Preface ix
CHAPTER ONE: From Method to Epistemology and from Metaphysics to the Epistemic Stance 1
Descartes's Early Work: The Rules 5
The World 14
The Discourse on Method 24
CHAPTER TWO: God and Efficient Causation 36
A Historical Preamble 37
God's Efficient Causation and the Introduction of Causa Secundum Esse 45
God, Time, and Continual Creation: The Emergence of Re-creationism 59
Causal Axioms and Common Notions 73
CHAPTER THREE: Seeing the Implications of His Causal Views: The Response to His Critics 82
God as Causa Sui: The High Tide of Descartes's Causalism 83
Eminent Containment, Transcendence, Divine Powers, and God's Causal Harmony 91
Epistemic Teleology 102
CHAPTER FOUR: Body-Body Causation and the Cartesian World of Matter 111
The Current Debate on Body-Body Causation 111
The Early Descartes 116
Cartesian Conservationism 119
Three Questions of Metaphysics: Principles Parts I and II 127
Mature Motion 134
The Place of Our Position in the Current Debate 157
CHAPTER FIVE: Mind, Intuition, Innateness, and Ideas 164
Intuition and Enumeration 165
Ideas and Descartes's New Theory of Mind 169
Innate Ideas 176
Innateness and Sensory Ideas 183
Innate Ideas: Present but Swamped 186
Innateness and Intellectual Memory 188
Common Notions, Eternal Truths, and Immutable Natures 193
CHAPTER SIX: Mind-Body Causality and the Mind-Body Union: The Case of Sensation 198
Sensation 199
The Physical Side of Perception 202
The Mental Side of Perception 209
How the Soul Moves the Body, or Mind-to-Body Causation 221
The Nature of the Distinction between Mind and Body 224
The Mind-Body (Soul-Body) Union 232
Epistemic Teleology and Dualism 239
References 243
Index 251