Spinoza: Experience

This study considers freedom of speech and the rules of engagement in the public sphere; good government, civic responsibility, and public education; and the foundations of religion and society, as seen through the eyes of seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher, Spinoza.

This paper begins with a pressing question for contemporary philosophy: What does it mean to read Spinoza’s Ethics today? Before we can address this particular question, we pose another, one possibly prior, question. The question is situated within Spinozism itself. It asks, ‘What does it mean to read, for Spinoza?’ Given Spinoza’s commitment to the theory of parallelism, reading affects both the body and the mind. We first show how an explicit formulation of the three kinds of material bodies allows (...) us to understand the process by which the meaning of a text can affect the body of the reader. We then show how the three kinds of knowledge evince the order in which textual meaning can affect the mind of the reader. We then claim that these tripartite orders map directly onto each other. After demonstrating the structural parallelism at the corporeal and cognitive levels, we return to further characterize the nature of the meaning of the meaning of a text in order to understand what it means to read, for Spinoza. We conclude with an observation about the necessary interrelatedness of metaphysics and ethics. (shrink)

Through a detailed study of Spinoza's concept of 'experience', Moreau shows how Spinoza extends the power of reason to capture the singularity of individuals: their lives, languages, passions and societies.

This book interrogates the ontology of mathematical entities in Spinoza as a basis for addressing a wide range of interpretive issues in Spinoza’s epistemology—from his antiskepticism and philosophy of science to the nature and scope of reason and intuitive knowledge and the intellectual love of God. Going against recent trends in Spinoza scholarship, and drawing on various sources, including Spinoza’s engagements with optical theory and physics, Matthew Homan argues for a realist interpretation of geometrical figures in Spinoza; illustrates their role (...) in a Spinozan hypothetico-deductive scientific method; and develops Spinoza’s mathematical examples to better illuminate the three kinds of knowledge. The result is a portrait of Spinoza’s epistemology as sanguine and distinctive yet at home in the new Cartesian and Galilean scientific-philosophical paradigm. (shrink)

There can be little disagreement about whether ideas of sense perception are, for Spinoza, to be classed as passions or actions—the former is obviously the correct answer. All this, however, does not mean that sense perception would be, for Spinoza, completely passive. In this essay I argue argues that there is in the Ethics an elaborate—and to my knowledge previously unacknowledged—line of reasoning according to which sense perception of finite things never fails to contain a definite active component. This argument (...) for activity in sense perception consists of two main parts: first, that ideas we form through sense perception have something adequate in them; second, that the adequate component is actively brought about. Discerning this line of thought connects to—and sheds some new light on—Spinoza’s general way of understanding ideas as entities involving activity. (shrink)

Spinoza’s Ethics, and its project of proving ethical truths through the geometric method, have attracted and challenged readers for more than three hundred years. In Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination, Eugene Garver uses the imagination as a guiding thread to this work. Other readers have looked at the imagination to account for Spinoza’s understanding of politics and religion, but this is the first inquiry to see it as central to the Ethics as a whole—imagination as a quality to be (...) cultivated, and not simply overcome. ​Spinoza initially presents imagination as an inadequate and confused way of thinking, always inferior to ideas that adequately represent things as they are. It would seem to follow that one ought to purge the mind of imaginative ideas and replace them with rational ideas as soon as possible, but as Garver shows, the Ethics don’t allow for this ultimate ethical act until one has cultivated a powerful imagination. This is, for Garver, “the cunning of imagination.” The simple plot of progress becomes, because of the imagination, a complex journey full of reversals and discoveries. For Garver, the “cunning” of the imagination resides in our ability to use imagination to rise above it. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates an objection to introspective arguments for human freedom found within Spinoza's Ethics. The objection-- which we call Spinoza's dream argument -- challenges the evidentiary value of a person's experience of her own freedom by pointing out that some choices made within dreams are experienced as no less free than choices made while awake despite the fact that choices made within dreams are not free. After reconstructing Spinoza's dream argument, we critically evaluate it, concluding ultimately that it (...) fails in two respects. First, we draw upon the results of an experiment we conducted that suggests that dreamt choices are not experienced as free to the same extent as choices made while awake. Second, we argue that there is no compelling justification for the claim that choices made within dreams are not free. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of which kinds of knowledge Spinoza himself employs in developing the system of the Ethics. The problem is raised by Professor D. Savan and further discussed by G. H. R. Parkinson. The thesis is (1) that no occurrence of the first kind of knowledge is to be found in the Ethics (against Parkinson), (2) that the main part of the analysis in the Ethics is conducted on the level of the second kind of knowledge (in (...) agreement with Parkinson), and (3) that the third kind of knowledge occurs frequently and plays a most important role in the Ethics (in part against Parkinson). The relation between knowledge and language, the distinction between two types of imagination, or two ways of imagining things, the translation of knowledge of modes of extension into knowledge of the mind, and the relation between the second and third kind of knowledge are main parts of the argument. The third kind of knowledge derives its significance in the Ethics from the definitions and axioms, particularly in Part 1. These definitions and axioms form the basis of the whole system of the Ethics, and at least some of them, it is suggested, belong to the third kind of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss Spinoza’s critique of free will, though our brief study of this topic in the first part of the chapter will aim primarily at preparing us to address the main topic of the chapter, which is Spinoza’s explanation of the reasons which force us to believe in free will. At times, Spinoza seems to come very close to asserting the paradoxical claim that we are not free to avoid belief in free will. In the second part of (...) the chapter I will closely examine Spinoza’s etiological explanation of how we come to form the belief in free will. In the third part, I will raise and respond to a crucial objection to Spinoza’s explanation of the formation of our belief in free will. I will then turn to examine Fichte’s intriguing claim that Spinoza’s position on the issue of free will suffers from an internal contradiction, as evinced in Fichte’s suggestive remark: “Spinoza could not have been convinced of his own philosophy. He could only have thought of it; he could not have believed it [Er konnte seine Philosphie nur denken, nicht sie glauben].”. (shrink)

" Nous sentons et nous expérimentons que nous sommes éternels. " Cette phrase énigmatique n'est peut-être pas soli-taire : elle appelle - et suppose pour être comprise - toute une problématique spinoziste de l'expérience, peu aperçue mais régissant des pans entiers du système. L'expérience, c'est d'abord la clef de l'itinéraire par lequel, au début de la Réforme de l'entendement, le narrateur arrache à la vie commune les raisons de chercher le vrai Bien. C'est ensuite, dans les champs de l'histoire (lieu (...) de la fortune), de la langue (lieu de l'usage), des passions (lieu de l'ingenium), le signe de tout ce qui paraît échapper à la Raison sans pourtant la contredire. C'est enfin la présence, en tout homme, d'une conscience de la nécessité au sein même de la finitude. Ainsi l'étude de l'expérience permet-elle de voir autrement la Raison elle-même ; de comprendre, aussi, la constitution du système qui apparaît comme une réflexion sur les formes et les moyens de la rationalité. (shrink)

Della Rocca concentrates on two problems crucial to Spinoza 's philosophy of mind: the requirements for having a thought about a particular object, and the problem of the mind's relation to the body. He contends that for Spinoza these two problems are linked and thus part of a systematic philosophy of mind.

This paper outlines the role of the bodily essence in Spinoza’s epistemology. Spinoza maintains in the Ethics that the power of the imagination depends on bodily affections and it explains the inadequateness of imaginative ideas. However, Spinoza also exploits the capabilities of the human body to work out his account of common notions, which grounds the adequate knowledge provided by reason. Moreover, the essentia corporis plays a crucial role in the fifth part of the Ethics. Indeed, the “eternal part” of (...) the mind depends on the adequate idea of the eternal essence of the human body. By connecting this idea with other ideas, the mind has the power of ordering its ideas according to the intellect. Thus, the mind increases the number of the ideas it conceives of sub specie aeternitatis. In this sense, the bodily essence is not only the ground of Spinoza’s epistemology but also of Spinoza’s doctrine of the eternity of the mind. (shrink)

Spinoza attributes mentality to all things existing in nature. He claims that each thing has a mind that perceives everything that happens in the body. Against this panpsychist background, it is unclear how consciousness relates to the nature of the mind. This study focuses on Spinoza’s account of the conscious mind and its operations. It builds on the hypothesis that Spinoza’s panpsychism can be interpreted as a self-consistent philosophical position. It aims at providing answers to the following questions: what is (...) consciousness, for Spinoza, and what are the causes that determine its presence in nature? How can human and non-human individuals be distinguished on account of their mentality? How can Spinoza conceive of the human mind as consisting entirely of conscious perceptions? And how, according to Spinoza’s mind-body parallelism, is the content of consciousness determined so that it reflects in thought the order and connection of the actions and passions of the body? To address these questions, I first determine what Spinoza’s notion of “consciousness” is and how he uses it. Then, I investigate whether he has a theory of recognition capable of accounting for specifically human behaviour and mentality. Further, I examine his description of memory and the way in which memory shapes the framework of human conscious thought. Finally, I look for an account of discursive reasoning, capable of explaining the existence of activities of the mind that, by operating on the content provided by memory, preserve themselves through time and change. (shrink)

Se expone la relación entre el signo en tanto gnoseológica y semánticamente subordinado a la imaginación y el uso del lenguaje como medio para expresar las verdades filosóficas por parte de Spinoza. Al respecto, se revisan tres posturas: (i) la de David Savan, quien sostiene la inadecuación del lenguaje para expresar verdades filosóficas debido a la vinculación spinoziana entre las palabras y la imaginación; (ii) la de G.H.R. Parkinson, quien afirma que el uso del lenguaje no es inconsistente con la (...) expresión de las proposiciones filosóficas por parte de Spinoza, sino que, la mayor parte de lo propuesto en la Ética pertenece al conocimiento de razón y las nociones comunes y; (iii) la de Mogens Laerke, quien defiende la posibilidad de atribuir coherencia al uso del lenguaje, por un lado, y a la filosofía spinoziana, por el otro, a partir del recurso matemático de la demostración geométrica. Finalmente, se argumenta una interpretación propia con base en el análisis semiótico del signo en Spinoza, a partir de la cual (i) es posible atribuirle al signo una función dentro del entendimiento, sin detrimento de su capacidad gnoseológica y semántica para alcanzar verdades filosóficas y, por consiguiente, (ii) validar el uso del lenguaje como medio para expresar su filosofía. (shrink)

Spinoza’s account of memory has not received enough attention, even though it is relevant for his theory of consciousness. Recent literature has studied the “pancreas problem.” This paper argues that there is an analogous problem for memories: if memories are in the mind, why is the mind not conscious of them? I argue that Spinoza’s account of memory can be better reconstructed in the context of Descartes’s account to show that Spinoza responded to these views. Descartes accounted for the preservation (...) of memories by holding that they are brain states without corresponding mental states, and that the mind is able to interpret perception either as new experience or as memory. Spinoza has none of these conceptual resources because of his substance monism. Spinoza accounts for memories as the mind’s ability to generate ideas according to the order of images. This ability consists in the connection of ideas, which is not an actual property, but only a dispositional one and thus not conscious. It is, however, grounded in the actual property of parts of the body, of which ideas are conscious. (shrink)

This book reconstructs Spinoza's theory of the human mind against the backdrop of the twofold notion that subjective experience is explainable and that its successful explanation is of ethical relevance, because it makes us wiser, freer, and happier.

Spinoza assigns to the imagination a wide-ranging and often disparate looking set of operations. Commentators have long recognized that these operations share a certain proximity to the body and a common tendency to lead people into error. Yet others remark on the apparent thinness of an overarching theme. This article examines the prominent and often underappreciated role of memory in unifying Spinoza’s account of imaginative cognition. The discussion revisits various aspects of imagination in light of their integrated characterization as forms (...) of remembering. The article also assesses reasons other than memory that Spinoza has for grouping them in common. The examination focuses on the intrinsic character of the imagination and its related operations in the Ethics, while occasionally bringing other works into play. (shrink)

Locke is often thought to have introduced the topic of personal identity into philosophy when, in the second edition of theEssay,he distinguished the person from both the human being and the soul. Each of these entities differs from the others with respect to their identity conditions, and so they must be ontologically distinct. In particular, Locke claimed, a person cannot survive total memory loss, although a human being or a soul can.

This dissertation investigates the nature of imaginatio in the works of Spinoza. The first three chapters are devoted to explicating the ways imaginatio figures in Spinoza's accounts of the attributes, extensio and cogitatio. I show how both attributes are aspects of the same force in which substance perseveres through its essence, and how imaginatio is the key to understanding the movement from corpus to mente. In chapters 4 and 5, my work explores the place of imaginatio in the nature of (...) each of these attributes, examining first the dynamics of extensio before turning to the distinctions essential to cogitatio. These two chapters also trace in great detail the ways in which Spinoza's account of imaginatio derives, on the one hand, from his critique of the principles of Descartes' physics and, on the other, from his critique of Maimonides' account of prophecy. Concluding chapters focus on the 'intensive-extensive' aspects of imaginatio insofar as Spinoza shows these to possess ethical/political implications for the constitution of the state and for human relations as the expression of historical, and a-historical, force. (shrink)

The idea of an original contract is, ironically, inherently narrative in form; although tautological in essence, it nevertheless portrays events occurring in sequence. In response to Filmer's provocations that the idea of an original contract lacks historical veracity. Locke tries and repeatedly fails to establish a direct historical substantiation of his position in the early chapters of the Second Treatise. The most important of these various miscalculations concern the role of consent in his account of the origins of government, the (...) tension between logical and historical evidence in describing the development of prerogative in the English monarchy, and the inescapable conclusion that conquest and not consent was the likely origin of most states. In these places, the Locke's deductive argument is forced to slow, hesitate, and change direction. The general concept of individual transgression, as it emerges from Locke's depiction of the state of nature, war, and slavery, later transforms itself into the basis of governmental injustice and tyranny. These, in turn, work to generate a sort of secondary and “political” state of nature in which a now “historical” people, by means of concrete acts of resistance and revolution, enact the hypothesis of the consensual theory in their own actual time and place. (shrink)

Do minds and ideas connect, interact, or even depend on each other, and if so, how exactly do they connect and interact? How should we conceive of the mode and process of minds and ideas being in a network and connected in some way, that is, being intersubjective or social? Martin Lenz's study Socializing Minds convincingly shows that, contrary to widespread opinion in philosophy of mind, at least some early modern philosophers, here Spinoza, Locke, and Hume, actually give a positive (...) answer to the first question and present models that respond to the second question, thus addressing what Lenz proposes calling 'the contact problem' and repudiating the idea that mentalism is necessarily bound to individualism. In this comment, I focus on a detail in Lenz's reconstruction of Spinoza's 'metaphysical model' of the intersubjectivity of minds, namely the Aristotelian physical dynamism that would underlie Spinoza's idea of the interaction of minds. While I agree that Spinoza's model of interaction of minds refers to the Aristotelian conception of motion, I argue that the guiding principle in natural motion is best understood not only in terms of contrariety but also in terms of complementarity. Admittedly, my proposal goes beyond Spinoza's model of ideas in contact, and probably beyond Lenz's interpretation of that model, but it might enrich the imagination of the socialising of minds and ideas from a kinetic point of view, which, at least as I understand it, is precisely what Spinoza and Lenz thrive on. (shrink)