BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260415T030028Z DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20251121T153000 DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20251121T170000 SUMMARY:Against Thinking Matter: The Case of Ralph Cudworth UID:20260415T113519Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-f5d4878dd-x5n6c TZID:America/Toronto LOCATION:1151 Richmond Street\, London\, Canada DESCRIPTION:

Ralph Cudworth offered a variety of arguments against thinking matter. In this paper I examine his use of three related arguments. (1) the so-called &ldquo\;Achilles Argument&rdquo\;\, on which matter cannot think because the subject of the mental must be simple and matter is inherently composite. (2) This argument presupposes\, however\, that thinking could not emerge from matter and its inherent qualities. So I next turn to Cudworth&rsquo\;s rejection of emergentism of the mental. I argue that his version is interestingly different from a version developed later by Samuel Clarke. (3) I also examine its connections to yet another argument: a Cartesian argument that relies on the claim that all the qualities of a substance are modes of its nature. Like Descartes\, Cudworth holds that thinking cannot be understood as a mode of matter. These arguments rely on very specific views about the relationship between a substance and its qualities.

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