Following up on this post, I’ve posted The Letters in the Philosophical Letters. This describes some features of Margaret Cavendish’s Philosophical Letters. For each of the letters in the Letters it gives a brief description of the letter’s topic, and says which authors and texts are referred to.
Author Archives: Stewart Duncan
Locke, Pasnau, and More
[Cross-posted from Modsquad.] A lot has been said about Locke’s account of substance and substratum. Robert Pasnau has recently argued (in his book Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671) that “the substratum just is the ordinary substance” (160). Pasnau says that Locke’s statements about substance become less puzzling when we put them in “the proper historical context, that of the thin …
Materialism and panpsychism (making things from Bayle’s Dictionary)
[Cross-posted from Modsquad.] In an earlier post I talked about some arguments in Bayle’s Dictionary. In notes to the article ‘Dicaearchus’ Bayle argues against the view that certain material things can think because of the way their parts are arranged. I suggested at the end of that post, rather hesitantly, that one might gloss the conclusion as ‘the …
Continue reading “Materialism and panpsychism (making things from Bayle’s Dictionary)”
Materialism and panpsychism (puzzling about Bacon)
[Cross-posted from Modsquad.] In my previous post I mentioned Hobbes’s worry that his materialist account of perception would lead him to a sort of panpsychism. When he explains the problem he faces, Hobbes notes that one might just accept the conclusion. After all, “there have been philosophers, and those learned men, who have maintained that all bodies …
Continue reading “Materialism and panpsychism (puzzling about Bacon)”
Materialism and panpsychism (Bayle and Toland edition)
[Cross-posted from Modsquad.] In thinking about early modern materialism, I’ve repeatedly come across the view that materialism implies panpsychism. This claim has some current resonance, in that Galen Strawson has been arguing for a version of it. And it has several early modern sources. Thomas Hobbes worried that his materialist account of perception would lead …
Continue reading “Materialism and panpsychism (Bayle and Toland edition)”
Stewart Duncan 