NDPR Denis Kambouchner, Damien Lacroux, Tad M. Schmaltz, and Ruidan She (eds.) The Cartesian Brain: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2025.09.12 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Denis Kambouchner, Damien Lacroux, Tad M. Schmaltz, and Ruidan She (eds.), The Cartesian Brain: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives, Routledge, 2025, 292pp., $200 (hbk) ISBN 9781032545653.

Reviewed by Daniel Garber, Princeton University

Cartesian studies has come a long way in recent years. It used to be (and I suspect still is the case in some places) that, when teaching Descartes, the focus was on the Meditations and on the development of his metaphysical and epistemological thought: Cartesian doubt, followed by the cogito, the proof of the existence of God, the validation of reason, the Cartesian circle and the distinction between mind and body. Students were taught that there is a body, united to the incorporeal mind, but the focus was on the mind and its connection with the body, not the details of...