Is imagining a stone something different from perceiving a stone, or remembering one? In this paper, I focus on an early defense of a strong 'No' answer to this question, as offered by Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). In his work On the soul (1572), Suárez defends the unity of inner sense: he maintains that even though we can conceive or talk of, say, common sense and imagination as different, in reality all manifestations of inner sense are acts of a single power. The broad stance that Suárez takes in this debate is in itself not novel--it had already been put forward by Augustine, and would gain popularity within a generation of Suárez' writing, for example in Descartes' Regulae (c. 1628). What is radical and requires explicating is how Suárez in his argumentative strategy moves away from standard concerns about the criteria of individuation of inner sense powers.
    Common criteria for the individuation of cognitive capacities, going back at least in part to Plato (Republic V) and Galen (De usu partium VIII), are based on a difference in either act (e.g. apprehensive or retentive acts), or object (e.g. sight is of color, and taste of flavor), or bodily organ (e.g. hearing takes place in the ears, memory in the final ventricle of the brain), or a combination of these. In defending his position, Suárez moves away from these standard criteria for the unity or diversity of inner senses. At some points he simply dismisses them, for example when he sets aside the idea that physiology and the organ of operation can reveal anything about the unity of a power. But in other cases he proposes a more fundamental shift on the metaphysics of the individuation of powers. This is the case when Suárez emphasizes that what determines the unity or diversity of powers is not their acts but what underlies and causes these acts, namely the soul itself. On this line, even if to imagine and to remember a stone are different acts, there still is one unified source that brings them about, and on this basis no real distinction between powers should be accepted. I demonstrate how Suárez' shift on this point is crucial, as it prepares the ground for later discussions on the capacities of the soul, and I bring out how it marks a core contribution to the debate on the individuation of inner sense powers.

    The distinction Descartes makes between the mental operations of abstraction and exclusion, in the replies to objections to the Meditations, and in letters from the early 1640s, has been recognized by scholars as important for understanding many of his major metaphysical arguments. Recent attention to the development of Descartes' thought has in some cases associated exclusion wholly or mainly with Descartes' later works. {Peter Machamer and J.E. McGuire (Descartes's Changing Mind) argue that the Rules follows "the method of abstraction," while the post-Meditations metaphysics increasingly follows "the method of exclusion." Dugald Murdoch ["Exclusion and Abstraction in Descartes' Metaphysics," PQ 43 (1993): 38-57] claims, more plausibly, that exclusion is present but not emphasized in the Rules.} It has not been appreciated, however, how the early Descartes articulates exclusion as a crucial part of his method. In this essay I examine passages from his early and unpublished Rules for the Direction of the Mind, particularly from Rules 12 and 14. Descartes not only characterizes abstraction and exclusion, and distinguishes between them, but also makes exclusion the test that demarcates contingent from necessary connections between simple natures. Thus the exclusion test is involved in deduction and is hence a major part of the method of the Rules.
    I also argue that Descartes has at least a rudimentary account of real distinction operating in Rule 14 (albeit one couched in terms of the corporeal imagination), and that the operation of exclusion (and its success or failure) is the criterion for real distinction. For the physical realm, this operation has to involve the imagination as well as the intellect. The fact that Descartes articulates a notion of real distinction in the context of the physical imagination or phantasia is potentially illuminating for the development of his later thought on real distinction and separability, a subject much discussed in the recent literature. It suggests that the Cartesian real distinction was first thought of as a relation between different subjects of properties, rather than a distinction, e.g., between two things that can each exist while the other does not. Part of my aim is to show the continuities and contrasts between Descartes' thought on distinction and exclusion in the Rules and his later elaboration and use of these concepts.

    Descartes believes we can know that mind and body are really--metaphysically--distinct because, he thinks, we can clearly and distinctly separate out all attributes of mind from all those of body. While it begins as an epistemological claim, the goodness of God (and Descartes' unique substance metaphysics) ensures its metaphysical implications. In practice, however, a certain subset of universal properties--commonly called transcendentals (duration, unity or number, and existence)--pose a problem. Real distinction relies upon a marked difference between the sorts of properties mind can have (the thinking kind) and the sorts of properties body can have (the corporeal kind). Since transcendentals are by definition common to all objects, it's unclear how they are clearly and distinctly separable, and so it's hard to see how Descartes can get the real distinction that he needs for dualism.
    Fueled by Descartes' conflicting treatment of universals in his Principles and in his Meditations, scholarship on Cartesian universals tends to investigate their ontological status. Some scholars (e.g. Nolan, Chappell, Secada) think that in the Principles Descartes give a conceptualist account of universal properties, suggesting that universals exist only within the mind. Number, for example, is "merely a mode of thinking; and the same applies to all the other universals" (see also To Unknown, 1645 or 1646, CSMK 280; Principles 1.55, CSM 211; Principles I.57; CSM 212.) In the Fifth Meditation, however, Descartes provides support for a realist approach to universals. Using triangularity as one example, he says that he finds within himself countless things such that "they are not my invention but have their own true and immutable natures." This passage's striking espousal of mind-independent natures leads other scholars (e.g. Rozemond, Gewirth) to conclude that Cartesian universals have real existence outside the mind.
    In addition to arguing that transcendentals pose a unique problem for Cartesian dualism, in this paper I argue that transcendentals pose a problem regardless of whether one takes a realist or conceptualist stance. Both Platonic and Aristotelian forms of realism leave Descartes unable to consistently posit transcendentals, and reducing transcendentals to a mere conceptual distinction is not adequate because its repercussions are at odds with central features of his substance metaphysics.
    Finally, I will offer a few potential solutions to the problem of transcendentals including: (1) reassessing the requirements for dualism, (2) allowing that transcendentals simply don't conform to Descartes' substance framework, and (3) assenting to the minority view that there is a difference in kind between properties, attributes, and modes in Descartes.

Sanem Soyarslan, North Carolina State University
“The Power of Intuitive Knowledge in Spinoza's Ethics: The Case of Akrasia”