In the Passion of the Soul Descartes sets out to explain the origins and structure of intentional voluntary action, to give an account of physical behavior and motion that (in some sense) has psychological and intellectual causes.

Actually of course this is not at all what he says. He announces an analysis of the passions of the soul. But why does he define his subject as he does? His correspondence had forced a concern with questions of virtue. How is he to introduce an account of virtue in his metaphysically, scientifically oriented philosophy of mind, a theory which must accommodate his normative epistemology on one hand and his mechanistic physiological psychology on the other? Other pressures forced closely related questions. Just what is the character of the ‘substantial’ union of mind and body? What is the psychological status of perception, and what are the relations among various types of perceptions? It is these questions that Descartes sets out to answer.

The Philosophical search for Natural Kinds is motivated by the hope of finding ontological categories that are independent of our interests. Other requirements, of varying importance, are commonly made of kinds that claim to be natural. But no such categories are to be found. Virtually any kind can be termed ‘natural’ relative to some set of interests and epistemic priorities. Science determines those priorities at any particular stage of its progress, and what kinds are most ‘natural’ in that sense is always a real and lively scientific question. The general philosophical problem of scientific realism is also real; but between the scientific and the metaphysical, the ‘Problem of Natural Kinds’ sits otiose.

One trend in contemporary discussions of the topic, ‘the meaning of life.’ is to emphasize what might be termed its subjective dimension. That is, it is widely recognized that ‘the meaning of life’ is not something that simply could be presented to an individual, regardless of how he/she felt about it. Thus, for example, Karl Britton has written that we could imagine ‘a featureless god who set before men some goal and somehow drove them to pursue it'; while this would constitute a purpose for human life, it would hardly be sufficient to render life meaningful. ‘The goal would seem arbitrary, senseless: and its pursuit burdensome, souldestroying.’ Similarly, R. W. Hepburn has stated that meaningfulness must indispensably involve value judgment. Any set of conditions presented to us, whether by God, nature, or our fellow humans, constitutes a fact about how the world is; what provides meaningfulness to our lives, on the other hand, must be something which we affirm - something we feel ought to be the case.

Perhaps the most venerable objection to Descartes’ Meditations is the charge that Descartes argues in a circle when he tries to show that his clear and distinct perceptions are true. Arnauld and others raised this objection to Descartes himself, and Descartes’ reply to them, far from clearing the matter up, seems to be entirely unresponsive to their criticism. There has since grown an enormous literature about what is often called the Cartesian Circle, partly because in interpreting the work of someone as important as Descartes we feel obliged to try to read him so that he is not making a patent blunder, and partly because seeing whether a project like Descartes’ is doomed from the start is of intrinsic philosophical interest. But the size of this literature alone suggests how complex and difficult the interpretative and philosophical issues surrounding the Circle are.

It was the middle of winter now and the Grasshopper was long dead. Skepticus and Prudence, being not quite grasshoppers had retreated into a burrow dug by Prudence and stocked by her for the winter.

Unfortunately, Skepticus had taken the Grasshopper far too seriously and had not assisted Prudence in laying up for winter. Thus, by the time January came around, the cupboard was bare (metaphorically speaking) and the insects once again had to choose between going the way of the Grasshopper and another (seemingly appalling) alternative.

PRUDENCE: There is simply no doubt about it. We must either starve like the Grasshopper or we must take refuge with the Ant. He laid up enough food to tide a dozen insects over the winter so he couldn't possibly mind if we went over to share it with him.

I want to present some evidence that facts about de re attitudes or causal facts are important in the explanation of actions. In particular, I will argue that an attempt by Ernest Sosa and Mark Pastin [4] to give a scheme for explaining intentional actions fails. By adding either de re or causal locutions we can devise a more adequate schema for explaining action, but their analysis had been designed to eliminate de re locutions from explanations of intentional action. Showing the failure of their analysis does not, of course, show that de re or causal elements are required in these explanations, since it does not rule out the possibility of alternative explanatory schemes. But the centrality of de re or causal elements is supported by the inadequacy of their attempts to dispense with them.