Descartes developed an elaborate theory of animal physiology that he used to explain
functionally organized, situationally adapted behavior in both human and nonhuman
animals. Although he restricted true mentality to the human soul, I argue that he developed a
purely mechanistic (or material)'psychology'of sensory, motor, and low-level cognitive
functions. In effect, he sought to mechanize the offices of the Aristotelian sensitive soul. He
described the basic mechanisms in the Treatise on man, which he summarized in the …