ABSTRACT
The Clarke Collins Correspondence of 1707–1708 is one of the great battles between dualism and materialism in the modern era. It is largely taken up with the question of whether a materialist philosophy of mind is even possible. Samuel Clarke defends traditional metaphysics of an immortal and immaterial soul by a priori means, while Anthony Collins searches for a new empirical way of analyzing and explaining consciousness and mind that treats humans as just another part of the animal kingdom. Discoveries in chemistry and biology made long after Clarke and Collins – from the modern notion of atoms, to organic molecules, one-celled organisms, multi-celled organisms, organs, tissues and so on – underline the importance of organization-dependent properties. Clarke rejects the account of identity in terms of functional organization in favor of an account in terms of sameness of substance – the ship must keep all its timbers in order to stay the same ship.
