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    A Rationalist Manifesto Spinoza and The PDF

    Enviado por

    Corbin C. Bates

    Direitos autorais:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Baixe no formato PDF ou leia online no Scribd
    Sinalizar o conteúdo como inadequado
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    PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS ‘VOL. 31, NOS, 1 & 2, SPRING AND FALL 2003 A Rationalist Manifesto: Spinoza and the Principle of Sufficient Reason Michael Della Rocea Yale University In this paper, I will put in motion a rationalist train of thought. The train is ile that each fact hasan explanation or, equivalently, fact. Few if any, of you will want to stay on ths train leads to some extremely controversial conclusions. there are a number of points along the way at which ‘one may be able, with some legitimacy, to jump off the train, However, I tbe so eager to disembark. As Iwill try to show, at each stage the train of thought moves with surprising and substantial plausibil- SR makes the ride seductive. But convincing you of the correct- ‘ware that much more T can develop here (or perhaps elsewhere!) would be the (plausible) rationalist moves that I make along the way. Instead of offering knockdown arguments for rationalist conclusions, ‘one of my primary aims isto highlight the strength and promise ofthe ratio- nalist line of thought—in short, to lead you, through this broad overviews, to take these positions more seriously as live philoso ‘My other main aim isto do justice to some of the views of that great Spinoza, He goes further, perhaps, than any other major philoso- ppher in prosecuting the rationalist line of thought with which Lam concerned. to Spinoza, The Spinoza and is avery effec- In part, 1 want to do justice to rationalism by doing, tive way to put both Spinoza and rationalism in the best light 1, CAUSATION AS CONCEIVABILITY | begin witha rationalist problematic about causation. What to cause another? What isi in virtue of which a causal re natural to think that there must be some informative accou ‘Yes, there are obviously cases of causation, but its not enough just to point and say that that’s a causal relation. We want to know what such cases have in common and what it is for a causal relation to be present. What is it for ‘one event to make another occur? To put it vividly, what does the oomph of jon consist in? It would seem odd for causation to be a primitive fact ‘observable. This intuition is behind all reductive accounts of cau- sation, and L want to point out here that this line of thought i a rationalist ‘one. In demanding an account of the nature of causation, one is realy seek- ing to explain causation. The fact of causation would be a brute fact if it were snd the ere cha on ind ach piv abe (os 1 are well on your way toa rationalist account of causati light such phiosophes a David lume and David Lewis both reduction” ists about causation (or atleast, in the case of Hume, a would-be reduction- ist)—appear to be guided by rationalist sympathies. This may seem puzzling because who would regard those phil pointing out that there is an applic full-blown rationalism itself. This isin keeping with my theme that ratio- nalist sentiments are much more natural than they might at first seem. In any event, this approach to causation represents what I regard as the frst use of the PSR in the case of causation. The very demand for an explanation of cau- sation and the rejection of causation asa primitive i a local application of the PSR. use of the PSR—feirly common because it is shared by all reductionists about causation—naturally leads to a second use of the PSR that is far less common and correspondingly far more interesting, Given that ‘one accepts the demand for an explanation of causation, what must that explanation be? The account ofthe oomph or of the making relation must (somehow) leave no possibilty ofa (the total cause) occurring without b (the

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