Part 6 of a series on 'Science and Philosophy'. Cartesian Philosophy is so 'Rational', it is irrational. A persistent and malevolent influence on philosophy and science. Scientism.
I didn't realize that Descartes rejected nominalism. I assumed that he was a nominalist, except as regarding human beings.
After all, nominalism follows deductively and inescapably from Descartes' mechanistic reductionism regarding the natural world. If, for instance, a dog is just a mechanistic automaton, then there can be nothing about the bits of mechanistic matter comprising it that make them *objectively* count as a singular substance or object. Rather, there's just undifferentiated matter arranged in various ways, and we *subjectively* group certain subsets of matter together in our minds as if they were singular objects and *subjectively* project universals onto them by applying labels like "dog" to them.
Human selves would be the one exception, being substances by virtue of the res cognitans (and *maybe* the body by virtue of being somehow paired with it), but it would seem that Descartes' mechanistic philosophy logically *requires* extreme nominalism about absolutely everything else.
Yes correct. Difficult to support, with our modern sensibilities, that a dog is just a 'machine'.
"a dog is just a mechanistic automaton, then there can be nothing about the bits of mechanistic matter comprising it that make them *objectively* count"
The complexity of the creature defies Cartesian philosophy. Descartes detaches common sense from the real world and allows fantasy worlds to be built.
I didn't realize that Descartes rejected nominalism. I assumed that he was a nominalist, except as regarding human beings.
After all, nominalism follows deductively and inescapably from Descartes' mechanistic reductionism regarding the natural world. If, for instance, a dog is just a mechanistic automaton, then there can be nothing about the bits of mechanistic matter comprising it that make them *objectively* count as a singular substance or object. Rather, there's just undifferentiated matter arranged in various ways, and we *subjectively* group certain subsets of matter together in our minds as if they were singular objects and *subjectively* project universals onto them by applying labels like "dog" to them.
Human selves would be the one exception, being substances by virtue of the res cognitans (and *maybe* the body by virtue of being somehow paired with it), but it would seem that Descartes' mechanistic philosophy logically *requires* extreme nominalism about absolutely everything else.
Yes correct. Difficult to support, with our modern sensibilities, that a dog is just a 'machine'.
"a dog is just a mechanistic automaton, then there can be nothing about the bits of mechanistic matter comprising it that make them *objectively* count"
The complexity of the creature defies Cartesian philosophy. Descartes detaches common sense from the real world and allows fantasy worlds to be built.