Research Overview

My current and planned research ranges across topics in philosophy of mind and metaphysics in early modern philosophy.

Below, you will find a list of unpublished research projects, divided into the following four themes: (I) early modern arguments for, and defences of, substance dualism; (II) early modern discussions of the relation of consciousness to the mind; (III) early modern accounts of individual mental states and faculties; and (IV) projects outside of early modern philosophy.

For my published work, please see my ‘Publications’ page.

I. Early Modern Arguments For, And Defences of, Substance Dualism

Dissertation: Early Modern Dualisms: Descartes, Clarke, and More

In this dissertation, I explore the very different yet interrelated accounts of mind–body substance dualism that are advanced by three significant early modern dualists: René Descartes (1596– 1650), Henry More (1614–1687), and Samuel Clarke (1675–1729). In particular, I focus on their endeavours to argue for, and defend, their substance dualisms in the face of the mind’s experienced union with an extended body and concomitant presence in an extended world.

An overview of the dissertation, with extended abstracts of each chapter, can be found here.

The dissertation comprises the following four chapters:

Descartes’s Separability Argument for Substance Dualism

In this chapter, I examine Descartes’s influential argument in the Sixth Meditation that his clear and distinct understanding of mind and body apart from each other, along with an appeal to God, is sufficient to establish substance dualism. I first contend that Descartes must – and does – ascribe a much larger role to God in this argument than is typically recognized. In particular, I argue that God is invoked here as an omnipotent creator who is capable of bringing about anything that is not self-contradictory. I also maintain that Descartes’s clear and distinct understanding plays a much smaller role in the argument than is typically recognized and that it is restricted to claims about the essences of substances. Finally, I argue that Descartes’s substance dualism consists in mind and body being mutually separable in existence.

Descartes’s Indivisibility Argument for Substance Dualism

In this chapter, I consider Descartes’s other, relatively neglected, Sixth Meditation argument for substance dualism, which is based on the grounds that body is divisible by its nature, while mind is indivisible. I focus in particular on elucidating Descartes’s reasons for holding that the mind is indivisible, despite its close union with the extended body. I argue that, negatively, Descartes believes that he can clearly and distinctly understand the mind as a substance even without ascribing parts to it. Further, I contend that, positively, he believes that the mind is a unified and indivisible subject of experience, identified with the single attribute of thought, which engages in all of his mental operations. Finally, I maintain that this argument is not alone enough to fully establish Descartes’s substance dualism, since it does not involve a direct appeal to God.

Henry More on the Indiscernible, Extended, Spirit

In this chapter, I consider More’s intriguing position that immaterial spirits are essentially indiscerpible (the Morean term meaning unable to be actually divided), despite also being essentially spatially extended partes extra partes (i.e. with parts outside of parts) and with heterogenous powers in these different parts. I argue that More grounds the indiscerpibility of spirit in the fact that the various psychic powers are not only ontologically rooted in the same, singular, substantial centre of life, from which they all emanate, but also that these powers are essentially interdependent on one another, such that none can be discerped from the rest. I explain this position with respect to the perceptual soul in particular.

Clarke (and Descartes and More) on the Indivisible Soul

Finally, in this chapter, I examine the arc of substance dualism connecting Descartes, More, and Clarke – paying particular attention to Clarke and arguing that he offers a synthesis of Morean and Cartesian views when it comes to the crucial case of how essentially indiscerpible immaterial spiritual substances (i.e. finite souls and God) exist amongst bodies in the world. In particular, I argue that, Clarke, like More and unlike Descartes, takes spiritual substances to be essentially extended but, like Descartes and unlike More, holds that they are present in the world in a holenmerian manner – being wholly present in the whole body and wholly present in each of the body’s parts.

Descartes on Other Minds

In this early-stage non-dissertation project, I investigate how Descartes’s substance dualism informs both the individuation of, and the determination that there are, other finite minds. I will argue that Descartes believes minds can be individuated as tokens in a way analogous to how mind and body are shown to be different types of substances. Further, I will contend that it is Descartes’s view that, while we cannot know for certain if an individual being before us possesses a finite mind, we can know that there are other finite minds due to considerations of God’s goodness coupled with our own, imperfect, nature.

II. Early Modern Discussions of the Relation of Consciousness to the Mind

Descartes on the Mind as Consciousness

In this paper, I argue that Descartes identifies the mind with consciousness in his later writings. I argue for this claim in two steps. First, and less controversially, I contend that Descartes in his later work identifies the mind with the attribute of thought. Second, and more controversially, I maintain that, for Descartes, consciousness is best understood as being the attribute of thought – rather than merely as (a sub-set of) occurrent thoughts or even just a property of such thoughts, as scholars typically take it to be. This allows us to draw the conclusion that, for Descartes, the mind is consciousness

Samuel Clarke Against the Emergence of Consciousness

In this project, I examine Clarke’s account of consciousness and argument for why it cannot emerge from matter. First, I examine Clarke’s account of consciousness itself, beyond the mere fact that he holds it to be identical to the power of thought, which essentially belongs to souls. I then discuss Clarke’s repudiation of Anthony Collins’s repeated suggestions that consciousness might emerge from a system of appropriately-disposed matter. I contend that Clarke rejects this view because he refuses to admit capacities that depend on relational or extrinsic features in order to be realized.

III. Additional Early Modern projects

Émilie Du Châtelet on Love

In this paper, I examine Du Châtelet’s (1706–1749) theory of love as a passion. After explaining the central role that love plays in Du Châtelet’s account of happiness, particularly within her underappreciated treatise, Discours sur le bonheur, I elucidate several elements of her theory of love itself. I next develop a two-pronged worry for Du Châtelet’s account of love, which is that neither love nor the happiness that it produces seems to be sustainable, since, on Du Châtelet’s view, love both structurally wanes and involves putting one’s happiness in the fickle hands of others. In response to these concerns, I contend that it is Du Châtelet’s view that love can be sustained, not directly by reason, but through the continued production of the dual emotions of hope and fear through the aid of reason.

Descartes on Attention

In this project, which is in the early stages of development, I will contend that attention plays a particularly interesting role in Descartes’s psychology by straddling both the mind’s passive faculty of perception and the active faculty of the will. I will argue, further, that this undermines the frequent suggestion that the language of active and passive faculties is meant to track an ontological difference within the mind and, instead, supports the view that these faculties should be understood as nothing over and above collections of token thoughts belonging to a single, unified, mind

IV. Other projects

Aquinas on Artifacts and Substances

Recent scholarship on Aquinas has displayed a heightened interest in his position on the metaphysical distinction between substances and artifacts. In this paper, I first examine and motivate the standard interpretation – that Aquinas believed no substances are artifacts – and delineate three unsuccessful attempts by this interpretation to provide a metaphysical grounding for this claim. Next, I introduce several passages where Aquinas affirms the substancehood of a sub-class of artifacts, suggesting that Aquinas held a more-nuanced position than indicated by the standard interpretation. I then show that Brown’s (2007a) attempt to salvage the standard interpretation, despite these passages, is unsuccessful. Further, I contend that neither of the two alternative interpretations – i.e., Rota’s (2004) position that all artifacts are substances which are created in accordance with natural powers, or Marmodoro & Page’s (2016) argument that artifacts possessing descending forms are ‘deficient’ substances – offer a satisfactory metaphysical grounding either. In light of these difficulties, I present a new criterion by contending that Aquinas believes that anything is a substance which is self-generating and self-organizing. I demonstrate how this criterion is able to successfully classify natural substances, artifact-substances, and non-substantial artifacts, by permitting only those artifacts which undergo chemical changes to be considered substances.

The Stoics on Visual Perception

According to the Stoics, it is sense perception that, if conditions are right (LS 40L), provides the basis for cognitive impressions and, ultimately, ἐπιστήμη, being given to us by nature as ‘the standard of scientific knowledge and as the natural foundation for the subsequent impression of conceptions of things upon the mind’ (LS 41B). Gaining clarity on how sense-perception occurs is therefore integral to understanding not only Stoic psychology but, crucially, their epistemology as well. This task is particularly difficult, however, because, as Long & Sedley (1987) point out,  there is ‘meagre evidence on the mechanics of sensing’ for the Stoics, a fact which leads them to suggest that ‘the Stoics were largely content to take over Peripatetic doctrines, adapting these to suit their dynamic materialism’ (321). In this paper I shall focus on visual perception – which is the sense modality that is best attested to in the extant evidence – and contend that contra Long & Sedley, the Stoics do have an independent theory that is innovative and significantly different from the theories put forward by both Aristotle and Plato.