ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Margaret Cavendish’s claim that nature is composed of different “degrees” of matter—sensitive, rational, and inanimate matter—that are fully mixed in all its parts. It shows Cavendish’s likely response—“yes”—to William Molyneux’s question by discussing her account of perception by blind individuals and her distinction between mental representations that are two-dimensional and those that are three-dimensional. The chapter presents a challenge to this understanding of Cavendish’s likely answer to the Molyneux question by considering what she means in Observations by the “true knowledge” of an object. Margaret Cavendish’s metaphysics and natural philosophy have been the subject of recent scholarly discussion, but her philosophical psychology and epistemology have attracted somewhat less attention. The greater freedom of the rational matter compared to the sensitive matter plays a role in another significant aspect of Cavendish’s philosophical psychology.
