Introduction to volume 4
Rebecca Copenhaver
July 6, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9780429508158-1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that seventeenth-century debates about mind were framed as matters of soul within God's natural order, and that while materialism promised unity by incorporating mind into a single system, it struggled to distinguish mental from non-mental material motions, whereas dualists like More had to distinguish animating natural spirits from the supernatural spirit of God. |
Abstract
In the 1600s matters of mind were still matters of soul, and the emerging sciences sought to incorporate the mind into God’s natural order, sometimes quite literally. We find vitalism, panpsychism, non-mechanistic materialism, idealism, and still more positions about the mind and its place in creation for which we have no -isms. Methodologically, natural philosophers sought regularities in nature, including regularities that could explain how minds work. Materialism promises to make sense of the mind and nature through unity: it presents a single system of the world that incorporates the mind, quite literally. If materialism faced the problem of distinguishing mental material motions and non-mental material motions, the challenge for dualists like More was to maintain the distinction between the animating spirits that explain and regulate operations in nature and the super-natural spirit that is God.