1st Edition

The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy, 1637-1739

By Kenneth Clatterbaugh Copyright 1999
    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy examines the debate that began as modern science separated itself from natural philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book specifically explores the two dominant approaches to causation as a metaphysical problem and as a scientific problem.

    Chapter 1 The Debate; Chapter 2 Descartes: The Metaphysics of Causation; Chapter 3 Descartes: The Epistemology of Causation; Chapter 4 Classical Mechanism: Hobbes and Gassendi; Chapter 5 The Temptation of Occasionalism: Le Grand and Malebranche; Chapter 6 Causes and Sufficient Reason: Spinoza and Leibniz; Chapter 7 The Limits of Classical Mechanism: Boyle, Rohault, and Newton; Chapter 8 The Attempted Alignment of Philosophy and Physics: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume; Chapter 9 Summation and Final Ironies;

    Biography

    Kenneth Clatterbaugh is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington. He has contributed to many journals, including The Monist, The Philosophical Review and History of Philosophy Quarterly.

    "The book is a most valuable companion to primary texts. Clatterbaugh writes transparently and with impressive economy. Because he gets down to business and has a lot to say about each of the figures as well as the grander picture, there will be many useful points of discussion arising from the text. The author has done a genuine service to both students and researchers." -- John M. Nicholas, The University of Western Ontario
    "...insigntful, provocative, and worthy of recommendation." -- Teaching Philosophy
    "...an excellent introduction to the debate in early modern philosophy over the metaphysics and epistemology of causation, particularly on the nature of the interactions between body, mind, and God." -- Philosophy in Review