Cecilia Wee

Hsun Tzu on Family and Familial Relations

The Confucian tradition is often held to have accorded the family a prominent place in their ethics. This paper distinguishes three different senses in which the family is held to be primary in Confucian morality. It then explores Hsun Tzus views on the family and familial relations. I argue that, while other early Confucians such as Confucius and Mencius would have held the family to be primary in all three senses, Hsun Tzu held the family to be primary in only one of the three senses. In particular, there is textual evidence that Hsun Tzu holds that ones primary obligation is to the ruler of the state, rather than to the immediate family.

Descartes's Two Proofs of the External World

Given Descartes’s famous sceptical arguments concerning the existence of an external world in the First Meditation, any argument that he puts forward to prove that the external world exists must be of significant interest. Descartes offers two proofs of the existence of the external world—one in the Meditations (hereafter called PEWM) and one in the Principles of Philosophy (hereafter called PEWP). Commentators have generally held the two proofs to be fundamentally different. Whereas PEWM is held to rely on ‘natural inclination’ to establish the existence of the external world, PEWP is held to rely on clear and distinct perception to do the same. This paper seeks to establish that PEWM and PEWP are similar in essentials. Through a comparison of PEWP and PEWM, I show that both rely on clear and distinct perception to establish that the external world exists. PEWM has of course received far more critical attention than PEWP. If my reading of it is correct, then PEWM—surely a significant part of the epistemic project in the Meditations—has been widely misapprehended. Many commentators have held that PEWM relies on natural inclination, and explicitly disavowed that it appeals to clear and distinct perception. This paper begins with an outline of the standard reading of PEWM, which sees the proof as relying on natural inclination. I then turn to PEWP and explore the role played by clear and distinct perception within the proof. Finally, it is argued that PEWM similarly appeals to clear and distinct perception to establish that the external world exists.

Descartes's Ontological Proof of God's Existence

This paper argues that an examination of the ontology that underpins Descartes’s Fifth Meditation ontological proof of God’s existence will contribute to a better understanding of the nature and structure of the proof. Attention to the Cartesian meditator’s development of this ontology in earlier meditations also makes clear why this proof could not have been asserted before the Fifth Meditation. Finally, it is argued that Kant’s objections against the ontological proof have no force against Descartes’ particular version of the proof.

Animal sentience and Descartes's dualism: Exploring the implications of Baker and Morris's views

The debate on the issue of whether Descartes held to the notorious doctrine of the bête-machine continues to be heated. While some commentators still defend the view that Descartes saw animals essentially as non-conscious pieces of clockwork machinery, others have argued that, while Descartes ruled out the possibility of rational thought in animals, he did indeed ascribe to them sentience and feelings. Among those who hold that Descartes allowed animals sentience and feelings, a secondary debate of some importance has ensued: viz., on whether Descartes’s account of animals as sentient and passional is consistent with his dualism of mind and matter. For Descartes, minds are thinking and non-extended, while body is extended and non-thinking. Descartes clearly holds that animals do not think (cogitare) and hence do not have a mind, so it seems they must belong wholly to the realm of matter. But if Cartesian matter is (as commonly portrayed) extended and non-conscious, animals with their feelings and sensations cannot belong wholly to the realm of matter. This being so, commentators have suggested that a Cartesian ascription of sentience and feeling to animals is incompatible with Cartesian dualism. For example, in an influential paper that argues that Descartes attributes feelings such as anger and joy to animals, Cottingham concludes that ‘the truth, perhaps, is that Descartes was never completely comfortable with strict dualism’.