PHIL 151 History of Modern Philosophy

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PHIL 151 History of Modern Philosophy

• Dr. Martin Godwyn
• Fall 2008
• WEEK 10 Spinoza

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Baruch Spinoza

• Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) can be seen as
  inheriting from and reacting against Cartesian
  philosophy.
• One way of looking at Spinozas philosophy is as
  an attempt to systematise and render more
  rigorous Cartesian intuitions, biting a few very
  substantial bullets along the way.
• Most notably, Spinoza rejects both the dualism of
  Nature-God and the dualism of mind-body.

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Spinoza and Descartes

• Another important difference between Descartes
  and Spinoza is that Descartes considered it
  essential to first determine what he knows to
  begin with epistemology. His later metaphysical
  theses arise more or less directly out of his
  epistemology.
• Spinoza, by contrast, although also a
  rationalist, begins with metaphysics and derives
  his epistemology only much later.

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The Ethics

• The fuller title of Spinozas most famous
  work,the Ethics, is Ethics Demonstrated in
  Geometric Order
• Spinoza wears his rationalistic credentials on
  his sleeve starting with definitions and
  axioms, he proceeds from proposition to
  propositions explicitly drawing from previously
  established propositions as he goes.

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The Ethics

• Scholars vary as to whether the style of
  geometric proof is intended to be taken at face
  value as revealing a series of (putatively)
  deductively valid inferences, or as merely a
  matter of expository style to draw out more or
  less explicitly the connections between the
  various propositions.
• In either case, a good number (some critics would
  argue, at least most) of the inferences lack the
  force of deductive validity.

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The Ethics

• Although it is usually just called the Ethics,
  the bulk of the work does not deal with
  specifically ethical issues, which are left to
  the last two of five parts. Most of the work
  deals with God, metaphysics, psychology and human
  nature.
• But it does indicate that the goal of the work,
  including the metaphysical theses that take up
  its bulk, is to establish certain moral truths
  and to give an account of the good life. To
  understand how we should live we must first
  understand the nature of the universe and human
  nature.

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Outline of the Ethics, part 1

• (P)roposition
• P1-P15 Gods existence and nature.
• P16-30 Divine power and causality.
• P31-36 Criticisms of various features of the
  Judeo-Christian religious tradition.

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A few central theses

• A few central theses of the Ethics include
• There is just one substance the cause and
  explanation of itself.
• That substance is God-Nature and necessarily
  exists
• There are no contingent truths every truth is a
  necessary truth.
• There is no free will (although he does insist we
  have degrees of freedom).
• Mind and body are just two was of talking about
  the same thing.

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Some important definitions

• The definitions Spinoza begins with would mostly
  have been uncontroversial to contemporary
  metaphysicians, however, his specific terminology
  is often different from the terminology used by
  others.

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A key assumption

• Hiding within several of his definitions is a
  vital, initially unstated, assumption that
  Spinoza makes that drives much of his argument.
• That reality coincides with conception that the
  relations between ideas or concepts on the one
  hand coincides with relationships between things
  in reality.

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A key assumption

• Why think this true? Spinoza does not argue for
  it directly, although it re-emerges from his
  definitions most explicitly in Book 2, P7.
• The model may have been mathematical proof in
  math we prove certain propositions to be true in
  virtue of conceptual relations. In a manner of
  speaking, we explain the conclusion through the
  proof, and if the axioms are self-evident, we
  explain the conclusion completely.

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A key assumption

• Another way of grasping Spinozas assumption is
  that he assumes that the two central ways of
  addressing a why? question by appeal to
  reasons and by appeal to causes parallel each
  other.
• Sometimes when someone asks why? we answer with
  because ... and specify a cause other times we
  specify a reason. Spinoza seems to assume that
  giving an answer to one, in some important
  respect, gives an answer to the other.

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A key assumption

• E.g., Why did Jones kill Smith? Can be understood
  in two ways, and answered, respectively
• 1. By giving a reason for thinking that Jones
  killed Smith e.g., Jones killed Smith because
  only he had the opportunity to kill the victim.
  This identifies an inferential relation between
  propositions.
• 2. By giving a cause Jones killed Smith because
  he was high on drugs. This identifies a causal
  explanation for a material fact.

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Causa Sui

• D1 Cause of itself that whose essence involves
  existence, or that whose nature cannot be
  conceived except as existing.
• The phrase cause of itself (Latin causa sui)
  is often regarded as an incoherent notion. The
  reasoning is that causes must precede their
  effects, hence to cause itself something must
  exist before it is caused to come into existence.

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Causa Sui

• What Spinoza means by a causa sui is something
  rather different something that exists
  necessarily.
• If anything exists necessarily then it requires
  no further explanation and nothing outside of
  itself to account for its existence, and hence,
  it is its own explanation.
• Apropos his key assumption, notice that this
  definition has a metaphysical element (necessary
  existent being) and a conceptual element (cannot
  be conceived except as existing), run side by
  side as though equivalent.

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Substance

• Arguably the most important concept to get to
  grips with is that of substance.
• D3 Substance what is in itself and is
  conceived through itself.
• In other words, substance is ontologically and
  conceptually independent of anything else.
• Again, note the two-part character of the
  definition metaphysical (what is in itself)
  and conceptual (what is conceived through
  itself).

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Substance

• The word in here needs elucidation
• If B is in A that means that A is the
  explanation of B.
• Consider the actions of a club. The actions of a
  club (say, buying a clubhouse) are explained by
  the actions of its members. As Spinoza would put
  it, the club is in its members.

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Attribute

• Spinoza defines attribute somewhat differently
  from others (who tend to use it as a synonym for
  properties generally) to refer to essential
  properties.
• D4 Attribute what the intellect perceives of
  a substance, as constituting its essence.
• For example, the attribute of body is spatial
  extension.

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Some important definitions

• D5 Mode the affections i.e. property of a
  substance, or that which is in another through
  which it is also conceived.
• A mode is the particular instance of quality or
  property. For example, the square shape of a
  particular piece of wood is a mode of that
  substance an instance of the attribute of
  spatial extension.
• D6 God a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a
  substance consisting of an infinity of
  attributes, of which each one expresses an
  eternal and infinite essence.

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Some axioms

• As with Euclidean geometrical demonstration,
  after which the Ethics is loosely modelled,
  axioms are offered that are expected to be taken
  as obvious and not in need of proof.
• Some, although probably quite intuitive to his
  contemporaries, will take some explaining and
  perhaps justification for modern ears.

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Some axioms

• A1 Whatever is, is either in itself or in
  another.
• This axiom is about causation or explanation it
  says, in effect, that everything is either an
  explanation of itself (as an infinite and eternal
  thing must be there being nothing outside or
  prior to it to be its cause), or is explained by
  something else (in which case it is ultimately
  caused by something that is a cause of itself).
• Another way of seeing this axiom is Spinozas way
  of committing to the principle of sufficient
  reason since nothing is without a cause or
  explanation.

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Some axioms

• A3 From a given determinate cause the effect
  follows necessarily
• Clearly, this would be much disputed by Hume,
  even if we limit the understanding to causally
  necessary rather than logically necessary.
• A7 If a thing can be conceived as not existing,
  its essence does not involve existence.

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Substance (P1-10)

• The first ten or so propositions summarise
  Spinozas view of substance and causation
• P1 A substance is prior in nature to its
  affections.
• So, substance, not attributes or modes, is
  ontologically basic.
• P2 Two substances having different attributes
  have nothing in common with one another. (In
  other words, if two substances differ in
  essential nature, then they have nothing in
  common).

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Substance (P1-10)

• P3 If things have nothing in common with one
  another, one of them cannot be the cause of the
  other.
• This is where Spinoza bites the bullet on
  mind-body interaction that plagued Descartes
  metaphysics. In effect, Spinoza says that the
  dualist cannot have their cake and eat it if
  mind and body are essentially different
  substances with non-overlapping attributes (on
  the Cartesian view, thinking non-extension and
  non-thinking extension, respectively), then they
  have nothing in common, and so cannot interact.

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Substance (P1-10)

• P4 Two or more distinct things are distinguished
  from one another, either by a difference in the
  attributes i.e., their natures or essences of
  the substances or by a difference in their
  affections i.e., their accidental properties..
• This proposition appears to be an expression of
  what was later called Leibnizs law (although, as
  well see, in a weaker and less metaphysically
  loaded form than that advocated by Leibniz).

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Substance (P1-10)

• P5 In nature, there cannot be two or more
  substances of the same nature or attribute.
• This proposition has come in for much criticism
  and (at least in the earlier stages) Spinoza
  relies on this more than perhaps any other single
  proposition.
• Leibniz suggests that there is no obvious reason
  why two substances might not share some (but
  obvious, not all) their attributes. For instance,
  two things identical other than being in
  different locations.

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Substance (P1-10)

• Spinozas point might seem strongest in relation
  to natures (attributes) than to accidental
  properties (modes).
• If any two substances share the same attributes,
  then their essential natures are the same and
  they are therefore the same kind of substance.
• But that does not seem to imply that they are the
  same individual substance.

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Substance (P1-10)

• Perhaps what Spinoza has in mind is that any
  particular instance of an attribute property is
  the exclusive possession of the substance that
  has that property.
• For example, if you and I are substances, your
  weight is not my weight, even if we have the
  same weight.

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Substance (P1-10)

• P6 One substance cannot be produced by another
  substance.
• The reasoning, in essence, is this substance is
  ontologically and conceptually independent (D3)
  but whatever has an external cause is
  ontologically dependent. Therefore, substance
  doesnt have an external cause. Since everything
  must have a cause (the principle of sufficient
  reason), the only option is for substance to be
  its own cause.

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Substance (P1-10)

• P7 It pertains to the nature of a substance to
  exist.
• This proposition which says that substance
  exists necessarily follows from the fact that
  substance must be its own cause (which he defines
  as that whose essence involves existence),
  together with D1 a cause of itself is that
  whose essence involves existence, or that whose
  nature cannot be conceived except as existing.
• But is there something suspect here?

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Substance (P1-10)

• P8 Every substance is necessarily infinite.
• This follows from P7, P5 and D2 (a thing is said
  to be finite in its own kind because that can be
  limited by another of the same nature) that no
  finite substance is its own cause.
• P9 The more reality essence or being each
  thing has, the more attributes belong to it.
• P10 Each attribute of a substance must be
  conceived through itself. In other words, each
  attribute is ontologically independent of other
  attributes.

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The proof of God

• P11 God, or a substance consisting of infinite
  attributes, each of which expresses eternal and
  infinite essence, necessarily exists.
• The proof of this proposition consists
  essentially in an ontological proof for God's
  existence. Spinoza writes that if you deny this,
  conceive, if you can, that God does not exist.
  Therefore, by axiom 7 If a thing can be
  conceived as not existing, its essence does not
  involve existence, his essence does not involve
  existence. But this, by P7, is absurd. Therefore,
  God necessarily exists, q.e.d.

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Spinozas pantheism (P11-15)

• This proof that God (i.e., an infinite, necessary
  and uncaused, indivisible being) is the only
  substance of the universe can be glossed in three
  simple steps.
• First, establish that no two substances can share
  an attribute or essence (P5).
• Then, prove that there is a substance with
  infinite attributes (i.e., God) (P11).
• It follows, in conclusion, that the existence of
  that infinite substance precludes the existence
  of any other substance. Why?...

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Spinozas pantheism

• For if there were to be a second substance, it
  would have to have some attribute or essence. But
  since God has all possible attributes, then the
  attribute to be possessed by this second
  substance would be one of the attributes already
  possessed by God. But it has already been
  established that no two substances can have the
  same attribute (P5). Therefore, there can be,
  besides God, no such second substance.
• Here, more succinctly and with less gloss, is how
  he does it...

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Spinozas pantheism

• P13 A substance which is absolutely infinite is
  indivisible.
• P14 Except God, no substance can be or be
  conceived.
• This follows from the previous two propositions.
  And finally, since everything is either in itself
  or in another (A1)
• P15 Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be
  or be conceived without God.

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Spinozas pantheism

• Unsurprisingly, his pantheistic views cause a
  great deal of controversy. Wrong, he insists, are
  all theologies that distinguish God from anything
  else that exists
• In the scholium to P15, he argues that to
  distinguish anything as being apart from or
  distinct from God is absurd, since God is
  infinite to distinguish anything from anything
  else is to delineate boundaries, and the infinite
  cannot be bounded.

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Spinozas neccesitarianism

• Since God necessarily exists, and all that is, is
  in God, it follows that there are no contingent
  truths. (see P29 and P33)
• This is determinism on steroids! Not only are
  there no events or facts that are not causally
  determined, but every fact is necessarily true!

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Spinozas neccesitarianism

• From God's infinite nature all things have
  necessarily flowed, or always followed, by the
  same necessity and in the same way as from the
  nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity
  and to eternity, that its three angles are equal
  to two right angles. (P17, Schol. 1)
• Thus, God, because of his necessary nature, could
  not be other than he is, and (hence) the universe
  could not be other than it is.

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Ethics Part 2 Human beings

• In part two of the Ethics Spinoza, having laid
  out his account of the basic nature of the
  universe, develops an account of the basic nature
  of human beings.
• Of the infinite attributes of God, the two that
  we have direct cognisance of are, as Descartes
  noted, extension and thought.

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God as extended

• Spinoza claimed (P2) that since God possesses all
  attributes, God is extended.
• This claim resulted in Spinoza being vilified as
  an atheistic materialist. But interpreters differ
  as to whether this should be taken to imply that
  God has a body or that he is corporeal.

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God as extended

• A more sympathetic interpretation (at least one
  that leads to less controversy) has it that God
  is extended in that he has an essence or
  attribute of which particular material bodies are
  modes.
• Equally, God has the attribute of thought
  inasmuch as he has an essence or attribute of
  which particular thoughts wills, or ideas (etc.)
  are modes. (Compare Berkeley here.)

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Gods attributes

• Spinoza defines God as having infinite
  attributes (it is not entirely clear whether he
  means infinite in number infinitely many
  attributes or only some finite number that is
  infinite in extent), but in any case, he insists
  that we can grasp only two attributes extension
  and thought.

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Mind and matter

• Since, following Descartes, the mental and the
  material have no attributes in common with each
  other (the one being extended the other being
  non-extended), there cannot be any causal
  interaction between them.
• Hence particular ideas or thoughts and particular
  material bodies are causally independent of the
  other.

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Neutral monism

• Yet there is also a deep parallelism between
  particular modes. This combines with Spinozas
  overall ontological commitment to there being one
  thing and leads him to a position of neutral
  monism
• P7 a mode of extension and the idea of that
  mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in
  two ways.
• It is here that his key assumption, implicit in
  his definitions, finally rises to the surface.

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Neutral monism

• Thus, Spinoza argues that thought (and the
  conceptual relations between thought) and
  extension (and the causal relations between
  extended things) are simply two different ways of
  comprehending the very same nature.
• Every material body has its own idea which
  represents it (literally, re-presents it)
  every idea has its own material body which it
  represents.

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The Mind-Body problem

• Just as each material body is part of an infinite
  series of material causes that is the material
  universe, so each idea is part of the infinite
  series of ideas that is the mind of God.
• Like Leibniz (as well see), Spinoza solves the
  Cartesian problem of mind-body interaction by
  rejecting any genuine causal interaction between
  mind and body. The human mind and the human body
  are expressions (in terms of the attribute of
  thought and extension, respectively) of the same
  thing.

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The Mind-Body problem

• But unlike Leibniz (who, as well see, sticks
  with dualism), Spinoza insists that the apparent
  interaction between a mental event X and a
  material event Y (or vice versa) is explained in
  terms of the mental and the material being two
  perspectives on the same pair of events in
  the one case an event grasped under the attribute
  of extension, and in the other case grasped under
  the attribute of thought.

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Spinozas epistemology

• Given his view that all truths are necessary
  truths, it is no surprise that Spinoza sees
  reason as the route to knowledge and dismisses
  the role of perception the latter, he suggests,
  constitutes only the most confused and imperfect
  means of acquiring beliefs. Indeed, it is the
  source of great delusions.
• P29 As long as the human Mind perceives things
  from the common order of nature, it does not have
  an adequate, but only a confused and mutilated
  knowledge of itself, of its own Body, and of
  external bodies.

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Reason

• Reason alone is the adequate source of
  knowledge the rationally acquired idea of a
  thing clearly and distinctly situates its object
  in all of its causal nexuses and shows not just
  that it is, but how and why it is.
• The person who truly knows a thing sees the
  reasons why the thing was determined to be and
  could not have been otherwise.

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Reason

• Hence, knowledge can only be knowledge of
  necessary truths.
• P44 It is of the nature of Reason to regard
  things as necessary, not as contingent. And
  Reason perceives this necessity of things truly,
  i.e., as it is in itself. But this necessity of
  things is the very necessity of God's eternal
  nature. Therefore, it is of the nature of Reason
  to regard things under this species of eternity.
  

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Reason

• Since Spinoza took nature and God to be
  identical, a knowledge of one ipso facto revealed
  knowledge of the other.
• Thus, the knowledge of natural truths goes
  hand-in-hand with knowledge of God. And Spinoza
  thought (P46 P47) perhaps rather
  optimistically that by the application of
  reason we could, at least in principle, acquire a
  complete understanding of Nature-God.