Conway’s Ontological Objection to Cartesian Dualism

Grey, John

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Conway’s Ontological Objection to Cartesian Dualism

John Grey

July 2017, Volume 17, No. 13, pp. 1-19

Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0017.013

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Abstract

Anne Conway disagrees with substance dualism, the thesis that minds and bodies differ in nature or essence. Instead, she holds that “the distinction between spirit and body is only modal and incremental, not essential and substantial” (CP 6.11, 40). Yet several of her arguments against dualism have little force against the Cartesian, since they rely on premises no Cartesian would accept. In this paper, I show that Conway does have at least one powerful objection to substance dualism, drawn from premises that Descartes seems bound to accept. She argues that two substances differ in nature only if they differ in their “original and peculiar” cause (CP 6.4, 30); yet all created substances have the same original and peculiar cause; so, all created substances have the same nature. As I argue, the Cartesian is under a surprising amount of pressure to accept Conway’s argument, since its key premise is motivated by a conception of substance similar to one endorsed by Descartes in his Principles of Philosophy.

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Anne Conway, whose notebook was posthumously translated and published as The Principles of Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, has rightly been appreciated for her extremely original account of the relationship between mind and matter. Conway adopts a form of neutral monism, in opposition to the substance dualism prominently advocated by René Descartes and Henry More. On her view, spirits and bodies are not different kinds of substances. Rather, both are of the same nature or essence, differing only in their degree of corporeality: “crassness” (CP 6.11, 40) or “grossness” (CP 7.1, 43). It is no surprise that scholars have focused on this feature of Conway’s Principles: the possibility that spirit and body are states that lie on a single continuum, and that an entity may become more or less corporeal during its existence, is a fascinating one. However, in focusing on the details of Conway’s positive view, scholars have passed quickly over some of the most interesting reasons she provides for rejecting substance dualism. In particular, scholars have in general ignored an objection that Conway raises against substance dualism on the basis of ontological considerations about substantial kinds.