Abstract
The demise of the scholastic worldview and the rise of the mechanistic one may give the impression of a parallel demise of the scholastic explanatory framework. In this paper, I argue that this impression is wrong. To this end, I first outline Descartes’ representative and particularly sharp mechanistic criticism of the scholastic notion of explanation. Deploying conceptual machinery from contemporary philosophy of science, I then suggest a reconstruction of the scholastic notion that is immune to Descartes’ criticism. Based on this reconstruction, I reinterpret the dispute between Descartes and the scholastics as one that concerns the extent of two legitimate conceptions of explanation. Finally, I outline a contemporary dispute within cognitive neuroscience that reflects the Cartesian-scholastic one as thus reinterpreted, thereby showing that aspects of the world may well require a scholastic-like approach for their explanation. The aim of this paper, then, is to shed light on a most important philosophical-cum-scientific historical controversy from a modern perspective, but also to highlight the deep historical roots of a related contemporary dispute. Based on this, the paper also seeks to draw a substantial philosophical conclusion concerning the issue under dispute in both controversies.
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Acknowledgements
An early version of the paper was presented at an international conference “Rene Descartes: Meditations, Objections, and Replies” that took place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2016. I would like to thank the participants of this conference for their helpful comments on that version. I am also grateful to Nir Fresco for his insightful comments on a later version of the paper. Last but not least, thanks are due to an anonymous referee of Acta Analytica for penetrating and constructive comments on the penultimate draft of the paper.
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Levin, Y. Descartes vs. the Scholastics: Lessons from Contemporary Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience. Acta Anal 38, 393–415 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-022-00536-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-022-00536-x