Insight and Inference: Descartes's Founding Principle and Modern Philosophy (Toronto Studies in Philosophy) - Hardcover

Miles, Murray

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802043151 ISBN 13: 9780802043153

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 1998

Synopsis

In this major re-examination of Descartes's founding principle, cogito, ergo sum, Murray Miles presents a portrait of Descartes as the Father of Modern Philosophy that is very different from the standard one.

Viewing Descartes in both a historical and a systematic perspective, Miles presents a wealth of original analyses, arguments, and re-interpretations of key texts. The result is a fresh and illuminating account of Descartes's metaphysical project and theory of the mind. Descartes's achievement is a radical reversal of the order of knowing, a subjectivism that places knowledge of the mind ahead of knowledge of material things, yet is free of the metaphysical idealism that some of his successors went on to embrace.

A meticulous, scholarly, and exhaustive analysis, this book provides a minutely detailed reading of each word of Descartes's founding principle, exploring in great depth the underlying epistemology and ontology. The book will fully repay a careful reading by any serious student of Descartes's philosophy.

About this title

About the Author

Murray Miles is a professor of philosophy at Brock University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802043151
• ISBN 13: 9780802043153
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 600