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myself with which to distinguish what makes certain states these and not those(they fall under the category of states that are mine, directly experienced by me,under immunity from misidentification relative to ‘I’ etc.) or to legitimatecombining two or more states as part of the set (it is because that state is alsomine that it is part of the set of which this is a member). Second, Rovane’s can-didate description fails to preserve that first-personal feat of self-consciousself-reference by which the subject and object of an intentional episode is rec-ognized as identical. Thus the crucial motivational role of the first person pro-noun is lost. For one might be in a position to know that the set of rationallyrelated intentional episodes of which this one is a member is F (spilling sugar;late for a meeting; approached by a bear) without doing something about itprecisely because one did not know that that set was oneself. Third, it might besaid that there are circumstances in which the sentence ‘I do not exist’ istrue—those in which I did not exist. Whereas the circumstances in which theset of rationally related intentional episodes of which this one is a member didnot exist would deprive the equivalent sentence of meaning.

These difficulties notwithstanding, The Bounds of Agency is evidently animportant contribution to current debate and worth the serious attention ofmetaphysicians and ethicists.

Lincoln College

University of OxfordOxford OX1 3BJUKmax.degaynesford@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Cartesian Metaphysics: The Scholastic Origins of Modern Philos-ophy, by Jorge Secada. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Pp. xii+ . H/b $..

Recent years have seen interest rise in examination of the Aristotelian Scholas-tics both for their own sake and for their influence on, and ramifications for,the study of Descartes. Jorge Secada’s aim in Cartesian Metaphysics is to ‘offer aunified reading of Descartes’s metaphysics against the background of Scholas-tic philosophy’ (p. ). In so doing, Secada not only explores the things thatDescartes rejects from his predecessors, but also reveals just how much hekept. As such, Secada’s book is a significant contribution to this still young butvery important trend.

To structure the comparison between Descartes and the Scholastics (repre-sented primarily by Aquinas and Suárez), Secada uses the epistemologicaldebate between ‘existentialism’ and ‘essentialism’, where the former is the view,held by the Scholastics, that knowledge of a substance’s existence is in impor-tant ways prior to knowledge of its nature or essence, while according to thelatter, held by Descartes, knowledge of essence is prior to knowledge of exist-

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ence. Secada first shows that Scholastic existentialism and Cartesian essential-ism have much in common. Not only do they share an ideal of a true science ofbeing and its causes, but they also share substantial views about causation, theontological relationship between existence and essence, the nature of merelypossible essences, and the reality of natural necessities and their grounding inGod. Further, Descartes adopted much Scholastic terminology and attemptedto solve various clearly Scholastic problems. At the same time, however, theexistentialism–essentialism exegetical lens also reveals Descartes’s importantdivergences from Scholasticism, for his rejection of existentialism brings alongan anti-empiricism, intellectualism, indirect non-realist theory of ideas, nativ-ism, and a rejection of hylomorphism, all at odds with Scholasticism. By draw-ing out these commonalities and differences, then, Secada has unquestionablysucceeded in establishing that one’s grasp of Descartes profits greatly by study-ing him in the context of Scholasticism.

Here is an overview of the book. Chapter one articulates the distinctionbetween Scholastic existentialism and Cartesian essentialism, and sketches therationale for each. The primary justification for existentialism appears to bethe empiricist view that there is nothing in the intellect which was not previ-ously in the senses, while that for Descartes’s essentialism includes his rejec-tion of hylomorphism and his anti-empiricist intellectualism, according towhich understanding is fundamentally autonomous from sensation. Secadathen describes the essentialist order of the Meditations, arguing that withregard to the three main categories of substance (matter, self, and God), Des-cartes only claims to know existence if he knows essence, and that at least inthe case of matter he can know essence without knowing existence. Chaptertwo argues that Descartes’s use of scepticism is best understood as an attemptto undermine the empiricism supporting existentialism. Chapter threeexplores the common ground between Scholastics and Descartes on thenotion and nature of real essences, noting one important difference, that Des-cartes’s nativism allows God (and not sensation) to account causally for ourknowledge of possible essences, again contra empiricism. I will return to chap-ter four below. In chapter five, Secada reads Descartes’s famous wax discussionas an argument for the intellectualism grounding essentialism, against thosewho read the Meditations primarily as a response to scepticism; in so doingSecada makes sense of the wax discussion’s location between the cogito andproofs of God’s existence. Chapter six examines Descartes’s Third Meditationarguments for God’s existence in an essentialist light. It provides extremelyuseful insight into Descartes’s Scholastic conception of causation and showshow thoroughly Descartes follows Suárez’s critique of Aquinas’s Five Ways, inparticular Suárez’s demand that all a posteriori proofs of God’s existence besupplemented with a priori consideration of God’s essence. Chapter sevencontrasts Descartes’s essentialist conception of substance with Scholasticism’sexistentialist conception. Chapter eight is one of the strongest in the book.Secada details how Descartes followed Suárez both in holding a mere concep-

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tual distinction between essence and existence and in reconciling that viewwith the acceptance of merely possible essences by denying the ultimate ‘real-ity’ of the latter. Further, Secada shows that Kant’s famous claim against theontological argument, that existence is not a genuine property, was alreadycontained in Suárez’s and Descartes’s conceptual distinction above and appliedby Gassendi against the ontological argument. These facts generate a puzzle(nicely resolved by Secada) for understanding Descartes’s ontological argu-ment, given that he (like Kant) denies existence’s status yet goes ahead with theargument anyway. Chapter nine’s highlight, finally, is Secada’s critical exami-nation of Descartes’s conceptions of the body and self.

Most of this book is extremely interesting and valuable; Secada has made aconvincing case, as noted, that Descartes exegesis profits greatly by examininghim through the lens of his relationship to Scholasticism. Indeed, Secada hasmuch to offer to many particular debates in diverse areas of contemporaryCartesian scholarship, and most of what he says is, I think, rather persuasiveand worthy of study. My primary critical concerns with the book, in fact, restalmost exclusively with chapter four, to which I now turn.

First, briefly, Secada’s discussion in that chapter of primary and secondarycausation, occasionalism, continuous creation, and related notions could sim-ply do with substantial further analysis and defence (cf. my ‘Descartes’s NomicConcurrentism: Finite Causation and Divine Concurrence’, Journal of the His-tory of Philosophy, forthcoming). More importantly, Secada deals there withthe long-standing debate whether Descartes has an indirect (or ‘immanent’ or‘non-realist’) theory of ideas, according to which there are mental entities dis-tinct from acts of the mind which are the immediate and direct objects ofintentional mental acts, or whether he takes with the Scholastics a ‘direct real-ist’ view, where the immediate objects of intentional mental acts are externalthings themselves. Secada vigorously defends the non-realist interpretationagainst a number of recent commentators who, following the example ofArnauld, defend the realist one. But while I was originally neutral on thisdebate, I found myself, as the chapter progressed, actually becoming increas-ingly attracted to the realist interpretation.

Given space limitations, I can only sketch, with neither proper context nordefence, some of my thoughts against Secada’s treatment of the issue:() Descartes’s ontology, I think, rules out mental ‘entities’ other than mindsand their modes. There is no real ontological room to distinguish mentalmodes and mental objects, as Secada attempts to do (see in particular p. ).() Reading Descartes as a direct realist may best explain why he insists that theobjective reality of ideas requires a cause with at least the same formal reality.Further, he can insist on this causal principle against the Scholastics even whilesharing their direct realism, for example as Arnauld did (p. ). (In particular,I disagree with Secada’s reading of Descartes’s exchange with Caterus on thesepoints.) () That Descartes argues that the proper objects of intellect, viz.essences, are not obtained from the senses does not entail that he ‘created a

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world within the mind [as] the immediate object of its gaze’ (p. ). Indeed,essences are perhaps poorly suited to be mental ‘objects’ given that our graspof them fundamentally transcends sensation and imagination, that is, visualiz-ability. (See also () below.) () Secada’s primary argument against the directrealist interpretation is that it would require the essence of mind to involve arelation to external objects, which would undermine mental substantiality. Butit is (a) not clear that the essence of mind is intentionality at all, rather thanconscious awareness (as Secada perhaps might agree (p. , n. )), and (b) ifthe essence of mind is intentionality, it is not clear that direct realism—according to which intentionality may be construed as a primitive property ofthe mind—requires any such external relation, especially given the possibility,recognized by direct realists, of thinking about non-existent things. () Thetextual evidence, in my view, is not conclusive either way. Still, I especially takeissue with Secada’s analysis of certain passages, one particular example beingDescartes’s response to Caterus in the First Replies that ‘the idea of the sun isthe sun itself existing in the intellect …’ (p. ). This passage strikes me asstrong evidence for direct realism, despite Secada’s analysis. () Secada insight-fully and, I think, correctly shows that true intentionality in Descartes ulti-mately traces to the intellect: ‘The representative function of the mind relativeto things outside itself is the result of judgement’ (p. ). But then even if Sec-ada were correct that for Descartes ‘sensations have objects that exist in themind’ (p. ) (which, given some of the above, I am not convinced he is), thereal realist/non-realist debate should concern the nature of the ideas constitut-ing our intellectual judgements. (See also () above.) And here, it seems to me,we must assume Descartes to be a direct realist, on pain of a vicious regress.Consider the agent’s judgement that a sensory mental object o (say, the sun assensed) corresponds to an externally existing sun distinct from o. What is thenature of his idea of this externally existing sun? If it involves another mentalobject, o�, we would have to ask what makes mental object o� represent anexternal sun in a way that mental object o did not. The only way to avoid avicious regress is either to say that judgements do not involve ideas (whichDescartes does not appear to do), or to allow that certain ideas (or acts ofjudgement) are themselves intrinsically (or primitively) representational, asthe direct realist would have it. It seems to me that Descartes was fundamen-tally aware of this sort of regress problem, if not exactly in this form, andtherefore the charitable reading here takes him as a direct realist. (See forexample, Cottingham, J. et al. (eds), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , Vol. , p. , where, to avoidfundamentally the same regress, Descartes treats images in the eye in effect asmeans of, but not objects of, perception.)

Putting all these together suggests that we note an important distinction forDescartes between how we ordinarily learn what (other than God) exists exter-nally and what it is that constitutes intentionality. The former is perhaps bestanswered in something like the ‘indirect’ manner: to learn what exists exter-

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nally we require sensation, in particular our being directly aware, in a non-representational way, of our sensory modes. But the latter is perhaps bestanswered in the ‘direct’ manner: our ability to be in representational states,states (of judgement) which have representational content, is a primitive fea-ture of minds which requires no mediating objects whatever. Having sketchedall this, I should note that even if I am right here, Secada’s overall projectappears largely to remain unharmed. As far as I can see, Descartes’s being anindirect non-realist is not essential for his essentialism, nor for any of the par-ticular other doctrines that Secada persuasively attributes to him. Indeed, asnoted, Descartes grounds his aversion to Scholastic existentialism on his intel-lectualism and also nativism (p. ), both of which are consistent (I think)with direct realism. Perhaps some might think that indirect non-realism fitsbetter with empiricism, not Cartesian rationalism, in general, but I see no rea-son to believe this. Nor can it be thought that Descartes is an indirect non-realist in order simply to distance himself from Scholasticism, given, as Secadahas demonstrated, how much he happily preserves from Scholasticism. So inthe end it might just be that, if I am right, chapter four’s main thesis may be inerror, but it would not take away much from the otherwise great value of Sec-ada’s overall thesis, analysis, and arguments.

Department of Philosophy

Kenyon CollegeGambier, OH 43022USA

Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior,by Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, . Pp. . P/b $..

The evolution of human social behaviour was the hottest topic in public sci-ence in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Central to these debateswas the idea that natural selection, the central mechanism of evolutionarychange, is fundamentally hostile to unselfish behaviour. Unto Others is themost careful and intellectually substantive discussion of these issues to date.Although undeniably partisan, Sober and Wilson describe opposing viewswith some care and provide substantive arguments against them. This is a con-siderable advance in a debate in which the opponents have often caricaturedone another beyond recognition or simply failed to mention alternative views.

The book is in two parts, the first dealing with evolutionary altruism andthe second with psychological altruism. In the first part, Sober and Wilsonoutline ‘trait group selection’— a process first described by Wilson in thes. They argue for the reality and importance of this evolutionary mecha-nism and situate it within a broader account of evolutionary explanation: anaccount built around two complimentary ‘pluralisms’. Sober and Wilson are