The aim of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy is to discover the first principles of human knowledge, that is, what must be known before anything else can be known. If we are to understand this work, it is important to understand the methodology he employs. Descartes does not reveal the method utilized in the Meditations in this work, nor in any of his other books.
It is only in the Replies to the Second Set of Objections that he explains the method he utilizes in this work - he calls this method ‘analysis’; ‘synthesis’ is the method of mathematics. I explain the method of ‘analysis’ contra ‘synthesis’, and the employment of ‘analysis’ in leading the mind to the first principles of human knowledge. Examples are provided by focusing on Descartes’ analytic proofs of his existence as a thinking thing (second meditation), and that God is his creator (third meditation). In neither case is the analytic proof inferential. Further, if no inference is involved in gaining knowledge of God, then the charge of circular reasoning (raised by Arnauld and others) is without merit. Finally, I show the importance of meditation for Descartes in arriving at the first principles of human knowledge."
Monday July 6, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am AEST GCI-275 HYBRID
Leibniz often uses a mirror analogy to explain his monads. Referring to a monad as a simple substance, he writes in a typical passage: “each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe” (M 56). Although Leibniz’s mirror analogy is well-known, it is not well understood. Accordingly, the goal of my talk is to show how Leibniz’s mirror analogy can shed light on his monadic metaphysics. Unlike other commentators, my strategy is to draw on Leibniz’s writings on perspectiva because it is now clear that Leibniz had expertise in a branch of mathematics known as perspectiva and that his mirror analogy is based on his work in perspectiva.
My talk is divided into three parts. First, I outline a fact that Leibniz learned from perspectiva, which is that any point on a body can be projected onto a drawing in such a way so as to preserve its relations to other points on the body. I then claim that Leibniz took this fact to imply that there is an equivalence between a body and its perspectival representations. I close by sketching how this equivalence can make sense of Leibniz’s thesis that a body is an aggregate of monads.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm AEST GCI-273 HYBRID
Descartes’ rejection of the resemblance between sensory ideas and extramental objects and the inferior status of the former in his epistemology makes researchers believe that Descartes takes resemblance as the principle for veridical representation of intellectual ideas. On top of that, they attempt to explicate the nature of resemblance through property-sharing and identity, which is upheld by the scholastic reading of Descartes’ distinction between formal being and objective being. I contend that resemblance as the principle of representation cannot be sustained as it is theoretically incompatible with Descartes’ substantial dualism and universal conceptualism, and it is textually ungrounded. On top of that, I propose my reading of the objective being according to which it only denotes ideas’ ontological status.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 5:30pm - 6:25pm AEST GCI-273 HYBRID
Spinoza emphasizes the value of intuition, the third kind of knowledge, which he associates with the greatest human joy (E5p32=Ethics, Part 5, Proposition 32). He writes little, however, about how we might come to attain intuitive knowledge. The clearest suggestion is that such knowledge somehow arises from a different, less valuable sort of knowledge, reason (E5p28), but it is difficult to see how it might do so. After all, for Spinoza, it appears that (1) reason consists in common notions (E2p40s2), which are ideas of what is common to things (E2p38C); (2) intuition is knowledge of the essence of things (E2p40s2); and (3) what is common to things does not constitute the essence of anything (E2p37). In this essay, I try to make a little headway against this problem. I argue, first, against (1), that the Ethics may suggest that there are other ideas that are also ideas of reason but that are not common notions; second, that there is good reason to think that such ideas include ideas of laws of nature; and third, mitigating the problem that (3) presents, that laws of nature do, for Spinoza, constitute the essence of things.
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm AEST GCI-275 HYBRID
This paper challenges the widespread interpretation under which Spinoza understands the modes of God as propria. This interpretation is based on three principal doctrines:(i) Spinoza’s familiarity with the Scholastic tradition which defines propria as God’s necessary but non-essential properties; (ii) Spinoza’s claim that each mode necessarily follows from the essence of God; and (iii) Spinoza’s two-category ontology (substance and modes). I argue that the distinction between God’s modes and propria is compatible with (i)-(iii) because, whereas modes are intrinsic denominations of the only substance (properties that are predicated of a thing in virtue of something inherent to that thing), propria are its extrinsic denominations. First, I argue that for Late Scholastics, such as Suárez, the propria of God (such as eternity and infinity) are distinguished from God by reason and hence extrinsic denominations. Second, I show that Spinoza’s understanding of propria is consistent with Suárez’s characterisation. I contrast this with Spinoza’s view of modes as inherent properties and distinguished from God by a modal distinction. Third, I contend that by rendering propria as extrinsic denominations, my interpretation not only accommodates (i)-(iii) but also avoids the challenge of explaining how finite, durational things can follow from an eternal and infinite substance.
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 4:00pm AEST GCI-275 HYBRID
