Article ID: CBB117763212

Descartes, Malebranche and Leibniz: Conceptions of Substance in Arguments for the Immateriality of the Soul (2016)

unapi

The most prominent early modern argument against materialism is to be found in Descartes. Previously I had argued that this argument relies crucially on a robust conception of substance, according to which it has a single principal attribute of which all its other intrinsic qualities are modes. In the present paper I return to this claim. In Section 2, I address a question that is often raised about that conception of substance: its commitment to the idea that a substance has a single such principal attribute. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra and Daniel Garber have argued that this claim relies on Descartes's identification of substance with attribute. But I argue that it relies on his view that a substance has a single, unitary nature. In Section 3, I examine the role of this conception of substance in arguments found in Malebranche and Leibniz and compare these arguments with Descartes's.

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Authors & Contributors
Ablondi, Fred
Boccaccini, Federico
Christopher P. Noble
Cristina Santinelli
Rumore, Paola
Fincham, Richard Mark
Concepts
Philosophy
Soul (philosophy)
Materialism
Natural philosophy
Psychology
Mechanism; mechanical philosophy
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
Early modern
20th century
19th century
Places
Germany
France
Europe
Great Britain
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