Cavendish and Conway on the individual human mind

Abstract

Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway are monists – they believe that there is one type of substance in the created world, such that individual creatures are all made up out of the same essential stuff; there is no ontological marker that makes a human different from any other created being. According to Cavendish, all created substance is essentially rational , and so rocks, horses and humans alike are composed of matter that includes rationality. And according to Conway, all created substance is essentially thinking and wise , and so rocks, horses, and humans alike are composed of a substance that thinks. Cavendish claims that all parts of the natural world are perceptive, having both sense and reason. Conway presents a number of arguments against Cartesian and Hobbesian theories of matter and replaces them with what some might call a vitalist ontology.

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