Philosophy 592J - S-Topics in Early Modern Philo

Aristotelians held that there is a necessary connection between cause and effect. Medieval philosophers sought ways to make this picture of causation compatible with God's power to sever (as well as ground) any such connections. With respect to the early modern era, Kant famously wrote in the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason: ?The three usual systems that have been thought about [causality], really the only possible ones, are those of physical influx, pre-established harmony, and supernatural assistance [i.e., occasionalism] [A390].? On the influx account, a property (or its copy) is transmitted from one substance to another; occasionalism takes God to be the sole cause in nature; on harmony accounts, one type of event is regularly followed by another type of event - without influx and without an action by God that goes beyond the natures of things that he has created. In this course we will examine these three traditional metaphysical accounts of causation, along with Hume's skepticism about all such accounts of causality, and Kant's response to Hume's skeptical worries. Among the questions we will explore are these: Is Descartes committed to a physical influx theory, as Malebranche and Cavendish charge? What are the mechanistic versus vitalistic accounts of nature, and does commitment to one of these determine which system of causation a philosopher will embrace? Do mechanists such as Descartes, Malebranche and Berkeley hold any type of causal likeness principle? Are Malebranche and Berkeley both occasionalists? How can Cavendish account for nature's harmony, if she has excluded God from any explanatory role in nature? Has Cavendish eliminated all necessary connections by way of her "occasional causes"? How should we understand both similarities and differences between the various critiques of the idea of "necessary connexion" as found in Malebranche, Berkeley, and Hume? Finally, what does Kant mean when he claims that causation is a "synthetic a priori" concept, which is necessary for the possibility of any objective experience at all?

Pre Req: 3 PHIL courses (UG)