ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that the primacy of philosophers' knowledge of how minds move bodies does not establish that their idea of the union is the primitive notion on which all understanding of causation depends. She shows that bodies are real causes just as much as minds are and that Rene Descartes' main goal in replying to Princess Elisabeth is to demonstrate that nothing in Cartesian philosophy demands that all changes of motion occur through collisions. Narrowly construed, the debate between Elisabeth and Descartes concerns the possibility of interaction between mind and body. Descartes' thinking about the problem of mind-body interaction begins in his reply to the Fourth Objections. There, Arnauld warns him that the separation of mind and body is in danger of reintroducing a form of Platonism that conceives of the human being as a rational soul that simply uses the body like a tool.
