Abstract

Many hold that Descartes's dualism is subject to unanswerable objections regarding interaction and the illegitimacy of appeal to the nonphysical. These objections are usually merely sketched or referred to in order to exclude dualism. To better examine the merits of Descartes's view, it is useful to turn to the fuller original expressions of these objections offered by the best of Descartes's earliest critics. ;In Part One, I develop an account of Descartes's dualism. Mind-body union is the essence of being human for Descartes, but the human being is not a third kind of substance. In Part Two, I consider arguments against Descartes's dualism from Gassendi, Malebranche, and Leibniz. These are shown to rest on misreadings or on causal views that Descartes did not share. Part Three contains the conclusion. I oppose two recent objections going beyond those raised in the seventeenth century: McDowell's "veil of ideas" objection and that based on explanatory naturalism. I conclude that, for all these critics show, Descartes's position should be regarded as a serious competitor to materialist views.