Mechanism’s dead nature results from stripping intentional description, not from lack of spirit

Evidence

The deadness or lifelessness of mechanistically conceived nature, like the deadness of the body, appears in the stripping off of both intentional and intensional characteristics, and confinement to the ‘neutral’ extensional ones which make nature a dull and meaningless affair. The readmission of intentional description reintroduces agency and closes the gap Descartes opened. Thus an alternative to mechanism does not need an anthropomorphic ‘respiritualisation’ of nature, as most advocates and critics of antimechanist views have assumed. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 505

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends earlier ch17/ch18 notes: Descartes emptied body/nature of mindlike attributes — mechanism’s ‘deadness’ is shown here to be a description-stripping project, continuous with that account. — connects to: Mechanism removed the moral barrier that had made controlling nature seem impious — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 419; Cartesian mechanism evicted all spirits and occult qualities from nature — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 798; Explaining cruelty’s mechanisms does not excuse it — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 337 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Cartesian mechanism evicted all spirits and occult qualities from nature #complicates (0.78) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 798
• Explaining cruelty’s mechanisms does not excuse it #complicates (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 337