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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Other Cartesians have made an error by conflating bodies and matter.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Bodies and matter are two distinct things: bodies are simple substances, matter is a collection of bodies.
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    • 2.Treating matter and bodies as the same thing obscures this distinction.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Descartes himself defines body (corpus) as extended substance, while matter (materia) refers to the totality of extension—these are not coextensive.
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    • 2.Cordemoy's atomism requires that simple, indivisible bodies are the fundamental units, making matter a derivative aggregate rather than a primary substance.
      ?

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    • 3.Conflating body with matter commits the mereological fallacy of attributing properties of wholes to parts and vice versa, undermining causal explanations.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Leibniz independently criticized Cartesian matter-body conflation, arguing it renders bodies infinitely divisible and thus strips them of genuine unity.
      ?

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    • 2.If matter just is body, then dividing matter produces more matter of the same kind, leaving no principled account of what constitutes a discrete, countable individual body.
      ?

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    • 3.Cordemoy's distinction anticipates the Leibnizian demand that genuine substances must be simple, showing the conflation produces metaphysical incoherence within Cartesianism itself.
      ?

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