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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Descartes' reciprocity of transfer thesis is more likely intended to counter the Scholastic view that motion is caused by a special property intrinsic to the moving body, rather than to defend relational motion.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Descartes explicitly defines motion in Principles II.25 as transfer relative to immediately contiguous bodies, making relationality constitutive of motion itself.
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    • 2.A thesis that defines motion relationally cannot be merely incidental to that relationality; the anti-Scholastic and relational aims are logically inseparable in Descartes' framework.
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    • 3.Garber's reading in 'Descartes' Metaphysical Physics' shows Descartes' reciprocity thesis directly entails that no single body has privileged mover status, which just is a claim about relational motion.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Buridan's impetus theory was largely dormant as a live target by Descartes' time, whereas Descartes' contemporaries like More pressed him specifically on absolute versus relational motion.
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    • 2.The historical context of the Descartes-More correspondence shows Descartes defending reciprocity precisely to resist absolute space, not primarily to rebut Scholastic property theories.
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    • 3.Attributing the thesis solely to anti-Scholastic motivation commits the genetic fallacy by conflating a doctrine's polemical origin with its primary philosophical function.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.If there is nothing in a moving body that differs from its neighborhood of contiguous bodies, then a body's motion is not due to it possessing a special property that its neighborhood lacks.
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    • 2.Some Scholastics, such as Buridan, held that motion is caused by a special bodily property.
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    • 3.The reciprocity of transfer thesis denies any such distinguishing property between a body and its neighborhood.
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