One Man’s Meat Is Another Man’s Person

the term ‘Cartesian’ has suffered the same fate in certain circles (see below, n.3). 2 John Foster offers a discussion of a priori objections to dualistic psychophysical causation in Foster [1991], pp 158–185. He goes on (pp 185–201) to discuss causal closure and causal overdetermination as if they constituted empirical objections; as I argue below, I disagree with his categorisation, while accepting most of his arguments. 3 I am unhappy with the term ‘Cartesian’. It is used to refer to a variety of positions and beliefs, many if not most of which would have been rejected by Descartes. It is sometimes meant to refer to the beliefs of Descartes’ followers; apart from the difficulty of deciding who is to be included in that far from select group, there are scarcely two candidates whose views are not substantially at odds. Add to all this the tendency of some modern writers to use it as little more than a pejorative, and I wonder if we should not be better off dropping it altogether. However, it is used so widely that I have had to pepper the present paper with it, the alternative being a set of unwieldy paraphrases or an obscure new jargon term. ONE MAN’S MEAT IS ANOTHER MAN’S PERSON