Title: Malebranche's Embodied Trinity: Senses, Imagination, and Passions
Abstract:
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) holds that the senses, imagination, and passions are intimately connected to our bodies. These mental faculties arise from the mind’s interaction with the body, and they are for the preservation of the body. Their exclusive function or purpose is to keep the body alive. These faculties are not merely usefulfor survival, however. Malebranche holds that they are each necessaryfor the preservation of the body: we need all three to survive. This position is surprising, since even though the imagination, for example, is nice to have, we might think that we could survive without it. In this talk, I clarify the sense in which the senses, imagination, and passions are necessary for survival and reconstruct Malebranche’s reasons for thinking this. My proposal is that this system of cognitive tools is necessary for agents like us to successfully perform the task of preserving our bodies. These faculties do not operate in us as brute forces; they are, rather, addressed to our practical perspective as agents forced to choose, and they help us make the right choices for our bodies.
Sponsored by The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund at Yale University.
