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Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 25-49



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Descartes's Nomic Concurrentism:
Finite Causation and Divine Concurrence

Andrew Pessin


DESCARTES APPEARS TO HOLD the traditional view that God acts in the world via willing. 1 In recent papers on his successor Malebranche, who also holds that view, I have argued that since volitions are paradigm representational states, close attention to the representational content of God's volitions has substantial exegetical rewards. 2 The same, I will argue, is true regarding Descartes. In particular, due to lack of such attention, scholars have largely failed to realize that Descartes retains [End Page 25] a version of the scholastic doctrine that God ordinarily concurs with the causal activities of both mental and material finite substances ("concurrentism"). 3 Since concurrentism implies the true causal powers of those finite substances, in exposing Descartes's adherence to it I aim to open up new ways of thinking about some old problems in Cartesian exegesis.

The plan:

(I) I will first sketch a partial "worldview," along with evidence that Descartes held something like it, then

(II) argue, both on the basis of this worldview and other evidence, that we should interpret Descartes's account of divine and finite causality as a version of concurrentism, then

(III) show how interpreting Descartes this way has significant implications for understanding his views on the causal powers of both mental and material finite substances, and finally

(IV) contrast my interpretation with two recent relevant ones: Kenneth Clatterbaugh's and Daniel Garber's.

1. A Partial Worldview

If Descartes's God acts on the world via willing, we may inquire into the contents of those volitions. I suggest that Descartes's God has, among others, distinguishable volitions with roughly the following contents. 4 These constitute a partial worldview (W), and will be discussed in turn:

(V1) At all times beginning with original Creation matter exists everywhere.

(V2) There is at original Creation a particular quantity q and particular distribution d of motion.

(V3) At all times, the laws of motion apply.

(V4) Mind m exists at time t (appropriately substituted).

(V5) At all times, the laws of mind-body union apply.

Our first task is to accommodate God's role in the Cartesian system as the continuous conserver of the material world. 5 One divine volition which would accomplish that might have the content, not that each individual body persists, but rather, simply, that [End Page 26]

(V1) at all times beginning with original Creation matter exists everywhere. 6

Now (V1) may require us to rethink the way continuous conservation arguments are typically framed. In the texts of La Forge and Malebranche, for example, what God conserves are individual bodies,and Cartesian texts seem sometimes to suggest the same. 7 Such framing might suggest, contra (V1), that God's conservational volitional contents make explicit reference to each individual body. Nevertheless, there are reasons to think that Descartes's God's conserving activity is and ought to be framed as in (V1):

(i) God's willing that (V1) provides an easy way to reconcile Cartesian mind —> body causal interaction with continuous conservation. 8 Many think that there is a tension between these two doctrines, since God, in conserving bodies, would seem to be responsible for all their modes including motion, leaving nothing for minds to contribute to them. Now that might be true where God's conserving volition explicitly represents each individual body, particularly given the role that motion plays in distinguishing individual Cartesian bodies. 9 (V1), however, in making no reference to individual bodies, is perfectly consistent with minds affecting either the quantity or distribution of motion in the material world.

(ii) Similarly in Physiologia, Des Chene convincingly defends the claim that for Descartes, "since the existence of motion . . . is not entailed by the existence of matter, the creation of motion [is] independent of the creation of matter" (329). In light, again, of Descartes's conception of individual bodies (n. 9, below), this independence is best modeled by distinguishing God's conserving volition from those volitions...

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