This chapter explores the early modern influence of ancient Epicureanism, which was both profound and diffuse. It begins with the pivotal figures of Pierre Gassendi and Ralph Cudworth: the former’s comprehensive research made the Epicurean system newly accessible to a modern audience and formed a basis for his own physical theory; the latter treated Epicureanism as a dangerous foe in need of extensive refutation. The chapter then surveys three major themes of early modern Epicureanism. First, Epicurean atomism entered the fray of natural philosophy, although modern views of atomic motion tended to differ from ancient accounts. Second, materialism about the human mind, as exemplified in the work of Thomas Hobbes and Julien Offray de la Mettrie, was associated with Epicureanism. Third was the denial of divine providence, explored influentially by Pierre Bayle, Baron d’Holbach, and David Hume, sometimes accompanied by deflationary accounts of religious belief (as in Hobbes).
Pierre Gassendi is best known today as a critic of Descartes. This chapter surveys Gassendi’s Objections to the Meditations, Descartes’s Reply, and Gassendi’s Counter-Objections in the Disquisitio Metaphysica. The central theme of this debate is methodology. Gassendi thinks that the methodology of the Meditations is hopeless: nobody can genuinely clear their mind of preconceived opinions, and if they did, they would not have discovered new foundations for the sciences, but instead be trapped in a state of suspended judgment. Gassendi’s critique is not entirely fair to Descartes, and Descartes’s reply fails to take seriously the main points of the critique.
Berkeley’s immaterialism was not the only form of immaterialism on offer in the early modern period. In colonial America, Edwards, the Puritan preacher, theologian, and philosopher, put forward his own version of immaterialism. Edwards’s version of immaterialism, which was arrived at independently of Berkeley’s, is supposed to share many of its advantages. However, the line of thought that led Edwards to immaterialism ultimately also led him to deny the substantiality and causal power of created minds—something Berkeley was determined to avoid, at all costs. Thus, comparing Edwards’s view to Berkeley’s helps us better understand the logic of immaterialism. It also helps emphasize the importance of Berkeley’s claim that we have experience of an ongoing self, in addition to our experience of our ideas and volitions.
There has recently been a resurgence of interest in the early nineteenth century Scottish philosopher Mary Shepherd. This Element is intended to provide an overview of Shepherd's system, including her views on the following wide range of topics: causation, induction, knowledge of the external world, matter, life, animal cognition, the relationship between mind and body, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, miracles, and the nature of divine creation. The author also provides an overview of relevant secondary literature and argues for their own interpretation of Shepherd's metaphysics.
(1) I argue that agency, for Locke, consists in the ability to initiate action. Lockean agency is widely distributed. It requires the ability to perceive – which Locke extends to all animals, even oysters – and to feel pleasure and pain (else there would be no motivation for action). Beyond that, agency does not require much cognitive sophistication. (2) Locke also has a notion of free agency, the sort of agency possessed by beings who can act freely and are capable of the suspension and deliberation that allows our free actions be guided by reason. This requires more cognitive sophistication than mere agency: it requires the ability to predict the outcomes of different courses of action and decide which is better, the ability to hold off on acting until deliberation is complete, and the ability to recalibrate one's desires in light of such deliberation. (3) Finally, Locke has a conception of moral agency. This requires the ability to abstract, as well as the various cognitive capacities required for agency in general and free agency in particular, since all these cognitive capacities are necessary in order for an agent to know the natural law and have reason to obey it. (4) Locke designed his theory so that only human beings have all the cognitive capacities required for moral agency. It's less clear whether he thought that all human beings have these cognitive capacities.
Scholastic physics and metaphysics emphasized both the notion of power in general and the notions of the many particular powers of creatures. But during the 17th and 18th centuries, powers came to be seen as suspect. This trend culminated in Hume’s denial that we have the idea of power his predecessors assumed we have. This chapter tells the story of the decline, fall, and eventual resurrection of the concept of power in Britain in the long 18th century. It focuses on differing accounts of the idea of power, the scope of power, and the metaphysical basis of power, as found in four figures: John Locke, David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Mary Shepherd.
In the first edition of the Essay, Locke argued that we pursue whatever course of action we judge to be the best option available to us at the time. In other words, we always act under the guise of the good. Faced with empirical counter-examples, in the second edition he renounced this view in favor of a complex psychology involving desire and suspension. That we may not be motivated by the apparent good is a way in which we diverge from ideal rationality. But although determination by the good becomes aspirational in the second edition and later, Locke has not abandoned the guise of the good altogether. We may not always pursue what we see as good after mature deliberation, but we do always pursue what we see as good at the moment of action, under the influences of habit, emotion, and perspectival distortion.
This chapter examines the rise of the problem of personal identity and the relation between moral and metaphysical personhood in early modern Britain. I begin with Thomas Hobbes, who presents the first modern version of the problem of diachronic identity but does not apply it to persons. I then turn to John Locke, who grounds the persistence of persons in a continuity of consciousness that is important because it is necessary for morality, thus subordinating metaphysical personhood to moral personhood. Finally, I examine how the relationship between moral personhood and metaphysical personhood is treated in three of Locke’s critics: Edmund Law, Catherine Trotter Cockburn, and David Hume.
In several early 19th-century works,1 Mary Shepherd presents a sustained attack on Hume's theory of causation. She is responding to renewed interest in Hume at the time, and shares with many of her contemporaries a fear that Hume's views "lead directly to a scepticism of an atheistical tendency, whose dangerous nature can require no comment" (ERCE4). The danger she has in mind is that Humean skepticism undermines rational religion and thereby morality, but saving religion from the specter of Humeanism is not Shepherd's main goal. And although she presents her main work as an argument against Hume, this presentation is somewhat misleading: her ultimate goal is to advance her own positive philosophical views. Like Reid and Kant, Shepherd aims to refute Hume by providing a better alternative.Shepherd's alternate theory of causation and induction involves three principles about the nature of causation:(1) All causation involves the conjunction of at least two objects.(2)(2) Cause and effect are not distinct entities.(3) Cause and effect are always simultaneous.
When philosophers today think of Descartes' views about the mind, they are likely to think of his substance dualism and the attendant difficulties explaining mind-body interaction. Descartes' primary methodology in the philosophy of mind, is to deduce conclusions about the nature and workings of the mind via the intellect alone, operating over divinely implanted innate ideas. Descartes' methodology relies on the possession of innate ideas whose content we fully grasp only after meditating. Descartes' procedure in the Meditations is designed to establish the primacy of the intellect over the senses. One aspect of Descartes' theory of sensation that has received a great deal of attention in the secondary literature in recent years is his account of how we calculate size and distance in vision. Another is the status and nature of secondary-quality sensations.
Shortly before his death, Locke warned Anthony Collins about the dangers of his plan to publish Samuel Bold’s work on the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body: I desire you to …...
