-present in the body, then, they are present there by means of different sorts of
causality, and thus there is no instance here of causal overdetermination.72
Despite this admission of different ways in which incorporeal entities can be causally
related to bodies, it continues to be the case for Thomas, given his understanding of the
Aristotelian no-distant-action axiom, that any sort of action of such entities on body
requires that they be spatially present where they act. However, this requirement on spiritual action was not universally accepted. A generation after Thomas, for instance, John
Duns Scotus (1308) insisted that it is essential to divine omnipotence that God can produce effects without being present where he acts.73 Moreover, Thomass critic Durandus
argued around the same time, in his Sentences, that even nite angels act through their
intellect and will alone, and thus need not be present in a place in order to act there (S
I.37.1, 1:1012*).74 To be sure, Duranduss claim that the angel is present by operation (per operationem) or the application of power to a place (applicationem virtute
ad locum) (S I.37.1, 39, 1:102*) may not seem to be far from Thomass view of angelic
presence via a contact of power. Nevertheless, Durandus explicitly rejected the application of the Aristotelian no-distant-action axiom to the case of angelic action on body,
arguing that in this case it is only the effect, and not the intellectual power responsible
for the effect, that must have a spatial location.75

70. The qualication of the same order is needed, of course, to allow for Thomass causal
compatibilist position that both God and creatures can be total causes of the same effect given
that creatures belong to a causal order that is subordinated to divine action (see 1.1.2).
71. This response draws on the position in ST I.51.3 that angels cannot exercise the vital
functions of a body, since they are not united to a body.
72. Perhaps the view here is that the demon is the total cause of the souls being the total
cause of certain bodily actions.
73. For discussion of Scotuss position with references, see Sylwanowicz 1996, 17481.
74. This quaestio is a commentary on ST I.52.1. Durandus also insisted, in response to
Thomass views in ST I.8.2, that God is in all places not in himself, but according to his effects
(S I.37.1, 6, 1:100*). In line with his mere conservationist position, Durandus held that the
action by which God is present in all places is his conservation of the existence of all material
beings.
75. So also, Durandus argued contrary to Thomass view in ST I.53.1 that since angels
cannot occupy a place, they cannot be said to move locally, that is, from one place to another
(S I.37.2, 1:1023*).

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In his Disputations, Surez defended the need for spiritual presence in the case of
angelic action on body against the objection in Durandus that in such a case what is
required is not the proximity of position but an immediacy of intellectual power
(cited in MD XVIII.8, 7, 1:652). Surez insisted that an angel must have a substantival and real delimited presence in accord with which it must be conjoined to a
patient when it acts on that patient, and that such a presence is perhaps what
St. Thomas meant by spiritual contact with a body (MD XVIII.8, 42, 1:666).76
In response to Durandus, Surez noted that since the angel can will any object indifferently but cannot move just any object, its power to move must be distinct from its
will. The efcacy of this power requires that the angel be present to the body to move
it (43, 1:66667; cf. MD XXXV.6, 2223, 2:47475*).
To explain the nature of the substantival and real delimited presence required
here, Surez appealed to our experience of the rational soul that is diffused through
the whole body and necessarily is as whole is in whole and whole is in each part
(MD XXX.7, 44, 2:109*). As in the case of Aquinas, the point of the comparison to
the souls union with body is to show that what is present in a divisible body need
not itself be divisible. Even so, Surez allowed that the substantival presence of an
angel in a body differs in important ways from the presence of the rational soul in
its body. Whereas the soul can be united only to a body specially suited to it, for
instance, the angel is not limited to a particular sort of body (MD XXXV.6, 23,
2:475*).77 On the other side is the fact that the rational soul, as the substantial form
of a body, can be the source of vital actions of that body. Since the angel is not a substantial form, it cannot produce such actions, but can bring about in a body only local
motion (1516, 2:47273*).
This last difference indicates an interesting point of contact between Aquinas and
Surez. Aquinas had argued that though an angel is more perfect than a body, still it
cannot cause those actions of the body that derive from its form, since it is not sufciently similar to a substantial form (ST I.110.2).78 Surez attempted to reinforce
this line of argument by appealing to the fact that a given things being more perfect is not sufcient for its being able to effect a less perfect thing. What is required
further is that the cause be proportioned to the type of action in question. Since
angels are not proportioned to the actions of substantial forms, however, they cannot
produce such actions (MD XVIII.1, 17, 1:598). Surez linked this inability to the
fact that angels do not contain corporeal things eminently. I have noted that
Descartess account of eminent containment is more restrictive than Surezs insofar
as the former has the implication missing in the latter that only minds can eminently
contain objects (see 2.1.3 (ii)). But now we can discern a sense in which Surezs
account is more restrictive than Descartess. For we discovered earlier the implica-

76. Surez noted, however, that the claim that a spiritual entity must have such a presence
does not itself commit one to a view on whether the operation constitutes the nature of this
presence or whether (as Surez himself held) the presence is prior to and independent of that
operation (MD XVIII.8, 42, 1:666).
77. For the similar position in Thomas, see ST I.110.3, ad 3.
78. Cf. note 71.

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tion in Descartes that a nite mind can eminently contain the entire visible world
even though it cannot produce such a world. Missing in Descartes, then, is Surezs
requirement that what eminently contains an object must be proportioned to the production of that object.
Given his rejection of the claim that angels can eminently contain bodies, however, Surez might seem to be committed to the conclusion that they cannot produce
local motion in bodies either. Yet he argued that since local motion is not bound up
with the form of a body, it is something to which an angel can be proportioned (MD
XXXV.6, 16, 2:478*). Here he was drawing on the claim in Thomas that angels are
capable of producing local motion, since such motion is perfect in the Aristotelian
sense of not requiring any intrinsic change in the moving object (ST I.110.3).79
Since Descartes holds that all change in body is due to the local motion of its parts
(see, e.g., PP II.23, AT 8-1:5253), he need not take the result in Aquinas and Surez
that angels are limited to local motion to indicate any signicant restriction on
angelic action. Moreover, he is quite willing to admit that angels can act on body, as
when he claims in his 1649 letter to More that an angel can exercise power now on
a greater and now on a lesser part of corporeal substance (15 Apr. 1649, AT 5:342).
However, his further claim in this letter that angels and other incorporeal substances
have no extension of substance [extensio substanti], but only an extension of
power [extensio potenti] (5:342) raises the question of whether he could accept
the claim in Aquinas and Surez that there can be no spiritual action on a body without the presence of that spirit to the body it moves. In other words, does Descartess
extension of power involve something as thick as Surezs substantival and real
delimited presence, or rather only something as thin as Duranduss application of
power to a place? With respect to this question, it turns out to be relevant that when
Elisabeth challenged Descartes to explain how an immaterial substance could affect
an extended thing, he appeals to the scholastic conception of the manner in which
the real quality of weight or heaviness acts on body.

4.3.2. The Heaviness Analogy and the Extension of Power


Elisabeths initial objection to Descartes regarding the conceivability of mindbody
interaction was that it is not conceivable that an immaterial mind could determine
the motion of a body given that it is not literally in contact with that body (see
4.1.1). To show how he conceived of the interaction in this case, Descartes responds
by appealing to the scholastic account of heaviness in terms of the real quality of
weight (pesanteur). On that account, this quality consists simply in the force to
move the body in which it is toward the center of the earth, and even though the
quality is supposed to be a being distinct from body, we have no difculty in conceiving how it moves this body or how it is joined to it; and we never think that
[motion] is made by a real contact between two surfaces, because we experience in
ourselves that we have a particular notion to conceive it. This notion is simply that

79. In this text Thomas cited Aristotles claim in Physics VIII.7 (261a14, Aristotle 1984,
1:436) that local motion requires no change in the quality or quantity of the object moved.

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of the union, or more particularly of the force of the soul to move the body. Descartes
emphasizes that we misuse this notion when we use it to conceive of the action of
the scholastic quality of weight, since this quality is nothing really distinct from
body, as I hope to show in my Physics (21 May 1643, AT 3:6678). Even so, the
point of the analogy is to draw Elisabeths attention to the fact that the notion provides a manner of conceiving of the action of the soul on body, despite the fact that
it is something that is really distinct from body.
In his letter to Elisabeth, Descartes refers back to his discussion in the Sixth
Replies of the action of heaviness (gravitatem) (AT 3:666).80 He observes in that
text that he had in his youth conceived of heaviness as a quality insofar as I referred
it to the bodies in which it inhered, but also as real insofar as I really took it to
be a substance: in the same way that clothing, considered in itself, is a substance,
although when it is referred to a clothed man, it is a quality. He had further conceived of heaviness as something which, though it is spread out through the whole
body that is heavy, nonetheless does not possess the same kind of extension that
body possesses, since the true extension of body is such that it excludes the penetration of all parts, whereas heaviness is something extended throughout the heavy
body. The co-extension of this quality is also tied to the fact that it could exercise
all of its power [vim] in any part of [the heavy body], as when that body pulls on a
rope attached to one of its parts just as if this heaviness were only in the part touching the rope instead of also being spread through the other parts. This conception
of the power of heaviness is supposed to be akin to the conception of the soul as
related to the body in which it is united as whole in whole, and whole in each of its
parts (AT 7:44142).
However, this comparison seems to be weakened by the fact that the co-extension
of the human soul does not include the ability of that soul to exercise its power in any
part of its body. As I have indicated, Descartes makes clear that the human soul can
bring about voluntary motion only by acting on the pineal gland (see 4.1.3). To be
sure, he allows in the Passions that this soul is related to the whole body given that this
body is in a sense indivisible because of the arrangement of its organs, these being so
related to one another that the removal of any one of them renders the whole body
defective (PS I.30, AT 11:351). Insofar as the soul is joined to a body that is indivisible
in this way, it can be said to be whole in whole, and whole in each part. Nevertheless,
this relation of the soul to the whole extension of the body does not involve the power
of the soul to act directly on any part of that extension. In this respect, then, the coextension of the soul must be distinguished from the co-extension of heaviness.81
I have drawn attention to the confusion in Descartes of the conception of mind as
being able to act on body with the conception of the human soul as united with a
particular body (see 4.1.1). In his discussion of the heaviness analogy, we have
the related confusion of the extension that the mind must have to act on body with

80. See also the references to this discussion in To Hyperaspistes, Aug. 1641, AT
3:42425; and To Arnauld, 29 July 1648, AT 5:22223.
81. Cf. the criticism of Descartess use of the heaviness analogy in Rozemond 2005,
which has inuenced my discussion here.

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the extension that the soul has in virtue of its union with body. To act on a body, mind
must have a power that is somehow present to that body. But the union with a body
presupposes the different condition that this body consist of parts that are systematically interrelated in a particular manner.
Nevertheless, there is one point of contact between the cases of mind-to-body
action and soul-body union that may help to explain why Descartes confuses them.
Both this action and the union require that the mind or soul have a location, and so not
be something that lacks any sort of extension. Even though Descartes held in his youth
that the quality of heaviness is really distinct from body, still he was able to conceive
of it as being located in the parts of the body where it can act. And he was able to conceive of heaviness in this way because he already had the notion of his soul as an
immaterial thing that is nonetheless present in the body to which it is united. Though
Descartes is not careful to note that the sort of presence involved in heaviness differs
from the sort of presence involved in the union, this need not undermine the basic point
that the immateriality of the soul does not preclude its contact with a body. And this
point is all that he needs to address Elisabeths original worry that the touch required
to determine the motion of body is incompatible with the immateriality of mind.
Descartes does not simply drop the claim in his correspondence with Elisabeth that
the soul can be conceived to have some kind of extension. Indeed, this claim plays a
central role in his late correspondence with Henry More.82 More took exception to
Descartess doctrine that the nature of body consists in extension on the grounds that
God, and an angel, truly any other thing subsisting per se, is a res extensa (11 Dec.
1648, AT 5:238*). For More, anything that exists must be somewhere, and so must
have an extension. Whatever lacks extension can only be nowhere, and thus be nothing. This explains why More later charged that those who follow Descartes in taking
minds to lack extension are Nullibists, literally, nowherists.83
To be sure, Descartes does deny in his initial response to More that real extension [veram extensionem], as commonly conceived by everyone, is found either in
God, or in angels, or in our mind, or in any substance that is not a body. The fact
that such substances do not have real extension is revealed by the fact that if there
were no body, I would understand no space with which angels or God would be
coextended. Nevertheless, Descartes also insists in this response that immaterial
substances can have capacities or powers (virtutes aut vires) that apply themselves to extended things (5 Feb. 1649, AT 5:26970). In a previously cited passage
from a subsequent letter to More, he expresses this point by saying that even though
minds do not have an extension of substance, nonetheless they do have an extension of power, as shown by the fact that an angel can exercise its power now in a
greater, now in a lesser part of corporeal substance (15 Apr. 1649, AT 5:342).
This response did not placate More. He protested that it implies a contradiction
that a power of the mind is extended, when the mind itself is in no way extended.

82. For a comprehensive survey of Mores attitude toward Cartesianism, see Gabbey
1982. See also the more recent discussion in Jesseph 2005 of Mores contribution to the reception of Descartes in England.
83. See the discussion in Mores 1671 Enchiridion Metaphysicum (More 1995, 27.2).

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More was particularly concerned to argue that we could not distinguish between extension of power and extension of substance in Gods case given the doctrine of absolute
divine simplicity. But he also made the point that even in the case of nite minds, there
cannot be a distinction between the two kinds of extension given that the power that is
extended is merely an intrinsic mode of the mind, it is not outside of the mind itself
(23 July 1649, AT 5:379*). Since a mode is merely the manner in which a substance
exists, the mode cannot have any extension if the substance it modies lacks extension.
Descartes ultimately concedes that any distinction of Gods substance from his
power is problematic. He is led thereby to the Thomistic view of Gods ubiquity,
holding that Gods essence must be present everywhere for his power to be able
to manifest itself everywhere. But there is no indication that Descartes is willing to
give up his earlier claim that extension is not essential to God insofar as God could
exist in the absence of any body. One has the sense here that he is simply having difculty expressing this point in a manner consistent with the doctrine of divine simplicity.84 Nevertheless, in the case of nite minds, there is no similar barrier to his
assertion that it is not essential to an immaterial thing that it have a relation to extension. In this sense, Descartes is indeed a nowherist.
Even so, this sort of nowherism admits only the possibility that minds exist in a
world without bodies, and thus without any extension. There remains the question of
whether Descartes is a nowherist with respect to minds that act on bodies in the
actual world. To address this question, we need to consider further the sort of extension of power that he attributed to minds. The discussion in 4.3.1 of the scholastic debate over spiritual presence is in fact germane to such a consideration. We have
seen that Thomas was led by his acceptance of the Aristotelian no-distant-action
axiom to the conclusion that there must be a contact of power in the case of the
actions of spirits on bodies. In Surez, this contact of power required in turn a substantival and real delimited presence of the spirit to the body. If Descartess extension of power were equivalent to Thomass contact of power, particularly as Surez
interpreted it, then he would be committed to the conclusion that this extension
requires that minds that act on bodies are really located where those bodies are.
However, there is also the possibility that the Cartesian extension of power is just
a version of Duranduss application of power to a place, which requires the location only of the effects of the action of a spirit on body, and not of the spirit itself. If
Descartes embraced Duranduss alternative conception of spiritual presence, he
could have responded to Mores main objection by simply denying that the mental
power to act on body, as opposed to the effects of this power, has a location.
It is perhaps signicant that Descartes does not respond to More in this manner, but
simply insists that minds lack any essential relation to extension. Even more signicant,
though, is his persistent suggestion that the scholastic conception of the relation of heaviness or weight to the body in which it inheres is modeled on the conception of the relation of our soul to the body with which it is united. For surely Descartes does not take

84. See Descartess earlier claim to More that he prefers to discuss the nature of extension
with respect to nite minds, which are more on the scale of our own perception, rather than
to argue about God (15 Apr. 1649, AT 5:343).

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the scholastics to hold that the quality of heaviness lacks any location. Indeed, the indication in the Sixth Replies is that this quality is in fact located throughout the heavy
body. Given that our idea of the soul provides the model for this conception of heaviness, it would seem that this idea presents the soul as something that also is located
in the body with which it is united. Contrary to the view in Durandus, then, it is not just
the effects of our soul that are present in our body, but our soul itself.85
Of course, we must keep in mind Descartess warning in his correspondence with
More, as well as in his correspondence with Elisabeth, that immaterial things are not
present in the material world with the same sort of extension that bodies possess.
Whereas the extension of bodies entails impenetrability, and thus an exclusion of all
other bodily extension, such is not the case with the extension of minds (cf. To More,
Aug. 1649, AT 5:403, and To Elisabeth, 28 June 1643, AT 3:69495).86 Yet what
may seem strange, on a contemporary understanding of Descartess dualism, is the
fact that he attributed any sort of extension to mind. In light of scholastic discussions
of spiritual presence to bodies, however, this attribution is not only not unusual, but
also understandable as a means of avoiding action at a distance, or at least action
without proximity, in the case of mind-to-body action.87

4.3.3. Voluntary Motion and the Conservation Principle


In chapter 3, I noted the doctrine in Descartescentral to his physicsthat Gods
ordinary concursus does not bring about any change in the total quantity of motion
or motive force that he originally created in matter. One natural question is how

85. As indicated in Reid 2008, later Cartesians such as Geraud de Cordemoy (162684)
and Johann Clauberg (162265) insisted that nite spirits are present in a place merely operationally and not substantially.
86. More would agree that the extension that the mind has differs from the divisible and
impenetrable extension that is found in bodies. However, after Descartess death he came to
reject the scholastic view, which Descartes himself endorsed, that the soul is present in the
body as whole in whole and whole in each part. More came to hold that such a view, which
in his Enchiridion Metaphysicum he labels Holenmerism (see More 1995, 98), must be
replaced by the position that the extension of the soul, like the extension of space, has distinct
but indiscerpible (i.e., indivisible) parts. For further discussion of the evolution in Mores
views on these issues, see Reid 2007.
87. But cf. the view in Reid 2008 that though Descartes in the end was forced to concede
that Gods activity in the material world requires his substantial spatial presence, on balance
the evidence favors the view that he took the action of nite minds on bodies to require only
an operational presence. For the reasons indicated in the text, I take Descartess use of the
heaviness analogy and his appeal to an extension of power to indicate more than an operational presence. Moreover, whereas Reid sees Descartess claim in the More correspondence
that nite minds are not present in a place in virtue of essence (15 Apr. 1649, AT 5:343) as
supporting the conclusion that they are present merely operationally, I read it as saying only
that having a location is not essential to such minds, since they could continue to exist even
though there are no bodies. Nevertheless, I concede that Descartes himself was not careful to
close off an operationalist view of spiritual presence.

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Descartess admission of mind-to-body action can be reconciled with his principle


of the conservation of motion. In contrast to other aspects of his account of this
action, his views on this issue have no clear scholastic precedent, since this principle has no analogue in the scholastics and in fact was singled out for condemnation
by the Jesuits (see 3.1.2 (ii)). In attempting to relate Descartess views of causation in psychology to his views of causation in physics, then, we must strike out on
a new path.
One place to start is with Leibnizs various comments regarding Descartess view
of the manner in which the soul moves the body. In correspondence with Arnauld,
Leibniz discusses the position, which M. Descartes apparently intends, that
the soul, or God on its occasion, changes only the direction or determination
of the motion and not the force that is in bodies, because it does not appear
probable that God is constantly transgressing, on the occasion of every act of will
by minds, the general law of nature that the same amount of force must continue
to exist. (30 Apr. 1687, Leibniz 1978, 2:94/Leibniz 1985a, 117)

In the New Essays concerning Human Understanding, which he nished by 1704,


Leibniz attributes to the Cartesians the position that immaterial substances at
least change the direction or determination, if not the force, of bodies (I.1, Leibniz
1978, 6:72/Leibniz 1981, 72). However, in other mature writings, he is not reluctant
to attribute this position to Descartes himself. Thus, Leibniz writes in the 1710
Theodicy that
Descartes wished . . . to make a part of the bodys action dependent on the soul.
He believed in the existence of a rule of Nature to the effect, according to him,
that the same quantity of motion is conserved in bodies. He deemed it not
possible that the inuence of the soul should violate this law of bodies, but he
believed that the soul notwithstanding might have the power to change the
direction of the motions that are made in the body; much as a rider, though giving
no force to the horse he mounts, nevertheless controls it by guiding that force in
any direction it pleases. (I.60, Leibniz 1978, 6:13536/Leibniz 1985b, 156)88

On the view here, then, not only later Cartesians but also Descartes concluded on the
basis of constraints deriving from his physics that immaterial minds cannot produce
new motion in the material world, but can only change the direction of motions that
already exist.
It is beyond doubt that certain Cartesians accepted the change of direction
account of voluntary action. There is, for instance, a 1660 letter from Descartess
literary executor, Claude Clerselier, appended to the third and last volume of
Clerseliers Lettres de Descartes, which concerns laction de lAme sur le Corps.
In this letter, Clerselier claims that God alone can give the rst motion to body, or
to imprint in it a completely new motion that increases the quantity of that which is
already in the world. But though no nite mind can add to the quantity of motion,
still such a mind could have the power to change the direction of motion that is in
bodies (Clerselier 1667, 641). Here is a possible source for Lebinizs claim in the

88. See also the 1714 Monadology (80, in Leibniz 1978, 6:62021/Leibniz 1989, 223).

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Theodicy that the soul can have the power to change the direction of the motions
that are made in the body. However, there is even clearer evidence of the inuence
of the discussion of mind-to-body action in Of the Body and Soul Conjoined in Man
(Corporis et Anim in Homine Conjunctio), a work of the Dutch-trained Cartesian
Johann Clauberg.89 In his text, Clauberg claims that the commonsense view that the
mind produces certain changes in the body seems contrary to the fact that God is
truly the efcient, creative, and conserving cause of all motions, whose action, as
immutable, accounts for the fact that the quantity of motion in the world can be
neither increased nor diminished.90 He proposes to eliminate this tension by appealing to the fact that the human mind is not a physical cause of bodily motions in the
man, but only a moral one, since it no more than guides and directs those other
[motions], and forms those motions, which already are in the body, by which means
that part [of the human body] is agitated. Signicantly, given Leibnizs remarks
in the Theodicy, Clauberg continues by comparing the action of the soul on body to
the case where the driver joins the horse to the wagon, and turns to that place, and
thus directs the motion of the wagon that the horse truly produces as the physical
cause (Clauberg 1968, 1:221). There is thus some reason to think that when he
attributes the change-of-direction account to Descartes, Leibniz is thinking not only
of Clerseliers appeal to our power to change the direction of motion, but also of
Claubergs position that the human mind merely guides and directs the motion that
God has already created and conserved.
Whatever the actual source of Leibnizs understanding of the change-of-direction account, though, there is still the question whether this account can be found
in Descartes. Over a century ago, Norman Smith argued for the negative on the
grounds that
though Descartes frequently speaks of the motion of the animal spirits as being
merely directed (not originated) by the movements of the pineal gland, he never,
so far as we know, suggests that those movements of the pineal gland, which are
involved in voluntary action, can be explained in a similar manner as previously
existing and merely guided by the mind. (Smith 1902, 83, n. 2)

Though this judgment has its defenders in the recent literature,91 Peter McLaughlin
has insisted that Leibniz was basically right both on the historical question of what
Descartes meant to say about conservation and change of direction and on the philosophical question of why he had to mean this (McLaughlin 1993, 157).
On the historical question, the evidence seems to me to favor the Smith reading
over McLaughlins alternative. In a series of articles in the Passions that concern the

89. This text was originally published in 1664, though Leibniz may have had access to the
version published in 1691 in Claubergs posthumous Opera Omnia Philosophica (of which
Clauberg 1968 is a reprint).
90. Clauberg here cited theses concerning motion found in his Physica Contracta,
14647, in Clauberg 1968, 1:7. Cf. his more complete account of motion in Disputatio
Physica, ch. 13, in Clauberg 1968, 1:97103.
91. See Remnant 1979 and Garber 1983.

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precise nature of this action, Descartes speaks of the soul as making the gland
move ( fait que la petite gland . . . se meut) (PS I.41, AT 11:360), as making the
gland lean ( fait que la gland se penchant) to one side or the other (PS I.42, AT
11:360), and as having the force to make the gland move (a la force que la glande
se meut) in a particular manner (PS I.43, AT 11:361). The nal claim that the soul
has the force to move the gland is particularly signicant given Descartess earlier
contention to Elisabeth that the notion of the union involves the notion of the force
that the soul has to move the body (AT 3:665). Here, it seems, the soul does not
merely guide motion, but has a force that produces such motion.
McLaughlin cites as evidence for the Leibnizian reading passages in which
Descartes speaks of the mind as merely determining the motion of the animal spirits.92 However, this evidence is far from conclusive. For one thing, it is relevant,
given Smiths comment quoted above, that these passages concern the motion of the
animal spirits rather than the motion of the pineal gland. They therefore seem to
leave open the possibility, to which Smith drew attention, that the soul indirectly
determines this motion by directly moving the pineal gland. Moreover, the reference
in Descartes to the force of the soul to move body is signicant in light of his view
in a letter to Mersenne, which McLaughlin himself cites, that force is needed
only to move bodies and not to determine the direction in which they are to move
(11 June 1640, AT 3:75). Whereas McLaughlin concludes that the Cartesian mind
acts on the body in a forceless manner, since it merely determines its direction
(McLaughlin 1993, 163), I think the conclusion must be rather that Descartes takes
our mind to have the force needed to move bodies.
It must be admitted, however, that we do not have a clear and nal word from
Descartes on the status of mind-to-body action. Though he had a long-standing goal
of providing a treatment of such action that relates it to his mechanistic account of
body, such a goal was never fully realized. In the early Treatise on Man, Descartes
promised a treatment of the body on its own, the soul, again on its own, and
how these two natures would have to be joined and united in order to constitute the
men who resemble us (AT 11:11920), but in fact considered mainly the human
body, with some remarks concerning the manner in which nature has linked bodily motions to sensations. Later, in the Principles, he noted that his third law of
nature, governing changes in motion due to collision, covers only corporeal causes
of such changes,93 and that he was reserving consideration of the power that human
or angelic minds have of moving bodies (PP II.40, AT 8-1:65) for another treatise.
However, this treatise was never written, and so whatever opportunity there was to
address directly the manner in which mind-to-body action relates to the three laws
of nature and the conservation principle was lost. We do have the Passions, but there
is no consideration there of how the power of the soul to act on the body relates to
the laws that govern bodybody interaction. This text merely appeals to the fact that

92. The evidence is from the Meditations and the Description du corps humain; see
McLaughlin 1993, 16667.
93. For more on the view that this passage restricts the law to corporeal causes, see chapter 3, note 61.

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in certain instances, at least, the soul affects the animal spirits by moving the pineal
gland.
It might be thought that Descartes provided a hint of his nal view when he
allowed for the possibility in the passage from the Principles just cited that mind-tobody action is exempt from the third law. Daniel Garber has recently drawn attention to this escape clause, as well as to Descartess claim in the Principles that his
conservation principle allows for changes in the quantity of motion that evident
experience or divine revelation render certain (PP II.36, AT 8-1:61).94 The reference here to evident experience is particularly telling given his comment in the
1648 letter to Arnauld that such experience reveals that our soul can move body. On
the basis of these texts, Garber nds reason to conclude that Descartes might have
answered Leibnizs attack on interactionism by simply denying that the conservation
laws hold for animate bodies (Garber 1983, 116).
My own sense is that if pressed, Descartess initial reaction would indeed have
been to deny that the conservation principle and related laws governing motion
apply to the case of mind-to-body action. Certainly, he gave no signs of a willingness to sacrice the dictate of evident experience that our soul has a real force to
move our body. But though the evidence seems to me to be stacked against
McLaughlins answer to the historical question of whether Descartes embraced the
change-of-direction account of voluntary motion, there remains the philosophical
question of whether there are reasons internal to his system for him to accept this
account. And with respect to this question, McLaughlin seems to me to have the
upper hand.95 Garber has claimed that though Descartess conservation principle
requires that God cannot add to the total quantity of motion in the world, it provides
no reason to think that nite minds cannot add to this quantity (Garber 1983,
11516).96 But it is far from clear that additions to motion by nite minds leave the
constancy of Gods action untouched. I have emphasized the conservationist view
in Descartess physics that Gods ordinary concursus consists simply in the continuation of his act of creating particular quantities of matter and motion (see 3.3).
Insofar as there are no additions to these quantities, Descartes could say that this
concursus alone sufces for the conservation of the material world. If nite minds
could add to the quantity of motion, however, then that additional quantity could be

94. McLaughlin takes Garber to task for his assumption that this passages concerns changes
in the quantity of motion rather than changes in the distribution of motion (McLaughlin 1993,
177, n. 52). However, the exceptions that PP II.36 allows are clearly to the constancy of the
quantity of motion. The distribution of the motions is not at issue in this article.
95. Even so, McLaughlins insistence on the point that the material world is a closed
causal system (e.g., McLaughlin 1993, 15859) does not seem to me to be clearly reected in
Descartess texts. I think we can do better by focusing on the implications of Descartess conservationist physics.
96. Cf. Remanants view that the doctrine of primitive notions in Descartess 1643 correspondence with Elisabeth suggests that animate bodies are governed by a set of laws distinct
from those governing inanimate bodies (see Remnant 1979, 38284). As Garber notes, however, it cannot be the case that animate bodies are exempt from all laws governing inanimate
bodies, including those governing the geometrical properties (Garber 1983, 11819).

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retained only if God supplemented his initial act of creation with additional acts
that yield the conservation of this new quantity.97 But then it would seem that
Descartes could not say, as he apparently wants to say in the Principles, that Gods
ordinary concursus consists simply in the continuation of his initial act of creation.
We have seen the suggestion in the Principles that there could be exceptions to the
conservation principle that are revealed by evident experience, that is, experience
of mind-to-body action, or divine revelation, and in particular the revelation of
miracles. But the exceptions that experience reveals would be a greater threat to
Descartes than the miraculous exceptions that divine revelation requires, insofar as
only the latter are supposed to leave Gods ordinary concursus untouched.
Precisely this threat is reected in the claim in the passage above from Leibnizs
letter to Arnauld that it does not appear probable that God is constantly transgressing, on the occasion of every act of will by minds, the general law of nature that the
same amount of force must continue to exist (Leibniz 1978, 2:94/Leibniz 1985a,
118). A world in which nite minds could add to the quantity of motion over time
would be a world that God cannot conserve by his ordinary concursus alone, at least
on the account of that concursus that Descartes provided in the Principles. In such a
world there would indeed be a constant transgression of the immutability of Gods
conservation of the world by means of the same act with which he created it.
In requiring such a transgression, the case of the addition of motion by nite
minds is similar to the problematic case of the force for resisting in Descartess
physics (see 3.1.2 (iii) and 3.3). I have argued that this case is problematic because
it requires not just the conservation of a constant quantity, but also the addition in
collision of an instantaneous impulse to resist motion. It is difcult to see how the
introduction of these momentary resistive impulses could be said to derive simply
from the divine concursus that Descartes identies with Gods continuation of his
original act of creating a world with a particular quantity of matter in motion. But in
the same way, it is difcult to see how such a concursus alone could yield the conservation of any new motion that nite minds produce.
In contrast, any changes in the direction of motions that nite minds introduce
would not threaten the conservation principle. For as Descartes makes clear, that
principle concerns only the total quantity of motion and not the direction of the motions.
So considerations drawn from the metaphysics of Descartess physics ultimately do
seem to me to support the change-of-direction account of voluntary motion, just as

97. Garber notes that Descartess claim in a letter to More that Gods motive force consists in his conserving the same amount of transference in matter as he put into it in the rst
moment of creation (Aug. 1641, AT 5:404) seems to suggest the strange position that God
fails to conserve any additional motion that nite minds add (Garber 1983, 132, n. 70).
Garbers conclusion is that we should not read this remark so literally, but should rather take
Descartes to indicate only that God conserves just the amount of motion that existed during
the previous moment. I nd this reading of Descartess remarks to More to be strained, and
would suggest as an alternative that he simply carries over his view in the Principles of Gods
ordinary concursus without realizing the complications required for the admission of additions to the quantity of motion provided by nite minds.

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Leibniz suggested. McLaughlin concludes from this fact that we should attribute to
Descartes the strong philosophical position attributed to him by Leibniz, which is
at least compatible with the texts (McLaughlin 1993, 182). But given that the position Leibniz attributes to Descartes in fact is not compatible with the texts, a better
conclusion would seem to be that Descartes never quite got around to thinking his
account of mind-to-body action through to its foundations. Had he done so, he could
have discovered the need to reconcile such action with the sufciency of the divine
concursus that his conservationist physics requires.
Descartess conservation principle need not create similar problems for his
account of body-to-mind action. It is not necessary that bodies gain or lose motion
in order to trigger the activity of the innate mental faculty that Descartes posited in
the Comments (see 4.2.2). Rather, the nature of this faculty is such that the mere
presence of these motions affects it in such a way that it forms particular sensory
ideas. The fact that Descartes feels compelled to posit a mental faculty and to speak
of the motions as giving occasion for this faculty to produce the ideas draws attention to complications for body-to-mind action that are not present in the case of
mind-to-body action. But such complications do not derive from Descartess conservationist physics.
There is another case of casual action that the constraints of his physics leaves
untouched, namely, the minds causation of its own states. In the Passions, these
actions are said to result in volitions that we experience as proceeding directly from
our soul and as seeming to depend on it alone (PS I.17, AT 11:342). Though, as its
title indicates, this text focuses on the passions of the soul rather than its actions,
an account of volition is nonetheless crucial for its central teaching that we should
restrict our desires to what depends only on our free will (see, e.g., PS I.144, AT
11:43637). Since the production of volition does not itself involve any gain or loss
of motion, there is no threat here to the divine concursus that yields a constant quantity of motion in the material world. However, Descartess insistence that we freely
produce our own volitions may seem to threaten his acceptance of a strong form
of divine providence. Indeed, he himself notes this tension when he claims in the
Principles that it is beyond our power to reconcile our freedom with the fact that
the power of God, by which he not only foreknew from eternity all that is or can
be, but also willed and preordained it, is innite (PP I.40, AT 8-1:20). Of course,
Descartes was not the rst to worry about the compatibility of divine preordination
with human freedom. As we will discover in the following chapter, scholastic disputes concerning this issue are germane to his own struggles with it. But the reference in the passage from the Principles to the divine preordination of what can be
broaches what is perhaps the most idiosyncratic feature of Descartess theory of causation, namely, his famous (and notorious) doctrine of the creation of the eternal
truths. As we will discover, this doctrine plays an important though subtle role in his
account of the relation of our freedom to divine providence.

Causation and Freedom

In an entry from a notebook that he composed as a young soldier traveling through


Europe, Descartes observes that the Lord has made three miracles: something from
nothing, free decision, and God in man (Tria mirabilia fecit Dominus: res ex nihilo,
liberum arbitrium, et hominem deum) (AT 10:218). The rst two of these miracles
are directly relevant to his theory of causation.1
The miracle of something from nothing of course recalls Descartess conclusion that the act by which God conserves the world is not distinct from the act by
which he creates it ex nihilo (see 2.2). But this chapter focuses on the miracle of
free decision, or more specically the freedom of our will, which as I hope to show
is an important element of Descartess theory of causation.
To understand the connection between the issues of causation and human freedom in Descartes, it is helpful once again to consider the scholastic context. Toward
the end of 1.2.3 (ii), I noted the objection to Surez, deriving from Durandus, that
the concurrentist conclusion that God is the proximate and immediate cause of our
sinful action conicts with the claim that such action is free. As we know, the
response in Surez is that Gods concursus with our free action is compatible with
our abilityessential for our freedomto do otherwise even given that all the conditions for action have been posited. Though our will determines such action, for
Surez, there is nothing, including the divine concursus, that determines the will to
do so.

1. Though the last mystery of God in man is less obviously relevant to Descartess theory of causation, it bears some relation to the union of mind with body, for in both cases it is
the unity of a composite of parts with diverse natures that is at issue (see 4.1).

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179

In 5.1, I begin with a consideration of two problems that confront Surezs


account of human freedom. The rst concerns the relation between the will and
judgment. Surezs view of judgment presupposes a scholastic account of the mental faculties that differs in fundamental respects from the account that Descartes later
defended. Nevertheless, he considers an objection to his account of free will that is
relevant to Descartess treatment of freedom, namely, the objection that our will does
not seem to have freedom of indifference given that it is determined by our intellect.
Surezs response to this objection turns on the claim that in this life, at least, any
sort of intellectual determination depends on a prior act of our will that is itself undetermined. The second problem for Surezs account of human freedom concerns the
compatibility of his insistence on the indifference of free human action with the traditional Catholic doctrine that God exercises complete providential control over creation. This problem is connected to a heated theological dispute in the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries that pitted Jesuits against members of the Dominican
order. Surez attempts to defend the Jesuit line by developing the view in the work
of his contemporary Luis de Molina that divine providence is made possible by a
special middle knowledge of undetermined human action. I argue in this chapter
that ultimately we must place Descartes with Surez on the Jesuit side of this debate.
However, I also claim that Descartes must be distinguished from Surez and other
Molinists insofar as his account of freedom is informed by his distinctive but difcult doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths. I close this rst section with a consideration of Descartess account of created truth, with particular attention to the
complications it introduces for his theory of causation in general and for his treatment of human freedom in particular.
I then turn in 5.2 to the issue of Descartess somewhat conicted attitude toward
the Jesuit position in Surez that human freedom requires indifference in action. In
the Fourth Meditation, Descartes not only offers an account of judgment very different from what we nd in Surez, but also indicates that the will is most free when it
is determined in a manner that wholly excludes indifference. Nevertheless, there is
reason to think that even in this case Descartes accepts the view in Surez that
perceptions are not efcient causes of the action of the will. Moreover, in both the
Principles (1644) and correspondence with Jesuits dating from the mid-1640s, there is
some movement toward Surezs position that free human action precludes any sort of
thoroughgoing intellectual determination. These texts still have a non-scholastic
emphasis on the role of free will in assent to truth. However, the role of free will in the
pursuit of the goodwhich is more familiar from Surezis prominent in the account
of human freedom that Descartes provides in his last published work, the Passions of
the Soul.
One reason that scholars have taken Descartes to be a compatibilist with regard
to free human action is that some of his statements seem to indicate a commitment to
the position that God fully determines everything in nature, including our free action.
If, as I argue in this chapter, his nal account of human freedom is fundamentally
incompatibilist in nature, we need to rethink his account of divine providence and its
relation to free human action. In 5.3, I offer an interpretation of this account that
draws on Surezs claim that Gods middle knowledge of our free action derives from
his comprehensive grasp of the dispositions in us from which this action results in a

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nondeterministic manner. The corresponding position that I attribute to Descartes is


that God produces our free action by making it the case that this action derives in a
nondeterministic manner from the inclinations of our will. For Descartes, then, just as
God can make essences from which truths derive necessarily, so he can produce inclinations from which our actions derive predictably but nondeterministically. The implication here that God determines free human action only indirectly, by producing a
special sort of volitional inclination, ultimately serves to reinforce the conservationist
reading of Descartess theory of causation that I have been concerned to defend.

5.1. JESUIT FREEDOM AND CREATED TRUTH


5.1.1. Surez on Human Freedom
Surezs views on human freedom belong to what can be called the voluntarist tradition in scholasticism. This sort of voluntarism must be distinguished from the voluntarist axiom that I discussed earlier with respect to Surezs renovation of
scholastic metaphysics (see 1.2.1). Recall that that axiom afrmed the power of
God to produce in separation really distinct creatures. But Bonnie Kent has noted
that in the context of later-medieval scholasticism, ethical voluntarism indicates
a strong emphasis on the active character of the will, the claim that the will is free
to act against reasons dictates, and the conviction that moral responsibility depends
on this conception of the wills freedom.2 In contrast to the case of the voluntarist
axiom, ethical voluntarism is concerned primarily with the nature of free human
action, and not with the nature of divine power.
Nevertheless, the two kinds of voluntarism are rooted in the Paris Condemnation
of 1277. As we have seen, the voluntarist axiom derives from the rejection in this
proclamation of certain Thomistic restrictions on divine power.3 However, the
Condemnation includes a section of twenty articles on the topic of the human will.
The overall concern in this section is to condemn the position that the will is subordinated to reason. For instance, this section prohibits the following article: That
the will necessarily pursues what is rmly believed by reason and that it cannot
abstain from that which reason dictates. This necessitation, however, is not compulsion but the nature of the will (Lerner and Mahdi 1995, 350). The intellectualist
view here that the will is by its nature subservient to reason was popular among certain Thomists. Just as Surezs acceptance of the voluntarist axiom set him against a
hard-line Thomist ontology, then, so his emphasis on the importance of indifference
for human freedom set him against a Thomistic form of intellectualism.4

2. Kent 1995, 9496, citing the characterization of voluntarism in Bourke 1970, 1:138, 147.
For more on discussions of human freedom in later medieval philosophy, see Eardley 2006.
3. As indicated in chapter 1, note 35.
4. As indicated in chapter 1, notes 35 and 37, Cajetan is one of the main Thomistic opponents of the voluntarist axiom. Among the Thomists that Surez cites as opposed to his
account of freedom is the Dominican Chrysostom Javellus (14701538) (MD XIX.6, 3, 720).

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181

There is an issue here whether Thomas himself was as much of an intellectualist


as some of his followers claimed. In fact, Surez insisted that his voluntarist position
was for the most part in line with Thomass own position.5 But the focus here is not
on Surezs Thomas scholarship, but rather on the manner in which he responded to
the account of human freedom that some Thomists claimedrightly or wrongly
to derive from Thomass writings. I indicated at the outset of this chapter two features of this account that Surez, in line with other Jesuits, took to be problematic.
The rst concerns the intellectualist view that the will is determined by intellectual
judgment. On this point, Surez held that our will has a sufcient amount of indifference to act against such judgment. The second concerns the claim that divine
providence requires a knowledge of free human action that is made possible by
Gods predetermination of such action by means of physical premotion. Against
this claim, Surez insisted that divine providence involves a middle knowledge
of this action that does not compromise its undetermined nature. Let us consider in
turn these elements of Surezs response to the Thomists.
(i) Judgment and Indifference
Surez and his Thomist opponents shared an Aristotelian conception of the will as
rational appetite. Qua rational, the will is a power of the intellectual soul rather than,
as in the case of sense appetite, the soul-body composite. However, both the will and
the sense appetite, qua appetite, are directed toward the good as presented either
by the senses or by the intellect. In contrast, the senses and intellect are apprehensive powers directed toward the true, with the senses being powers of the composite
and intellect a power of the soul alone. As opposed to the view that Descartes later
defended, most scholastics, including Surez, simply assumed that judgment concerns truth and, as such, is an operation of an apprehensive faculty. Whereas sensory
judgment is an operation of the senses that involves the apprehension of sensible features of objects, rational judgment is an operation of the intellect that involves the
apprehension of intelligible features of objects.
Beyond these basic points, however, there was considerable controversy within
scholasticism concerning the relation of the will to rational judgment and the relation of both to free decision (liberum arbitrium). Whereas intellectualists understood the conception of the will as rational appetite to indicate that the will is
subordinate to rational judgment and cannot act contrary to it, Surez follows other
voluntarists in insisting that the will is more noble than and thus can control the

5. For Surezs invocation of Thomas, see, among many other places, MD XIX.8, 10,
1:729. As Kent notes, however, late-thirteenth-century masters who defended a voluntarist
account of the will, such as William de la Mare (c. 1290) and Walter of Bruges (1307), did
so in explicit opposition to Thomas (Kent 1995, ch. 3). The question of whether Thomas was
more of an intellectualist or a voluntarist is still a matter of dispute today; cf. Pasnau 2002,
22033, which defends a primarily intellectualist (and compatibilist) reading of Thomass
account of freedom; and Stump 1997, which defends a primarily voluntarist (and incompatibilist) interpretation of this account.

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intellect. In contrast to those who held that free decision is rooted in the intellect,
moreover, he argues that the intellect is wholly determined to assent to the true and
dissent from the false, and so cannot be the source of freedom. Since the will is
directed to the good of the object, however, and since some objects can be both good
and evil in different respects, there can be some indifference on the part of the will
with respect to whether to pursue or avoid such objects. The conclusion here is that
free decision is rooted in the will rather than the intellect (MD XIX.5, 14, 1:716).6
Surez notes that there are two sorts of necessity with respect to acts of will. First,
there is the necessity that involves coercion, which is to be contrasted with uncoerced
and voluntary acts of will. But there can be a sort of necessity even with respect to
voluntary acts in cases where the goodness of the object that the intellect presents
determines the will to act in a particular manner. Surez holds, for instance, that the
will of the blessed is determined by the beatic vision to love God (MD XIX.8, 8,
1:72829).7 Moreover, he grants that even in this life, our will is not able to will contrary to an end proposed under the concept of a universal good; in his terms, this end
determines the will with respect to the specication of its act (15, 1:730). Yet Surez
insists that though the will acts voluntarily in these cases, it lacks the freedom that
precludes any determination to a particular act (MD XIX.2, 9, 1:695). This robust
sort of freedom, which adds indifference in action to voluntariness, is required for
the justice of reward and punishment for our actions (16, 1:698).
It may seem that given his emphasis on the value of the freedom that involves
indifference, Surez would claim that the will is less perfect when the intellect determines its voluntary act of will than when the will itself determines its voluntary act
in a manner that involves freedom of indifference. However, he in fact says that the
perfection of the acts of will is determined by the rule that
an object be loved in proportion to its worthiness or capacity; so that if a given
object is the highest and most necessary good, then it is loved with complete
necessity, whereas if it is a lesser or non-necessary good, then, correspondingly,
an act with respect to it is under the control of the one who loves it. (MD XIX.8,
21, 1:732)

When the will is not determined to pursue nonnecessary goods, it has a perfection of
control over action that allows for merit. But even though this perfection is lacking
both in the case of the blessed who love God necessarily and in our own case when
we are unable to act contrary to the universal good, still there is in these cases the
perfection of the will that consists in its determination to the good.
Nevertheless, Surez holds that in this life, at least, the perfection of the will consists more in the perfection of control than in the perfection of determination to the
good. Even in the case of the end of the universal good, where our will lacks freedom of specication, he insists that we are free to refrain from acting altogether, and

6. In taking free decision to be a power of the will, Surez opposes not only those who
take free decision to reside in something external to the will, but also those who identify it
with an act or habit rather than with a faculty; see MD XIX.5, 4, 1:712.
7. As Surez indicates in this text, he sides with Thomas against Scotus on this point.

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183

so retain freedom of exercise. And in the case of all particular goods that our intellect naturally apprehends in this life, including God, our will has both freedom of
exercise and freedom of specication. All such objects can be considered as evil or
inconvenient, and thus as something that the will can refrain from loving or can even
hate (16, 1:731). Though judgment concerning the goodness of particular objects
can move the will as a nal cause, the fact that it does not determine either the exercise of the will or the specication of its act reveals that it is not the efcient cause
of the decision of the will.8
Cases where judgments seem to be efcient causes of free decision are to be
explained by the volition to pursue particular goods as ends or means (8, 1:722).
Suppose, for instance, that I resolve to satisfy my craving for sweets. Given this resolution, the judgment that particular objects are conducive to this end compels me
to pursue those objects. However, the efcacy of the judgment is conditional on my
resolution. If I withdraw the resolution (due, for instance, to concerns about my
weight), then the judgments will not necessarily lead me to pursue the objects they
present. Since, according to Surez, I as a free agent have some indifference to all
resolutions concerning particular objects, and thus can withdraw such resolutions,
there is no judgment concerning such objects that can, by itself, determine my will.
Surezs concern with the pursuit of particular goods distinguishes his discussion
of human freedom from the remarks on this topic in Descartes, which, as we will see,
tend to focus on the case of assent to particular truths.9 However, there is one aspect
of Surezs discussion that will prove useful in understanding certain developments
in Descartess treatment of human freedom. I have in mind Surezs view of how it
is that the will can resist those judgments that lead it to pursue particular goods. He
notes that with respect to such judgments,
the will is able either to suspend its act or to divert the intellect from thinking
about the object; or to apply [the intellect] to investigating more carefully,
regarding that object, how much goodness it has and whether it has conjoined to it
some evil or inappropriateness in light of which the will is able not only not to
love it but even to hate it. (MD XIX.6, 14, 1:724)

Thus, in cases where I freely decide to pursue sweets, I could have resisted the judgment that sweets are good insofar as they satisfy my cravings for them by distracting myself from thinking about sweets or by considering the goods that derive from

8. Cf. the discussion in 1.2.2 (iii) of Surezs account of nal causality. There is some
question whether Surez allowed that judgment is an efcient cause of volition in the case
where, as in the case of the blessed, it determines the will with respect to both exercise and
specication. His claim that there is no reason for the cognition of a good object to be an efcient cause, since appetite is moved toward that object by its own nature and not by any external agent (MD XIX.18, 49, 1:646), may seem to reveal that he did not. To be sure, the passage
indicates that the goodness involved here is not such that it determines the will. As I indicate
in 5.2.1 at note 40, however, Suarez indicates that the intellect is not an efcient cause of the
will even in the case of cognition of a necessary good.
9. As we will also discover in 5.2.3, though, Descartess treatment of freedom in the
Passions pushes to the forefront the case of the pursuit of the good.

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resisting sweets. Given this view in Surez, it is not too surprising that the emphasis
on the ability of the will to distract the intellect reappears in Descartes at just the
point where he is attempting to accommodate the Jesuit account of human freedom
(see 5.2.2).
(ii) Divine Providence and Middle Knowledge
In 1597 Pope Clement VIII established a Congregation on Grace (Congregatio de
Auxiliis) to review the Concordia of the Jesuit Molina.10 The publication of this work
ignited a controversy that pitted members of the recently formed (in 1540) Society of
Jesus against members of Thomass established Dominican order, most prominently
Domingo Baez (15281604). Most objectionable to Baez and other Dominicans
was the denial in the Concordia that God determines free human action. For Molinas
critics, this denial threatens divine providence. When Molina died in 1600, rumor had
it that the Congregation was on the verge of declaring his views to be heretical.
However, due in part to the reconciliationist efforts of the Jesuit Cardinal Robert
Bellarmine (15421621), the Congregation ultimately ended in a draw, and Pope Paul
V issued a decree in 1607 that forbids the two sides from labeling the views of their
opponents heretical or even temerarious. This decree promised an ofcial resolution
of the dispute at an opportune time, which time we still await.11
As a result of the 1607 decree, it is theologically acceptable for Catholics to endorse
either the Molinist views in the Concordia or the opposing views of Molinas
Dominican critics. Both sides in fact agree that God creates in a providential manner,
and that such providence requires that prior to the divine decision to create a particular
world God knows all future contingent propositions concerning that world, including
those propositions concerning free human actions in that world. The dispute principally
concerns the explanation of how God has knowledge of the latter sort of proposition.
According to Dominicans such as Baez, God is able to know in advance how human
agents would freely act in certain circumstances because his efcacious concursus
determines those free actions that are good, whereas his failure to offer such a concursus results in those free actions that are evil. For Molina, however, this account of foreknowledge is unacceptable insofar as it involves the determination of free human action
by the granting or withholding of an efcacious concursus. On the view that Molina
shared with Surez, our actions can be free only if they involve an indifference that
is incompatible with this sort of determination. Thus, Gods foreknowledge of such
actions cannot be grounded in his free decrees concerning his own concursus. Rather,
such knowledge must derive from Gods simply seeing that free agents would decide to
act in certain ways in certain circumstances, even though such action is determined neither by the circumstances nor by the causal contributions of the divine will.12

10. For the full title of the Concordia, see chapter 1, note 71.
11. For an account of the Congregation and of Bellarmines role in it, see Brodrick 1961.
12. For a summary that is sympathetic to the Molinist side of this dispute, see the editors
introduction to Molina 1988. For a discussion more sympathetic to the Dominican side, see
Osborne 2006.

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185

This is the Molinist theory of middle knowledge (scientia media), so called


because it posits a sort of divine knowledge of free human action that stands between
Gods natural knowledge of necessary features of creation and his free knowledge of contingent features of the created world that his will determines. The theory
of middle knowledge was theologically objectionable for Dominicans because it
seemed to render the goodness of our action independent of Gods providential
action. But there is also the philosophical objection that Molina has provided no
ground for the truth of the propositions that God foreknows concerning free human
action. Molina must reject the claim that knowledge of Gods concursus provides the
foundation, for the reasons just indicated. But the free agents themselves cannot provide the foundation, since middle knowledge is logically prior to Gods creation of
a world containing such agents. Thus, there seems in the case of middle knowledge
to be truths without truthmakers.13
Molina attempted to explain Gods ability to know truths concerning free human
action by appealing to the absolutely profound and absolutely pre-eminent comprehension, such as is found only in God with respect to creatures (Molina 1988,
Disp. 52, 11, 171). However, this theory of supercomprehension, as it has come
to be known, was not satisfactory even for Molinas Jesuit defenders. Most notably,
Surez rejects this theory. In his On the Knowledge That God Has of Future
Contingents (De Scientia quam Deus habet de Futuris Contingentibus), he objects
that the appeal to the fact that God supercomprehends (supercomprehendit) an
object cannot explain Gods knowledge of free human action, since what provides
the foundation for such knowledge is not the perfection of the mode of knowledge
but rather the perfection of the object of Gods knowledge (perfectio in cognitione
solum . . . ex parte rei cognitae). The fact that God knows the free agent perfectly is
thus to be explained by an appeal to the fact that the object of this knowledge reveals
all truths concerning the free action of this agent (Opera 11:366).14
What, then, is the object that explains middle knowledge? Surezs most explicit
answer can be found not in On Knowledge but rather in his Treatise on Divine Grace
(Tractatus de Gratia Dei).15 In the Treatise he appeals to Gods intuitive knowledge
of the immediate disposition of the cause to a future effect (per immediatem habitudinem causae ad effectum ex hypothesi futurum) (Opera 7:94). In particular, the
object is the habituo, or disposition, of a possible agent that would yield a particular
effect in certain circumstances. Though it is compatible with the nature of this

13. For a contemporary formulation of this philosophical objection to middle knowledge,


see Adams 1990, 11415.
14. Even so, someone like Surez might want to retain the view in Molina that God can
have this sort of complete knowledge only of objects he innitely surpasses to explain the fact
that he does not have middle knowledge of his own free actions. For this point, see Freddosos
remarks in the introduction to Molina 1988, 5153.
15. Though the claim in On Knowledge that God knows conditional contingent propositions concerning free human action by the innite power of representation of his ideas (ex
vi innitae repraesentationis suarum idearum) (Opera 11:369) anticipates the position in the
Treatise.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

disposition that it not yield such an effect, the idea that God has of it allows him to
know that the disposition would in fact lead the agent to act in this manner.16
Calvin Normore has helpfully explained Surezs position here in terms of the claim
that God has a perfect model of each possible being that allows him to simulate possible histories to determine how a particular agent A would behave in the simulated circumstances C. Normore notes that if there is a way in which A would behave in C, a
perfect model should reect it, so if the conditional excluded middle is valid, such
a model is possible and God knows the history of the world by knowing that model,
i.e., by knowing his own intellect and his creative intentions (Normore 1985, 15). Of
course, the Baezian critic could reply that prior to Gods decree concerning his own
concursus, there is no fact of the matter as to how A would behave in C, and so nothing for the perfect model to capture. In effect, then, this response involves a rejection
of the conditional excluded middle.17 But assuming that there is a fact of the matter
here, and thus that the conditional excluded middle holds, it seems that God could
know it by intuiting the results of his simulation of the history of the agent.
Molina and Surez appealed to the theory of middle knowledge to overcome the
apparent conict of claims concerning divine providence and foreknowledge with
their view that our actions are free in a sense that precludes their determination. A similar sort of conict seems to resurface in Descartess Principles. Toward the end of
chapter 4, I noted a worry in this text concerning divine preordination of free human
action. This problem derives from the claim, in the title of article 40 of the rst part
of this text, that everything is preordained by God. In the article itself, Descartes
notes that we can easily entangle ourselves in great difculties if we attempt to reconcile this preordination of God with our free decision [arbitrii nostri libertate], and
to comprehend both together (AT 8-1:20). In the following article, he claims that we
can avoid this conict by remembering that our nite mind cannot comprehend the
innite power by which God not only knew from eternity what is or can be [quae sun
aut esse possunt], but also willed and preordained it. In particular, we cannot comprehend how such a power leaves free human actions undetermined [indeterminatas]. However, Descartes concludes that our inability to comprehend does not
preclude us from accepting the freedom and indifference [libertatis . . . et indifferentiae] that is in us, since we are so conscious [conscios] of this freedom that there is
nothing that we comprehend more evidently and perfectly (PP I.41, AT 8-1:20).
Certainly the reference here to the undetermined nature of our freedom and indifference is signicant in light of the emphasis in the work of Surez and other Jesuits
on the fact that human freedom requires an indifference that precludes determination.
I have more to say presently concerning the relation of these remarks in the Principles
to the Jesuit position (see 5.2.2 (i)). For the moment, however, I want to consider the
fact that the conict with which Descartes is concerned in his text differs in some signicant respects from the conict that Molina and Surez addressed. These Jesuit theologians were concerned only with the question of how, given the fact that our free

16. For the connection between middle knowledge and divine ideas, see the passage from
On Knowledge cited in note 15.
17. For a similar objection, see Adams 1990.

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187

actions are undetermined, God could know conditional propositions concerning these
actions prior to willing to create in a particular manner. In contrast, Descartes nds
problematic not only that God foreknew these actions but also willed and preordained them. Of course, someone like Surez could hold that God wills and preordains such actions in the sense that he intentionally creates that world which he
(eternally) foreknew would include the actions as part of its history. Yet there is no
precedent in the work of Surez and the other Jesuits for Descartess claim that Gods
innite power produces all that not only is but also can be.18 For the Jesuits, God
knows what can be by means of his natural knowledge of necessary features of the
world. Such knowledge derives not from his will but rather from ideas in his intellect.
In his 1630 letter to Mersenne, however, Descartes introduced the doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths, according to which such truths have been established by
God and depend as entirely on him as the rest of his creatures (15 Apr. 1630, AT
1:145). In a subsequent letter he told his correspondent that God established these
truths as efcient and total cause, and that he is the Author of the essence as well
as of the existence of creatures (27 May 1630, AT 1:152; italicized text in Latin). For
the Jesuits, Gods middle knowledge of our free action is akin to his natural knowledge
of the essences of creatures in being independent of any determination by his will. But
given Descartess created truth doctrine (as I call it for short), there can be no natural
knowledge, much less middle knowledge, of creatures. All truths concerning creatures
are subject to Gods will, and so even truths concerning our free action are so subject.
The mystery in the Jesuits of how God could have prevolitional knowledge of our
undetermined action is therefore replaced by the mystery in Descartes of how truths
concerning such action could be founded ultimately in a divine will that is the efcient
cause of all truths concerning creation. The mystery in Descartes would appear to be
more intractable insofar as it seems contradictory to say that the divine will determines
truths concerning free actions that are themselves undetermined. One easy way out
would be to claim that since the created truth doctrine allows that God can do the impossible, it raises no additional problems for the view that God brings about the impossibility of determining undetermined action. In the course of this chapter, however, I hope
to show that this doctrine yields a more sophisticated response to the problem of Gods
determination of free action, one that can accommodate certain aspects of the Jesuit theory of middle knowledge that distinguish it from its Dominican competitors. To set the
stage for this argument, I consider Descartess created truth doctrine. However, I begin
with questions concerning the scope of the doctrine that broach certain complications
for his theory of causation that are not restricted to the special case of free human action.

5.1.2. Descartes on Created Truth


When Descartes launched his created truth doctrine in 1630, he mentioned to Mersenne
only the mathematical truths you call eternal (15 Apr. 1630, AT 1:145). However, in
the 1641 Sixth Replies, he indicated that the scope of this doctrine extends far beyond

18. Cf. the claim earlier in the Principles that God alone is the true cause of all that is or
can be [sunt aut esse possunt] (PP I.24, AT 8-1:14).

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

mathematical truths, and indeed seems to be without limit, since no good or truth,
nothing worthy of belief or action or omission, can be feigned the idea of which is in
the divine intellect before his will determines to bring it about that it be such (AT
7:432). Similarly, in a 1648 letter Descartes told Arnauld in an unqualied way that
every basis of truth and goodness depends on [divine] omnipotence (AT 5:224).
In a groundbreaking discussion, Frankfurt has argued that Descartess created
truth doctrine in fact has universal scope (Frankfurt 1977, 40). He has further
claimed that Descartes understood this doctrine to entail a universal possibilism on
which eternal truths, including truths concerning God, are inherently as contingent
as or no more necessary than any other propositions (42). In Frankfurts view,
Descartes took the apparent necessity of these truths properly to be understood only
as relative to the character of our minds (45). God has created our minds such that
we perceive the eternal truths to be undeniable, but he could just as easily have created us and the world and even himself differently.
Jonathan Bennett has proposed an alternative to Frankfurts interpretation that
nonetheless takes all eternal truths to fall under the scope of the created truth doctrine. Bennett offers on Descartess behalf a conceptualist account on which the
necessity of the eternal truths is to be analyzed in terms of our own mental capacities. To say that a truth is necessary is simply to say that we cannot distinctly conceive the opposite of such a truth (Bennett 1994, 647). Thus, the created truth
doctrine amounts to the position that God has created our minds such that we cannot conceive the opposite of any eternal truth. As evidence for this reading of the created truth doctrine, Bennett appeals, among other passages, to Descartess remark in
correspondence with Arnauld that I do not think we should say of anything that it
cannot be brought about by God, but I merely say that he has given me such a mind
that I cannot conceive the opposite of the eternal truths, since such things involve
a contradiction in my conception (29 July 1648, AT 5:224).19
Bennett clearly differs from Frankfurt insofar as he rejects the attribution to
Descartes of any sort of universal possibilism. Indeed, in Bennetts view Descartes
accepted rather the opposite; all eternal truths are necessary in a conceptualist sense.
In one respect, however, his reading is close to Frankfurts. For both, the perceived
necessity of the truths is tied to the constitution of our minds. The difference is simply that Frankfurt takes this sort of perceived necessity to be merely apparent,
whereas Bennett takes it to be that in which Descartess necessity consists.
However, the implication here that even truths concerning God reduce to a created feature of our mind is difcult to square with certain claims in Descartes. Most
notable is his insistence in the Fifth Meditation, with respect to the truth that essence
and existence are inseparable in God, that it is not my thought that effects [efciat]
this, or imposes any necessity on anything, but on the contrary it is the necessity
of the thing itself, namely, the existence of God, that necessarily determines me to
thinking this (AT 7:67). Here it is something outside of my thoughtnamely, Gods
essencethat provides the reason for Gods existence and thus grounds the determination of my thought to consider his existence as necessary.

19. Bennett 1994, 65661.

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189

In other writings Descartes accords eternal truths concerning God a special status
that they cannot have on the interpretations Frankfurt and Bennett have offered. Thus,
he insists in his 1630 correspondence with Mersenne that the existence of God is the
rst and the most eternal of all possible truths and the one from which alone all others
proceed (6 May 1630, AT 1:150). Moreover, he closes out his initial discussion of the
created truth doctrine in this correspondence by noting that the essence of created
things is nothing other than eternal truths that are no more necessarily attached to
[Gods] essence than are other created things (27 May 1630, AT 1:15253). Given
these remarks, the created truth doctrine would seem to be restricted to whatever is not
necessarily attached to Gods essence, and thus not include those truths concerning this
essence that surely are so attached. Even if the necessity of created eternal truths is
bound up with the manner in which God creates our mind, the suggestion in these passages is that the necessity of truths concerning Gods essence does not derive from his
will, but rather serves as the uncreated ground for the necessity of created eternal truth.
The claim that Descartes allowed at least in certain passages for uncreated truths
concerning Gods own essence is not new.20 What I think commentators have failed
to appreciate, however, are the complications this sort of restriction on the created
truth doctrine introduces for Descartess theory of causation. The rst complication
concerns the issue of the cause of Gods existence. Earlier I considered Descartess
exchanges with his critics concerning his suggestion in the Third Meditation that God
derives his existence from himself. I noted Descartess conclusion that Gods nature
serves as a formal rather than an efcient cause of his existence (see 2.1.2 (ii.a)).
This special treatment of the case of Gods existence is relevant also to the causal
axiomwhich he introduces in the Second Repliesthat no thing exists of which it
cannot be asked what is the cause why it exists. Anticipating the objection that no
cause is required in the case of Gods existence, Descartes adds that this can be asked
even of God himself, not because he needs any cause in order to exist, but because
the immensity of his nature is the cause or reason [causa sive ratio] why he needs no
cause to exist (AT 7:16465).21 What is signicant, with respect to the created truth
doctrine, is the implication here that though the truth that God exists has a reason in
the immensity of the divine nature, this nature does not provide the sort of efcient
causal explanation for this truth that is required in the case of all created truths.
Moreover, the fact that the truth that God exists requires an ultimate reason serves to
distinguish it from created eternal truths. For Descartes notes in the Sixth Replies, in a
passage cited earlier, that
it is repugnant that the will of God not be indifferent from eternity to all that has
been made or will be made, since no good, or truth, or believing, or doing, or
refraining from doing can be feigned [ ngi potest], the idea of which is in the
divine intellect prior to his will determining or making it to be so. I am not
speaking here of temporal priority; there is not any priority or order, or nature, or
considered reason [ratione rationcinata], as it is called, such that this idea of
good impels God to choose one thing rather than another. (AT 7:43132)

20. See, for instance, Wells 1982.


21. For an extensive discussion of this axiom and its implications, see Carraud 2002, ch. 2.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Given the essential indifference of divine action, there can be no preexisting ideas
that provide reasons for Gods creation of the eternal truths. Not only is there no reason for this creation that we can comprehend; there is no reason God can comprehend either. So whereas the divine nature provides the reason for Gods existence,
there is nothing that can provide a reason for the divine production of created truth.
There is some question whether the result of the created truth doctrine that God
can have no reasons for action is consistent with the implication in Descartes that
God contains the reality of the creatures he creates. I have noted the requirement of
Descartess containment axiom that the reality or perfection of an effect be contained in its (total or adequate) cause formally or eminently (see 2.1.3). But
Descartes himself indicates that this axiom has unrestricted scope, and so requires
that even in the case of divine creation the effects must be contained eminently in
God. To be sure, the specic account of eminent containment that I attributed to
Descartes seems to be consistent with this requirement. Recall that on this account,
a cause eminently contains its effect in virtue of possessing the power that sufces
to produce the objective reality that is present in the causes idea of that effect (see
2.1.3 (ii)). Surely God has the power to produce the objective reality of any ideas
he may have of his effects. The problem, however, is that the reality of the effect that
is contained eminently in nite minds is supposed to provide a basis for its causation of the effect. However, Descartes makes clear that there can be no idea that conditions divine creation. Given this position, God contains not the reality of his effects
(in contrast to the case of nite minds), but rather a power that is able to produce the
reality of these effects ex nihilo (a power totally lacking in nite minds).22
This difference between the divine and created minds introduces a further complication for Descartess insistence on the similarity of our will to Gods. His claim
in the Fourth Meditation is that it is in virtue of his will or free decision (voluntas
sive arbitrii libertas) that I understand myself to bear some image and likeness of
God [imaginem quandam et similitudinem Dei] (AT 7:57).23 The claim that our will
is made in the image and likeness of the divine will is weakened to a considerable
extent by the admission, which follows the passage from the Sixth Replies just cited,

22. In the Use of Reason. Descartess later follower Regis (see chapter 1, note 77) argued,
on the basis of a version of the created truth doctrine, that
God does not see creatures in his perfections, because it has been proved that the
perfections of God have nothing in common with creatures, and by consequence that
they cannot represent them; we must say only that God sees creatures in his will,
insofar as it is by his decrees that he produces and conserves them. (Regis 1996, 169)
Elsewhere in this text, Regis also claimed that God is an analogous cause that, in contrast to
univocal and equivocal causes, contains his effects neither formally nor eminently (40607).
For further discussion of Regiss position and its relation to Descartes, see Schmaltz 2000.
23. Cf. the claim toward the end of the Third Meditation that from the one fact that God created me, there is a strong reason to believe that I have been made in some way in his image and
likeness [imaginem et similitudinem], and that I perceive that likeness, which includes the idea
of God, by the same faculty that enables me to perceive myself (AT 5:51), as well as the comment on this claim in the passage from the Conversation with Burman considered in 2.1.2 (i).

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191

that the indifference that belongs to human freedom is much other [longe alia] than
[the indifference] of divine [freedom]. This admission prefaces Descartess claim
that whereas human indifference does not belong to the essence of human freedom, since it involves an ignorance of reasons that leads our mind in one direction
rather than another, Gods supreme perfection requires that he be indifferent in such
a way that no good or truth . . . can be feigned the idea of which is in the divine
intellect prior to his will determining or making it to be so (AT 7:43233). But
given this admission, it seems that Descartes is not warranted in claiming, as he does
in the Fourth Meditation, that the divine will is not greater than our own considered
in itself formally and precisely (AT 7:57).24
As we will discover in 5.2, however, these remarks reect only one stage in the
evolution of Descartess views on human freedom. In passages from later writings,
he increasingly emphasizes the undetermined nature of our free action. Though this
shift in his thought perhaps reduces somewhat the difference between the divine
and human wills just noted,25 it also introduces the problem for the compatibility of
the created truth doctrine with human freedom that I mentioned toward the end
of 5.1.1 (ii). Recall Descartess acknowledgment in the Principles that it is difcult to comprehend how it is that the power by which God not only knows but
also wills and preordains whatever is or can be could leave free human actions
undetermined. The claim that God wills what can be reects the implication
of Descartess created truth doctrine that eternal truths derive from the indifferent
divine will. But this doctrine requires that there be no truth, or at least no truth concerning the created world, that is independent of Gods will. Even contingent truths
concerning our undetermined free actions can hold only because God has freely
willed that it be so.
This result of the created truth doctrine may seem to place Descartes on the side
of the Dominicans in their battle with the Jesuits on the issue of the relation of free
human actions to God. For Dominicans such as Baez held that the divine will is the
source of truths concerning such actions. What the Dominicans could not accept,
however, is Descartess insistence in the Principles that Gods power leaves our free
action undetermined. Moreover, there is his later claim in the Passions that everything follows necessarily from Gods immutable decree alone except for those
things that this same decree has willed to depend on our free will (PS II.146, AT

24. Descartes holds in the Principles that the term substance cannot apply univocally
to God and creatures given that God is dependent on no other being, whereas created substances depend on God (PP I.51, AT 8-1:24). Nonetheless, as I have argued in Schmaltz 2000,
he allowed for the traditional Thomistic position that God is related in an analogical manner
to creatures. One might think that in a similar manner Descartes could say that even though
our will differs fundamentally from the divine will, nonetheless an analogical relation holds
between the two. One problem with this proposal, however, derives from his insistence in the
Fourth Meditation that his will is so great that I apprehend no idea of any greater (AT 7:57).
In contrast to the case of substantiality, then, the suggestion here is that the sort of perfection
that pertains to his will is not different in kind from the perfection that pertains to Gods will.
25. Though Descartes never admitted that human freedom requires the sort of indifference
from any consideration of truth and goodness that is essential to divine freedom.

192

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

11:439).26 So Descartes seems to have wanted to combine the Dominican position


that truths concerning our free action derive from the divine will with the Jesuit position that God leaves these truths under the control of our will.
The obvious question here is whether there is any intelligible way to combine
these seemingly conicting positions. In the Principles, Descartes suggests that it is
beyond our power to reconcile our freedom with Gods power, and it might be
thought there is nothing more he can say on this issue. As I indicate in 5.3, though,
Descartes has more to say elsewhere on the issue of the relation of our freedom to
divine providence. What he has to say, moreover, can be linked to Surezs account
of middle knowledge in terms of Gods idea of the habituo that results in free action.
Before we consider Descartess views on this issue, though, we need to understand
his attitude toward the sort of human freedom that Surez associated with indifference. As I have indicated, he has a complex and evolving view of our free action.
Whereas he starts in the Meditations with a non-Surezian conception of human
freedom as determination to the true, he ends in the Passions with a Surezian
emphasis on the importance to such freedom of control over pursuit of the good.

5.2. INDIFFERENCE AND HUMAN FREEDOM


In the unnished Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Regulae ad Directionem
Ingenii), which he abandoned in 1628, Descartes distinguishes faith in what God has
revealed from immediate knowledge both of rst principles through intuition and of
remote consequences of those principles through deduction. There he says that the
acceptance of revelation, as well as of anything obscure, is set apart by the fact that
it is not an act of native intelligence [ingenii] but of will [voluntatis] (RM III, AT
10:370). The view here that the acceptance of what is not intellectually evident derives
from the will is something of a scholastic commonplace, as illustrated by Surezs
remark that a person who believes things that he does not see clearly . . . believes
because he wills to, which is why theologians claim that the act of faith . . .
depends on a pious disposition of the will (MD XIX.5, 20, 1:717). However, Surez
made clear that the will is involved only in the case of judgments concerning the good,
and not judgments concerning truth. All of the latter derive from the intellect alone,
and even in the case of judgments concerning the truth of something that is less than
evident, the strength of the assent of the intellect is tied to the clarity of its perception
of its object (1516, 1:716). Even in his early work, then, Descartes departs from
the scholastic line in claiming that assent to the truth of claims that are obscure is an
act of will rather than of intellect.27

26. For more on Descartess account of freedom in the Passions, see 5.2.3.
27. Cf. Thomass distinction between intellectus and scientia, on the one hand, where
intellectual assent is moved by its object, and opinio and des, on the other, where assent is
moved not only by its object, but also by decision. On the view here, the will can command
assent to propositions that do not themselves compel assent (ST II-II. 1.4). Nonetheless,

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193

In his later account of judgment, however, Descartess differences with the scholastics are even more pronounced. According to this account, judgment involves an act of
will not only in the case of assent to obscure matters, but also in the case of assent to
the results of intuition and deduction, or what he came to call the perception of clear
and distinct ideas. This change from his position in the Rules introduces certain difculties for his view of human freedom that derive from his commitment to the freedom
of the will in its contribution to judgment. In particular, on his new account there
appear to be two different kinds of freedom that judgment can involve. With respect to
judgments concerning perceptions that are obscure, freedom seems to consist in the
ability of the will to refrain from assenting even in cases where it does in fact assent.
In contrast, we will see the indication in Descartes that the nature of the will is such
that it is impelled by clear and distinct ideas to assent. Given this view, the sort of freedom involved in the case of clear and distinct perception seems to involve intellectual
determination rather than the ability to do otherwise.
A related problem is that it is unclear which of these two kinds of freedom is most
primary. In passages associated with his account of freedom in the Fourth Meditation,
Descartes emphasizes that the will is most free when it is most determined by the
intellect, and thus lacks any sort of indifference. However, he later makes the claim
in the Passions, which I have noted already, that God leaves it to the will alone to
determine its free action. We will discover that with this shift there is a corresponding
move from an initial preoccupation with the role of the will in assent to truth to a nal
acknowledgment of the importance to human freedom of the control of the will over
its pursuit of the good.28

5.2.1. The Fourth Meditation


In his set of objections to the Meditations, Arnauld counsels that Descartes make
clear that his discussion in the Fourth Meditation is dealing above all with mistakes
we commit in distinguishing between the true and the false, and not those that occur
in pursuit of good and evil (AT 7:215). In response, Descartes notes that the entire
context of my book makes clear the restriction to the consideration of truth and
falsehood (AT 7:24748). Nevertheless, on the basis of Arnaulds remarks, he asked
his editor Mersenne to insert into the Synopsis of the Meditations the disclaimer that
it should be noted in passing that I do not deal [in the Fourth Meditation] at all with
sin, i.e. the error which is committed in pursuing good and evil, but only with the
error that occurs in distinguishing truth from falsehood (AT 7:15).29

Aquinas insisted that even in cases where the will commands assent, the assent itself is an act
of intellect rather than (as Descartes would have it) an act of will.
28. The importance for Descartess account of freedom of the shift in his thought from a
focus on the search for truth to a consideration of the pursuit of the good is highlighted in
Schickel 2005.
29. Descartes made this request in To Mersenne, 18 Mar. 1641, AT 3:33435. The restriction to the consideration of truth had been indicated in the First Meditation (AT 7:22) and in
the Second Replies (AT 7:149).

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

For scholastics such as Surez, the restriction to the case of the consideration of
the true and the false would involve as well a restriction to the role of the intellect in
judgment. In the Fourth Meditation, however, Descartes insists that all judgments
require contributions both from the faculty of knowledge ( facultate congnescendi),
that is, the intellect (intellectu), and from the faculty of election or freedom of
decision ( facultate eligendi sive . . . arbitrii libertate), that is, the will (voluntate).
The former contributes merely the ideas from which judgments can be made, which
strictly speaking are not themselves true or false. Truth or falsity enters only with the
assent or dissent of the will with regard to these ideas (AT 7:56).30
Descartes is most concerned in the Fourth Meditation to argue that mistakes in
judgment are our fault, since they derive from the fact that we have failed to restrict
our will to clear and distinct ideas. In cases where our ideas are confused or obscure,31
the judgmental act of our will is not determined, and thus we are indifferent to these
ideas. Given this indifference, we are able to refrain from judgment, and so to avoid
falling into error. Here we may seem to have a parallel to the case in Surez of our
pursuit of an object that is not perceived to be a necessary good. For Surez emphasized that in the case of such a pursuit our will is indifferent in the sense that it has
the ability in the very same circumstances to refrain from such a pursuit. Just as
Surez held that the freedom involved in our pursuit of the good requires an ability to
do otherwise, so it seems that Descartes allows that the freedom involved in our judgments concerning the true requires such an ability.
However, the analogy is undermined by Descartess treatment of the role of the will
in judgments concerning clear and distinct ideas. He notes that when he made such
judgments, a great light in the intellect was followed by a great inclination in the will,
and thus the spontaneity and freedom of my belief were all the greater in proportion to
my lack of indifference (AT 7:59). Such judgments correspond most closely to the
case in Surez of the pursuit of a necessary good. But whereas Surez claimed that the
act of will involved in this pursuit cannot be free since indifference is lacking, and thus
is merely voluntary, Descartes insists that the spontaneity and freedom of his will are
all the greater because its action is determined by the intellect.
This is not merely a verbal dispute over which acts of will are to be included in the
extension of the term free. Rather, it is over which acts are paradigmatic instances of
our freedom. For Surez, as we have seen, only uncoerced acts that are indifferent have

30. In the Fourth Replies, Descartes insists that apart from judgment, ideas have no reference to the truth or falsity of their objects, and thus cannot be said to be formally true or
false (AT 7:232). The discussion here concerns Arnaulds objections to the remarks in the
Third Meditation concerning the material falsity of ideas (see AT 7:2067). For more on
Descartess somewhat obscure notion of material falsity, see chapter 2, note 44.
31. In the Principles, Descartes denes a clear perception as one that is present and
accessible to the attentive mind and a distinct perception as one that as well as being clear,
is so sharply separated from all other perceptions that it contains in itself only what is clear
(PP I.45, AT 8-1:22). A perception can fail to contain in itself only what is clear, and thus be
obscure, even though it is present to the attentive mind, and so is clear. However, if a perception fails to be present to the attentive mind, and so is confused, it is automatically obscure
(see PP I.46, AT 8-1:22).

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195

Will

Coerced

Uncoerced
voluntary

Necessary good

Non-necessary good

Determined by
intellect

Freedom of
indifference

(Perfection of
determination to good)

(Perfection of control
required for merit)

FIGURE 5.1 Surez on the Will

the perfection of control that is essential for human freedom. Though determined volitional acts have the perfection of being determined to the good, this perfection does not
allow for the merit that pertains to genuinely free human action (see gure 5.1).
The distinction between coerced and uncoerced acts of will is not so clear in
Descartes.32 However, his main difference from Surez concerns the relation
between voluntariness and freedom. Whereas Surez emphasized that voluntariness
is distinct from a true freedom involving indifference, Descartes speaks in the Fourth
Meditation as if the spontaneity involved in voluntary action is equivalent to freedom, and indeed claims in the Second Replies that it is the essence of the will that
it is carried voluntarily and freely (voluntarie . . . et libere) toward what is clearly
known to be good (AT 7:166).33 Far from being paradigmatic instances of freedom,
judgments involving indifference are presented in the Fourth Meditation as being
imperfect instances of freedom, since they involve a defect of knowledge or a kind
of negation. It is only when we are impelled by our clear and distinct ideas to
embrace the truth that we are wholly free in a manner that excludes all indifference (AT 7:5758). The account of free will in the Fourth Meditation (see gure 5.2)
indicates a clear alternative to what we nd in Surez.
The suggestion in the Fourth Meditation that determination to the true rather than
indifference is a dening aspect of the freedom involved in our judgment is reected

32. In contrast to Surez, Descartes does not mention explicitly in the Fourth Meditation the
case of coerced action. Presumably this is because coercion does not seem to be a consideration
in the case of assent to ideas. However, the denition of will in this text does mention lack of
determination by an external force, and it seems that one could contrast cases where such force
limits options to a single undesirable one from cases where there is no such constraint.
33. See also the claim in the Sixth Replies that since a person has a will that is determined
to the true and the good, it is evident that he will embrace the good and the true all the more
willingly [libentius], and thus also more freely [liberius], that he sees more clearly (AT
7:432).

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION
Will

Coerced (?)

Uncoerced
voluntary = free

Clear and distinct


ideas

Confused or obscure
ideas

Freedom of
spontaneity

Freedom of
indifference

(Perfect freedom =
determination to the true)

(Imperfect freedom =
lack of determination)

FIGURE 5.2 Free Will in the Fourth Meditation

in comments on this text in which Descartes emphasizes that Gods freedom differs
in fundamental ways from our own. Drawing on his created truth doctrine, Descartes
claims in the Sixth Replies that divine perfection requires that nothing can determine
God to will anything, and thus the supreme indifference to be found in God is the
supreme indication of his omnipotence. However, he notes that in our case not only
are we free when ignorance of what is right makes us indifferent, but we are most free
when a clear perception impels [impellit] us to pursue something (AT 7:43233). In
contrast to the case of God, then, the perfection of our freedom consists in the determination to the true (and the good) rather than in an indifference to action.
One might object at this point that Descartess remarks in the Fourth Meditation
indicate more ambivalence on the issue of what is essential to our free will than
I have allowed. In particular, there is the famous passage in which he claims that our
will consists only in the fact that we can do or not do (that is, afrm or deny, pursue or ee), or rather [vel potius] only in that when something is proposed by
the intellect to us for afrming or denying, or pursuing and eeing, we are carried
[feramur] in such a way that we sense no power external to us that determines us to
it (AT 7:57). Scholars have disagreed over what kind(s) of freedom the two clauses
of this passage endorse, and what the vel potius connector is supposed to indicate.
One prominent view is that the two clauses offer two different kinds of freedom,
with the rst clause indicating a freedom of indifference that requires a contracausal ability to do otherwise, and the second clause indicating a freedom of spontaneity that does not require such an ability.34 The vel potius connector is then read
either as a retraction of the denition of free will in terms of freedom of indifference,35 or as an indication that our will can exhibit either kind of freedom.36

34. See especially Kenny 1972, which distinguishes between liberty of indifference and
liberty of spontaneity. Cf. Gilson 1913b and Beyssade 1994.
35. Gilson 1913b, 310; Beyssade 1994, 206.
36. Kenny 1972, 18.

Causation and Freedom

197

However, it seems that vel potius is best read as indicating not a retraction or a
qualication, but rather an equivalence, as in, or in other words. The question, then,
is whether freedom of indifference is to be understood in terms of freedom of spontaneity or the other way around. Though some have argued that freedom of indifference is primary,37 I take the primacy of freedom of spontaneity to be indicated by
passages we have just considered in which Descartes emphasizes that indifference is
not essential to human freedom. Thus, I understand the claim that we can do or not
do (that is, afrm or deny, pursue or ee) to afrm our ability to determine our own
action in a manner that precludes determination by an external power.38 This determination involves indifference in cases where we lack clear and distinct ideas, but
even in cases where we possess such ideas, our will remains the source of the fact that
we are carried inevitably toward what the intellect represents to us.39
I propose that we understand Descartess view that the will determines its own free
action in terms of Surezs account of the relations between the faculties of intellect and
will in action. Earlier I noted the claim in Surezs De Anima, with respect to the production of appetition, that apprehension is required, not as an efcient cause, but as an
application to the object (DA V.3, 8, Opera 3:760) (see 4.2.1). This claim is reected
in his view in the Metaphysical Disputations that cognition is merely a necessary condition for an appetitive act directed toward the cognized object, and that this faculty
rather than the cognition itself is the efcient cause of the act (MD XVIII.7, 49, 1:646).
To be sure, the particular passage from the Disputations is concerned only with cognition of nonnecessary goods (in particular, sensory goods), and it might be thought that
appetition must move itself simply because its act is not determined by cognition.
However, elsewhere in this text Surez appeals to Thomas in support of the view that
the function of the intellect is simply to illuminate, direct and regulate the operations
of the will, and not to move the will as an efcient cause (MD XIX.6, 7, 1:721).40
The indication here is that cognition serves merely as a nal cause that moves the will
to act on its own. Even in the case where the intellect presents a necessary good, it only
instructs the will to determine itself in a particular manner.

37. See, for instance, Alanen 2003, 24046, and Ragland 2006a and 2006b.
38. For a similar view that freedom is equated in this passage with an ability of the will to
determine itself, see Hateld 2003, 19298. But see note 43.
39. Cf. Campbells view that the rst clause of Descartess denition requires that there be
genuine alternatives even in the case of clear and distinct perception, but that these alternatives
are compatible with the determination of action in the actual case. This is what Campbell calls
two-way compatibilism (Campbell 1999). See also the emphasis in Ragland 2006a on the
importance of alternative possibilities for freedom. However, toward the end of the Fourth
Meditation Descartes stresses that his will would be free even if God precluded the possibility
of error either by restricting his deliberation to clear and distinct perception or by impressing on
his memory the importance of making judgments only in the case of such perception (AT 7:61).
There is no indication here of the requirement that alternatives be open to him. I take this same
point to count against the view that Descartess denition in the Fourth Meditation indicates the
necessity for freedom of a contracausal power to do otherwise (see the work cited in note 37).
40. Surez cites ST I-II.9.1 and 3.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Descartes admittedly does not use the notion of nal causality in describing the
relation of perception to the will. However, he also refrains in passages connected to
his account of freedom in the Fourth Meditation from referring to such perception as
an efcient cause of the will. It is true that he speaks of perception as impelling
(impellit) the will (Sixth Replies, AT 7:433), and this may seem to suggest an efcient
causal relation. However, in other passages he indicates that the impulsion is to be
understood in terms of the will being drawn (fertur) by perception (Second Replies,
AT 7:166), or of something being proposed (proponitur) in perception for action on
the part of the will (Fourth Meditation, AT 7:57). In general, the stress in the Fourth
Meditation is on the distinction between the passive intellect, which merely offers up
ideas for consideration, and the active will, which acts on those ideas.41 Given this
emphasis, it seems that the relation between perception and the will is better conceived in terms of an agent being drawn toward a perceived end, as in Surez, rather
than in terms of a perception being an efcient cause of an effect in a patient.42
The remarks in the Fourth Meditation also appear to allow for a Surezian understanding of indifference in terms of a contracausal power to do otherwise. After all,
when Gassendi objects to the account of indifference in this text on the grounds that
our will is determined to judge in a particular manner even when perception is
obscure (Fifth Objections, AT 7:317), Descartes responds by insisting that our will
has the freedom of moving itself, without the determination of the intellect, in one
direction or another (Fifth Replies, AT 7:378).43 In the case of judgments concerning clear and distinct ideas, however, there is no indication that the will has the power
of moving itself in one direction or another. To be sure, Descartes could still say that
even in this case our will can do or not do in the sense that it determines itself to act.
He in fact does say that our freedom is most perfect in this case given that it is the

41. See also Descartess claim that will and intellect differ only as the activity and passivity of the same substance. For strictly speaking, understanding is the passivity of the mind
and willing is its activity (To Regius, May 1641, AT 3:372).
42. In 3.2.1 (i), I noted the problem that the suggestion in the discussion in PP II.37 of the
rst law of nature that even minds never change unless by external causes (AT 8-1:62) seems
to conict with Descartess claim that our will can be a source of internal change. We can now
see that the problem derives from Descartess view that (setting aside the difcult case of God;
see 5.3) nothing external to our will can be an efcient cause of its free action. However, on
the Surezian position that I attribute to Descartes, perceptions could serve as nal causes of
such action. Descartes also held that perception is required for judgment involving the assent
of the will (see, e.g., PP I.34, AT 8-1:18), and it seems that he would allow that it is required
for any act of will. Thus, he could hold that even in the case of changes due to free action, a
cause external to the will is required, albeit a nal rather than an efcient cause.
43. But cf. Hatelds claim that for Descartes, indifference is not incompatible with the
will being determined by other factors, such as habit, to choose one way rather than another
(Hateld 2003, 194; the reference here is to Descartess remarks in what I call in 5.2.2 (iii)
the Jesuit letter). Though Descartes is concerned in his response to Gassendi only with
external determination by the intellect, and not by internal determination by habit, I take his
claim in this response that our will can guard against our erring by moving itself in one
direction or another to indicate a stronger sense of indifference than Hateld suggests.

Causation and Freedom

199

nature of the will to be carried to the true (and the good). But certainly the implication here that our freedom is compatible with the fact that the nature of our will necessitates its being drawn to clear and distinct ideas would have been troubling to Surez.
Though we will discover that Descartes came to be worried by this implication in his
later writings, at the time of the Meditations he seems to have been content to identify the freedom of our will with a self-determining activity that is not negated but
rather perfected by clear and distinct perception.

5.2.2. Mid-1640s Developments


Some commentators have found in Descartes the consistent afrmation of a particular account of human freedom, though without agreeing on the precise nature of this
account.44 In contrast, my argument here is that his view of human freedom evolved
over time.45 We have seen the emphasis in the Fourth Meditation and related texts on
a kind of freedom that is most perfect when our will is determined by its nature to
assent to clear and distinct ideas. However, during the mid-1640s, after the publication of the second Latin edition of the Meditations in 1642, Descartes increasingly
emphasizes the importance of our control over the will in free action. Though he still
acknowledges during this time the determination of our will to clear and distinct
ideas, he also increasingly attempts to allow for some dependence of this determination on choice. We see this development in Descartess thought rst in his account of
human freedom in the Principles (1644), and then in his commentary on the Fourth
Meditation in two letters, the rst a 1644 letter to the Jesuit Denis Mesland, which I
call the Mesland letter, and the second an undated letter most likely from around this
same time and almost certainly addressed to a Jesuit correspondent, which I call the
Jesuit letter.46
(i) Principles
I have noted the emphasis in the Principles on the problem of reconciling the fact that
everything is preordained by God with the fact that we experience a freedom and
indifference (libertatas et indifferentia) in ourselves exhibited in our undetermined
(indeterminatas) actions (PP I.4041, AT 8-1:20). Here already there seems to be a
dramatic shift from the emphasis in the Fourth Meditation on a kind of freedom that
is most perfect when indifference is completely absent. Yet there are some important
44. Cf., for instance, the view in Campbell 1999 that Descartes consistently accepted a
compatibilist account and the view in Alanen 2003, 24046, and in Ragland 2006b that he
consistently accepted an incompatibilist account.
45. Here I develop the evolutionary account of Descartess views on human freedom that
I rst presented in Schmaltz 1994.
46. Cf. the discussion of the Mesland and Jesuit letters in Marlin 1986, which criticizes
the analysis of this correspondence in Kenny 1972. Though he anticipates my conclusion
below (against Kenny) that the Jesuit letter marks an important break from Descartess earlier
views, Marlin does not mention the sort of problems that I do with the positive account of freedom in this letter.

200

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

qualications in the remarks in the Principles that indicate that the differences are not
as great as they may rst appear to be. For instance, in this text Descartes restricts his
consideration of our freedom to assent or not to assent at will to cases in which
matters are not completely certain and examined (PP I.39, AT 8-1:19). Moreover,
he continues to insist there that our nature is such that whenever we perceive anything clearly, we assent to it spontaneously [sponte], and can in no way doubt that it
is true (PP I.43, AT 8-1:21). There is thus no denial here of the determination of our
will toward clear and distinct perception that Descartes highlighted in the Fourth
Meditation.47
What is missing in the Principles, however, is his earlier claim that such a
determination constitutes a perfect form of freedom. Indeed, at one point in this
text Descartes seems to indicate that genuine freedom precludes determination of
action. Thus, he notes there that whereas automata cannot be praised for producing certain motions, since they necessarily exhibit such motions, we can be
praised for embracing the truth, since it is more credit to us when we embrace
because we do it voluntarily, than would be the case if we were not able not to have
embraced (PP I.37, AT 8-1:1819). In contrast to the view in the Fourth
Meditation, voluntariness is contrasted with cases where one cannot do otherwise.48 To be sure, there is no explanation in the Principles of how the fact that
we were able not to have embraced the truth is consistent with our inability to
doubt our clear and distinct perceptions. So there are difculties here that remain
to be addressed. Even so, we are closer to the view in Surez that any sort of freedom in us that involves merit must include an indifference that consists in a contracausal power to do otherwise.49
(ii) Mesland Letter
In a 1644 letter to a Reverend Jesuit Father, identied in another letter as Denis
Mesland,50 Descartes responds to questions about the Fourth Meditation that

47. For the view that these features of the Principles reveal that the account of human freedom in this text is compatible with the account in the Fourth Meditation, see Kenny 1972,
2021, and Cottingham 1988, 25052.
48. The French edition of the Principles replaces the reference to what is voluntary
with what derives from a determination of our will (une determination de notre volont)
(AT 9-1:40). For discussion of the changes in this section of the Principles, see Beyssade
1996.
49. See also Descartess claim in a 1645 letter to Elisabeth that we experience in ourselves
an independence that sufces to make our actions praiseworthy or blameworthy (3 Nov.
1645, AT 4:333), and his claim in a 1647 letter to Queen Christina that it is only what
depends on the will that is subject to reward and punishment (20 Nov. 1647, AT 5:84).
50. In particular, Descartes indicates that Mesland is the correspondent in a later letter to
a Jesuit, at AT 4:121.

Causation and Freedom

201

concern an indifference connected to our ability to suspend judgment. He begins by


agreeing that we have this ability, but explains that
it is certain, it seems to me, that a great light in the intellect is followed by a great
inclination in the will; so that seeing very clearly that a thing is good for us, it is
very difcult, and even, as I believe, impossible, as long as one continues in the
same thought, to stop the course of our desire. But because the nature of our soul
is such that it hardly attends for more than a moment to the same thing, as soon as
our attention turns from the reasons by which we know that this thing is good for
us, and we retain in memory only that it is desirable to us, we have the power to
represent to our mind certain reasons that make us doubt, and suspend our
judgment, and also maybe even form a contrary judgment. And so, since you
regard freedom not simply as indifference but rather as a real and positive power
to determine oneself, the difference between us is merely a verbal one, for I agree
that the soul has such a power. (AT 4:116; italicized text in Latin)51

The claim here that it is impossible as long as one continues in the same thought
to resist a great light in the intellect is in line with the view in both the Fourth
Meditation and the Principles that our will is by nature determined to assent to
clear and distinct perception. In light of the suggestion in the Principles that we possess a kind of freedom and indifference that involves merit, however, it is signicant that Descartes does not merely stop in the Mesland letter with the claim that we
act voluntarily even when we must follow the inclination of our will. Rather, he
insists that even in the case where we are led by a great light of intellect, it is possible for us subsequently to be distracted and then consider reasons that lead us to suspend judgment. Thus, a continuing assent to clear and distinct perception requires a
certain effort of attention that depends on the will rather than on that perception
itself.
Admittedly, there are remnants in the Mesland letter of the suggestion in the
Fourth Meditation that perfect freedom consists in determined assent to clear and
distinct perception. Thus, Descartes notes there that we may earn merit even
though, seeing very clearly what we must do, we do it infallibly, and without any
indifference, as Jesus Christ did during this [earthly] life (AT 4:117). Nevertheless,
he also attempts there to accommodate the Jesuit view that indifference is essential
to human freedom. For instance, he emphasizes that the indifference that he took to
be accidental to freedom in the Fourth Meditation is merely one that involves some
sort of defect in knowledge. He therefore allows for the view of his correspondent that the will is indifferent in the sense of having a real power to determine oneself, and concludes that any difference between them is merely a verbal one (AT
4:116). Descartes may appear to indicate a more than verbal difference when he

51. The remarks here are reminiscent of Descartess claim in the Fifth Meditation that
though my nature is such that so long as I perceive something very clearly and distinctly I
cannot but believe it to be true, it is also the case that I cannot x my mental vision continually on the same thing to keep perceiving it clearly, and thus that other arguments can now
easily occur to me which might easily undermine my opinion, if I did not possess knowledge
of God (AT 7:69; cf. Second Replies, AT 7:14446; Fourth Replies, AT 7:24546).

202

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

claims that whereas Mesland restricts freedom to a power of determination accompanied by indifference in the sense of the Fourth Meditation, he takes freedom to
include in the general sense what is voluntary (AT 4:116). Here we seem to have
the sort of substantive disagreement with the Jesuit position connected to the insistence in the Fourth Meditation that true freedom is exhibited in our determined
assent to clear and distinct perception.52 In contrast to the case of this text, however,
there is the admission in the Mesland letter that at least in the case of the continuation of this assent, there is a certain kind of dependence on an apparently undetermined effort of the will.
(iii) Jesuit Letter
The third stage of Descartess development during the mid-1640s is reected in a
Latin fragment of an undated letter that Adam and Tannery found in a manuscript
from the Bibliothque Mazarine and presented in their edition of Descartess writings as a continuation of a letter to Mesland written in French and dated 9 February
1645.53 It seems unlikely that Descartes would have switched languages midletter,
and if Mesland were the correspondent it would be difcult to explain why crossreferences are missing from both the fragment and the Mesland letter. Even so, the
fact that the fragment repeats many of the claims from the Mesland letter regarding
indifference and its relation to free action allows us to be condent that it was composed around the same time. Moreover, we can be fairly certain that the fragment
was from a letter to a Jesuit correspondent, since there is the same attempt that we
found in the Mesland letter to accommodate the Jesuit emphasis on the importance
of indifference for freedom.
In line with his procedure in the Mesland letter, Descartes begins in the Jesuit
letter by distinguishing the indifference considered in the Fourth Meditation,
which involves merely a lack of impulsion of the will toward truth and goodness,
and a kind of indifference that is identied with a positive faculty of determining
oneself to one or other of two contraries that is to pursuing or avoiding, to afrming or denying. He then claims that our will has such a positive faculty not only
when it possesses indifference in the Fourth Meditation sense, but also when it is
moved by an evident reason to act in a certain way. Descartes cites as evidence that
the action derives from the positive faculty of determination in this latter case the
fact that

52. In fact, Kenny takes the position in the Mesland letter to be consistent with the view
in the Fourth Meditation; see Kenny 1972, 2324.
53. See the editorial comments on this letter in AT 4:172. As Kenny notes, Clerselier had
earlier provided a French translation of this letter and dated portions of it from 1630 and 1637,
whereas Adam and Tannery initially presented the French version of this letter as part of a
May 1641 letter to Mersenne (Kenny 1972, 2526). The former view of the letter is ruled out
by the fact that it refers to the account of indifference in the Fourth Meditation, whereas the
latter is implausible given its attempt to accommodate a Jesuit account of indifference to
which Mersenne was not committed.

Causation and Freedom

203

although morally speaking [moraliter loquendo] we can hardly move in the


contrary direction, absolutely [absolute] however we can. For it is always open
to us to hold back from following a clearly cognized good, or from admitting a
perspicuous truth, providing however that we consider it good to demonstrate
the freedom of our decision by this. (AT 4:173)

Thus, the positive faculty essential for freedom requires not only that the will determine itself toward an evident reason, as the Fourth Meditation suggests, but further
that the will have the ability absolutely speaking to move itself in a contrary direction even in the case of its consideration of such an evident reason.
Descartes introduces a complication into his account when he continues by noting that before acts of will are elicited, freedom consists either in a greater facility
in determining oneself or in a greater use of the positive power we have of following the worse although we see the better. We more easily determine ourselves when
we follow evident reasons, but make greater use of the positive power in turning
away from such reasons (AT 4:174). In addition to the positive faculty of determination, then, there is a positive power that is revealed in our choice of the worse,
which involves not only indifference but also a kind of perversion.54
Presumably we exercise our positive faculty of determination both when we determine ourselves to follow evident reasons and when we exercise our perverse power.
It is unclear, however, that the exercise of this power is involved in the case that
Descartes cites in the letter, where we hold back from following a clearly cognized
good since we consider it better to demonstrate our freedom by doing so. For in this
case we seem to think it better to act in this way, and therefore appear not to see
that this is a worse option. In general, it appears that the ability to do otherwise
absolutely speaking does not require the exercise of a perverse power to do what we
perceive to be worse. For we could be motivated to act contrary to evident reasons in
cases where we (confusedly) perceive some good that follows from so acting to be
greater than the good of being led by evident reasons.
In any event, the suggestion in the Jesuit letter is that our freedom involves the
possession of a positive faculty that allows us absolutely speaking to resist even clear
and distinct perceptions. Ferdinand Alqui has argued that such a suggestion marks
a decisive break with Descartess view in previous work, including the Mesland letter, that we cannot refuse assent to something clearly and distinctly perceived at the
moment it is so perceived.55 But we could perhaps reduce the differences between
the Mesland and Jesuit letters by drawing on the position in the former that when it
is distracted from considering a clearly known good, our will can attend to reasons
that lead it to suspend judgment or form a contrary opinion. When Descartes says
in the Jesuit letter that absolutely we can move against evident reasons, he need
not have meant that we can so move at the moment we perceive them. He could
have meant, rather, that it is always in our power to distract attention in a way that
allows us to act otherwise. Though the Mesland letter does not mention a power of

54. Following Kennys claim that this positive power involves a liberty of perversion
(Kenny 1972, 28).
55. Alqui 1950, 28892.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

distraction, it seems to leave room for the view that such a power explains the power
we have to resist even evident reasons.56
Alqui therefore may well distinguish the views in the Mesland and Jesuit letters
too sharply. Nevertheless, I think that he is correct to draw attention to an important
shift in Descartess thought on human freedom during the mid-1640s. In particular
there is a shift away from the focus in the Fourth Meditation on what Alqui
has called la libert clairethe enlightened freedom that occurs when the spontaneous assent of the will is determined by the clear and distinct perceptions of
the intellect. What comes to be emphasized rather is what he has called la libert
positivethe positive freedom that occurs when the act of will is undetermined.57
This sort of freedom is indicated by talk in the Jesuit letter of a positive faculty of
determination essential to freedom that includes the power absolutely speaking to
turn away even from evident reason.
Interestingly, the distinction in the Jesuit letter between what the will can do
morally speaking and absolutely is present also in the Metaphysical Disputations.
Surez appeals to such a distinction in that text in particular to address the question of
whether evil action presupposes an antecedent defect in intellectual judgment. He
claims that though no such defect is absolutely necessary (absolute necessarium)
for us to choose evil, still morally speaking [moraliter loquendo] the will never
lapses unless there is some antecedent defect in the intellect (MD XIX.7, 1011,
1:72526). But Surezs use of this distinction differs in important respects from the
use of it in Descartess Jesuit letter. For Surez appeals to a defect in our intellect to
explain our ability morally speaking to lapse into sin. In contrast, the indication in
Descartess Jesuit letter is that the defect of thinking it would be good to demonstrate
our freedom by turning away from evident reasons serves to explain our ability
absolutely to resist reasons that we would otherwise follow morally speaking.
Even so, toward the end of 5.1.1 (i), I alluded to the fact that another feature of
Surezs account of human freedom sheds some light on the distinction in the Jesuit
letter between what we can do absolutely and morally speaking. I have in mind
Surezs claim that the inuence of intellectual judgment on free action requires a
prior resolution on the part of the will. Given a resolution to pursue a certain good,
the judgment that particular objects are instances of such a good leads me to pursue

56. For a similar reading of the Mesland and Jesuit letters, see Kenny 1972, 2830.
However, Kenny does not draw attention to the fact that there is no mention in the Mesland
letter of the power of the will to distract attention. Moreover, the suggestion in the Mesland
letter that perfect freedom consists in the determined assent to clear and distinct perception is
missing from the Jesuit letter.
57. Alqui 1950, 28990. On the basis of close readings of the texts, Michelle Beyssade
has argued that this sort of shift is reected in changes to the Fourth Meditation in the 1647
French edition of the Meditations (Beyssade 1994). For a critique of this argument, see
Campbell 1999, 18789. I have already expressed my disagreement with Beyssades claim
(cited in note 34) that the vel potius connector in the Latin edition of the Fourth Meditation
indicates a retraction of the claim that a two-way power is essential to free action. However,
my evolutionary account of Descartess views on human freedom conicts with Campbells
claim against Beyssade that these views were consistently compatibilist in nature.

Causation and Freedom

205

them. In the terms Descartes employs in the Jesuit letter, given this judgment I pursue such objects morally speaking. Since it is in my power to withdraw the resolution,
however, absolutely I can resist the pursuit. As we have seen, Surez even speaks of
the will as having the ability to divert the intellect from thinking about the object
that is presented as good. When read in light of the Mesland letter, the Jesuit letter
indicates that our will has a similar power of diversion that can prevent us from pursuing a clearly known good, or from admitting a clearly perceived truth (AT 4:173).
Of course, the reference here to the role of the will in the admission of a perspicuous truth reects Descartess deep differences with the scholastics on the nature of
judgment. Even so, it is interesting that in the Jesuit letter, he takes the turning away
from a clearly perceived truth to be motivated by pursuit of an alternative good, in
particular, the good of demonstrating freedom. A further movement toward Surez
is reected in the indication in this letter that a consideration of the pursuit of the
good can be important for an account of the role of the will in the search after truth.
To be sure, I have cited several remarks above concerning the freedom of our will
that date prior to the Jesuit letter but that mention not only our assent to the true
but also our pursuit of the good. Even so, in the discussions of free will in the
Meditations and the Principles, he tends to consider the former in abstraction from
the latter. In contrast, the view in the Jesuit letter is that the freedom exhibited in the
assent of our will to a clearly perceived truth involves a power to do otherwise
absolutely speaking that is itself entangled with our pursuit of the good. To be
sure, the suggestion in this letter that doing otherwise absolutely speaking requires
the exercise of a perverse power of doing the worse tends to confuse matters. In the
nal account of the freedom of our will that he provides in the 1649 Passions of the
Soul, Descartes focuses on less bizarre considerations that lead us away from
the search after truth. As in the case of the Jesuit letter, however, these considerations involve the role of the will in the pursuit of the good.

5.2.3. Passions of the Soul


In the Passions Descartes emphasizes that the will is by its nature so free that it can
never be constrained [contrainte] and that its volitions are absolutely in its power
[absolument en son pouvoir] and can be changed only indirectly [indirectement] by
the body (PS I.41, AT 11:359). Volitions are here contrasted with passions in the
strict sense, that is, certain confused and obscure perceptions that we refer to our
soul rather than to our body or to external objects and that are caused, maintained
and strengthened by some motion of the spirits [in the body] (I.27, AT 11:349).58
Such passions are absolutely dependent on the actions that produce them, and can
be changed by the soul only indirectly, except in cases where it is itself their cause
(I.41, AT 11:35960). In cases where the passionate feelings do not have the soul as
their cause, they can come into conict with volitions deriving from the will. Thus,

58. In this text, Descartes also uses the term passions more broadly to include all perceptions that have the soul or body as their cause (PS I.19, AT 11:343).

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the passion of fear that arises from battle may compete in the soul with the volition
to act in a courageous manner (I.47, AT 11:36466).59
In this sort of competition, it cannot be assumed that the volition will win out over
the passion. Indeed, Descartes notes that weak souls allow themselves to be carried away by their strongest current passions. In contrast, strong souls are able to
follow determinate judgments concerning action that conict with such passions.
Sometimes these judgments are themselves based on passions that have previously
inuenced the soul. In the case of the strongest souls, however, the judgments derive
ultimately not from the passions but rather from knowledge of the truth as determined by clear and distinct perception (PS I.4849, AT 11:36668).
Descartes is not very explicit on how the passions overwhelm weak souls. But
though it is tempting to think that he takes these passions to be efcient causes of the
volitions of such souls, it is important to remember the indication in the Passions that
the body can affect volition only indirectly. My suggestion earlier, with respect to
the relation between intellect and will in the Fourth Meditation, was that it was more
appropriate to conceive of Descartess perceptions as nal causes that lead the will
to act in a particular manner than to conceive of them as efcient causes of effects
in the will. Likewise, I propose here that we conceive of his passions as nal causes
that weak souls choose to follow. Passions can affect volition only indirectly, since
they require the cooperation of the will, which itself is the efcient cause of its volitions.60 This sort of cooperation is precisely what strong souls refuse to afford their
current passions, since they nd it best to rely on their determinate judgments as
guides in their pursuit of the good.
Since Descartess earlier accounts of theoretical judgment tend to bracket considerations involving pursuit of the good, it is difcult to see how the will could
refrain from assenting to clear and distinct ideas. Indeed, his suggestion in the Fourth

59. In this article, Descartes presents the competition as consisting in the conict between
a volition in the soul and a motion in the pineal gland that corresponds to the passion. Here
he is resisting the traditional scholastic view that there can be conicts internal to the soul that
involve its sensitive and rational parts. However, it seems that even on Descartess own view
there can be a conict between a volition and a passion in the soul that corresponds to the
motion in the gland. Thus, his differences from the scholastics do not seem to be as great as
he suggests in this article.
60. Cf. Hoffmans claim that remarks in the Passions allow for the position that perceptions in general, and passions in particular, can cause volitions by causing the soul to will in
a particular manner (Hoffman 2003, 26872). Hoffman also cites Descartess claim to
Elisabeth that passions can cause the soul to lose its freedom as showing that he allows that
volitions can be caused by the passions to be unfree (29192, citing To Elisabeth, May 1646,
AT 4:411). However, Hoffmans textual evidence for the rst point does not seem to me to
show that volitions are passions deriving from bodily efcient causes. When Descartes allows
in the Passions that volitions can be passions (in the broad sense), he has in mind merely that
our soul perceives its volitions, not that volitions themselves can be passive effects of something other than the will (see PS I.19, AT 11:343). Moreover, the claim in the letter to
Elisabeth can be read as saying not that the passions can cause unfree volitions, but rather that
they can bypass judgment entirely in causing bodily behavior.

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Meditation is that the will determines itself without impediment in assenting to such
ideas. However, the view in the Passions is that in the case of our pursuit of the good,
the passions frequently provide a seductive alternative to knowledge of the truth.
For the passions naturally move us to pursue the objects they present as benecial to
ourselves as a soul-body composite, and to ee those objects they present as harmful to that composite (PS II.137, AT 11:430). But though we have an immediate
motivation to follow the passions, it is nonetheless the case that they almost always
make the goods as well as the evils they represent to be much greater and more
important than they are (II.138, AT 11:431). Whereas it is difcult to see how
Descartes could allow that we resist a clear and distinct idea once we actually perceive it, it is easier to understand why he would have thought it requires some effort
of will to resist a reliance on the passions in favor of arduous intellectual determination in attempting to distinguish good from evil. Moreover, acquiescence to the
passions does not require the exercise of anything as exotic as the perverse power of
doing the worse while seeing the better. All that is required is the inclination that all
human souls have in virtue of their union with a body to judge good and evil immediately by means of the passions.
I noted Descartess claim that the soul does not have direct control over the passions
except in cases where it itself is their cause. In the Passions, the most notable case
in which the soul has control is that of the passion of generosity (generosit).61 Not
coincidentally, this passion is also the one most closely linked to our control over our
own will. In the Passions, Descartes prefaces his discussion of generosity by making
the point, which we saw earlier in the Principles, that it is only those actions that
depend on free decision [libre arbitre] for which we can be praised or blamed with reason (PS III.152, AT 11:445). Indeed, the claim in the Passions is that our control over
our free actions renders us in some manner similar to God in making us masters of
ourselves (11:445). Generosity is able to arise in someone not only when he knows
that he can be praised or blamed only for using our freedom well or poorly, but also
when he feels in himself a rm and constant resolution to use it well, by undertaking
and executing all that he judges to be best (III.153, AT 11:446).62 This passion in turn
strengthens virtuous habits that lead to the proper use of the will (III.161, AT
11:45354). In this way, generosity provides the means of overcoming the inclination
to depend on our current passions for judgments concerning good and evil.
According to the Passions, then, an attachment to clear and distinct ideas is not a
simple matter of having an actual perception of them. Rather, we must have a rm
and constant resolution to seek them out and to act in accord with them. And this
resolution is made possible by our recognition of the primary good of using our free
will well. Here, then, the search for truth is subordinated to the pursuit of the good.

61. Cf. the discussion in Shapiro 1999a of Descartess account of generosity.


62. Descartes says that the passion consists (consiste) in these two components, but
given his view that passions in the strict sense are feelings that are referred to the soul and are
caused, maintained, and strengthened by the motion of the animal spirits, it seems that the passion could consist only in the positive feelings associated with the recognition of a resolution
to use the will well.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

Moreover, Descartess view in the Passions is Surezian in emphasizing that our


adherence to our best intellectual judgment itself depends on decisions that are under
the control of our will. In terms, again, of the view in the Jesuit letter, whereas
morally speaking it is impossible for us to resist a clearly cognized good given our
resolution to use free will in the best manner, absolutely we are able to turn away
from such a good, since we are free to withdraw the resolution. In contrast to the suggestion in the Jesuit letter, the primary case of such a withdrawal occurs not when
we exercise our perverse power of doing the worse while seeing the better, but when
we fail to stand up to our current passions in deciding how to act.
Descartes held consistently to certain tenets in his mature discussions of human
freedom in the period bounded by Fourth Meditation (1641), on one end, and the
Passions (1649), on the other. For instance, he indicates throughout that we make the
best use of our freedom in adhering to clear and distinct ideas. Moreover, from start
to nish he suggests that whenever we consider confused or obscure ideas, there is
an indifference that allows us to refrain from judgment. It is important, however, not
to overlook the very real development of Descartess views that occurs over this
period of time. In the Fourth Meditation, he insists that human freedom is perfected
in the case where the clarity of knowledge precludes any sort of indifference.
Starting with the Principles, however, he begins to link our freedom to a kind of
merit that requires an undetermined control over decision. The link is only strengthened in the Mesland and Jesuit letters, where he emphasizes the ability of our will to
consider goods other than those revealed by clear and distinct ideas. Admittedly,
these letters were written to Jesuit correspondents, and the Principles was modeled
on texts used in the Jesuit schools. It might be thought, then, that Descartes was
merely playing to the Jesuit crowd in drawing attention to the importance for our free
action of a kind of indifference.63 However, his nal word is in the Passions, and this
text was not directed to a Jesuit audience. There we nd not the view in the Fourth
Meditation that we are most free when least indifferent, but rather the claim that the
proper use of our freedom requires a resolution to resist the ever-present temptation
to follow our current passions in making judgments about good and evil. The earlier
focus on the freedom of a disembodied mind is therefore replaced with a consideration of the more complex case of the freedom of an embodied soul, and with this
shift there is a recognition of the fact that our free assent to the truth is dependent on
our exercising proper control over our will in the pursuit of the good. Though
Descartes began in the Meditations with an account of free will that has some decidedly anti-Surezian elements, he ended with an account in the Passions that perhaps
would not have seemed so strange to Surez.

5.3. HUMAN FREEDOM AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE


I have noted at several points the pessimistic conclusion in the Principles that we confront insuperable difculties in attempting to reconcile our undetermined freedom

63. As suggested, for instance, in Gilson 1913b.

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209

and indifference with the power by which God not only knew but also willed and
preordained all that is or can be (PP I.4041, AT 8-1:20). In correspondence with
Elisabeth soon after the publication of this text, however, Descartes seems to be more
optimistic that we can nd a way around these difculties. Thus, he tells Elisabeth
that the independence that we experience and sense [experimentons et . . . sentons]
in ourselves and that sufces to render our actions praiseworthy or blameworthy, is
not incompatible with a dependence that is of another nature, according to which
all things are subject to God (3 Nov. 1645, AT 4:33233). As in the case of the
Principles, there is a stress here on a freedom that involves independence and that
makes us worthy of merit. However, the view in this earlier text seems to differ from
the position Descartes offers to Elisabeth insofar as it lacks the proposal that we can
reconcile our freedom with the complete dependence of creatures on God once we
recognize the different levels at which our will and divine power operate.
Nevertheless, I believe that a closer reading of Descartess remarks to Elisabeth
reveals that the differences with the views in the Principles are not as great as they
initially appear. In particular, the discussion in the Elisabeth correspondence allows
for a fundamental mystery concerning Gods determination of our free action. This
mystery involves not only the problemfamiliar from the Molinist account of middle knowledgeof comprehending how God can foreknow with certainty actions
that are themselves undetermined. In addition, there is the problemderiving from
Descartess created truth doctrineof comprehending how God can be the efcient
cause that produces the truths that provide the foundation for this sort of foreknowledge. My ultimate conclusion is that an understanding of the dependence of our free
action on God in terms of the divine creation of eternal truths provides support for a
conservationist account of Gods production of that action. I therefore take Descartes
to deviate from the sort of concurrentist treatment of human freedom that we nd in
Surez. However, I also claim that once Gods creation of truths concerning our free
action is posited, the remaining mystery in Descartes concerning Gods providential
control over such action is just the one that Surez admitted in response to his
Dominican critics.

5.3.1. The Elisabeth Correspondence


In July 1645, Descartes proposed to Princess Elisabeth that they read together
Senecas On the Happy Life (De Vita Beata) to reect on the position that we acquire
happiness not from fortune but only from ourselves (21 July 1645, AT 4:25253).
Based on their subsequent discussion of this text, Descartes claimed that once we recognize that there is a God on whom all things depend, whose perfections are innite,
whose power is immense and whose decrees are infallible, we will be able to accept
calmly all the things that happen to us as expressly sent by God (15 Sept. 1645, AT
4:291). But Elisabeth was not persuaded, arguing in response that though this recognition can perhaps lead us to accept what follows from the ordinary course of
nature, it cannot help us with regard to those humans impose on us, the decision of
whom appears to be entirely free. She concluded that it is faith alone that can teach
us that God takes care to rule volitions, and that he has determined the fortune of
each person before the creation of the world (30 Sept. 1645, AT 4:302*).

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

In response, Descartes insists that not only faith but also the reasons that prove
that God exists and is the rst and immutable cause of all the effects that do not
depend on human free will reveal equally that he is also the cause of all the effects
that do so depend. For natural reason reveals that God must exist as a supremely
perfect being, and he would not be supremely perfect if anything could happen in
the world without coming entirely from him [entirement de lui]. He anticipates the
objection that God does not determine particular effects, since he is merely a universal cause of such effects, but urges that
the distinction of the Schools between universal and particular causes is out of
place here: because what makes the sun, for example, the cause of owers is not
the cause of the fact that tulips differ from roses, [since] their production depends
also on other particular causes to which they are not subordinated; but God is such
a universal cause of all that he is in the same way the total cause. (6 Oct. 1645,
AT 4:314)

In an earlier discussion of this passage, I read the claim that God is a universal
and total cause of all effects as indicating not that there are no other causes of such
effects, but merely that there are no such causes that are not subordinated to Gods
universal causality (see 2.2.1). Given this reading, the conclusion that God is a universal and total cause of our free action does not indicate that our will is not an efcient cause of such action. What it indicates is that our causation of our own free
action must be subordinated to Gods universal causation of everything in the created world.
Even so, some commentators have concluded on the basis of the remarks to
Elisabeth that Descartes allowed that God determines even our free actions.64 Yet
such a determination would seem to be incompatible with the claim in the Principles
that such actions are undetermined. Elisabeth recognized the difculty here when
she responded to the letter containing the assertion that God is the universal and total
cause of our free action by protesting that it seems to me to be contrary to common
sense to believe in [free will] depending on God in its action, as it is depending on
him in its being (28 Oct. 1646, AT 4:323*). Descartes answered, in a passage quoted
previously, that the independence that renders our free action meritorious is of quite
another kind than the dependence whereby all created things are subject to God
(3 Nov. 1645, AT 4:333). In a subsequent letter, he attempts to illustrate the consistency of the independence of our free actions with their dependence on God in terms
of a story about a king who causes a free violation of his prohibition of dueling. The
king causes this violation by ordering two individuals to meet who he knows with
certainty would duel if they met. But this action of the king does not prevent their
ghting when they meet from being as voluntary and as free as if they met on some

64. See, for instance, Gorhams claim that in his correspondence with Elisabeth, Descartes
implies that our free actions are determined by God (Gorham 2004, 416), and Chappells
claim that this correspondence indicates that God is responsible for every volition by concurring in all actions of mind (Chappell 1994, 184).

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211

other occasion and he had known nothing about it. Likewise, according to
Descartes, God
knew exactly all the inclinations [inclinations] of our will; it is he himself who
has given them to us, it is also he who has disposed all other things external to us
such that such and such objects present themselves to our senses at such and such
times, on the occasion of which he has known that our free decision would
determine us to such and such a thing; and he has willed it such, but he has not
willed that it be constrained to that [thing]. (Jan. 1646, AT 4:35354)

We seem to have here the Molinist position that God causes our free action merely
by producing a will that he knew would freely yield a certain action in certain circumstances. Contrary to the remarks in the Principles, this sort of dependence on
divine knowledge seems to be perfectly compatible with the claim that the actions
themselves are undetermined.65
But though a Molinist reading appears to be warranted by the emphasis in
Descartess letter on divine knowledge of our inclinations,66 such a reading cannot
reect his most considered position. For as I have indicated, Descartess created truth
doctrine requires, contrary to the Molinist view in Surez, that God has created even
truths concerning the actions that derive from our free will (see 5.1.1 (ii)). In the
Treatise on Divine Grace, as we know, Surez explained divine knowledge of free
human action by appealing to the presence in God of an uncreated idea of the
habituo in us that would yield certain free actions in particular circumstances.
Despite the fact that this habituo seems to be similar to the inclinations that
Descartes took to be involved in Gods knowledge of our free action, Descartes cannot hold that an uncreated idea provides the foundation for this knowledge. The created truth doctrine in fact commits him to the position that God is the efcient cause
of whatever it is that allows him to know that certain actions follow from the inclinations of our will.
Once we read the Elisabeth correspondence in light of the created truth doctrine,
then, we can see that there is still something fundamentally mysterious there concerning the dependence of our free action on God. God must not only know which
actions follow from the inclinations in certain circumstances and produce a will with
those inclinations in those circumstances; in addition, he must be the efcient cause
of the truth that a will with those inclinations would produce such actions in those
circumstances. We can no more comprehend how God could cause this sort of conditional truth than we can comprehend how God can bring it about that certain eternal truths derive necessarily from the essence of a triangle. And just as Descartes

65. At least insofar as we can make sense of infallible knowledge of undetermined action.
As I indicate below, the mystery of how such knowledge is possible is no more eliminated by
Descartes than it was by Surez. However, this mystery does not presuppose a divine determination of free action.
66. As I assumed in an earlier consideration of this letter in Schmaltz 1994, 1719. I owe
my appreciation of the inadequacy of the Molinist reading to the discussion in Ragland 2005,
17886.

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

emphasized that the power by which God has created the eternal truths exceeds our
comprehension, so he could say the same about the power by which he determined
conditional truths concerning our free will.
In contrast to the case of the eternal truths, however, what renders the divine power
incomprehensible in the case of our free action is the fact that it leaves such action
undetermined. There is no similar problem of comprehension on the Dominican view
that God renders determinate truths concerning free action that natural causes leave
indeterminate. Moreover, there is a sense in which Descartess created truth doctrine
leaves fundamental features of the Jesuit theory of middle knowledge intact. From a
Dominican perspective, what is particularly troubling about Surezs version of this
theory is that God could know with certainty that a habituo in us would result in certain free actions even though those actions do not follow from the nature of that feature. But then what would be equally problematic from that perspective is Descartess
suggestion to Elisabeth that God could know that certain actions derive from the
inclinations of our will even though such inclinations leave our action undetermined.
The mystery here is of the same sort whether the idea that is the source of divine
knowledge is uncreated, as in Surez, or rather derives from Gods will, as in
Descartes. For the mystery concerns not the ultimate source of the object of Gods
knowledge of how we would freely act, but rather the manner in which such an object
could allow for infallible knowledge of something that is itself undetermined. Despite
siding with the Dominicans in holding that divine causality is involved in xing the
truth of future contingent propositions concerning our free action, then, Descartes
remains on the side of the Surez and the Jesuits in embracing the view that God
leaves such action in its undetermined state.

5.3.2. Created Truth and Conservationism


I have noted the reference in the discussion of human freedom in the Principles to
Gods power over all that is or can be. Descartess account of the divine creation of
eternal truths concerning what can be in fact broaches difculties that are analogous
to the difculties that confront his view of the dependence of our free actions on God.
In both cases, the central problem concerns the fact that the nature of the effect
appears to preclude the sort of dependence on divine power that Descartes posited.
Thus, the result of the created truth doctrine that eternal truths derive from Gods
indifferent will seems to be in tension with the conclusion that these truths are themselves necessary. There is the claim in Frankfurt that Descartes denies the necessity
of the eternal truths (see 5.1.2), but this claim is belied by Descartess own insistence
on the fact that it is because [God] wills the three angles of a triangle to be necessarily [necessario] equal to two right angles that this is now true and could not be
otherwise [eri aliter non potest] (Sixth Replies, AT 7:432).67 Nevertheless, the
implication in Descartes that God is not necessitated in creating the eternal truths
seems to support Frankfurts claim that such truths ultimately are contingent.

67. See also the reference in the Mesland letter to the fact that there are things that God
could have rendered possible, but that he nonetheless willed to render impossible (AT 4:118).

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213

In the case of our free action, there is an analogous problem concerning the compatibility of the claim that our free actions are undetermined with the conclusion that
they derive entirely from God as their efcient and total cause. 68 Gods determination of our actions is supposed to involve his determination of truths concerning how we would freely act in certain circumstances. According to the Principles,
however, these free actions are by their nature undetermined. Just as the fact that
eternal truths are necessary seems to show that they cannot derive from a divine will
that is not itself necessitated, so the fact that our free actions are undetermined seems
to show that truths concerning them cannot be determined by God.
There is a solution in Descartes to the problem concerning created eternal truths
that turns on the fact that such truths derive necessarily from something else that God
has freely created, and thus that is not itself necessary.69 Descartes claims in the Fifth
Meditation, for instance, that eternal truths concerning a triangle follow from the
determinate nature, or essence, or form of a triangle that is immutable and eternal,
and not invented by me or dependent on my mind (AT 7:64). He even notes in this
text that this truth can no more be separated from this essence than existence can be
separated from the divine essence (AT 7:66). Certainly this is a striking claim given
the position in Descartes that the derivation of Gods existence from his essence is
independent of the divine will. But he could still hold that the case of this derivation
differs from the case of the derivation of truths concerning triangles insofar as the
essence of triangularity, in contrast to the divine essence, has an efcient cause. Thus
God could create truths concerning triangles that are necessary by creating an
essence that it was in his power not to create, and thus is not itself necessary, but that
is nonetheless such that these truths follow from it necessarily.70
There is an analogous solution to the problem of the divine determination of truths
concerning our free action. The suggestion I nd in the Elisabeth correspondence is

68. See the similar connection between these two problems in Della Rocca forthcoming.
Whereas Della Rocca holds that Descartes sets both problems aside by appealing the divine
incomprehensibility, though, I nd in Descartess post-Principles comments, at least, the suggestion that there is more to say in the case of our free action.
69. In his account of the modal status of Descartess eternal truths, Curley has emphasized
the claim in the Mesland letter that even if God willed certain truths are necessary, that is not
to say that he has willed them necessarily; for to will that they be necessary is something
entirely different than willing them necessarily or being necessitated to will them (AT 4:118).
According to Curley, the suggestion here is that the truths are necessary but not necessarily
necessary (Curley 1984, 58183). In terms of this account, we could take eternal truths that
are contingently necessary to be those that derive immediately from essences that are themselves contingent, and eternal truths that are necessarily necessary to derive immediately from
the one essence that is itself necessary, namely, the divine essence.
70. My suggestion that Descartes distinguished between the created essence and the truths
that necessarily and immutably derive from it may seem to conict with his remark in the
1630 Mersenne correspondence that the essence that God creates is nothing other than [nest
autre chose que] the eternal truths (27 May 1630, AT 1:152). It may be that the later remarks
in the Fifth Meditation require a distinction between essences and the truths deriving from
them that is not fully present in this 1630 correspondence.

214

DESCARTES ON CAUSATION
Non-necessary divine creation
of

Divine determination
of

immutable essences

inclinations of will

ground

ground

necessary eternal truths

truths concerning undetermined


free action

FIGURE 5.3 Eternal Truths and Free Action

that God determines such truths by making it the case that the relevant actions follow
in a nondeterministic manner from the inclinations of our will. Having determined
this sort of connection between the inclinations and the action, God is then in a position to know with certainty which volitions we would freely choose in certain circumstances, even though our will is not determined to choose in this manner. Just as
Gods nonnecessitated action can produce necessary truths through the mediation of
essences, so his determination can result in truths concerning something that is itself
undetermined through the mediation of inclinations (see gure 5.3).
There is, however, one important respect in which Descartess account of the eternal truths differs from his account of free human action. Though he makes clear that
God is the efcient cause of created eternal truths, Descartes mentions only creation
when characterizing the production of such truths, and not conservation or concurrence.71 In contrast, he uses concurrentist language in discussing Gods causal contribution to our free action. Most notably, he comments in the Fourth Meditation that
I must not complain that God concurs [concurrat] with me in choosing
[eliciendos] those voluntary acts, or those judgments, in which I err; for these acts
are all true and good, insofar as they depend on God, and it is in some manner
more perfect that I could choose them, than if I could not. (AT 7:60)

For Surez, the claim that God concurs in our free decision indicates that he not only
conserves us in existence as we act, but also produces our decision by means of a
per se and immediate concursus that is identical to the action by which we produce it (see 1.2.3 (ii)).72 So the question that confronts us now is whether Descartes
intended to provide room for a similar sort of additional divine concursus in the case
of our free action.
I argued in chapter 3 that given Descartess emphasis on the constancy of the
immediate effects of Gods ordinary concursus to bodybody interactions, we

71. The 1630 correspondence on the created truth doctrine includes the claim that God
from all eternity willed and understood them to be, and by that fact he created them (To
Mersenne, 27 May 1630, AT 1:152). If we take creation from eternity to preclude any sort
of temporality, then there would be no room for continued conservation or concurrence, both
of which presuppose temporal effects.
72. In addition, as we know, Surez holds that in the case of free action, God offers a concursus with refraining from making a choice or with deciding differently.

Causation and Freedom

215

must conceive of this concursus in a conservationist manner. So also, I claimed in


chapter 4 that Gods causal contribution to mindbody interaction consists not in his
immediate production of the mental and bodily effects of that interaction, but rather
in his creation and conservation of the natures that make such interaction possible.
This line of argument suggests that we should accept a conservationist account of the
way in which Descartes thinks God has willed and preordained our free action.
Moreover, the story of the duelers that Descartes provides in the Elisabeth correspondence seems to support this sort of account. For the dueling is dependent on the
king not in the sense that he directly causes it, but in the sense that he indirectly produces it by giving an order that he infallibly knew would result in the decision to duel
that involves an indeterministic sort of freedom. So also, free action is not said to
depend on God in the sense that he produces the same action that free agents produce. Instead, Descartess claim is that God wills that such agents have an inclination that leads them to a certain action even though they are not constrained to that
action in the sense of being determined to produce it. We know that given the created truth doctrine, this sort of willing must involve more than Gods producing
inclinations and circumstances that he prevolitionally knows will result in certain
undetermined free actions in those circumstances. For God must also be the efcient
cause of the conditional truth that the inclinations would yield the actions in those
circumstances. Having created these truths, however, there is nothing that God needs
to do to produce the free actions beyond creating and conserving a world in which
agents with the relevant inclinations exist in the appropriate circumstances.
Certain remarks from writings Descartes produced toward the end of his life reinforce the impression that he did not take God to directly produce our free action.
There is, for instance, Descartess claim in a 1647 letter to Queen Christina of
Sweden that free decision [libre arbitre] is in itself the noblest thing that can be in
us, and that renders us in a certain manner [en quelque faon] equal to him and
seems to exempt us from being his subjects (20 Nov. 1647, AT 5:85). The need for
the qualication that our will makes us only in a certain manner like God and that
it only seems to exempt us from being his subjects is evident given the created
truth doctrine. For this doctrine requires not only that the divine will have a sort of
indifference that is impossible for us, but also that God determine all that is or can
be concerning even our free action. Nevertheless, insofar as it is in our control to
choose how we freely act, our free action is comparable to the acts that derive from
Gods supremely indifferent will. And insofar as what God creates does not itself
determine truths concerning our free action, we are distinct from subjects that God
determines simply by creating and conserving with their natures in certain circumstances. We therefore retain in this late letter the position from Descartess early
notebook that free decision is one of the most distinctive of the miracles that
God has produced.
Finally, there is Descartess claim in the 1649 Passionsquoted previouslythat
reection on divine providence leads us to consider everything that affects us to
occur of necessity and as it were by fate [comme fatale], with the notable exception
of matters that God has willed to depend on our free decision (PS II.146, AT
11:439). As in the letter to Christina, so here there is an emphasis on the fact that our
free decision renders us in some manner similar to God in making us masters of

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ourselves (III.152, AT 11:445). The suggestion in the Passions is that God allows
us to be masters of ourselves by leaving it to our will to determine its free actions.
In light of the remarks to Elisabeth, we can take the more complete position here to
be that God creates and conserves our will with inclinations that allow God to know
with certainty how we would act in certain circumstances but that leave our will
undetermined with respect to such action. We still have something similar to the
mystery, deriving from Surez, of how God could know our free action on the basis
of his idea of a habituo of our will that does not determine this action. Yet
Descartess talk of a divine decree that dictates that our free action depend on our
will alone reveals how far he is from the view in Surez that God produces this
action by means of a concursus that is identical to the action itself.

Conclusion

According to a standard narrative concerning the history of philosophy, Descartess


theory of causation marks a sharp break from past conceptions of causality. In particular, this story has it that Descartes set out on a new path by replacing the four
Aristotelian causes prominent in scholastic natural philosophy with the efcient
causes required for his new mechanistic physics. There is admittedly a residue of
scholasticism, for instance, in his claim in the Third Meditation that a cause must
contain its effect formally or eminently. However, such a claim can and has been
understood to reect a merely supercial connection to past thought. For those who
take Descartes to herald the advent of modernity, what is novel in his theory of
causation is more signicant than what is borrowed.
There can be no doubt that this theory involves a signicant break with the
scholastic past. Having rejected material forms and qualities distinct from extension
and its modes, for instance, Descartes simply could not speak in the way the scholastics did of the containment of forms in bodily causes either actually or virtually
in the more noble power to produce those forms. Moreover, it is certainly important
that in one fell swoop, he eliminated from his physics the sort of nal causality that
scholastics such as Surez took to derive from Gods concursus with natural causes.
The displacement of nal causes in Descartes is nowhere more dramatic than in his
claim that God has no ends when he acts as an efcient cause in creating eternal truths.
Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the emphasis in Descartes on efcient causality did not emerge from history ex nihilo, but was anticipated in a
scholastic reconceptualization of causation that culminated in the work of Surez.
We also need to remember that there were issues in scholasticism concerning efcient causation that Descartess new ontology did not eliminate entirely. There is, for
instance, the scholastic problem of explaining the bodily production of changes in an
incorporeal intellect. To be sure, the immaterial mind that Descartes posited was a
217

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DESCARTES ON CAUSATION

res cogitans with sensations and feelings rather than, as on the standard scholastic
view, a purely intellectual substance. Moreover, his paradigmatic case of the action
of body on mind is the production in the mind of sensory states rather than, as in the
scholastics, the production in the intellect of intelligible species. Even so, Descartes
retained from scholasticism both the sense that the immaterial is more noble than the
material, and the axiom that what is less noble cannot sufce to produce a change in
what is more noble. He thereby also inherited the difculty of explaining the causal
contribution of something that is material to changes in something immaterial. At
least some causal aspects of the mindbody problem in Descartes were not new,
then, but merely recycled versions of problems that previous thinkers confronted.
What I take to reveal most clearly the signicance of Descartess connections to
scholastic accounts of causality, however, is his emphasis on the foundational role
for his physics of the claim that God conserves the same quantity of motion in the
material world by means of his ordinary concursus. I have argued that such a claim
provides the primary clue for discerning fundamental elements of Descartess theory
of causation. Though the claim itself may seem to draw on a traditional scholastic
concurrentism, a more careful consideration of its scholastic context serves to reveal
its radical implication that Gods contribution to the natural causal order of the material world is exhausted by his creation and continued conservation of that world. In
contrast to the view in scholastics such as Surez that divine concursus is identical
to the actions by which secondary causes produce particular changes, Descartes indicated that this concursus produces an effect that is constant and thus distinct from
the changes that are attributable only to secondary causes. There is a sort of causal
division of labor that is closer to the conservationist views of Durandus than to anything in the work of the scholastic concurrentists.
Of course, neither Durandus nor his concurrentist opponents confronted the problem in Descartes of explaining how a mere res extensa could be an efcient cause.
But though some have thought that this problem led Descartes to give up on genuine
bodily causes and to embrace a kind of occasionalism, the texts seem to me to indicate otherwise. In the case of bodybody interaction, I have found an explanation of
the forces for acting in Descartess physics in terms of special features of the duration of moving bodies. Such forces are supposed to allow the moving bodies to be
(total or adequate) causes of particular changes that leave intact the total quantity
of motion that God continually conserves as universal and primary cause. In contrast, it is not bodily duration that matters most in the case of body-to-mind action,
but rather the special nature of the human mind. Descartess most considered
position is that this nature is such that certain bodily motions are able to affect this
mind as (partial) efcient causes of its sensations. What is missing from Descartes,
however, is any appeal to the immediate activity of God in the production of sensation. Though the absence of such an appeal would be surprising on an occasionalist
or even a concurrentist reading of his theory of causation, it is to be expected on the
conservationist reading that informs this study.
The problem of attributing causal power to a merely extended thing of course provides no barrier to the claim in Descartes that nite minds are real causes. Moreover,
his acceptance of the scholastic axiom that the effect cannot be more perfect than its
cause does not produce the sort of difculty for mind-to-body action that it produces

Conclusion

219

for body-to-mind action. Nevertheless, Descartess insistence on the immateriality of


mind does broach the scholastic problem of explaining how something that is incorporeal can be present to something that is corporeal in order to act on it. Descartes
could have simply dismissed this problem, as Durandus did, by claiming that a cause
need not be present at a place in order to act there. It is surely signicant that he did
not take this route, but instead appealed to the fact that an immaterial mind has an
extension of power in virtue of which it is present where it acts.
The suggestion in Descartes that the mind is the cause of its free volitions
broaches different issues from scholasticism. There is in the background the Jesuit
view in Surez that the will that produces such volitions must have the power to do
otherwise. Descartes started from a position that was not entirely friendly to such a
view when he emphasized in the Fourth Meditation that we are most free when our
acts follow necessarily from the orientation of our will toward the true (and good).
However, he was increasingly drawn to the view that our freedom requires the mastery of our will over its action, particularly with respect to pursuit of the good. He
persisted in his commitment to the presence of this sort of mastery even while holding that God is not only the universal and total cause of our free action, but also
the indifferent cause of truths concerning that action. Yet though these claims regarding Gods causal contribution to our free action in some respects go beyond anything
in Surez, they stop short of Surezs concurrentist conclusion that God concurs with
our will as the immediate efcient cause of such action. On the conservationist view
suggested in Descartes, God merely leaves it to us to determine how our will freely
determines our own volitions.
I have been concerned, then, to argue that a conservationist framework provides
a means both of deciphering and of interrelating Descartess discussions of various
forms of causal interaction. However, I also have indicated that this framework
allows us to appreciate certain problems internal to his system. I have mentioned two
particular problems, the rst of which concerns bodybody interaction, and the second mind-to-body action. The rst problem is connected to the objection, prominent
even among early modern sympathizers, that Descartess physics fails to provide a
satisfactory account of the force for resisting that bodies at rest exhibit in collision.
A conservationist understanding of this physics reveals that this force is problematic
precisely because it cannot be a constant result of Gods ordinary concursus. Rather,
the force for resisting involves a momentary impulse that God would have to create
by means of an act distinct from the continuation of his original act of creating the
material world. This is one act too many given Descartess own view that particular
changes in matter derive from secondary causes rather than from God as primary
cause.
The second problem for Descartes is connected to the objection, prominent in
Leibniz, that the admission that nite minds can produce new motion in the world
conicts with the principle in Cartesian physics that requires the conservation of the
total quantity of motion. I have argued that Leibniz was wrong to suggest that
Descartes himself was led by this difculty to conclude that nite minds are limited
to acting on body by changing the direction of its motions. Nevertheless, there is a
clear philosophical motivation for this conclusion given Descartess understanding
of Gods ordinary concursus in terms of his conservation of the quantity of matter

220

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and motion he originally created. Just as this concursus cannot explain the additional
impulses required by the force for resisting, so it cannot explain the conservation of
any quantity of motion that other minds add to the world subsequent to creation.
It might be thought that these problems with the force for resisting and the introduction of new motion provide reason to question my conservationist interpretation
of Descartes. However, the problems derive directly from his own insistence that
Gods action as primary cause consists merely in the continuation of his original act
of creating the world. Far from leading to occasionalism, such an insistence shifts
the burden for explaining particular changes in nature from God to secondary causes.
There is no similar shift in scholastic concurrentism, which requires immediate
divine involvement in all causal operations. Nevertheless, we cannot understand this
shift adequately, or perhaps even recognize it in the rst place, if we fail to take seriously the scholastic context of Descartess theory of causation.

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Index

action
body-to-mind
account of, in Comments, 149160, 162
(see also mind, innate sensory faculty
of)
scholastic problem with, 145149
See also motion, as sign for sensation;
sensation
denition of, in Surez, 3132
at a distance, 96, 108, 112, 143 n.31, 164,
165, 166, 170171
free
vs. coerced action, 182, 194195
and generosity, 207208
Gods concursus with, 4244, 178, 184,
214
vs. voluntary, 35 n.66, 64 n.37, 182, 195
See also freedom, human; volition; will
immanent, 3233, 34, 42, 107, 155 n.55
mind-to-body
change of direction account of, 131,
172173, 175177
and conservation of motion, 99 n.33,
171177, 219220
scholastic problem with, 163167
See also union, of mind and body, and
mind-body interaction
in patient, 19, 31
transeunt, 3233, 36
See also causation; cause; force
Adam, Charles, 202

Adam of Wodenham, 92 n.7


Alanen, Lilli, 161162
Albert of Saxony, 92 n.7
Alqui, Ferdinand, 203204
angels, 15, 16, 32 n.59, 107 n.54, 131, 134,
141, 142143, 164167, 169, 174
Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle, 4, 20, 29, 3031, 35, 60, 80 n.85, 94,
110 n.59, 129, 140, 145, 146, 167 n.79
(see also categories, Aristotelian;
motion, Aristotelian concept of; will,
Aristotelian concept of)
Arnauld, Antoine, 5960, 140141, 193
Asar, Abu lHasan al-, 12
attribute. See mode, vs. attribute
Augustine of Hippo, 75 n.71, 145
Aureoli, Peter, 92 n.7
Averroes (Abul-Walid ibn Rushd), 15
Avincenna (Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sna ),
14, 33
axiom
conservation, 4951, 7184, 8586
(see also conservation)
containment, 7, 4971, 8485, 112115,
128, 130, 148149, 153157, 190191
(see also containment)
vs. principle, 49 n.1
voluntarist, 25, 26, 180
Baker, Gordon, 135 n.11, 159 n.61
Baez, Domingo, 184, 191

231

232

INDEX

Ba quillan, Abu Bakr al-, 13 n.13


Beeckman, Isaac, 110 n.59
Bellarmine, Robert, 184
Bennett, Jonathan, 50, 51, 8283, 84, 112
n.64, 18889
Beyssade, Michelle, 204 n.57
Blackwell, Richard, 89 n.5
body
argument for existence of, 5556, 66, 116,
151152
Descartes vs. scholastics on, 1112, 4447,
87, 122, 129, 217 (see also quality,
real, Descartes vs. scholastics on)
divisibility of, 7881, 9192, 107
indenite extension of, 70 n.57
particular, mode vs. substance, 53 n.9, 68
n.53, 78, 8081
See also extension, as essence of body;
intellect, more noble than body; mind,
more noble than body
Broughton, Janet, 112114, 153157
Buridan, John, 9495
Burman, Frans, 5758
Cajetan (Tommasio de Vio), 25 n.35, 31 n.57,
147 n.38, 180 n.4
Campbell, Joseph, 197 n.39
Carraud, Vincent, 3, 60 n.26, 74 n.68
Cartesian interaction. See interaction,
Cartesian, scandal of
categories, Aristotelian, 2526, 46, 116
Caterus, Johannes (Johan de Kater), 59, 65
causation
occasional, 910, 145, 130131, 157161
(see also occasionalism)
orders of, 17, 22, 4042, 76, 8586
universal vs. particular, 2021, 57 n.17,
7677, 8586, 9091, 123,
210211
See also action; cause; overdetermination,
causal
cause
adequate/total, 5658, 7677, 8586, 114,
148149, 153
denition of, in Surez, 29
efcient, 4, 3033, 5661, 162
denition of, in Surez, 3031
priority of, 4, 11, 2936, 5964
See also God, as efcient cause
exemplary, 24 n.31
extrinsic, 29, 33, 113
nal, 4, 3336, 6164, 158159
and God, 36, 44, 6164
and intellectual agents, 3435, 64
metaphorical motion of, 29, 34, 36, 64
and natural agents, 3536, 6263

See also intellect, as nal cause of will;


union, of mind and body, and
teleology
formal, 4, 30, 45, 5961, 158159, 189
(see also form)
immediate, 2021, 39
instrumental, 17, 19, 21, 4041, 43,
146147, 154
intrinsic, 29, 30, 61
material, 4, 30
modal vs. substantial, 103104
necessary, 4243
partial, 5657, 154
primary, 20, 40, 89105
principal, 17, 40, 42, 45, 90
remote, 39, 151
secondary, 17, 2023, 39, 40, 42, 105124
secundum esse/secundum eri, 18, 23, 33,
3839, 7375, 7677, 81, 8384, 86,
104, 117118, 121
as simultaneous with its effect, 7475, 81,
112
and reason, 36, 74, 189190
See also action; causation; freedom, human;
overdetermination, causal; force
Clarke, Desmond, 112 n.62, 122 n.82
Clatterbaugh, Kenneth, 68 n.50
Clauberg, Johann, 5 n.6, 171 n.85, 173
Clement VIII, 184
Clerselier, Claude, 5 n.6, 172173, 202 n.53
Cohen, I. B., 107108
collision, rules for, in Descartes, 89 n.5,
9899, 114115
compatibilism, casual, in Thomas Aquinas, 11,
1619, 165 n.70
concurrentism, 6, 7, 1619, 4044, 8485, 86,
100102, 125127, 209, 218, 219, 220
(see also concursus, ordinary)
concursus, ordinary, 8, 92, 93, 99105,
122124 , 128, 171172, 175176,
214215, 219220 (See also conservation, and concursus; freedom, human,
Gods concursus with; God, power of,
absolute vs. ordinary)
Condemnation of 1277, 25, 180
Congregation on Grace, 184
conservation, 1819, 7377
and concursus, 4044, 99105,
127128
not distinct from creation, 22, 3839, 8184,
125126, 178
See also action, mind-to-body, and
conservation of motion; axiom,
conservation; quantity, conserved
conservationism, mere
critique of, in Surez, 2223, 4142

Index

233

in Descartes, 6, 8, 2324, 41, 8586,


125128, 160, 175177, 212216, 220
in Durandus, 1924, 86, 89
containment
eminent, 3, 4, 58, 6771, 113, 148149,
166167, 190191
formal, 3, 4, 55, 6467, 84, 114115, 149,
153155 (see also reality,
formal)
See also axiom, containment
Cordemoy, Geraud de, 5 n.6, 171 n.85
Cottingham, John, 117 n.75, 138 n.21
created truth. See truth, created
creation, 1719, 3639
ab aeterno, 37, 38, 74
de novo, 37, 38, 45, 75
ex nihilo, 18, 19, 3639, 58, 76, 8283, 90,
125126
See also conservation, not distinct from creation; truth, created
Curley, Edwin, 213 n.69

Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia, 3, 130,


131135, 144, 167169, 209212
Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, 132
esse. See cause, secundum esse/secundum eri;
res
eternal truths, creation of. See truth,
created
extension, as essence of body, 6061, 71, 87,
88, 9192, 116, 119, 134, 168, 169,
171, 217 (see also body; God,
extension of; mind, extension of;
quantity, conserved, of matter)

Dalbriez, Roland, 65 n.42


Della Rocca, Michael, 47 n.88, 213 n.68
Descartes, Ren. See body, Descartes vs.
scholastics on; collision, rules for, in
Descartes; heaviness, discussion of, in
Descartes; hierarchy, ontological, in
Descartes; judgment, Descartes vs.
scholastics on; laws, of nature, in
Descartes; motion, denition of, in
Descartes; occasionalism, and
Descartes; quality, real, Descartes vs.
scholastics on; soul, Descartes vs.
scholastics on; rest, problems with, in
Descartes; truth, created, doctrine of, in
Descartes; union, of mind and body,
argument for, in Descartes
Des Chene, Dennis, 105 n.49, 109, 127128
Desgabets, Robert, 107 n.54
distinction
formal, 2627, 28 n.46
modal, 2628, 7879
real, 2526, 27, 78
in reason, 21, 26, 27, 61, 77, 85, 119
Dominicans, 1011, 1920, 179, 184, 191192
(see also freedom, human, Dominicans
vs. Jesuits on; Thomism)
Du Hamel, Jean, 107 n.54
Dubarle, Dominique, 97 n.25
Duhem, Pierre, 94
Duns Scotus, John, 2627, 28 n.46, 31 n.57,
4041, 42, 165, 182 n.7 (see also
Scotism)
Durandus of Saint-Pourain, 11, 17, 1924,
36, 3738, 40, 41, 42, 8586, 126, 147,

Farabi, Abu Nasr Muhammed al-, 14


Fonseca, Peter, 27
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 910,
122123, 130
force
in bodybody interaction
for acting, 95, 97, 111112, 115116,
124, 127128, 218
and duration, 88, 117121, 122, 218 (see
also duration)
ctionalist interpretation of, 105,
115116, 120121
and God, 102105, 121124, 218
impressed vs. inertial, 9899
ontology of, 104105, 116121, 160161
for resisting, 9798, 111112, 115116,
124, 127128, 176177, 219 (see also
rest, problems with, in Descartes)
in union, 3, 134, 138, 140, 144, 167168,
174175
form
accidental/substantial, 17, 32, 41, 45, 61
eduction of, 32, 4546
and matter, 4546, 92
perfect vs. imperfect, 164
See also quality, real
Frankfurt, Harry, 188189, 212
Freddoso, Alfred, 22 n.27
Frederick V, King of Bohemia, 132
freedom, human
account of
in Descartess correspondence, 200205
in the Fourth Meditation, 193199
in the Passions, 205208

165, 167, 170, 178, 218 (see also conservationism, mere, in Durandus)
duration
of God, 78 n.80
modes of, 79, 118120
and substance, 7778, 119
See also force, in bodybody interaction,
and duration; time

234

INDEX

freedom, human (continued)


in the Principles, 199200 (see also
freedom, human, and divine
providence, in the Principles)
in the Rules, 192
in Surez, 180187
compatibilist view of, 197 n.39, 198 n.43,
204 n.57 (see also freedom, human,
incompatibilism of)
vs. divine freedom, 190191, 196, 215 (see
also God, indifference of)
and divine providence,
Domincans vs. Jesuits on, 179, 184187,
191192
in the Elisabeth correspondence, 209212
in the Principles 177, 18687, 199200,
208209
See also action, free, Gods concursus
with; middle knowledge
exercise vs. specication of, 35 n.66, 4243,
182183
incompatibilism of, 179180, 184, 191,
199200, 208 (see also freedom,
human, compatibilist view of)
indifference of, 8, 35, 43, 179, 182,
184, 186, 192208 (See also God,
indifference of)
positive faculty of, 202204
spontaneity of, 196197
See also action, free; truth, created, and
human freedom; volition; will
Gabbey, Alan, 83 n.92, 98 n.30, 99 n.32,
117118, 119
Gabriel Biel, 92 n.7
Galileo Galilei, 110
Garber, Daniel, 6, 88, 98 n.30, 102105,
115116, 120122, 156 n.57, 175176
Gassendi, Pierre, 62, 7374, 198
Geulincx, Arnold, 144
Ghaza l, Abu Ha mid al-, 1416, 17
Gilson, Etienne, 65 n.42, 83 n.92
God
argument for existence of, 3, 4950, 5152,
5556, 7172
as causa sui, 5960, 189
as efcient cause, 36, 44, 187, 211, 213,
214, 215, 217
extension of, 163164, 165, 169170
immutability of, 9091, 9394, 100, 109,
115 n.74, 116, 121122, 124, 125126,
160, 210, 21415
indifference of, 62, 189191, 212, 215 (see
also freedom, human, vs. divine
freedom)

power of, 10, 15, 1718, 36, 59, 75, 177,


186, 188, 192, 211212
absolute vs. ordinary, 99 (see also concursus, ordinary)
See also cause, nal, and God; duration, of
God; force, in bodybody interaction,
and God; freedom, human, Gods
concursus with; freedom, human, and
divine providence; sensation, and
divine goodness; truth, created; will,
human, in image of God
Gorham, Geoffrey, 70 n.76, 80 n.89, 81 n.90
Gouhier, Henri, 158 n.59
Gueroult, Martial, 50, 51, 53 n.9, 68 n.53,
7981, 102, 109 n.58, 117
Hateld, Gary, 105 n.48, 161 n.63, 198 n.43
Hattab, Helen, 115 n.73
heaviness, discussion of, in Descartes, 71, 137,
138, 140, 163, 167169, 170171
heterogeneity, problem of, 130, 132, 133, 163
(see also interaction, Cartesian, scandal
of)
hierarchy, ontological, in Descartes
enhanced, 69
simple, 5354, 68
Hobbes, Thomas, 119
Hoffman, Paul, 206 n.60
Hume, David, 47
Hyperaspistes, 6970, 7374
idea. See reality, objective; judgment,
concerning clear and distinct
perception; sensation, as mode of
mind; thought, pure vs. sensory
impetus, theory of, 9495
indifference. See freedom, human, indifference
of; God, indifference of
intellect
agent vs. passive, 3233
as nal cause of will, 64, 183, 197198, 206
(see also will, relation to intellect)
more noble than body, 146, 147, 148 (see
also mind, more noble than body)
See also species, intelligible; thought, pure
vs. sensory
intellectualism. See volunatism, ethical, vs.
intellectualism
interaction, Cartesian, scandal of 57, 8, 9 (see
also action; heterogeneity, problem of;
union, of mind and body, and
mindbody interaction)
James of Viterbo 146147
Javellus, Chrysostom 180 n.4

Index
Jesuits 25, 2627, 43, 9394, 172, 200205,
219 (see also freedom, human,
Dominicans vs. Jesuits on)
judgment
concerning clear and distinct perception,
193, 194, 195, 198199, 200, 201202,
206208
Descartes vs. scholastics on, 179, 183,
192195, 197199, 200205
concerning truth vs. goodness, 181, 183,
192194, 205, 207208
See also intellect, as nal cause of will; will,
relation to intellect
Kenny, Anthony, 202 n.53
Kent, Bonnie, 180
La Forge, Louis de, 5 n.6
La Mare, William de, 181 n.5
laws
of nature, in Descartes
rst, 73, 106108, 198 n.42 (see also
quantum in se est)
second, 108110
third, 110116, 174175 (see also
collision, rules for, in Descartes)
psychophysical 161162
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 31, 74 n.68, 79
n.84, 163, 172173, 176177, 219
light, nature of, 18 n.21, 73 n.66, 108 n.57
Locke, John, 67 n.47
Loeb, Louis, 5455, 161162
Lucretius, 107108
Maier, Anneliese, 9495
Maimonides. See Moses Maimonides
Major, John, 92 n.7
Malebranche, Nicolas, 5, 71 n.62, 93 n.11, 96
n.24, 121, 122123, 124 n.84, 144
Marion, Jean-Luc, 76
Marmura, Michael, 16
McLaughlin, Peter, 173177
Menn, Stephen, 25
mere conservationism. See conservationism,
mere
Mersenne, Marin, 56, 187188
Mesland, Denis, 200201, 202
metaphysics, renovation of, in Surez, 2528,
3132, 180
middle knowledge, 179, 185187, 211
mind
extension of, 131, 134, 138, 169171, 219
immateriality of, 78, 132133, 135, 146
n.35, 163164, 219
indivisibility of, 6869, 78, 107

235

innate sensory faculty of, 150155, 157158,


160162, 177
more noble than body, 6869, 218 (see also
intellect, more noble than body)
See also sensation, as mode of mind; soul;
thought; union, of mind and body
miracles, 14, 99
mode
vs. attribute, 54 n.10, 79, 11718
vs. substance, 28, 44, 68, 71, 7677
See also body, particular, mode vs.
substance; distinction, modal; duration,
modes of; quality, real, difference from
mode; sensation, as mode of mind
Molina, Luis de, 40 n.71, 179, 184187
More, Henry, 88, 9798, 103104, 113114,
169171
Morris, Katherine, 135 n.11, 159 n.61
Moses Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon),
1214, 1617, 80
motion
cinematic view of, 102103 (see also time,
atomistic concept of)
denition of, in Descartes, 89
determination of, 109, 111, 119120, 132
n.7, 172, 174
impulse view of, 103104
inclination to, 109, 110, 111, 120121,
123124
migration theory of, 112114, 159
rectilinear nature of, 108111, 120,
123124
as sign for sensation, 136, 152 n.47, 156157
speed of, 95, 96
voluntary, 171177
See also cause, nal, metaphorical motion
of; collision, rules for, in Descartes;
impetus, theory of; laws, of nature, in
Descartes; quantity, conserved, of
motion
Nadler, Steven, 145, 151 n.45, 157161
Newton, Isaac, 9899
nominalism, vs. realism, 26, 32, 92
Normore, Calvin, 186
Norris, John, 71 n.62
occasionalism
argument against, in scholastics, 1617, 20,
2223
and Descartes, 45, 910, 7677, 8486,
121122, 126, 144, 155156, 158161,
220
medieval Islamic, 7, 10, 1216, 19,
47, 80

236

INDEX

occasionalism (continued)
post-Descartes, 16, 92 n.11, 122123, 144,
172173
See also causation, occasional
Ockham. See William of Ockham
Olivio, Gilles, 64
ONeill, Eileen, 6871
overdetermination, causal, 20 n.24, 22, 165
Paul V, 184
Perler, Dominic, 11
Pessin, Andrew, 100 n.35, 127 n.88
Peter of Auvergne, 33 n.61
phantasm. See species, intelligible, relation to
phantasm
Plato, 145, 146, 163 (see also Platonism)
Platonism, 14, 140141, 146147, 148
Pollot, Alphonse, 132
power, extension of. See mind, extension of
Proclus, 52 n.6
providence, divine. See freedom, human, and
divine providence
quality, real
Descartes vs. scholastics on, 28, 35, 4445,
53 n.8, 61 n.29, 6263, 71, 105, 113,
116, 122, 167168, 170171, 217
difference from mode, 28
See also form, accidental/substantial; heaviness, discussion of, in Descartes
quantity, conserved
of matter, 9192
of motion, 9396, 171177 (see also action,
mind-to-body, and conservation of
motion)
of rest, 9699 (see also rest, problems with,
in Descartes)
quantum in se est, 107108, 115, 118119
Quinn, Philip, 41 n.74
Raconis, Charles Franois dAbra de, 32 n.58
Radner, Daisie, 5354, 67
Ragland, C. P., 197 n.39
Ra z, Fakhr alDin al-, 13
realism. See nominalism, vs. realism
reality
formal, 52, 6567, 148149, 154 (see also
containment, formal)
objective, 52, 6567, 116117, 149, 151,
153, 154, 190 (see also sensation,
representative nature of)
Regis, Pierre-Sylvain, 43 n.77, 104 n.47, 107
n.54, 123 n.83, 127 n.87, 190 n.22
Regius, Henricus, 126, 129, 138 n.20, 149150
Reid, Jasper, 171 n.87

Remnant, Peter, 175 n.96


res, 25, 27, 37 n.68, 41, 4446, 77, 107
rest, problems with, in Descartes, 120, 124,
128, 176177, 219220 (see also
conservation, of rest; force, for resisting)
Revius, Jacobus, 101102, 149 n.43
Richardson, Robert, 130, 140 n.23
Rozemond, Marleen, 145146, 147
Rudolph, Ulrich, 11
scholasticism, 4, 67, 2528, 30, 4445, 92,
94, 101102, 133, 145149, 163167,
180, 192, 194, 217218 (see also
action, body-to-mind, scholastic
problem with; action, mind-to-body,
scholastic problem with; body,
Descartes vs. scholastics on;
Dominicans; freedom, human,
Dominicans vs. Jesuits on; Jesuits;
judgment, Descartes vs. scholastics on;
occasionalism, argument against, in
scholastics; quality, real, Descartes vs.
scholastics on; Scotism; soul, Descartes
vs. scholastics on; Thomism)
Scotism, 11, 27, 65
Scott, David, 152 n.48, 152153 n.51
Scotus. See Duns Scotus
Seneca, 209
sensation
as arbitrary, 135137
confusion of, 138, 140, 143
and divine goodness, 63 n.34
internal vs. external, 141142
as mode of mind, 148, 155
representative nature of, 6667, 143
See also action, body-to-mind, account of,
in Comments; mind, innate sensory
faculty of; motion, as sign for
sensation; species, intentional; thought,
pure vs. sensory
Simmons, Alison, 141142, 162 n.66
Smith, Norman (Kemp), 56, 8, 50,
173174
Soto, Domingo de, 25, 26
soul
Descartes vs. scholastics on, 129, 148, 155,
217218
weak vs. strong, 206207
See also mind
Specht, Ranier, 158 n.59
species
intelligible, 3233
relation to phantasm, 146149, 154155
intentional, 46
Spinoza, Benedict de, 107 n.55

Index
Surez, Francisco, 1112, 2247, 49, 5051,
52, 53, 57, 59, 61, 6266, 6971,
7475, 77, 78, 8284, 8586, 8789,
90, 92, 93, 9495, 99, 100, 113, 114,
116, 125126, 147149, 154, 155156,
166167, 178187, 192, 194195,
204205, 211, 214, 218, 219 (see also
action, denition of, in Surez; cause,
denition of, in Surez; cause, efcient,
denition of, in Surez; conservationism,
mere, critique of, in Surez; freedom,
human, account of, in Surez;
metaphysics, renovation of, in Surez)
substance. See cause, substantial vs. modal;
duration, and substance; form,
accidental/substantial; mode, vs.
substance; res
Tamburini, Michelangelo, 93
Tannery, Paul, 202
teleology. See cause, nal; union, of mind and
body, and teleology
Thomas Aquinas, 10, 1619, 2023, 3739, 40,
41, 43, 7375, 80, 82, 99, 145149, 154,
163167, 181, 182 n.7, 192193 n.27
(see also compatibilism, causal, in
Thomas Aquinas; Thomism)
Thomism 2526, 32, 43, 65, 7475, 92,
147148, 180181
thought
as essence of mind, 129
pure vs. sensory, 141142, 150151
See also mind; soul
time
atomistic concept of, 1315, 47, 7981, 109
n.58 (see also motion, cinematic view of)
and duration, 77 (see also duration)
endurantist vs. perdurantist concept of,
8081
parts of, 7881, 118
See also cause, as simultaneous with its
effect
truth, created
doctrine of, in Descartes, 187192, 212216
and essences, 213214
and human freedom, 211216
necessity of, 188, 212214
vs. truths concerning God, 188189, 213

237

union, of mind and body


argument for, in Descartes, 140142
in the Elisabeth correspondence, 132135,
167169
fact vs. explanation of, 139140, 142
and mindbody interaction, 131144,
167169
ontological status of, 138139, 155
and teleology, 6364, 136, 162 (see also
sensation and divine goodness)
two accounts of, 135140
See also force, in union; sensation; volition,
human, as confused
Vasquez, Gabriel, 65 n.43
Voetius, Gisbertius, 126, 138 n.20, 149 n.42
volition
human, as confused, 142144
vs. passion, 177, 205206
and psychokenesis, 143
See also action, free; freedom, human;
motion, voluntary; will
voluntarist axiom. See axiom, voluntarist
voluntarism, ethical, vs. intellectualism
180182
Walter of Bruges, 181 n.5
weight. See heaviness, discussion of, in
Descartes
Westfall, Richard, 117 n.75
will
ability to act morally vs. absolutely,
202203, 204205, 208 (see also
freedom, human, positive
faculty of)
Aristotelian concept of, 181
rst vs. second act of, 33, 3435
habituo of, 185186, 192, 211212, 216
human, in image of God, 190191,
215216
relation to intellect, 181182, 192208 (see
also intellect, as nal cause of will)
See also action, free; freedom, human;
judgment; volition
William of Ockham, 26, 65 n.43, 92 n.7
Williams, Bernard, 5, 143
Wilson, Margaret, 3, 135137, 140 n.23, 141
n.26, 153 n.52

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