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Kara Richardson
Draft for UNYWEMP, Sunday Oct. 4, 2009
The claim that Descartes rejects substantial forms must be qualified in two
ways. First, Descartes sometimes refers to the mind as the form of the
human body or as the form of the human being, e.g., at CSM II 246/ AT VII
356, CSM III 207 /AT III 503 and CSM III 208/ AT III 505). Scholars
disagree about whether his use of Aristotelian language in this regard
indicates that he endorsed a hylemorphic account of the unity of a human
being. Hoffman (1986) argues in favour of this view; Rozemond (1998), ch.
5 argues against it. Second, Marleen Rozemond has shown that Descartes
notion of a principal attribute is a successor to substantial form in the sense
that the principal attributes of extension and thought determine the kinds
of modes found in bodies in general and in minds (Rozemond (1998), p.
117). In this way, it play a role similar to that of a substantial form which
determines the proper accidents of a substance, e.g., the substantial form of
water determines its proper accidents, sc., coldness and moisture.
2
Garber (1992), pp. 274-5. Garber makes the same point in several other
works; see Garber .Gary Hatfield also makes this point; see Hatfield (1979),
p. 113. Michael Della Rocca thinks that Descartes denial of substantial
forms conflicts with his attribution of causal powers to bodies, but defends
Descartes; see Della Rocca (1999).
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there sides with those Aristotelians who hold that the actions of substances
depend directly on their accidents alone, and I argue that this letter reveals
Descartes own view of the causal powers of bodies without substantial
forms. Rather than replacing substantial forms with God to explain activity
in the created world, Descartes reforms the ground for activity in the
created world, by replacing Aristotelian active qualities with Cartesian
ones. In the final part of the paper, I consider an important objection to my
interpretation, sc. that it conflicts with Descartes view that the nature of
body is extension.
1. Suarez on substantial forms as efficient causes
Scholastic substantial forms have their roots in Aristotle who claims
that among the causes of something are its form, i.e., the definition of its
essence (Physics 194b 27-28). To know the form of a thing is to know what
kind of thing it is. This contribution to knowledge is quite different from the
one made by an efficient cause, i.e., by the primary source of the change or
rest (Physics 2.3 194b 30-32). To know the efficient cause of a thing is to
know the mover or shaper who makes it happen or brings it to be.
Nevertheless the two types of cause intersect: what kind of thing X is
determines for the most part what changes X can bring out or suffer.
Efficient causal powers are rooted in the substantial forms of agents, and
their exercise depends on passive powers which are so rooted in patients.
For example, the rational soul the substantial form of human being
determines our powers to nourish ourselves and grow, to reproduce, sense,
move about, imagine and understand. These powers are either active or
passive, and Scholastic philosophers disagreed about which were which: for
example, Aquinas held sensation to be a passive power acted on by the
object of sense, e.g., sight is a passive power acted on by colour, whereas
Suarez held it to be an active power on the ground that sensation requires
attention on our part. But they agreed on the general point that the
substantial form of a substance determines what it can do or suffer. Viewed
from this perspective, substantial forms play a role in natural action, but
this role is indirect.
The view that substantial forms play direct efficient causal roles was
controversial in the Middle Ages. Suarez holds that they do in at least two
kinds of ways.4 First, he argues that a substantial form is the efficient cause
of accidents appropriate to it, e.g., an animal soul is the efficient cause of
the powers of sensation and locomotion, which are accidents appropriate to
an animal soul.5 Likewise, the substantial form of water is the efficient
My account focuses on Surez discussion of efficient causality in
Disputationes Metaphysicae (DM) 17-19 and on his discussion of formal
causality in Disputationes Metaphysicae 15. Disputations 17-19 are
available in English translation by Alfred Freddoso: Surez, Francisco. On
Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19, trans.
Freddoso. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Disputation 15 is
translated into English by John Kronen and Jeremiah Reedy: Surez,
Francisco. On the Formal Cause of Substance: Metaphysical Disputation
XV, trans. Kronen and Reedy. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,
2000. Unless otherwise noted, quotations of Surez in English are taken
from these translations.
5
DM 15.1, DM 18.3. In DM 15.1, Suarez uses the example of water to
support the claim that we must posit substantial forms. He says if water,
for example, is heated, and later the external cause of the heat is removed,
the water returns to its original coldness because of an intrinsic force, as
experience attests. This is a sign, therefore, that there is in water a certain
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inner principle from which an increase of cold flows anew after all external
obstacles have been removed. That principle which returns water to its
original temperature, however, cannot be anything other than the
substantial form (DM 15.1, Kronen (trans.), p. 22). Suarez continues by
refuting alternative explanations of this phenomenon, which do not employ
the claim that the principle which returns water to its original temperature
is the substantial form (DM 15.1, Kronen (trans.), pp. 22-25). He cites the
example of water in DM 18.3 as support for the claim that the substantial
form has a certain power for having its proper accidents emanate from it
(DM 18.3, Freddoso (trans.), p. 93).
6
DM 18.5.
6
per se can operate per se on the ground that as a thing operates, in that
way it is (Aquinas. Summa Theologiae 1.75.2, p. , Pegis (trans.), p. 685).
Since the human intellect performs an operation per se sc., understanding
it follows that the human intellective soul subsists per se.
13
DM 18.2, p. 599; Freddoso (trans.), p. 53.
14
DM 18.2, p. 599; Freddoso (trans.), p. 53.
15
DM 18.2, p. 601, Freddoso (trans.), p. 58.
16
DM 18.2, p. 601, Freddoso (trans.), p. 59.
17
DM 18.2, p. 602, Freddoso (trans.), p. 54.
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on a view of the causal powers of bodies which his argument against these
opponents suggests. Suarez claims that qualities or accidents conserved
(by God) apart from substantial forms will do whatever they do when
conserved with these forms. Suarez illustrates his point with the example of
heat, a single quality. But there is no reason why God couldnt conserve
collections of qualities or accidents apart from the substantial forms which
are supposed to give rise to these collections in nature.21 Say God
conserves the tart, white flesh of the apple apart from its form. It is clear,
Suarez thinks, that these qualities would act on our senses in just the way
they do when conserved with the form of apple.22 This account of the
actions of qualities or accidents conserved by God apart from substantial
God conserves collections of accidents apart from substantial forms in the
mystery of the Eucharist, i.e., he conserves the accidents of wine and bread
apart from their substantial forms. Thus, one of the questions Suarez must
determine in DM 18.2 is whether the separated accidents of wine and bread
act apart their substantial forms. He thinks that it is obvious that they do;
however, he denies that the separated accidents of wine have sufficient
power to convert a drop of water into wine. Such a conversion is a
substantial generation and requires the aid of a higher power (DM 18.2.29,
Freddoso (trans.), p. 77).
22
What, then, is the difference between a collection of qualities and a
collection of qualities plus a substantial form? According to Suarez, one
difference is that a collection of qualities lacks the unity which is required
to constitute a natural thing (DM 15.1.7). Another is that the substantial
form which unites the collection may also be needed for cooperative efforts
amongst members of collection. For example, Suarez argues that the
various powers of my human soul, e.g., sight, imagination and
understanding, cannot interact with one another directly. Their apparent
interaction requires that they are connected in some common principle
sc., my soul which is the substantial form of my body (DM 18.5.3,
Freddoso (trans.), p. 123). This aspect of the efficient causality of
substantial forms is the focus of Marleen Rozemonds Suarez and the Unity
of Consciousness (2008). So Suarez identifies interesting and important
differences between aggregates and aggregates unified by substantial
forms.
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forms suggests that bodies without substantial forms could have causal
powers, and that the ground for these powers would be qualities or
collections of qualities. In the next Section, I will argue that Descartes
adopts a similar view.
CSM I 83/AT XI 7.
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Garber, Rozemond
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conserved apart from the fiery form. On this model, activity in the created
world depends on accidents alone.
Descartes employs the model on several occasions. One prominent
example is his account of how fire burns wood in Le Monde. There he
argues that in the absence of the form of fire and the quality of heat, that is,
in the absence of those entities which ground Scholastic causal powers, the
changes we observe when wood burns could be caused by some power
which puts its finer parts into violent motion and separates them from the
coarser parts.27 He then explains what constitutes this power in the body
of the flame:
Now since it does no seem possible to conceive how one body could move
another except through its own movement, I conclude that the body of the
flame which acts upon the wood is composed of minute parts, which move
about independently of one another with a very rapid and very violent
motion. As they move about in this way they push against the parts of the
bodies they are touching and move those which do not offer them too much
resistance. I say that the flames parts move about individually, for although
many of them often work together to bring about a single effect, we see
nevertheless that each of them acts on its own upon the bodies they touch.
I say, too, that their motion is very rapid and very violent, for they are so
minute that we cannot distinguish them by sight, and so they would not
have the force they have to act upon the other bodies if the rapidity of their
movement did not compensate for their lack of size.28
Flame, according to Descartes, is a body composed of very tiny, very rapidly
moving parts. The size and speed of its parts constitutes its power to burn.
In Principles IV, ss. 187, Descartes boasts that he has penetrated
seeming mysteries such as the properties [proprietates] of magnets and of
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fire, and how a huge flame can be kindled from a tiny spark in a moment
without appeal to the occult qualities of his predecessors:
In this book I have deduced the causes which I believe to be quite evident
of these and many other phenomena from principles which are known to
all and admitted by all, namely the shape, size, position and motion of
particles of matter. And anyone who considers all this will readily be
convinced that there are no powers in stones and plants that are so
mysterious, and no marvels attributed to sympathetic and antipathetic
influences that are so astonishing, that they cannot be explained in this way.
In short, there is nothing in the whole of nature (nothing, that is, which
should be referred to purely corporeal causes, i.e. those devoid of thought
and mind) which is incapable of being deductively explained on the basis of
these selfsame principles; and hence it is quite unnecessary to add any
further principles to the list.29
Here Descartes replaces Aristotelian occult qualities with mechanistic
properties. Occult qualities were posited by Aristotelians to explain
phenomena seemingly irreducible to mixtures of the four elements (earth,
air, fire, water). Famous examples: magnetism, effects of drugs, e.g., opium.
Descartes boast is perhaps not only about the fact that his explanatory
principles known and admitted by all but also that his most basic principles,
unlike the Aristotelian elements, encompass all natural phenomena caused
by bodies, i.e., he doesnt have to posit hidden powers in certain cases.
The merits of Descartes project of reforming the ground for corporeal
causal powers by replacing Aristotelian forms and qualities with the
mechanistic properties is not addressed here. Others have noted that
Descartes own explanations are often flawed, unsatisfying. I aim only to
show that Descartes does not consider bodies devoid of forms to be bodies
without activity, and that his basic model for corporeal causal powers
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derives from a Scholastic view that bodies act directly through their
accidents. I also think that the model supports Descartes very frequent
claims that bodies are causes by identifying the ground of their activity. 30
But the occasionalist interpretation of body-body causation in Descartes
also finds support in his claim that the nature of body is extension. If a body
is simply an extended thing, then it has no features which could constitute
active powers.
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Notice that Hattab infers the claim that Descartes leaves no room for
active forces or causal powers originating from the nature of bodies from
the claim that he holds that all the properties of matter are reducible to its
divisibility and consequent mobility. So she takes Descartes claim that all
the properties of matter are reducible to its divisibility and consequent
mobility to mean that he holds that all the properties of matter originate
from the nature of body, i.e. extension. But the claim that all the properties
of matter originate from the nature of body conflicts with Descartes central
point in Principles Part Two 23.
Principles Part Two 23 begins with the claim that [a]ll the variety in
matter, all the diversity of its forms, depends on motion.35 Descartes aim
in this section is to explain this point. He notes first that [t]he matter
existing in the entire universe is thus one and the same, and it is always
recognized as matter simply in virtue of its being extended.36 This claim
follows from Descartes assertion that variety in matter depends on motion:
if variety in matter depends on motion, then matter considered in itself is
undifferentiated extension. His next claim explains the relationship
between the nature of matter and the properties which cause variety in
matter: he says that [a]ll the properties which we clearly perceive in
[matter] are reducible to its divisibility and consequent mobility in respect
of its parts, and its resulting capacity to be affected in all the ways which
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36
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its divisibility and consequent mobility cannot mean that all of these
properties originate from its divisibility and consequent mobility. By
reducible to he means something other than originate from.
What does reducible to mean, for Descartes in Principles Part Two
23?
1. The properties of matter are reducible to extension in the sense that
the existence of these properties does not require anything over and
above, or other than, a finite parcel of extension. So, e.g., spherical is
reducible to extension in the sense that it is does not require for its
existence anything over and above, or other than, a finite parcel of
extension.
This view seems to accord with an analysis of modes as ways of being
extended: Garber gives such an analysis in Descartes Metaphysical
Physics:
Descartes wants to make all of the properties of body geometrical. And so
for him, modes, the term he comes to choose in preference to accident, are
to be the expression of the very essence or attribute, in his terminology. For
him, no accidents are to be merely tacked onto a substratum; for him all
accidents are to be either propria or accidentia propria, intimately linked to
the essence of the substance: as Descartes put it, all of the modes of body
must be understood through its essence, its principal attribute, extension
(see Pr I 53). And thus, when he claims that the essence of body is
extension, he is not merely saying that all bodies have extension and
necessarily so, as his scholastic contemporaries might have meant such a
claim; he is saying something stronger, that everything that can really be
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the nature of matter and its properties in Principles 1.53 and 2.23. But why
should we agree that bodies have in themselves the power to continue to
move if they are in motion? This claim finds support in Descartes first law
of nature: each thing, in so far as it is simple and undivided, always
remains in the same state, as far as it can, and never changes except as a
result of external causes.47 In other words, we know by the first law of
nature that a body in motion will remain in motion unless checked by
something else. Since it is the case that a body in motion will remain in
motion unless checked by something else, we should agree that bodies have
in themselves the power to continue to move if they are in motion. The
principle at work here seems to be the following: (1) X has the power to
continue to if (a) X is actually ing and (b) X will cease to only if
something else makes it cease.48 Note that Descartes does not need to
CSM I 241/AT VIIIA 63
We might think that if Descartes really does endorse this principle, then
his claim that creatures depend on God for their existence so long as they
exist is in trouble. For the principle as applied to existence yields the
following claim: X has the power to continue to exist if (a) X is actually
existing and (b) X will cease to exist only if something else makes it cease.
In the Fifth Set of Objections Gassendi raises an objection along these lines
against Descartes claim that creatures depend on God for their existence
(CSM II 210/AT VII 301-2). Descartes responds to Gassendis objection as
follows: You say that we have a power which is sufficient to ensure that we
shall continue to exist unless some destructive cause intervenes. But here
you do not realize that you are attributing to a created thing the perfection
of a creator, if the created thing is able to continue in existence
independently of anything else (CSM II 255/AT VII 371). What is interesting
about this reply is that Descartes does not attack Gassendis line of
reasoning, i.e. he does not deny that it makes sense to hold that an existing
thing has the power to continue to exist if it will continue to exist in the
absence of a destructive cause. Rather, he points out that this view
misattributes to a creature a perfection that belongs to creators alone.
What is the perfection that belongs to creators alone? Descartes might
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establish that (a) and (b) are necessary conditions for (1); his view makes
sense so long as they are sufficient conditions for (1). This principle seems
to me to be unobjectionable. I clearly have the power to continue to
breathe if I am actually breathing and will only cease to breathe if
something else makes me cease.
Gary Hatfield denies that Cartesian bodies have in themselves the
power to continue to move. He thinks that God is directly responsible for
this power. He reasons as follows. Since Descartes appeals to the first law
of nature to support his claim that bodies have in themselves the power to
continue to move and since the first law of nature is grounded in divine
immutability, it follows that a bodys power to continue to move is grounded
in divine immutability. This means that God is directly responsible for a
bodys power to continue to move. Hatfield makes this point in the
following passage:
Descartes gives no reason why bodies should tend to persist in their own
state other than the immutable nature of the divine action that preserves
bodies at each moment. A fortiori, in explaining the tendency to persevere
he does not appeal to the force that a body has by virtue of its motion.
Indeed, the relation is just the reverse: the force of a body to actis simply
the tendency of everything to persist in its present state, a tendency that
does not follow from any property of matter, but rather from an attribute of
God. Just as with the preservation of the quantity of motion, it is difficult to
see how a tendency to move could be grounded upon the immutability of
God, unless God were directly responsible for the tendency itself. 49
Hatfield cites Descartes claim in Principles, Part Two 43 that a
bodys power to act on another body consists simply in the fact that
everything tends, so far as it can, to persist in the same state, as laid down
in our first law.50 This claim follows from the claims that (1) a bodys
power to act on another body is constituted by its power to continue to
move and (2) a bodys power to continue to move is established by the first
law of nature. Hatfield infers from Descartes appeal to the first law of
nature in claim (2) that God is directly responsible for a bodys power to
continue to move. He justifies this inference on the ground that the first
49
50
Della Rocca (1999), p. 69). Tad Schmaltz rejects Della Roccas account on
this ground. See Schmaltz (2003), p. 744.
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