HoP 491 Image Problems: Arnauld vs Malebranche on Ideas

Peter Adamson· Host0:00

[music] Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode: Image Problems: Arnauld versus Malebranche on Ideas. Some philosophical dilemmas are hard to resolve because two opposing answers both seem attractive and plausible. Take Cartesian dualism. It's very tempting to say that thinking is an activity divorced from the body because mental life feels so distinctive. Also, then we might get to survive bodily death, which would be a welcome bonus. But it's also tempting to say that thinking is a physical process because it is affected by the states of our organs, especially the brain, and because it would also be a welcome bonus if the mind could be studied by science. Then there are dilemmas where both answers seem unattractive. Take another central philosophical dispute of the period we've been covering, the question of free will. Determinism seems to make genuine freedom impossible, thus depriving us of moral responsibility. But if free choices are indeterministic and uncaused, then they would seem to be inexplicable, random, and arbitrary. Another less familiar debate that falls into this second category would be the disagreement over