FREE ESSAY ON SPINOZA FEAT. DESCARTES

SPINOZA FEAT. DESCARTES

Spinoza at first worked in the framework of the Cartesian philosophy, publishing in 1663 a
book entitled Principles of the Philosophy of Rene Descartes. Another early work, the
posthumously published Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, contains themes that
were central to Descartes' investigation of knowledge. It also contains hints of the
metaphysics unfolded in the posthumously published Ethics, the capstone of Spinoza's
philosophical career. 
In the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza (like Descartes) was concerned with the
improvement of human knowledge, which requires that we be able to distinguish the true
from the false in a reliable way. Rather than looking for some sort of further idea or
property as the criterion of truth, he claimed that truth shines forth on its own: the
criterion of the true idea is the true idea itself.
A method of seeking truths is most perfect when it begins with the idea of a most perfect
being. The truth of the idea lies in the essence it expresses. The idea of a perfect
being is a true idea, corresponding to something existing, because the essence of a
perfect being implies its existence. Further, whatever follows from the idea of such a
being is also true. Thus the best method will produce an order of ideas, flowing from the
idea of a perfect being. To this ideational order corresponds an order of existing
things. 
Spinoza's system can be understood in terms of its similarities and differences to the
system of Descartes (Principles I, 51ff). Descartes' system will therefore be
recapitulated. The particular object of comparison is his ontology (systematic
enumeration of what exists). 
The objects of Descartes' ontology are substances. The only substance properly so-called,
that is, the only being that does not depend on anything else for its existence, is God.
God's existence is contained in his essence, so there is no need for anything but the
essence to insure God's existence. Substances in a relative sense are God's creations,
which depend only on God's will to exist. In particular, substances improperly so-called
do not depend on one another for their existence. 
Each substance has a principal attribute, which makes it the kind of thing that it is.
God has the attribute of thinking (which includes understanding and willing). Some
created substances (humans and angels) also have the attribute of thinking, while others
(physical objects and non-human animals) have the attribute of extension. Descartes
believed that thinking and extension are mutually exclusive: no substance can have both
attributes. Thus I myself am a thinking substance and my body is an extended substance.
The composite of the two (the rational animal) is not a substance, on Descartes' view,
though it was on the view of Aristotle. 
Created substances, according to Descartes, of the same kind are differentiated from one
another by their modes, or the ways in which they have their attributes. Thinking a
series of particular thoughts, willing a series of particular acts, all go into making me
a unique individual, though I am not a unique kind of thing. Similarly, extended things
are differentiated by their modes: a certain size, shape, state of motion or rest. 
Spinoza agreed with Descartes about substance proper; like Descartes, he believed that
the essence of God includes God's existence. But he broke with Descartes by asserting
that there are no created substances. Rather, God is a being with infinitely many
attributes, including thinking and extension. Each of these attributes is infinite in its
own kind, so there is no limit to God's thought and none to extension. 
Difference comes in only at the level of modes. The individual thoughts that Descartes
assigned to his own mind as a substance are on Spinoza's view thoughts in the mind of
God. Similarly, individual physical things are modes of God's attribute of extension. 
Spinoza's system is supposed to follow from a few definitions and axioms. If one rejects
the system (and if Spinoza's inferences are valid), there must be a problem with the
starting point. One of the interesting tasks for the student of Spinoza is to discover
the sources of beliefs that are found to be objectionable. 
Through Propositions 1 and 2, Descartes and Spinoza are in agreement. Substance is prior
to its affections (or modes), and two substances with different attributes have nothing
in common. It is with Proposition 3, that what has nothing in common cannot causally
interact, that Spinoza breaks ranks with Descartes, at what was an admitted weak point in
Descartes' metaphysics. 
Spinoza argues for Prop. 3 on the basis of Axioms 4 and 5. The absence of a common
element prevents us from understanding one kind of thing through the other. I think
Descartes would have to concur with this claim. We do not understand bodies through minds
or minds through bodies. Actually, we would only understand both through God's mind, but
we have no access to the mind of God. 
If we do not know bodily events through minds, if we could never tell merely by
consideration of an act of will which bodily motion would follow it, how can we know that
the two are connected? Only by noticing that one does in fact follow the other, in a
systematic way. But this is not enough to establish a causal connection, as Spinoza
recognized in the Emendation of the Intellect. In order to know that a connection exists,
one must discover that in the cause which brings about the effect. Where two things have
nothing in common, this is impossible. 
The next move against Descartes' scheme is the claim in Proposition 5 that no two
substances can share an attribute. This means that if there is a mental substance, it is
unique, and the same for extended substances (and in general any other kind of
substance). Descartes held that there can be a real difference between substances due to
the fact that we can conceive one clearly and distinctly without the other (Principles I,
60). This might be thought to work for different kinds of substance (though Spinoza will
deny this too), but how can it work for the same kind of substance? I can conceive of
another mind, for example, by conceiving of its principal attribute, thinking. But this
is not enough to distinguish it from any other thinking thing. So it must be the modes of
thinking which distinguish them. 
Here Spinoza plays his trump card. To consider a substance as a substance we must
conceive it through itself (Definition 3). But then we do not conceive it through its
modes, for by Definition 5, a mode is something other than the substance itself. So (to
use Descartes' language against him) no modal distinction can amount to a real
distinction. (One must ask, however, whether Definition 5 has stacked the deck against
Descartes!) 
There remains the possibility of more than one substance, and this is the next target. In
Proposition 6, Spinoza claims that production of one substance by another (creation) is
not possible. The reason is the created substance would have to be conceived through the
creating substance, which is contrary to the meaning of 'substance.' 
Proposition 7 establishes the relation between substance and existence: the nature of
substance includes its existence. This is the germ of the ontological argument, though it
differs in form from both Anselm's and Descartes' versions. The claim here is that
because nothing else can produce substance, substance is self-produced, and hence that it
exists from its very nature. But this is a questionable argument, for it does not
consider the question why substance has to be produced at all. 
We have reached the point where Spinoza claims to have shown that substance exists
necessarily, but it is still an open question how many substances there are. Spinoza's
answer will be that there is only one, but to arrive at this conclusion, he had to make
some further claims about attributes. 
The first claim is that substances are infinite, in the sense that they are not limited
by anything of their own kind. A thinking substance is the only thinking substance, and
hence it is not limited by any other thinking substance. The same holds for extended
substance. There is nothing greater than the cosmos (whole extended universe), since
there is only one extended thing: the cosmos itself. 
After showing the unlimited character of each attribute singly, Spinoza introduces the
notion of degrees of reality, corresponding to number of attributes. A substance may have
more than one attribute, since each attribute is conceived through itself. A maximal
substance (identified with God) would have infinitely many attributes, each one of which
is infinite. It has already been argued that substance exists, but does God, maximal
substance, exist? 
Spinoza has several proofs that a maximal substance exists, but perhaps the most
important one is from the mere possibility of a maximal substance. Its nature does not
involve a contradiction, so its existence is possible. And if some other thing were able
to prevent its existence, that thing would limit the maximal substance. But by definition
each attribute is unlimited, so no thing of the same attribute can prevent the existence
of maximal substance. Further, there can be no conflict among the different attributes,
since they have nothing in common. So from the mere possibility of a maximal substance,
the conclusion is drawn that it must exist. 
Moreover, there is only one maximal substance. This is not surprising, given the argument
for its existence. A maximal substance has all the attributes that can be had, so that if
there were another one, it would have to share in these attributes, which would be a
limitation and contrary to the nature of the maximal substance. 
Maximal substance is also indivisible. This claim is very important to Spinoza, given his
identification of maximal substance with God. The attributes are not parts of substance,
and so there is no division of substance in that which constitutes its essence. It is
true that the attributes themselves may exist in a way that allows division. If thinking
is an attribute of substance, there may be individual thoughts which are distinct from
one another. And if extension is an attribute of substance, there may be extended things
(e.g. the blocks making up the wall of a tower) which are distinct and indeed are
themselves divisible. 
But the divisibility of the modes of substance do not mean that substance itself is
divisible. For substance is conceived through itself, not through its modes or
affectations. This distinction is absolutely critical to Spinoza's thought: it is what
prevents him from falling into the view that reality is homogenous. Spinoza was a monist,
in that he held that only one thing (maximal substance or God) is ultimately real, but he
wanted to hold at the same time that the appearance of plurality is not an illusion. To
do so, he gave a place to plurality at the level of modes. 
At this point we need to consider the specific question of whether God can be extended.
Spinoza counted as his opponents those philosophers who argued that God is incorporeal.
He granted that it would be wrong to think of God as having a body like a human being, as
do the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This would be to make God finite. But this
does not rule out the possibility that the infinite expanse of extended nature is the
body of God. But perhaps the very nature of extended things precludes God from being
extended. 
The argument is that nothing extended can be infinite, and so extension is not suited to
be an attribute of God. If there were infinite extension, it is claimed, paradoxes would
arise (Galileo, for one, was aware of such paradoxes). For example, take any unit of
measurement of a finite length, say an inch. Then an infinite length would consist of
infinitely many inches. On the other hand, it would also have infinitely many feet, and
hence be twelve times larger! Modern philosophers (following the nineteenth-century
mathematician Cantor) would deny that the conclusion follows from the premises. They
maintain that since there is a one-to-one correspondence between feet and inches, the
number of feet and the number of inches is the same. 
Spinoza's approach was quite different. He maintained that all the argument establishes
is that infinite quantity is not measurable and cannot be made up of finite parts
(Ethics, Part I, Proposition 15, Scholium). But in that case, what about the parts we
perceived extended objects to have? Spinoza again draws a distinction between how we view
extension abstractly through the imagination (whence they have parts) and through the
intellect (as unitary substance). This recalls the distinction made earlier, that matter
is everywhere the same, and there are no distinct parts in it except in so far as we
conceive matter as modified in various ways. Then its parts are distinct, not really but
only modally ((Ethics, Part I, Proposition 15, Scholium). 
Spinoza considered a number of other arguments on this topic, but we will pass over them
in the interests of time. The next topic is Spinoza's claim that everything that is or
can be conceived, is in God. This is really only an elaboration of his position that God
is maximal substance. Whatever exists either is God or a mode of one of God's attributes.
As mentioned above, Spinoza denies that there is a creation of other things. The notion
that God has an intellect which allows the conception of an uncreated world, and a will
which creates the world is denounced by Spinoza as anthropomorphic. God as rational
creator is as much a myth as Jupiter or Zeus. 
At the same time, Spinoza held that God is the cause of all things. Obviously this is
possible only on a very specific understanding of the notion of a cause. In the primary
sense, something is a cause when its nature is responsible from the existence of
something. Thus because everything follows from the nature of God, God is the cause of
all things (including God, for substance is self-caused). Moreover, God causes all things
that are in the scope of the divine intellect, since an infinite number of things flow
from an infinite substance. Later, at Proposition 35, Spinoza claims that whatever is in
God's power necessarily exists. 
Since God is a cause in the sense that what exists follows from God's essence, God can be
said to be a free cause. Freedom here is understood in the sense of a lack of external
constraint. God is free because there is nothing to interfere with the unfolding of the
Divine essence. 
This notion of freedom does not involve any notion of will or choice; indeed, Spinoza
denies that God has a will or makes choices. To attribute will and choice to God is
anthropomorphic, a projection of (alleged) human characteristics onto the divine being.
In fact, will is only a mode, not an attribute of substance. In Part II, Spinoza
maintains that there is nothing more to will than individual acts of volition. Thus will
is not a faculty of God (and this holds for intellect as well). 
It might be objected that without choice, God is not free. Because they follow
necessarily from God's essence, things cannot be otherwise than what they are, and this
is a limitation of God's power. Spinoza turns the tables on this objection, stating that
if things were otherwise than what they are, they would have to be the product of a God
with a different nature, in which case two Gods would be possible, and God would not be
the maximal substance. 
In the succeeding propositions, Spinoza discusses a number of aspects of the causality of
God. What is most important is a distinction between two ways in which God is a cause.
From the essence of God, some things are said by Spinoza to follow directly. In this
sense, God is a proximate cause. But with finite existing things, essences are not
sufficient for existence. The essence of an individual human being, Peter, is not such
that Peter's existence follows from it necessarily. Rather, the existence of finite
things has as its cause the existence of other finite things. Nevertheless, since all
things are in God, God must be considered their cause. 
In general, there are two ways of thinking of God, as a being conceived through itself
and as a being conceived through its affections. Considered in the first sense, God is
free (in the sense noted above). But in the realm of finite things, which are only
affections of God, there is only necessity. Each thing exists as it does solely by virtue
of some cause which necessitates it. Nothing can determine itself to action. 
Finite existence and action is determined by prior causes, to infinity. There is no first
cause of finite things. If it is supposed that there is a first cause, then it would have
to be of the same kind as what it causes. Then it would be limited by that thing and
hence finite. But every finite thing has a cause. 
Things must be as they are, so there is no contingency in the world. A contingent
existence or action would be one that neither must occur of necessity nor cannot occur of
necessity. But everything is either necessary or impossible. What we think is contingent
(e.g. that I was born at the exact minute that I was) really depends on our ignorance of
the chain of causes (Corollary to Prop. 23, Pt. II). 
Part I of the Ethics concludes with a remarkable discussion of the origin of the common
way in which God is conceived. Belief in God is the result of a combination of an
ignorance of causes and a desire to get one's way. When we do not know the cause of the
occurrence of a favourable event, we deem it a sign of God's favouring of us. In general,
events are understood as dependent on God's ends, and systems of worship are built up,
designed to gain God's favour. The universe is understood in terms of final causes (for
example, as in Aristotle's philosophy). Moreover, since disaster sometimes befalls the
pious and fortune sometimes favours the impious, God's real plan for the universe is
deemed mysterious. 
On Spinoza's view, there are no final causes: the universe is utterly indifferent to the
fortunes of any individual. There is no distinction between good and bad, right or wrong,
except as relative to the interests of the individuals who use those labels. Since these
interests are tied to the favour of God, people call good that which is consistent with
their conception of God and bad that which is not. The same applies to evaluative
concepts such as order and disorder, beautiful and ugly. We can never define the
perfection of God using these relative concepts. Only an intellectual understanding of
God's nature as a maximal substance adequately characterizes God's perfection. 
In Part II of the Ethics, Spinoza turns from the general nature of God to the two
specific attributes which we human beings understand: thought and extension. We know
through experience that we think and that we have bodies, but we are not familiar with
any mode of any other attribute of God. The relation between thought and extension in the
human being is considered in two ways. The metaphysical relation between the two is
explored in the earlier propositions of Part II. In the later ones, the attention shifts
to the way in which thought represents extended things, and finally, how it represents
things in general. 
What we call a human being consists of an extended body and a series of ideas of the body
(the human mind). The body is subject to the causal laws of the physical world, as is the
mind, which is determined by previous ideas, with both causal chains paralleling each
other. In fact, Spinoza claims generally that the order and connection of extended things
is the same as the order and connection of ideas. 
Since the thesis of parallelism dominates Part II, its proof deserves a close look. Modes
of thought are ideas, which have a formal reality, which is their very existence. But
ideas have as well content, or objective reality. Because the formal reality of ideas is
embedded in a necessary chain of causes, its objective reality is determined by that
chain as well. For Spinoza had set out as Axiom 4 of Part I that The knowledge of an
effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of the cause. From this he infers that the
content of a given idea follows from the content of the idea which caused the existence
of that idea. In the Scholium to Proposition 8, Spinoza put the matter another way: the
idea and its content (an extended body) are two modes of the existence of the same thing.

We may now contrast Spinoza's view with Descartes'. First, whereas Descartes claimed that
mind and body are independent substances, Spinoza claimed that both are modes of a single
substance, which is both thinking and extended. (This view is sometimes called neutral
monism.) Moreover, Descartes claimed that he could conceive himself without a body, but
for Spinoza, the mind is the idea of the body, and hence inconceivable without it.
Finally, Descartes held that the mind can affect the body freely, and the body can affect
the mind against its will: both can act independently of the other. Spinoza proposed
instead a psycho-physical parallelism, according to which all acts of both mind and body
unfold in lock-step with each other. 
More generally, to every extended thing there corresponds an idea of that thing. The
extended universe for Spinoza is animate. What distinguishes the idea comprising the
human mind from other ideas is the complexity of the human body of which it is the idea.
The representation of this body is equally complex to the extent characteristic of human
thought. 
There follows a treatise on bodies in general, which is used to explain how the human
body operates, which in turn explains the ideas which we get from experience. After
laying out the general notions of motion and rest, Spinoza offered up a notion of the
form of a body, which is an unvarying relation of movement among the parts making up the
body. The material constituents of a body may change while the form remains the same. It
was important for Spinoza to have a way of explaining the unity of the human body to
correspond to the unity of the ideas which make up the human mind. 
To account for the peculiarity of human experience that our ideas represent more than
merely the states of our own bodies, Spinoza concocted a physiology of bodily parts. The
key elements are soft parts which can change when the human body is acted upon by another
body. The persistence of their changed state accounts for the production of ideas as if
the body were still there, thus explaining how memory and imagination are possible. 
Also explained is the way in which people commonly understand nature. This first kind of
knowledge (which is really opinion rather than truly knowledge), comes from casual
experience. It is described as external, fortuitous, resulting from the run of
circumstance. Exposure to a pattern of events A-B reinforces the impressions made on us,
resulting in the strengthening of the images which follow when A occurs again. 
In this way, we make causal judgments which are not really justified because there is no
insight into how B comes from A. (David Hume would claim in the Eighteenth Century that
this is the only way causal judgments can be made, so that none are justified!) It also
leads to a false doctrine of universals. People believe that they know the essence of a
thing (say a human being) based on what is common in their experience. Whether a human
being is called a rational animal, a featherless two-legged animal or a laughing animal
depends entirely on the associations made with instances of humans we have encountered. 
Similarly, common language is based on association. When I hear the word 'apple,' there
comes to mind an image of a baseball sized fruit with a shiny skin, succulent flesh, etc.
There is no reason this association takes place other than my experience in having such a
thing pointed out to me when I hear the word. Spinoza maintained that a great deal of the
confusion of human thought stems from a failure to recognize the arbitrariness of
language which is based on association alone. 
With all this in mind, Spinoza states that experience yields inadequate ideas (images) of
other bodies, our own bodies, and our own minds. With respect to bodies, the problem is
that our ideas of them pertain to their form, and not their material constituents. So
these ideas will always be inadequate. (We have even more inadequate ideas of other
bodies, since we know them only through the effects on our own bodies.) And since the
mind is the idea of the body, the inadequacy of the idea of the body spills over to the
idea of the idea of the body (i.e., the idea of the mind). 
What is common to knowledge of the first kind is that it is based on imagination, which
in turn comes from experience. What we get in imagination is dumb pictures. The mind has
other ideas, however, which result from its activity. These ideas are conceived, not
imagined, and it is in them that true knowledge lies. Knowledge of the first kind is not
knowledge proper, but only opinion. 
A higher form of knowledge (knowledge of the second kind) is that involving common
notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things. Ideas of motion and rest are
common to all extended body. (Contrast this with the more restricted idea of a human
being, which is a universal derived from individual experience.) So laws of physics such
as the conservation law enunciated in the treatise on body would be known in this way. 
The highest form of knowledge is intuitive. We gain knowledge of the third kind, merely
by contemplating the ideas involved. The ideas are those of the attributes of God and the
essences of things. Part I of the Ethics exhibits this kind of knowledge. 
Spinoza posed a question considered at length by Descartes: how he could distinguish
between opinion and knowledge. Is there a criterion to separate the two? In the case of
images, one can have false ideas without being able to tell that they are false. We think
that they are true when we lack a reason to think otherwise. We may have no doubt about
its truth, but this does not amount to certainty. On the other hand, when we have a true
idea, we are certain of its truth. The truth of a true idea is known through its mere
possession. Thus the true idea is the criterion of truth. It is like a light which
illuminates itself. 
When one is in possession of a true idea, there is no question about its affirmation or
denial. To have a true idea is to affirm it, so in this case, the act of the
understanding and the act of will are indistinguishable. This is so with images as well.
Spinoza asks us to consider the case of a child with the idea of a winged horse and no
other ideas. He claims that the child affirms the existence of the horse simply through
the possession of the idea of it. Only the presence of other ideas excluding the
existence of the horse would give rise to doubt. 
In general, the understanding of an idea is identical to its affirmation or denial.
Individual ideas are nothing more or less than individual acts of volition. (Note that in
Part II, Spinoza restricts himself to affirming and denying as acts of will, reserving
until later a discussion of other volitions, such as pursuing and shunning.) Further,
there is nothing over and above individual acts, no faculty of understanding or willing,
since the mind itself is only a mode of thinking. So the will and the intellect are the
same thing. 
The identity of will and intellect undermines Descartes' contention that will is free.
One basis for this contention is the claim that one is at liberty to doubt the truth of
any idea whatsoever (the project of the First Meditation). Spinoza counters that this
liberty is illusory. One's suspension of judgment is a necessary consequence of the
recognition that there are reasons that an idea is not true. And if the idea is true, its
possession is tantamount to its affirmation. 
Spinoza discussed other Cartesian arguments for free will, but here only one other one
will be noted. Descartes had rather lukewarmly embraced the liberty of indifference,
which exists when and individual lacks any reason inclining him or her toward one
alternative rather than another. If an individual lacks freedom to act in an arbitrary
manner, then he or she will be in the same position as an ass who starved to death when
faced with a choice between two type of feed, which he likes equally well. Spinoza's
response is that in the case where there is no inclining preference, the individual would
not indeed act like a rational human being. Any starving to death because he could not
decide which restaurant he liked best would be behaving irrationally, like a child,
someone insane, or even an ass. (In fairness to Descartes, it should be noted that he
considered indifference to be the lowest form of liberty.) 
At the end of Part II, Spinoza summed up the advantages of living one's life according to
the kind of knowledge described in the Ethics. In general, one has a proper reverence for
God, a respect for other people, and a disregard for what is beyond one's power. But he
ends paradoxically, stating that citizens should be governed and led so as to do freely
what is best (Ethics, Part II, Scholium to Proposition 49). It is only in a very rarified
sense that people are able to act freely, and only a relative sense in which they may do
what is best. [c2p]