iii

A Companion toRationalism

Edited by

Alan Nelson

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM3

vi

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM6

i

A Companion to Rationalism

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM1

ii

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy

This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey ofphilosophy as a whole. Written by today’s leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid andengaging coverage of the key figures, terms, topics, and problems of the field. Taken together,the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, representing an unparalleled work of referencefor students and specialists alike.

A Companion to Business EthicsEdited by Robert E. Frederick

A Companion to the Philosophy of ScienceEdited by W. H. Newton-Smith

A Companion to Environmental PhilosophyEdited by Dale Jamieson

A Companion to Analytic PhilosophyEdited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa

A Companion to GenethicsEdited by Justine Burley and John Harris

A Companion to Philosophical LogicEdited by Dale Jacquette

A Companion to Early Modern PhilosophyEdited by Steven Nadler

A Companion to Philosophy in theMiddle AgesEdited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B.Noone

A Companion to African-AmericanPhilosophyEdited by Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman

A Companion to Applied EthicsEdited by R. G. Frey and Christopher HeathWellman

A Companion to the Philosophy of EducationEdited by Randall Curren

A Companion to African PhilosophyEdited by Kwasi Wiredu

A Companion to HeideggerEdited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A.Wrathall

A Companion to RationalismEdited by Alan Nelson

A Companion to Ancient PhilosophyEdited by Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin

A Companion to PragmatismEdited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis

A Companion to NietzscheEdited by Keith Ansell Pearson

Already published in the series:

The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy,Second EditionEdited by Nicholas Bunnin and EricTsui-James

A Companion to EthicsEdited by Peter Singer

A Companion to AestheticsEdited by David Cooper

A Companion to EpistemologyEdited by Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa

A Companion to Contemporary PoliticalPhilosophyEdited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit

A Companion to Philosophy of MindEdited by Samuel Guttenplan

A Companion to MetaphysicsEdited by Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa

A Companion to Philosophy of Law andLegal TheoryEdited by Dennis Patterson

A Companion to Philosophy of ReligionEdited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro

A Companion to the Philosophy of LanguageEdited by Bob Hale and Crispin Wright

A Companion to World PhilosophiesEdited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe

A Companion to Continental PhilosophyEdited by Simon Critchley andWilliam Schroeder

A Companion to Feminist PhilosophyEdited by Alison M. Jaggar and Iris MarionYoung

A Companion to Cognitive ScienceEdited by William Bechtel and George Graham

A Companion to BioethicsEdited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer

A Companion to the PhilosophersEdited by Robert L. Arrington

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM2

iii

A Companion toRationalism

Edited by

Alan Nelson

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM3

iv

© 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltdexcept for editorial material and organization © 2005 by Alan Nelson

blackwell publishing

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

The right of Alan Nelson to be identified as the Author of the Editorial Material in this Workhas been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recordingor otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, withoutthe prior permission of the publisher.

First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

1 2005

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to rationalism / edited by Alan Nelson.p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to philosophy)

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-0909-3 (alk. paper)ISBN-10: 1-4051-0909-2 (alk. paper)1. Rationalism. I. Nelson, Alan Jean. II. Series.

B833.C66 2006149′.7–dc22

2005010996

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Set in 10/12.5pt Photinaby Graphicraft Limited, Hong KongPrinted and bound in the United Kingdomby TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy,and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-freepractices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have metacceptable environmental accreditation standards.

For further information onBlackwell Publishing, visit our website:www.blackwellpublishing.com

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM4

v

To Linda and Ian with love

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM5

vi

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:03 PM6

vii

Contents

List of Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xi

List of Abbreviations xii

Introduction xiv

Part I The Core of Rationalism 1

1 The Rationalist Impulse 3Alan Nelson

2 The Rationalist Conception of Substance 12Thomas M. Lennon

3 Rationalist Theories of Sense Perception and Mind–Body Relation 31Gary Hatfield

4 Rationalism and Education 61David Cunning

Part II The Historical Background 83

5 Plato’s Rationalistic Method 85Hugh H. Benson

6 Rationalism in Jewish Philosophy 100Steven Nadler

7 Early Modern Critiques of Rationalist Psychology 119Antonia LoLordo

8 Rationalism and Method 137Matthew J. Kisner

9 Cartesian Imaginations: The Method and Passions of Imagining 156Dennis L. Sepper

ACTA01 8/9/05, 2:06 PM7

viii

Part III The Heyday of Rationalism 177

10 Descartes’ Rationalist Epistemology 179Lex Newman

11 Rationalism and Representation 206Kurt Smith

12 The Role of the Imagination in Rationalist Philosophiesof Mathematics 224Lawrence Nolan

13 Idealism and Cartesian Motion 250Alice Sowaal

14 Leibniz on Shape and the Cartesian Conception of Body 262Timothy Crockett

15 Leibniz on Modality, Cognition, and Expression 282Alan Nelson

16 Rationalist Moral Philosophy 302Andrew Youpa

17 Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Rationalist Reconceptions of Imagination 322Dennis L. Sepper

18 Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism 343Henry E. Allison

Part IV Rationalist Themes in Contemporary Philosophy 361

19 Rationalism in the Phenomenological Tradition 363David Woodruff Smith

20 Rationalist Elements of Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy 379Paul Livingston

21 Proust and the Rationalist Conception of the Self 399Alan Nelson

22 Rationalism in Science 408David Stump

23 Rational Decision Making: Descriptive, Prescriptive, or Explanatory? 425Jonathan Michael Kaplan

24 What is a Feminist to do with Rational Choice? 450Mariam Thalos

25 Rationalism in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson 468Richard N. Manning

Index 488

contents

ACTA01 8/9/05, 2:06 PM8

ix

Contributors

Henry E. Allison is Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of California,Davis.

Hugh H. Benson is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma.

Timothy Crockett is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University.

David Cunning is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa.

Gary Hatfield is the Adam Seybert Professor in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy atthe University of Pennsylvania.

Jonathan Michael Kaplan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oregon StateUniversity.

Matthew J. Kisner is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of SouthCarolina.

Thomas M. Lennon is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.

Paul Livingston is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University.

Antonia LoLordo is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia.

Richard N. Manning is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University.

Steven Nadler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Alan Nelson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine.

Lex Newman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah.

Lawrence Nolan is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at California StateUniversity, Long Beach.

Dennis L. Sepper is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas.

David Woodruff Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California,Irvine.

Kurt Smith is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University ofPennsylvania.

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM9

x

Alice Sowaal is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University.

David Stump is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University ofSan Francisco.

Mariam Thalos is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah.

Andrew Youpa is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University,Carbondale.

contributors

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM10

xi

Acknowledgments

I thank the authors and the editors at Blackwell Publishing for making this volumepossible. The final stage of my own editorial contributions was supported by a leavefrom the University of California, Irvine; and by the hospitality of the PhilosophyDepartment at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Center for HumanScience, Chapel Hill.

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM11

xii

Abbreviations

Works cited frequently throughout the volume are abbreviated as follows:

A Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (Deutsche Akademie derWissenschafter, ed.). Darmstadt: Akademie-Verlag, 1923–. Cited byseries, volume, and page.

AG Leibniz, Philosophical Essays (Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber, trans. andeds.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1989.

AL Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. In Brian Vickers (ed.), Francis Bacon:A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996. Cited by page.

Ar Aristotle, De Anima ( J. A. Smith, trans.). In J. Barnes (ed.), Complete Worksof Aristotle, 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Citedby the standard page and line numbers for Aristotle’s works (Bekkernumbers).

AT Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 vols. (C. Adam and P. Tannery, eds.).Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1996.

C Leibniz, Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz (L. Couturat, ed.). Paris:Presses Universitaires, 1903.

CSM Descartes, Philosophical Writings, 2 vols. ( J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff,and D. Murdoch, trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–5. Cited by volume and page number.

CSMK Descartes, Philosophical Writings, Vol. 3: Correspondence ( J. Cottingham,R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, and A. Kenny, trans.). Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991.

DG Descartes, The World and Other Writings (S. Gaukroger, trans.). Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

DM Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics. In C. J. Gerhardt (ed.), Die philosophischenSchriften von G.W. Leibniz, 7 vols. Hildescheim: Olms, 1965. Cited byarticle number.

G Leibniz, Nouvelles lettres et opuscules inédits de Leibniz (Foucher de Careil,ed.). Paris: Auguste Durand, 1857.

GM Leibniz, Leibniz’ Mathematische Schriften (C. I. Gerhardt, ed.). Berlin:A. Asher; Halle: H. W. Schmidt, 1849–63. Cited by volume and page.

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM12

xiii

GP Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (C. I.Gerhardt, ed.). Berlin: Weidmann, 1875–90. Cited by volume and page.

JS Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (N. Jolley andD. Scott, trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Le Grand Antoine Le Grand, An Entire Body of Philosophy According to the Principlesof the Famous Renate Des Cartes, 2 vols. (R. Blome, trans.). London: SamuelRoycroft, 1694. (Reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1972.)

LL Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters (L. E. Loemker, trans.). Dordrecht:Reidel, 1969.

LNE Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding (P. Remnant and J. Bennett,trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

M Leibniz, The Leibniz Arnauld Correspondence (H. T. Mason, trans. and ed.).Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967.

Mal Malebranche, The Search after Truth (T. M. Lennon and P. J. Olscamp,trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

NO Francis Bacon, Novum Organum. Cited by section.OC Malebranche, Oeuvres complètes de Malebranche, 20 vols. (A. Robinet, ed.).

Paris: J. Vrin, 1958–67.P Leibniz, Leibniz: Philosophical Writings (G. H. R. Parkinson, ed., M. Morris

and G. H. R. Parkinson, trans.). London: Dent, 1973.QNS Francisco Sanchez, Quod Nihil Scitur (D. Thomson, trans.; introduction,

notes, and bibliography by E. Limbrick). New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1988. Cited by page.

RA Leibniz, The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Writings on the Continuum Prob-lem, 1672–1686 (R. T. W. Arthur, trans. and ed.). New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 2001.

RB Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding (P. Remnant and J. Bennett,eds. and trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Régis Pierre Régis, Cours entier de philosophie, ou systeme general selon les principesde M. Descartes, Latest Edition, 3 vols. [Entire Course of Philosophy, orGeneral System According to the Principles of Mr. Descartes]. Amster-dam: Huguetan, 1691. (Reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1970.)

Rohault Jacques Rohault, System of Natural Philosophy, 2nd edn. ( J. Clarke, trans.).London: Knapton, 1728–9. (Reprint, New York: Garland, 1987.)

SE Spinoza, Ethics. In E. Curley (ed. and trans.), Collected Works of Spinoza(pp. 401–617). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Citedby Part, Proposition, and Note.

Search Malebranche, The Search After Truth (T. M. Lennon and P. J. Olscamp,trans.). Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980.

TEI Spinoza, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. In S. Feldman (ed.) andS. Shirley (trans.), Ethics, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect andSelected Letters. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1992. Cited by page and linenumber.

TTP Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise. In C. Gebhardt (ed.), Spinoza Opera.Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925. Cited by volume and page.

abbreviations

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM13

xiv

Introduction

What is rationalism? Philosophers have learned not to expect detailed, or even fullycoherent, answers to this sweeping kind of question. There is, nevertheless, a core ofrationalist thinking that can be traced through two millennia of recorded philosophicaldevelopment. The rationalist insists on the distinction between appearance and real-ity. Reality is revealed to our rational thought, which might also be called “reason” or“intellect.” Since appearance is the way reality appears to us, philosophy has twoimportant tasks. The first is to employ rational thought to reveal the truth aboutthe real. The second is to explain the appearances in terms of the real. Why do wenaturally fasten on apparent truth instead of the real? Why must the real appear as itdoes when our rationality is not specially applied to it? Most rationalists want theappearances to be explained as necessary consequences of the human condition.

The central example of this philosophical attitude is the explanation of sense percep-tion. Our sensing something to be colored red is treated as depending on somethingthat is ultimately not red – not really red – perhaps particles of light affecting our senseorgans. This provides a fairly neat and iconic contrast with empiricism, the comple-ment of rationalism. The empiricist takes sensory information as prior to, and pro-viding data for, explanatory hypotheses. The role of these hypotheses is to classify,simplify, and interrelate the data. There is no sense in which the hypotheses are moretrue or real than appearances for the empiricist.

The chapters in part one of this book, “The Core of Rationalism,” explore thesefundamental features of rationalism. “The Rationalist Impulse” explores the attitudinaldifferences between rationalist and empiricist philosophy. “The Rationalist Conceptionof Substance” tracks the development of that crucial element of rationalist reality witha particular focus on Spinoza, who made it central in his philosophy. “RationalistTheories of Sense Perception and Mind–Body Relation” examines explanations of howappearances come to the mind through the body’s sense organs and how this relatesthe appearances to reality so that they can be used as part of the quest for truth.Finally, the philosopher’s path from a childhood immersed in the senses to a sagaciousadulthood and how rationalists try to bring their readers along this path is the topic of“Rationalism and Education.”

The chapters in part two, “The Historical Background,” take us from the beginningsof theoretical rationalism up until the great flowering of rationalist thought in the

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM14

xv

seventeenth century. Plato is the iconic rationalist, though “Plato’s RationalisticMethod” brings out some of the problems in making this characterization precise. Animportant link between the ancients and Spinoza is forged by focusing on medievalrationalism in the Jewish tradition in “Rationalism in Jewish Philosophy.” One of thegreat critics of early modern rationalism was Pierre Gassendi, who championed anupdated understanding of ancient anti-rationalist atomism. The chapter “Early ModernCritiques of Rationalist Psychology” puts Gassendi’s critique of rationalist theories ofsense perception into the context of the intense debates sparked by Descartes’ rational-ism. Another aspect of these debates was concerned with the new stress on method inphilosophical and scientific thinking. The development of Descartes’ canonical state-ment of the rationalist side of this story is the main topic of “Rationalism and Method.”The distinction between passive sensation and active reasoning is central to the historyof Rationalism. This distinction is richly elaborated by the consideration of imagina-tion, which is naturally understood as the active combination of elements passivelyreceived in sensation. “Cartesian Imaginations: The Method and Passions of Imagin-ing” follows the development of this theme into the seventeenth century and the trans-formation of the role assigned to imagination in Descartes and his followers.

The chapters in part three, “The Heyday of Rationalism,” examine rationalism as itappears in the works of the great canonical figures formerly known as the ContinentalRationalists. “Descartes’ Rationalist Epistemology” analyzes the distinction betweenknowledge that is transmitted via the senses and knowledge that is innate to the mind.Because the treatment is in the context of Descartes’ philosophy, his famous method ofdoubt also comes under scrutiny. This critical distinction is developed in the context ofthe notion of mental representation in “Rationalism and Representation.” We returnto the delicate issue of imagination in “The Role of the Imagination in RationalistPhilosophies of Mathematics.” Much depends on mathematics in Cartesian systemsbecause of the identification of the essence of matter with the subject matter of geo-metry – extension in length, breadth, and depth. This means that the foundation ofphysics is geometry; this is one version of scientific mechanism. “Idealism and CartesianMotion” is devoted to the various conceptual problems inherent to this part ofCartesianism. Leibniz’s critique of this conception of matter and his own Rationalisticapproach to solving the problems is the subject of “Leibniz on Shape and the CartesianConception of Body.” His rationalism is considered in a more general framework in“Leibniz on Modality, Cognition, and Expression.” The great rationalists insisted thattheir philosophical thought, even the natural philosophical part of it (what we nowcall physics) was in the service of the development of moral philosophy. Spinoza’sgreat work was, of course, entitled Ethics. “Rationalist Moral Philosophy” addressessome of the most salient considerations. We return to the hybrid faculty of imagina-tion in “Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Rationalist Reconceptions of Imagination,” whichbrings the story up to some of the pressures that lead from Leibniz through Wolff toKant. Finally, “Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism” is a critical examination ofKant’s engagement with rationalist theories of truth and of the contrast betweensensory and intellectual knowledge.

The chapters in part four, “Rationalist Themes in Contemporary Philosophy,” studyhow both the core issues and transformations of them remain alive in more recentthought. Indeed, there are some ways in which traditional rationalist themes are very

introduction

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM15

xvi

much alive even in contemporary philosophy. All of these chapters, however, alsoserve to bring out how it is ultimately problematic to distinguish sharply betweenrationalism and empiricism. “Rationalism in the Phenomenological Tradition” expli-citly puts into the historical tradition the phenomenology of Husserl and later phe-nomenological research in the important Husserlian tradition. “Rationalist Elementsof Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy” does the same for another, even moredominant twentieth-century philosophical tradition; here we find a particular focuson the development from the early Russell to Carnap. “Proust and the RationalistConception of the Self ” makes a case that the great novelist represents one culmina-tion of rationalist theorizing about self and identity. Rationalism in its seventeenth-century heyday was animated by the ideal of providing rationalist foundations formodern science. “Rationalism in Science” traces this theme up to the present day.“Rational Decision Making: Descriptive, Prescriptive, or Explanatory?” is an explana-tion and also an internal critique of contemporary rationalism with respect to actionand choice. “What is a Feminist to do with Rational Choice?” is a more externalcritique that raises important questions about hidden presuppositions. Finally, “Ration-alism in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson” shows how the distinction betweenrationalism and empiricism plays out in one of the most influential systems of philo-sophical thought in contemporary philosophy.

introduction

ACTA01 14/9/05, 12:04 PM16

1

the rationalist impulse

Part I

THE CORE OF RATIONALISM

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM1

alan nelson

2

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM2

3

the rationalist impulse

1

The Rationalist Impulse

ALAN NELSON

Philosophers are rightly suspicious of the usefulness of broadly conceived labels and“-isms.” They are particularly suspicious when the labels mark dichotomies. Rational-ism thus qualifies as suspicious if it is taken to be a neatly delineated set of doctrines.The task assumed by this chapter is not to find such a set, but instead to provide ananalysis of what I shall call the impulse to philosophize rationalistically. The analysistherefore does not purport to sharply distinguish a set of maxims or propositions char-acteristic of rationalism from another set proper to its foil, empiricism. Nor does itattempt to delineate specific doctrines to which all “rationalists” adhere. I shall,however, argue that attention to some overarching themes in rationalist systems ofphilosophy can be of considerable use in understanding the philosophical accomplish-ments of the great rationalists. Insufficient attention to these themes has often led tointerpretations of rationalists that skew the dialectic with their empiricist antagonistsin favor of the latter.

I shall draw some examples from Plato, who provides most of the earliest textsclearly articulating rationalist themes. The primary focus will be on the great thinkersfrom the seventeenth-century heyday of rationalism, but in conclusion some observa-tions will be made about the rationalist impulse in Russell’s logical atomism. Thisshould help bring into relief some respects in which the triumph of empiricist sensibil-ities among historians of philosophy in the twentieth century and beyond has madethe rationalist impulse rather alien. Naturally, this is not conducive to recovering thespirit of rationalist projects.

I

The primary and customary sense of the term “rationalism” characterizes a philo-sophical attitude toward knowledge. Knowledge itself is partly characterized both bythe subjects, or possessors, of knowledge and by the objects of knowledge, the things tobe known. Rationalism, therefore, bears on ontology since it requires an understand-ing of the natures of these subjects and objects. There are also characteristically rationalprocesses or techniques for obtaining or developing knowledge, so rationalism bearson method, philosophical education, and the nature of philosophy itself.

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM3

alan nelson

4

The traditional series of contrasts with its foil, empiricism, thus begins with subjectsand objects of knowledge. Traditional rationalisms identify the intellect, the mind, orthe rational part of the soul (or even the State) as of primary importance in receivingand holding knowledge. The corresponding objects of knowledge are then non-sensory, general, and unchanging or eternal. Traditional empiricisms, by contrast,identify the senses, or common sense, or the sensitive part of the soul as of primaryimportance. The corresponding objects of knowledge are then the inhabitants of thetemporal world in flux. Of course, rationalists have a story to tell about how somekinds of derivative knowledge depend directly on the senses. We can come to knowthat the senses are reliable indicators of what is beneficial to us and we can then know(as opposed to taking it for granted) that, for example, bread nourishes. Furthermore,absolutely all knowledge depends in some attenuated ways on the sensory because weneed to learn more esoteric truths by first hearing or reading things that bring us tounderstand them. Empiricists similarly have a story to tell about the role of the non-sensory. The clearest example is Locke’s essential reliance on innate operations of themind. This is an extreme case, but all empiricists need to have some account of howabstract, general truths are derived from what is given by the senses.

These points are crucial to appreciating the depth of the chasm between rationalismand empiricism despite the pockets of shared concerns and overlap. It is easy to seethat the empiricist has an initial debater’s advantage. Because human beings are bornhelpless, pre-linguistic, and dependent, they first become cognizant of the sensory qual-ities of objects familiar to common sense. A normal person not having a prior educa-tion in rationalist philosophy will cling to thoughts of these familiar things whenbeginning a philosophical education. Thus the empiricist finds a ready pupil, an ally infact, in what we now like to call the “untutored common sense” of a “sensible” personor a person of “good sense.” Such a person is apt to appreciate an analysis of featuresof the intangible, vaguely perceived, intellectual objects of rationalist knowledge intocommonsensical items and their features. The rationalist teacher cannot display thereward of hard study to the beginning student like candy in a jar. Students are insteadtold that their opinions, while perhaps of considerable utility, are strictly speaking falseand that the truth can be only vaguely characterized until they can see it for them-selves. And the goal is to see the truth. Not visually, of course, but with the mind’s eye,through a “purely mental scrutiny” as Descartes put it.

II

How is the esoteric truth of the rationalist to be accessed? If mere exhortation is thelast resort, even open-minded students will be justifiably suspicious. And even thosewho are somehow moved to appreciate the truth by exhortations might be later per-suaded by other, contrary doctrines. What is required is some technique or methodfor bringing the student from a starting place favoring empiricism to the truth. Aneffective method must start with easy steps and progressively draw the pupil awayfrom sensory distractions. Let us consider examples with some detail.

A rudimentary development of such a method can be found in Plato’s dialogue,Symposium (210a–212b). Here, the esoteric truth to be sought is described as a “vision”

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM4

5

the rationalist impulse

of Beauty itself, the Platonic form. Love is characterized as desire, ultimately desire forBeauty. The method, then, can be regarded as instruction in the art of loving well. Thefirst step in this form of Platonic education requires that one love a beautiful body.This is ingeniously designed to be an easy step that requires no prior commitment andno special effort from most students. Loving (that is, desiring) a beautiful body comesnaturally to humans and can be mostly driven by sensual appetites. The Trojan horse,of course, is that the body is beautiful in a way that connects it, albeit distantly andvaguely, to the final goal of Beauty itself. The next step is to love many beautiful bodiesand this is, unbeknownst to the pupil, loving the Beauty in all these bodies. The begin-ning students’ inability to understand fully their intermediate accomplishments is char-acteristic of rationalist enlightenment. As students progress, they typically will notfully understand the nature of the progress they have made, nor do they need to. It isthe final goal that is important. So lovers of many bodies might conceive their achieve-ment as the ability to love different kinds of corporeal beauty, but the already enlight-ened understand that those at the second step are loving Beauty despite its degradationby various corporeal guises.

In this course of instruction, students next progress to the love of individual souls,and then to what might be regarded as the soul of the State, its laws. This leads to loveof various kinds of knowledge and then to the love of knowledge in general – philo-sophy. The Philosopher, having thus advanced through these stages of love, is preparedto catch glimpses of Beauty itself. One crucial aspect of this method is that those whocompleted the course of instruction are able to perceive in ways that are unavailable tothe uninitiated. Even a generally competent adult immersed in the world of sense willbe unable to perceive truth at will. The situation is quite analogous to the developmentthat can be effected in sensory capacities. All wine might taste sour to the neophyte,but a trained wine taster might make very fine discriminations with some reliability. Asymphony orchestra might sound like noise to a child or someone trained in anothermusical tradition and so on. It is to be expected, therefore, that if rationalists begin alesson or an exposition with a plain statement of Truth, they will meet with skepticismand incomprehension.

An interesting feature of the method described in the Symposium is that it is muchmore than a means of acquiring some abstract doctrines. It also involves learning away of life. Since the “bringing forth of beautiful ideas” is itself a high form of appreciat-ing Beauty, the advanced philosopher is motivated to teach beginners. It is not expectedthat pupils go it alone. This makes progress highly contingent on the availability ofsuitable teachers. It also means that the process of education requires a very long-term, daunting initial commitment of time from the student. The search for a methodof discovery with greater generality, reliability, efficiency, and power led Descartes tohis infamous method of universal doubt. Descartes himself would, of course, be horri-fied by later use of the term “Cartesian Skepticism.” Universal doubt is meant to lead to“perfect knowledge” of the truth and it is for this reason that he calls it “methodical.”The various functions of the doubt include (a) withdrawal from the senses whoseparticular deliverances are most easily doubted, (b) a preemptive strike against laterdoubts; if the project begins with, and then overcomes a universal, all-inclusive doubtthere is no room for subsequent second guessing of anything that emerges from thedoubt, and (c) the imposition of a strict order on the acquisition of knowledge.

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM5

alan nelson

6

Insufficient attention has been given to Descartes’ emphasis on the importance of“philosophizing in the correct order.” One reason that universal doubt comes first inthe order is that it establishes an order for the entire enterprise. The first positive resultis the cogito, “I think, therefore I am,” or simply, “I think, I am.” Why is the cogitofirst? Not because it is the obvious place to begin philosophizing; no one before Descarteschose this point. Nor is the cogito first because of any special, mysterious fecundity tobe found in it. In fact, though Descartes moves from the cogito to some very importantresults, everything beyond the most basic principles of knowledge depends on one’sbeing a human with sensation, memory, and imagination. And the idea that hasfoundational priority for knowledge is not of the self, it is of God. It is not even thecertainty that attaches to the cogito that makes it first in the proper order. The tri-laterality of triangles is just as certain as the cogito. The cogito comes first because it isdelivered by the universal doubt itself. Doubting is thinking, so given that one doubts,one must exist to doubt. The very fact that one is doubting does not inevitably drawthe attention to triangles, squares, or anything else; doubting instead brings to mindthat one is doubting.

Once it emerges that one’s own existence follows from the idea of oneself presentwhen doubting, there is no way to proceed except to ask whether the existence ofanything else at all follows from the ideas of the thinking thing. The pupil, now in theguise of a solitary, independent meditator (independent except for reading Descartes!),is inexorably led to the existence of God, the existence of extension, and finally to theexistence of the self as an embodied, thinking thing. This procedure does not enableone to clearly state the Truth to the unenlightened any more than the “steps of love”from the Symposium. Descartes’ method is, however, designed to be implemented in anumber of days rather than a number of years. The method itself is, moreover, some-thing to be employed once in a lifetime of learning with perhaps brief annual checkupsor refreshers. And unlike the method described by Plato, it can serve as a foundationfor various pursuits.

It is not surprising to the historian that different versions of the Truth are attainedby different rationalists. This provides empiricists with a justifiable basis for attackingthe general procedures of rationalism notwithstanding the fact that empiricists agreeamong themselves no more than do rationalists. There are, however, significantgeneralizations to be made about the sorts of Truth that a rationalist education issupposed to reveal. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of rationalist truth is itssimplicity. It is simple in the strict sense that it is undivided and indivisible. In casethere are a modest number of separate truths, they are each simple in themselves.

III

The most prominent example of a simple rationalist truth is the idea of infinite being.Empiricists tend to believe that insofar as we can understand infinity at all, our con-cept of it must be constructed from ideas of finite things. And insofar as we can do that,the result will be complex and unclear relative to the ideas of finite things employedin its construction. Rationalists, by contrast, believe that the idea of the infinite isconceptually prior to ideas of the finite. This does not mean that infants think about

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM6

7

the rationalist impulse

the infinite before they think about the finite. The point is that finite things are to bephilosophically understood as limitations of the infinite. One does not begin withthe truth concerning the finite and work to extend these truths to the infinite.Instead the post-enlightenment beginning, the principle of philosophy proper, is theinfinite. The task of philosophy, after the attainment of the simple truth, is discoveringthe truth about finite things by understanding the respects in which they are limita-tions of what is infinite.

For example, finite things are limited in their knowledge, their power, their creativeactivity, their temporal and spatial extent (at least in some rationalist accounts), theirgoodness, etc. Again, the rationalist will agree with the empiricist that learning toconceive infinity might involve first reflecting on the conceptions of finite things andthen imagining the various limitations being removed, perhaps one by one. But oncein command of the idea of infinity, the epistemic situation is reversed. The perfectwholeness and simplicity of the idea of the infinite must have limitations imposedupon it in thought to arrive at accurate conceptions of finite things. Spinoza expressesthis by saying that finite things “follow” from the infinite and must be “conceivedthrough” it.

A more specific example is provided once more by Descartes’ position on the natureof thought. Scholars have long debated whether Descartes is best interpreted as takingconsciousness or intentionality as the fundamental core of thought. Others have dis-puted whether it is the intellect or the will that is more basic to the thinking thing.None of these discussions are Cartesian in spirit. Descartes makes it very clear that theessence of a thinking thing is to think. Thought itself is something as perfectly simpleas a finite thing can be. The philosopher’s task is to explain the variety of phenomena,the empirical, given the simple idea of thought. This is the opposite of the empiricist’stask of searching for deep mysterious essences (often concluded to be inaccessibleanyway) using commonsensical building blocks.

The principal theoretical device for explaining the appearance of diversity in what isreally simple depends on being able to think identically the same ideas “under differentaspects” or “regarding” them in different ways. Doing this is said to produce a distinc-tion of reason, a conceptual distinction, or (especially appropriate in the present con-text) a rational distinction. So a Cartesian philosopher might regard the idea of himselfas a finite thinking thing in various ways. He might regard the passive aspect of thoughtin which it perceives ideas of things, or instead he might regard its active aspect inwhich it chooses to attend to the apparent good. In this account, will and intellect areonly rationally distinct. When one accurately perceives will or intellect one is in eachcase perceiving the same idea, the idea of finite thought albeit under different aspects.Similarly, perceiving omniscience and omnipotence is to perceive exactly the samething, infinity, but under different aspects. Yet another example would be the percep-tion of divisibility and quantity, which are both aspects of Cartesian extension. In eachcase, the simple ideas of infinity, thought, or extension are conceptually prior to theparticular, rationally distinct aspects under which they might be regarded.

The notion of rational distinction itself was probably an invention of medievalphilosophers attempting to explain the various ways in which the perfect simplicity ofGod is perceived. The device is particularly important in developing the rationalistimpulse, but it is very important to note that empiricists also have occasion to put it to

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM7

alan nelson

8

work. The arch empiricist Hume found it necessary to employ a version of the rationaldistinction to understand the comparisons between, for example, “figure and bodyfigured; motion and the body moved” (A Treatise of Human Nature, 1.1.7). The onlyessential difference between Hume and Descartes on this point is that Hume takessensory impressions to be prior to the abstract ideas in question, while Descartes wouldtake these ideas to be distinct, “concrete,” and prior to their confused representationin the senses.

Although the centrality of the theory of rational distinction has not been muchnoted by scholars, its importance to rationalist philosophy cannot be overstated. Afteran education in rationalism has freed the philosopher from the prejudices of the sensesand the truth is uncovered, that truth is revealed to be simple. For most rationalists,the truth available to human beings is expressed in a handful of innate ideas. Therichness of human experience then needs to be explained as somehow arising fromthis source. Otherwise, rationalism would be reduced to either the inquiry-haltingposition of Zeno of Elea who taught that Being is an unintelligible, really undifferentiatedunity, or else to a skeptical phenomenalism in which sensation is utterly unconnectedwith reality. Once it is understood that the appearances or phenomena of unschooled,everyday life are grounded in simple ideas expressing a Truth inaccessible to sensoryinvestigation, the phenomena themselves appear in a new light to the rationalist.The appearances are transformed and reconfigured by the reality of which they are,after all, mere appearances.

IV

The rationalists’ reconfiguration of experience brings into sharp relief an importantcontrast with empiricism. For an empiricist, the ultimate test of the reasonableness,the credibility, and the fruitfulness of a philosophical theory is its conformity withappearances as experienced by common sense. It is fine to be told that the dog downthe street is a machine, or an aggregate of monads, or a finite mode of the infinite, solong as one arrives at a deep analysis of what the dog really is. And the same holds forcookies, hands, the moral wrongness of taking candy from babies, and so on. A com-mitted, theoretically minded empiricist might be prepared for thoroughgoing analyses,or even reductions, of all these items to esoteric theoretical entities. A cookie might bean aggregate of elementary particles, and the wrongness of an action might evenreduce to something that is not intrinsically normative – say, Hume’s custom. What acertain kind of empiricist is not prepared to accept is that dogs, hands, taking candy frombabies, etc. are not the touchstones, the base from which philosophical theorizingbegins. For these empiricists, philosophical theories are to be judged according to thefidelity with which their analyses result in the furniture of the commonsense world.The rationalist, by contrast, discovers that the world of common sense is merely anappearance of what is real and true. So it is to be expected that dogs, hands, and therest are not really precisely individuated.

The present point connects with the previous observations about rationalism. Wefirst saw how the proper starting place for philosophical explanation is not readyto hand, but requires careful education. One must unlearn the apparent truths of

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM8

9

the rationalist impulse

common sense to gain an appreciation of where philosophy proper begins. Perhapsthis is best expressed by saying that philosophy consists of two stages. The first stage isan unlearning of prejudice, a preparation for doing real philosophy. According to arationalist, the empiricist attempts to do philosophy on the cheap without bothering toput in the requisite training. The empiricist is like the tennis player who wants to be achampion without practicing ground strokes or the pianist who wants to play Chopinwithout practicing scales. The second stage can only begin once an adequate under-standing of the Truth is in place. The rationalist’s understanding of the Truth is, there-fore, not rightly characterized as a “theory.” It is not a hypothesis supported byevidence. What might the evidence be except for the deliverances of the empiricist’scommon sense? The Truth must instead come to be understood, appreciated, or “seen”by the knower’s innate attunement with it. This attunement must, of course, receivesome explanation. But – and this is the sticking point – the explanation of attunementmust itself proceed from the Truth as explanans.

We also saw that the rationalist’s Truth is relatively simple. Infinity, thought, andextension are simple in Descartes’ system, for example. And this simplicity means thatthey are easy to understand for the enlightened sage; a claim that provokes frustrationor amusement from the empiricist. But given that the rationalist’s Truth is simple,the empiricist’s easily understood items – dog, hand, etc. – turn out to be fabulouslycomplex in reality. This is not to deny that empiricists might welcome a theorywhich maintains that dogs are complexes of cells, or atoms, or impressions, or etc. It isinstead characteristic of the empiricist to insist that what are really dogs can be givena theoretical analysis into theoretical simples. The theoretical entities cannot be morereal than commonsensical objects because the latter are what ground the falliblepostulation of the former.

V

Once the topic of the analysis of appearances has been raised in this way, it is naturalto see how it is played out in philosophy that is analytic in a historically strict sense ofthe term. The issues arise clearly at the very beginning in the twentieth-century ana-lytic philosophy of Russell and Moore. To standardize terminology we can say that thissort of analysis takes the objects of knowledge to be facts. Facts are symbolized orexpressed by propositions. Analysis then consists in analyzing some propositions intoothers. For Moore, analysis typically begins with a proposition that we know to be true.Some of these propositions also have analyses that are known. We might know, forexample, “T is an equilateral triangle” and know that this analyzes into “T is a closed,plane figure with three equal sides.” Philosophical analysis most typically involvescases in which we know the analysandum to be true, but do not know its correctanalysis. A typical Moorean example is the proposition expressed by the sentence“I now see a hand before me” when one is looking at one’s own hand before oneself.Moore regards this as known for certain, but thinks the correct analysis is very hard tocome by. At times he thought the first step in the analysis includes the proposition“‘This is seen by me’ and ‘This is part of the surface of a hand,’” but he was never sureof how to proceed. What I wish to stress here is that Moore begins by taking the

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM9

alan nelson

10

deliverances of common sense as known for certain. Being in possession of correctanalyses would somehow enhance this knowledge though Moore, with characteristiccaution, was unsure of the nature of the enhancement. This is very much in the spiritof empiricism. Knowledge in philosophy derives from analyses of what is known forcertain by common sense. Moore rejected outright the suggestion that an analysis ofcommon sense could lead to knowledge that revealed common sense as false. That is,propositions expressing commonsensical truisms express facts, and these propositionscannot be discovered to be false because these facts are indisputable. This is the foun-dation of Moore’s famous “defense of common sense.” We know that any philosopherpurporting to undercut common sense by showing propositions expressing common-sensical truisms to be false must have made a mistake in analysis.

Analysis in Russell’s logical atomism is different in character. He agrees with Moorethat valuable philosophical analyses begin with things that we take for certainly true.Where else would we begin the quest for philosophical enlightenment – with thingswe regard as highly dubious? Russell believed, however, that sentences in naturallanguage expressing commonsensical truisms are highly misleading in their logicalform. Sentences like “Socrates was snub-nosed” or “The cat is on the mat” mightappear to the uneducated to express simple facts about Socrates and the cat. We beginthe analysis of such sentences by first translating them into a more appropriate sym-bolism. The full analysis of the sentences into a proposition with an appropriate logicalform would reveal vast complexity, perhaps an infinite complexity. This is because thelogical atoms which are the goal of the analysis must include names for logicallyperfect simples, items with no further structure whatsoever. These atoms are mani-festly unavailable to common sense. They are, in fact, probably unavailable altogetheralthough logical atomism holds by a kind of transcendental argument that they mustbe at the “ground floor” as a condition of the possibility of a symbolic system’s repre-senting reality.

Russellian analysis thus displays some of the characteristic features of rationalism.Most prominent is its radical reconfiguration of common sense. Propositions that Mooreknows to express facts are revealed under Russellian analysis to be vaguely andambiguously expressed complexes of facts beyond the grasp of human intellect. So“Socrates,’” “snub-nosedness,” “the cat,” and “Piccadilly” all stand for logical con-structions, and apparently well-formed propositions employing these symbols vaguelyand ambiguously symbolize complexes of atomic facts. Russell, therefore, was pre-pared for analysis to reveal that such “things” as dogs, cats, mats, even persons, the“properties” of these things, and their ordinary activities are not fully real. (Or better,that they are not in the end constituents of facts.)

Russell himself does seem to have been inclined to think that the atomic facts con-tain as constituents something very much like Hume’s simple impressions and simpleideas. This reflects his sympathy with empiricism. In other places, he seems to regard itas no more than a hypothesis, or even an example of what the logical atoms might belike. So it seems to be the simplicity and indivisibility of the atoms that impressedRussell most and this is, as we have seen, guided by the rationalist impulse. To be sure,logical atomism results in a great many of the simples; in this respect it is more likeLeibniz’s Monadology than like the systems of Descartes or Spinoza. Russell divergedfrom the more empirically minded Moore in laying heavy stress on the inadequacy of

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM10

11

the rationalist impulse

ordinary expressions in natural languages. For Russell, learning a system of symbolsthat reflected the structure of the esoteric atomic facts was a necessary prerequisite toeffective philosophy. This might be seen as a version of the first of the three character-istics of rationalist thought discussed above; namely the requirement that the philo-sopher be trained to transcend the truths of common sense to appreciate an esotericsimple truth.

In short, Russell’s analytic philosophy, especially in this period of his development,was in crucial aspects aligned with mainline rationalism. Moore’s version of analysiswas much more in line with traditional empiricism. It is interesting to observe thatmuch contemporary analytic philosophy is done more in the spirit of Moore than inthe spirit of Russell. When an analysis is controlled by, and ultimately answerable to,untutored “intuitions” about the commonsensical observations of “plain” people inWestern cultures, that analysis is in an empiricist tradition.

Philosophers trained in these techniques might be in an excellent position to under-stand what the great, canonical empiricists were trying to do and how they viewed thephilosophical enterprise. It might, however, be necessary for them to exercise particu-lar caution when they turn to the interpretation of the rationalist tradition. Rationalistphilosophy, like modern science, does not “leave everything as it is.” It is instead anadventure that transforms the philosopher’s perception of the world.

ACTC01 8/9/05, 2:23 PM11

thomas m. lennon

12

2

The Rationalist Conception of Substance

THOMAS M. LENNON

Two Philosophical Impulses

Rationalism is often best understood against the foil of empiricism, for these two stylesof philosophizing spring from very different philosophical impulses. Empiricists seek toknow the way the world is. Their goal is to gather data, whether from controlledexperiment or from hurly-burly experience, in order to produce a description of theworld. The drift among them is away from the ideal of a single description of the worldtoward the acceptability of a multiplicity of descriptions, constrained only by purepragmatics, to the point that whether there is one world, many worlds, or none at allanswering to their describing makes no difference.

By contrast, rationalists already know the way the world is. Recall Plato and hisdoctrine of learning as reminiscence, but also Descartes, who, in ruminating on theessence of material things, finds his discovery of the truth he discovers “not so muchlearning something new as remembering what I knew before” (Descartes 1985b: 44).Rationalists instead seek to know why the world must be the way it is. Their theoriesare thus prescriptive instead of descriptive. Descartes, in asserting that existence isinseparable from God, makes clear that the modal terms he employs are based inobjective features of the world. “It is not that my thought makes it so, or imposes anynecessity on anything.” (This sort of imposition by the mind would be what Leibnizcalled the super-nominalism of Hobbes, whom Descartes summarily dismisses (Descartes1985b: 135–6), or of Locke, for whom the essences of things, or the kinds to whichthey belong, depend on our ways of sorting them.) “On the contrary,” Descartes con-tinues, “it is the thing itself, namely the existence of God, which determines my think-ing in this respect” (Descartes 1985b: 46). Necessity imposes itself on the mind byprescribing the way it must think about the world.

If the underlying impulse of rationalists, prior to all argument, is the visceral convic-tion that the world could not have been otherwise, the empiricists’ conviction is thatthe world inexplicably just is the way it is. Thus the defining commitment of empiri-cism to experience as the ultimate source of all knowledge is in fact posterior to itsinitial impulse. Experience of the world is needed because reason does not tell, or is nottold, why it must be as it is. An additional part of the empiricist conviction is that theworld is multiple, diverse, and complex. There are many things in the world, they differ

ACTC02 14/9/05, 12:03 PM12