Descartes after Gaukroger

Remembering Stephen Gaukroger’s extraordinary contributions on the history of the mind-body problem and other key issues in cognitive history, this essay assesses relations between historical and contemporary ideas about memory and mind. It considers forms of anachronism and presentism that Stephen avoided. It contrasts persistent prevailing stereotypes and misinterpretations of Descartes’ putative errors, in committing what Rorty called ‘the original sin of modern philosophy’, with the richer reality described in Stephen’s revisionary account. On a range of issues, contemporary quests for ‘post-Cartesian agency’ could paradoxically draw on Descartes’ own views about embodied and dynamic cognitive processes.