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• W185418427 abstract "In the Third Meditation, Descartes suggests that God, and only God, is self-caused.(1) This claim results in objections, first Caterus and then Arnauld, that an efficient cause must be distinct its effect, and therefore the notion of self-causation is unintelligible.(2) In the course of his reply to Arnauld, Descartes distinguishes between a formal cause and an efficient contends that God's essence is properly the formal cause of God's existence, and attempts to find a cause midway between a formal cause and an efficient cause. In this paper, we examine Descartes' discussion of the distinction between formal and efficient causes in the reply to Arnauld. We show that Descartes' account of the formal/efficient causation distinction is consistent with prominent accounts of that distinction Aristotle to Suarez: an explanation by formal cause is an explanation based on the essence of a thing, while an explanation by efficient cause is an explanation based on agency. We then ask whether Descartes' concern with formal causation is limited to God's self-causation. To answer that question, we examine the ontological and epistemic status of Descartes' natural laws. We argue that Cartesian natural laws are ontologically and epistermically indistinguishable eternal truths: they constitute the form of the world. If we are correct, follows that, apart God's action in creating and sustaining the world and acts of the human will, all Cartesian causes are formal. Such a position makes intelligible Descartes' remarks on the union of mind and body.(3) I In the Third Meditation, Descartes considers the possibility that he, a thinking thing with an idea of God qua supremely perfect being, is caused by something distinct himself. Either he is caused by God, or he is caused by something less perfect than God, and if the latter, he can raise the same question regarding the cause of that being. As he wrote: In respect of this cause one may again inquire whether derives its existence itself or another cause. If then is clear what has been said that is itself God, since if has the power of existing through its own might, then undoubtedly also has the power of actually possessing all the perfections of which has an idea -- that is, all the perfections which I conceive to be in God. If, on the other hand, derives its existence another then the same question may be repeated concerning this further namely whether derives its existence itself or another until eventually the ultimate cause is reached, and this will be God.4 The argument is a variation on the cosmological argument, and as Descartes tells Caterus in his reply, he takes this self-causing God to effectively alleviate any possibility of an infinite causal regress.(5) Descartes' commentators found the argument puzzling. Caterus asked what Descartes meant by from itself. Caterus distinguished between a positive and a negative sense of that expression. In the positive sense, means from itself as a cause, and in this sense a cause itself bestows its own existence on itself; so if by an act of premeditated choice were to give itself what desired, would undoubtedly give itself all things, and so would be God.(6) However, Caterus considered the negative sense of from itself, that is, another, as what is more commonly understood by that phrase. So, he naturally concludes, it does not derive existence itself as a nor did exist prior to itself so that could choose in advance what should subsequently be.(7) Caterus further relates this negative sense of from itself to the essence or form of a thing by focusing on the question of limitation. …" @default.
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• W185418427 date "1997-06-01" @default.
• W185418427 modified "2023-09-23" @default.
• W185418427 title "Descartes on Causation" @default.
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