What are the most important problems of Spinoza's metaphysics?
1. As I understand, Spinoza was a panpsychist, so does his metaphysics encounter the combination problem?
2. In his view, God is nature, it possesses infinite consciousness (plus other infinite attributes), but it is not conscious and it has no will. Isn't this self-contradictory?
3. Causation: these attributes don't interact with each other. So a rock hitting you doesn't cause you to think ''Damn rock! I'm hurt...", but a previous thought does. How could someone defend this statement?
4. Please tell me if there are other big problems with his metaphysics.
2. In his view, God is nature, it possesses infinite consciousness (plus other infinite attributes), but it is not conscious and it has no will. Isn't this self-contradictory?
3. Causation: these attributes don't interact with each other. So a rock hitting you doesn't cause you to think ''Damn rock! I'm hurt...", but a previous thought does. How could someone defend this statement?
4. Please tell me if there are other big problems with his metaphysics.
Comments (327)
Ethics, Of God, Definition #2:
"A thing is said to be finite ?in its kind if it can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is said to be finite because we always conceive bodies that are greater. Similarly a thought is limited by another thought. But a body is not limited by a thought nor a thought by a body."
In regards to God's intellect and will, there are two approaches. In Ethics,Of God, Proposition 18, Scholium:
"Since God’s intellect is the sole cause (as we have shown) both of the essence and of the existence of things, it must necessarily differ from them both in regard to their essence and to their existence. For the thing caused differs from its cause precisely in what it has from its cause. For example, one human being is the cause of the existence of another human being but not of his essence; for his essence is an eternal truth.
Therefore they can completely agree in their essence; but in their existence they must differ. This is why if the existence of one comes to an end, the existence of the other will not therefore come to an end. But if the essence of one could be taken away and be made false, the essence of the other would also be taken away. This is why something that is the cause of both the essence and the existence of an effect must differ from that effect both in respect of essence and in respect of existence. ?But God’s intellect is the cause of both the essence and the existence of our intellect. Therefore God’s intellect, insofar as it is conceived as constituting the divine essence, differs from our intellect both in respect of essence and in respect of existence, and it cannot agree with it in anything except name, and this is what we set out to prove. One may make the same argument about will, as anyone may easily see." (Spinoza does make the same argument for will in Proposition 33)
The other approach is to see it as prejudices of human beings such as discussed in the Appendix to Proposition 36. It is long so I will only quote a snapshot:
"After human beings had convinced themselves that everything that happens, happens for their own sakes, they were bound to believe that the most important thing in everything was what was most useful to themselves and to put the very highest value on all those things that affected them most favorably. Hence in order to explain the natures of things, they found themselves obliged to form the notions of good, bad, order, confusion, hot, cold, beauty and ugliness. Also, because they believe themselves to be free, the following notions arose: praise and blame, sin and merit. I will explain the latter set of terms below after I have given an account of human nature, but the former set I will explain briefly now."
Which attributes do not interact with each other? Are you referring to Ethics, Of God, Proposition 28?:
"Proof:
Any particular thing, or anything that is finite and has a determinate existence, cannot exist or be determined to operate, unless it is determined to exist and operate by another cause, which is also finite and has a determinate existence; and this cause in turn is also unable to exist or be determined to operate, unless it is determined to exist and to operate by another thing, which also is finite and has a determinate existence, and so ad ?infinitum.
Scholium:
Some things must have been produced immediately by God, namely those things that follow necessarily from his absolute nature, and some things by the mediation of these first things, which still cannot either be or be conceived without God. It follows therefore, first, that God is the absolutely proximate cause of things immediately produced by him but not in their kind, as they say.24 For God’s effects cannot either be or be conceived (by p15 and p24c) without their cause. It follows, secondly, that God cannot properly be said to be the remote cause of particular things, except perhaps in order to distinguish them from those which he produced immediately or rather which follow from his absolute nature. For by a ?remote cause we mean the sort of cause that is in no way closely joined to its effect. But everything that is, is in God, and is also so dependent on him that without him they could neither be nor be conceived."
[All citations come from
Spinoza: Ethics: Proved in Geometrical Order (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)]
So, after all, it seems to me that God is different from the rest of things. So God's intellect is the cause of all things (nature); and God's intellect is different in essence and existence to those things. So we cannot say God's intellect is the same as nature.
Quoting Valentinus
It might escape the ''combination problem'', but it sounds to me that Spinoza cannot escape ''the hard problem of consciousness''. So God's intellect has nothing to do with what we call consciousness, feeling, will, etc. The question remains: if that's the case, how do we get from unconscious to conscious?
Quoting Valentinus
I've seen some videos and read some materials and they all say he believed everything was animated. On the other hand, God (the whole nature) has no consciousness. This sounds pretty much like panpsychism to me.
Spinoza doesn't claim it is the same. That is a statement you attribute to him.
Quoting Eugen
Spinoza outlines the connection to human experience through the propositions concerning modes and the distinction between causing oneself or being caused by another. In general, the "hard problem" would require subtracting from substance and then asking how to add it back again.
Quoting Eugen
You will have to show from what text you derive that interpretation. It seems like a misunderstanding of how Spinoza agreed and disagreed with Descartes on various issues.
1. It's arguable whether he does or not, I think. If the combination problem consists of how do little proto-consciousnesses come together to form a big consciousness like ours, I don't think Spinoza's troubled by it since modes like feelings and modes like microphysical events don't have causal contact or constitutive part-whole style relationships with each other to begin with. The conceptual framework in which the combination problem makes sense seems to me a category error when viewing it from (my terrible misreading of) Spinoza's perspective.
Quoting Eugen
2. Not self contradictory at face value. An analogy; nature consists in the myriad of attributes, a crowd consists of people, what the crowd's made of are all conscious, that doesn't mean the crowd is conscious. If you want to think of Spinoza's "mind" attribute in its entirety as a mind of an agent, it requires distorting the notion of an agent. That god has neither a mind nor a body in the sense an agent does, minds and bodies are (edit: immanent) manifestations of it.
Quoting Eugen
3. By construing the relationship between the rock impact and the person's flesh as mirroring the relationship between the person's perception of the rock's impact and the person's sensation of pain. There's the sequence of physical causes and the sequence of ideas.
If you want a historical angle on it, I think in context the big problems he's speaking about are the mind body problem, God's relationship to substance, God's freedom, good and evil, and whether God's an agent - in historical/political context I think he's as much a radical Jewish theologian and political activist as a metaphysician.
Attributes of Mind & Body belong to substance and not to the modes themselves. "Everything" is not conscious; rather mind can be attributed to any mode as "the idea of its body" as (the conception, or logic, of) its functioning, or purpose, attributed by a sufficiently complex body which complementarily – in parallel – is itself the 'conscious' "mechanism of mind". Like wave-particle complementarity, mind-body dual-aspects of modes are complementary descriptions, or concepts, (available to the human mode) attributed to modes that do not inhere in any mode. No "panpsychism", so no "combination problem".
I believe you're mistaken.
Quoting 180 Proof
S is an acosmist (Maimon, Hegel) and not a pantheist (or pan-en-theist or pan-en-deist) or philosophical materialist. Pandeist? :chin: Anyway, to wit:
[quote=Spinoza, from letter (73) to Henry Oldenburg]... But some people think the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as ‘Nature’ understood as a mass of corporeal matter. This is a complete mistake.[/quote]
(Emphasis is mine.)
[quote=Eugen] ... it possesses infinite consciousness (plus other infinite attributes), but it is not conscious and it has no will. Isn't this self-contradictory?[/quote]
Not at all.
Substance (i.e. "God") is not conscious in so far as consciousness is intentional, or directed at an object (i.e. consciousness of), because there is only itself and, therefore, nothing else to be conscious of. Likewise, it is both eternal (i.e. self-causal, its "essence is to exist" (E1d)) and infinite (i.e. without exteriority – is not the effect of a separate, external, cause – because there aren't any other substances which can affect it), necessarily not lacking anything whatsoever, and therefore cannot "will" without a lack to satisfy.
[quote=Eugen]3. Causation: these attributes don't interact with each other. So a rock hitting you doesn't cause you to think ''Damn rock! I'm hurt...", but a previous thought does. How could someone defend this statement?[/quote]
Plural-aspect ontology (re: summarized in Ethics section I Of God – parallel Attributes of Mind & Body discussed in section II).
The only problem with Spinoza's metaphysics is one that plagues almost all other Western speculative systems, namely that Spinoza proposes a kataphatic (rather than apophatic) ontology, or 'reified' absolute (à la Anselm). Though he denies ontological 'transcendence' by conceiving of immanent ontological distinctions (e.g. attributes & modes) without requiring separate ontologies (i.e. ontological transcendence), Spinoza's ontological immanence is itself 'positive' – kataphatic – as conceptualized sub specie aeternitatis (re: eternal-infinite attributes & infinite/finite modes-affects ... of substance), presupposing a perspective of 'existential transcendence' with respect to reasoning sub specie durationis, which seems to me a fundamental inconsistency in a 'metaphysics of non-transcendence'. For me, Spinoza's project ought to have (instead of kataphatically conceptualizing 'the necessarily real') apophatically conceptualized the 'necessarily not-real', and then stopped there with the proviso: whatever is not transcendent, or not impossible (i.e. unreal), is always, under specifiable sufficient conditions, possible.
I've watched some videos and they all claim that in Spinoza's metaphysics, you could easily call God nature.
Quoting Valentinus
I don't see any way out of this: how can an unconscious entity can cause consciousness? It's simply the same problem moving one step forward (or backward).
Quoting Valentinus
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
''In opposition to this dualism, the panpsychist views of Spinoza (1632–77) and Leibniz (1646–1716) can be seen as attempts to provide a more unified picture of nature. Spinoza regarded both mind and matter as simply aspects (or attributes) of the eternal, infinite and unique substance he identified with God Himself. In the illustrative scholium to proposition seven of book two of the Ethics ([1677] 1985) Spinoza writes:
a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing … therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought … we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes….''
I can provide you with some other videos and links if you want. They all say the same thing: he was a panpsychist, and he believed that one could call God nature.
1. In his view, every element possesses an infinite of attributes, including consciousness. So every atom that you contain is somehow alive. “all [individual things], though in different
degrees, are...animated”1 https://willamette.edu/arts-sciences/philosophy/past-colloquia/nwpc-2010/roelofs.pdf
“the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God; thus when we say, that the human mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing but that God...in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind has, this or that idea.”2
On the other hand, he claims that there's no real separation, and that everything is a whole. So how come the whole isn't conscious? If all atoms inside me have the attribute of consciousness and they form a greater conscious being (me), why stop here? You're saying that all people in a country are conscious, but the country isn't. Why not? If smaller conscious attributes somehow form a larger consciousness, why larger consciousnesses cannot form another larger one and so on to infinity?
Moreover, I don't see how Spinoza can avoid the either the combination problem or the hard problem, even if he manages to change a little bit the terms. How come smaller conscious attributes come together and form a bigger one? How come a non-conscious entity can cause consciousness?
Quoting fdrake
That's truly hard to bite. So stabbing your toe could be considered a thought causing another thought, namely ''Damn this needle''. I simply cannot see how this works.
Nonetheless, absolutely every video and material written says Spinoza thought everything was conscious. The problems still remain for me:
1. How come small conscious entities form larges conscious entities?
2. If 1 is true, and everything is a whole, how come that whole isn't conscious itself?
3. How come consciousness arises from a non-conscious thing?
I agree with you that "every atom would somehow be alive" would generate no ends of problems for Spinoza's account, but I don't think he's committed to the background of concepts you've used to pin the claim on him.
By my reckoning what you're saying would equivocate, per Spinoza, on what it means for an element to "possess an infinity of attributes" and what it would mean for nature to possess that infinity of attributes. I've made some remarks on a similar theme here. The bottom line, I think, is if you're trying to criticise Spinoza, you miss your target if you treat him like he believes predicating a property of a mode is the same mechanism as substance possessing an attribute.
It may turn out that making the distinction between mode properties and attributes isn't worthwhile, but if that's the source of your dispute with him, it's worth articulating in those terms.
Btw, if it feels like I'm contradicting @180 Proof here, go with his exegesis, he's done years and years more legwork on Spinoza than I have!
Quoting Eugen
I thought we'd be able to take it for granted that something which emerges from a collective of agents isn't necessarily conscious - like countries weren't. If you need more examples to block the syllogism, a handshake of agreement emerges from the actions of two agents, but is not conscious. Is that a clearer example?
One way to understand Spinoza's worldview is as an Enlightenment Era update to ancient notions of Panpsychism. However, the scientific knowledge, his model was based on, is now quite outdated. That's why, although I too hold an all-is-mind philosophy, I don't claim to be a panpsychist, in the Ancient Greek, or 17th century Enlightenment, or 20th century New Age sense. Instead, I have tried to update those old mind-is-prior-to-matter concepts in the light of modern Information Theory and Quantum Physics.
One advantage of Enformationism is that it bypasses the "combination problem", by avoiding the use of "Consciousness" to describe the "micro-experiences" of fundamental particles of nature. Instead, my thesis makes abstract Information the fundamental substance (or essence) of the physical + mental world, including human feelings. Whereas Spinoza labelled his "universal substance" as "God", my thesis uses the less metaphorically encumbered term "Information". When combined with modern Evolutionary Theory, Fundamental Information organizes & complexifies over time, so that a late development is the "recent" (cosmic timeline) emergence of human-level Consciousness. Hence, there's no need to explain how atoms and rocks "experience" their world. On the lower levels, Information exchange is equivalent to Energy emittance & absorption in matter. Any questions? :nerd:
Panpsychism : The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions of both East and West, and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. . . . . And whilst physicalism offers a simple and unified vision of the world, this is arguably at the cost of being unable to give a satisfactory account of the emergence of human and animal consciousness. Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
The Combination Problem :
The combination problem is most obviously a challenge for constitutive micropsychism, although as we shall see there are forms of it that threaten other kinds of panpsychism. According to constitutive micropsychism, micro-level entities have their own very basic forms of conscious experience, and in brains these micro-level conscious entities somehow come together to constitute human and animal consciousness. The problem is that this is very difficult to make sense of: “little” conscious subjects of experience with their micro-experiences coming together to form a “big” conscious subject with its own experiences.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
The EnFormAction Hypothesis : Emergent Evolution
http://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html
For Spinoza a rock is God but God is not a rock. God has intellect and consciousness (will) but no free will because Spinoza doesn't believe in free will, be it in God or humans. The only consciousness are our souls and God's divinity. A rock is is only conscious in that it comes out of God, who is conscious. You simply can't approach a work like this with the so-called hard problem and all that. Spinoza doesn't talk in those terms
I have read the books. I am not arguing on the basis of authority. You will have to forgive me for not being interested in your attempts to do so.
Nice.
I particularly like the Leibniz back flip at the end.
There is a departure from Anselm here in that the transcendent creator is presented as the first idea that occurs to one rather than something your mind can barely conceive.
:up:
Quoting Eugen
All I can say about this is that Spinoza didn't make videos to convey his philosophy. ("Ok, boomer!") :roll:
I don't understand this question.
How come a crowd of persons is not itself a person? Or trillions upon trillions of cells in a person but she is not also a cell? Or a barrel of apples isn't itself an apple?
( @last paragraph) In other words, Eugen, the premise of your question is what's known as a compositional fallacy.
How come walking "arises from" still legs? Or strawberry flavor "arise from" tasteless atoms? Or songs "arise from" breathing? Or stars "arise from" nebulae of helium gas? Or smoke "arises from" :fire: ...
What do you think about the etymology of the word 'substance' that is used in this context? As you're aware, the Greek original was ouisia, which is a form of the Greek 'to be'. it was then translated as 'substantia' into Latin, meaning 'that in which attributes inhere', thence into 'substance' in English. But if the word used was 'being' or 'subject' it is nearer in meaning to the original term than 'substance' which in normal usage means 'a type of material with uniform properties'. I mean, if Spinoza's philosophy was held to say that there is really only a single subject, it might convey the notion more accurately than a single substance. What do you think?
I think so. "this is an illusion to an idea found in latter cabalistic philosophy. These 'shard', also called 'shells', form the ten counterpoles to the ten sefiroth, which are the ten stages in the revelation of God's creative power. The shards, representing the forces of evil and dafkness, we're originally mixed with the light of the sefiroth." ( Carl Jung)
Modes break like vessels and are really vessels of attributes which subsist in the simple Intellect
Pure pantheism would have material modes and the infinite deity united perfectly as one being. Spinoza has infinite "attributes" subsisting between the Intellect and modes. He speaks of these in many elaborate ways (see the articles of modes and attributes in Spinoza on the Sanford website). Kaballah makes the attributes be described in 10 ways, and although Spinoza doesn't say that, we still have to understand him with the Jewish culture he was raised in. Speaking of God's attributes in these ways was very Jewish (and foreign to the Catholicism of the time)
I'm not here to criticize, I have nothing against Spinoza, especially when I myself used to believe in something very similar to his view. I'm here to understand. Every time I encounter a metaphysical idea related to consciousness (and spinozism is related to consciousness), I try to find out how is that related to materialism, panpsychism, epiphenomenalism, idealism, dualism, or if it's something totally new. I'm trying to find out how that metaphysical idea deals with the hard problem, the meta hard problem, the combination problem, the dissociation problem, or the interaction problem.
Insofar, depending on the interpretation one prefers, in my opinion, spinozism has to deal either with the hard problem (a non-conscious force causes consciousness), or the combination problem. Moreover, it always has to deal with epiphenomenalism, even if it's not a classical case of epiphenomenalism.
I'm not saying that by having to deal with those issues, a certain idea is automatically wrong. Maybe Spinoza manages to avoid those issues or to give a solution to them.
Quoting fdrake
I'm not arguing crowds are conscious, I don't think they are, but I think that's an argument against panpsychism. I'm just saying that I've repeatedly heard/read that in Spinoza was a panpsychist (even on Wikipedia) and that in his view everything has consciousness. I've also sent you a quote from Spinoza saying: “all [individual things], though in different degrees, are...animated”1
i. Now:
A. If he was a panpsychist - a rock is conscious, a mountain, which can be divided into rocks is also conscious. So on what basis two guys shaking hands cannot form a new conscious entity?
B. If S wasn't a panpsychist, please tell me where could I frame him? Was he a materialist, a dualist, an idealist? Can we consider his metaphysics totally out of these concepts, therefore avoiding all the issues those metaphysical ideas encounter?
If someone asked S about the hard problem or the combination problem, how would he respond?
Q1, 4, 5 - weak emergence, you can reduce and deduce everything from the properties of its components
Q 2,3 - how do you define flavor and songs?
I thought these kinds of questions have long disappeared from the materialists' list of arguments, but ''ok boomer''. :joke:
Look, I'm not even arguing that encountering the hard problem or the combination problem, aka compositional fallacy automatically makes metaphysics invalid. I'm not here to debate any problem. I'm just trying to find out how spinozism would answer these questions, or if it is related at all with them, like panpsychism or materialism.
So is spinozism something totally new in your opinion?
My guess is that you would consider it closer to materialism. If not, what makes it so different from materialism, panpsychism, dualism, idealism, or even epiphenomenalism?
How do you see it?
but is God conscious (not meta-conscious)? Does God will?
I don't think so. In the prologue to his Summa Theologia, Thomas Aquinas wrote:
Question 3
De Dei simplicitate
... Potest autem ostendi de Deo quomodo non sit, removendo ab eo ea quae ei non conveniunt, utpote compositionem, motum, et alia huiusmodi. Primo ergo inquiratur de simplicitate ipsius, per quam removetur ab eo compositio. Et quia simplicia in rebus corporalibus sunt imperfecta et partes, secundo inquiretur de perfectione ipsius; tertio, de infinitate eius; quarto, de immutabilitate; quinto, de unitate.
Of the Simplicity of God
Now it can be shown how God is not, by denying Him whatever is opposed to the idea of Him, viz. composition, motion, and the like. Therefore (1) we must discuss His simplicity, whereby we deny composition in Him; and because whatever is simple in material things is imperfect and a part of something else, we shall discuss (2) His perfection; (3) His infinity; (4) His immutability; (5) His unity.
And then he goes on to explore each of these numbered attributes. This is 13th century, and inspired a whole catholic literature about God's attributes.
The Kabbalah revival was barely a century old at the time of Spinoza. Even if Spinoza could have possibly heard of this movement, the Zohar was a secret book, not be to shared around and its sefirot tree was not "in the culture" yet.
Spinoza was also a rationalist who considered the Torah obsolete. He was excommunicated for it. It's a bit rich to see him appropriated by kabbalists.
It's not a problem at all. Indeed, it is a possible set of events. We don't know what a body can do-- if we had atoms which produced states of conciousness, we would have atoms which were "alive" in this sense.
What trips people up is misunderstanding the attribute of mind. It is NOT mind in the sense of an entity having thoughts or experiences. Those are modes of existence, of extension/body. In this sense, they aren't of the attribute of mind at all. If I'm speaking about how I have a present thought or feeling, I'm only speaking about modes of body.
The attribute of mind is a different distinction, dealing with relations of logic and meaning, not whether thinking beings exist or not.
:scream: :sweat:
You'd do well to read SEP's article on Spinoza. There's also a whole second article on his theory of emotion!
SEP has an article on Spninozian modes and one on Spinoza attributes. God for Spinoza was a phenomenal Intellect that can't see it own back. Aquuinas's God is the antithesis of the Kaballahs and I still maintain that Spinoza is closer to the later in more than terminology
They are modes of extension.
States which have been caused to exist. At some point, specific modes extension generate another mode of extension, a feeling.
There is no hard problem. Some modes of extension (e.g. brains, environment, etc.) result in others (e.g. a feeling) occurring. At least, that is the general point in the terms you are concerned with.
We could always get more specific, as Spinoza does sometimes, about more specific relations of the various causality we encounter about our feelings. But such empirical questions aren't in the concerns (indeed, they are thought outright impossible!) by the cult of the hard problem.
For me, that sounds like the hard prpblem. Caused by something unconscious?
And I still maintain that you don't know what you're talking about.
You're the one asking about the "hard" problem in relationship to Spinoza. Gee good luck k with that
The double bind of Gregory Bateson gets a new venue.
For Spinoza the soul creates consciousness in us. We are parallel to matter on one side and the Intellect (i.e.God). Matter is only conscious in that God thinks in it. A plant doesn't think. But God thinks in it
The difference between God and man is that we can't know anything positively about the interior life of God. What intellect and will are, in God's inner life, is not something we know of.
Conscious states are modes of body. To be conscious is to have existing states of conciousness which are caused by other things. It's just a causality, like rain making paper soggy.
In this case, we have some states which are not concious experience interacting to create a new existing state, a conscious state. No hard problem. The causality is question is some things which are not consciousness getting together to cause it.
There was a great thread here a couple weeks ago. Lots of great links cited in the question of "emergence" . It's a fascinating subject
A. If by ''conscious'' you mean meta-consciousness (the ability to self-reflect; abstract), and if by ''not conscious experience'' you mean qualia - you end up with the panpsychist so-called combination problem - how come small blocks of consciousness come together and form a higher consciousness.
B. If by ''not conscious experience'' you mean 0% consciousness (no qualia, no thought, no nothing you could associate with consciousness), then why did you use the word ''experience"? In this case, you've got the hard problem: how do you end-up with consciousness from combining things with 0% consciousness?
It seems to me from what you're saying that it's impossible to avoid either the hard problem or the combination problem.
I don't get this. Can you explain? What's "a previous thougth"? Any previous thought, or only select a few kinds of previous thoughts? What kind of thoughts? A certain kind or ... what you wrote I can't mind-mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXn6Q9cz548&t=223s
Watch from min.4:00.
It seems to me like a ''personal God'', with will and desires. It is exactly the opposite I've heard many saying.
Quoting Gregory
What does Spinoza ACTUALLY say? You claim he contradicts himself, which can be claimed even without any extra thinking:
"God .. has no will"
"They [god and humans] both have will"
So which is it? I can't argue with somebody (Spinoza in this case) if he speaks in terms of self-contradiction.
1. Long time ago, I had a pretty similar idea about reality;
2. Some smart people seem to embrace his idea;
3. There are some things about his view that I simply don't understand;
4. I was curious if he actually invented something that couldn't be touched by any of the problems of today's metaphysical ideas: the hard problem of materialism; the combination problem of panpsychism; the interaction problem of dualism; etc.
What exactly do you find wrong in Spinozism?
For starters, Spinoza said, or claimed, as you said, "God has will" and "God has no will". If someone (Spinoza in this case, as per your recall) so blatantly claims something and its exclusive opposite both to be true, then I am sorry, I can't take him seriously.
I quoted you, in my previous post to this, so please check the claim I make -- it is totally factual.
I believe that in regards to mind, his view rises many questions. Even in places where he had a clear opinion, like in the case of free will, if you dig deeper, you'll find some issues.
So far, I think he was actually an atheist trying to come with a new view in a world dominated by religion, but he didn't want to be too radical, so he came up with different version for the divine than the mainstream dogmatic religions, a view that leaves freedom of interpretation and that could make happy both spiritual and atheist people.
I mean neither.
Every conscious experience is its own unique state of existence. When a concious experience is produced, it isn't a combination of things which are already there.
It's an entirely new state formed or created. One which was not there prior. Small blocks never come together. Every instance of experience is its own state.
Produced by what?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Formed or created by what/who, why, how....?
In the common case of our experiences, our body responding to an environment. Light hits my eyes, soon after, the state of experience of me seeing something is formed.
The experience is a new state of matter generated. It is what the given relation of things does. Water, when combined with paper, produces new states, soggy paper which were not there before. Same here. Light, combined with out eyes (and other imvived parts of our body), generates a new state, a conscious experience of sight, which was not there before.
I say it makes conciousness because the brain (and other states of the body) are distinct things. When I look at a brain, I'm not looking at the experience of blue, purple or red.
Well, at the level your asking, that's how all causes work.
Why does the paper get soggy in the rain? The state of soggy paper results from the paper and rain interacting.
The hard problem is a mistep.People pose it because they fail to recognise concious states are just more existing instances of causality. The mistakenly think that generating conscious experiences is something states cannot do.
1. So you're saying Spinozism doesn't encounter the hard problem because it is different from materialism, or because the hard problem isn't a thing to begin with?
2. So you admit that in both Spinozism and materialism some combinations of unconscious matter create conscious states?
A better question: if one thinks the hard problem or the combination problem is true, can he still be a spinozist in regards to mind?
The latter, there has never been and will never be a hard problem.
Unconscious matter can create conscious states. It just one state matter (the experience) which is the conscious experience, following other states of matter (body, environment), which produce it.
1. Ok, so if that works, spinozism works, but if you're not right and there is a hard problem, then spinozism doesn't work, right?
2. In regards to consciousness, spinozism is consistent with materialism and not with panpsychism in your view, right?
We know there isn't a hard problem. We have to equivocate consious experience with something else to even suggest it. The hard problem is logically incoherent.
Depends, a coherent panpsychism is just a materialism with more states that produce conscious states. Spinozism is consistent with that.
I'm not interested if the hard problem is real or not, I am interested if spinozism can still work if the hard problem were true and materialism false.
So please give me a precise answer in this sense.
Thanks!
The question doesn't make sense because it is impossible for the hard problem to be true.
Spinzoa is a materialist, so if that were wrong, he would be in some sense wrong. But that's only a fiction: one cannot coherently pose an alternative to a non-reductive materialism. Other postions fall into one logical incoherence or another
Spinoza got his idea of the soul from Descartes. Someone CAN be an epistemic Spinozian while remaining a materialist. I think Hegel was exactly that. Pansychism is a whole different question. If you struggle with mind coming from matter, maybe a spiritual tradition that subscribes to a "soul" is more to your taste. Remember, there are thousands of religions in the world. You can look on Wikipedia to find a comprehensive list of them
Yes. Spinoza had two attributes we know of. Thought and matter. Both come from God and work parallel to each other. If you want to believe, as he did, that your mind and body are two substances that emanate from the divine altar, that's fine. There is nothing wrong with that
Yes. "Materialism" (re: natura naturata, or modes) is not ultimately real (re: natura naturans, or substance) in spinozism and, therefore, it's false to claim so. Also, in spinozism, "consciousness" does not emerge from "unconscious matter" so there's no "hard problem" (just as there's no "mind-body problem").
One way to approach the matter is that "consciousness" was/is not a property or quality that can/could be recognized as a thing in itself without describing a world it was happening in.
So, everyone has to start at the beginning. There are no artifacts.
:confused: ???
By ''we'' you mean like a secret society made up of people who think they know everything?:joke:
Not at all, thought it might seem that way with the amount of philsophers who try to suggest we know nothing about conciousness-- some of them would like the absence of the hard problem to be a conspiracy theory of a secret society.
But no. There is nothing esoteric or unjustified there, only description of conciousness itself.
But I'm not here to argue about that.
Thank you!
I think there are only 4 ways in which mind can exist (or not): materialism (mind emerges from matter); dualism/pluralism; panpsychism (small minds get together and form other minds); idealism (mind is fundamental, not emergent, and everything else emerges from it).
In your opinion, which one is closest to Spinoza's view? Or maybe you think he somehow manages to escape all 4 and come up with something totally different?
Thanks!
I think they confused the attribute of mind with the presence of an all encompassing thinking being, a finite casual actor, who wills things.
I was about to say there is a mismatch between what they think of as minds and Spinoza's attribute of mind. They are still thinking of mind as the existence of a thinking entity, not an immanent feature of all modes. In their terms, I suspect they would consider Spinzoa a materialist, atheist.
You expressed what I was thinking better than I did when you said:
Quoting 180 Proof
Whatever makes it possible before it happens exists without interruption afterwards. So the hard problem comes down to subtracting something at the beginning and being surprised by its addition.
Elaborate. I'm not following this ...
I don't believe it can be made plainer than this:
Quoting 180 Proof
And substance aka "God" is not an entity – not a "person" – but a process, as S says: nature naturing.
I suspect there is not a way to do so.
Eugen appears to a dualist who thinks anyone who has one substance, of which there are explicable instances of caused experiences (i.e. there is no hard problem), must be a materialist.
Ok, now I feel I know even more due to your explanation, thank you!
Indeed, as you put it, God is not an entity, therefore it doesn't think, will, and it cannot be called personal.
Moreover, one could argue that there's no God at all, there's just a process that can be called natural.
Now here's what I wasn't able to understand so far:
1. Why does a man have qualia and think, but a rock cannot have qualia or think?
2. If rocks do have qualia and think, why doesn't a planet have qualia and think?
3. Why not the whole universe can think and feel?
What's the fundamental difference between things that have consciousness and things that don't?
I'm neither a dualist nor any other of the four mentioned. I'm pretty much an agnostic trying to find answers. I do understand the 4 types of ideologies I've mentioned and their problems, but I still don't understand Spinoza. It seems to me that there's no logic in his view of the mind. For me, it just sounds like ''It's like that because it's like that''.
Quoting Eugen
In terms of humans: the distinction between conscious beings and non-conscious ones doesn't parse according to Spinoza's categorisation of things. Consciousness isn't some magical faculty in Spinoza, it's just a way a human body's constitutive relation can be effected by stuff and effect itself. It's more homeostatic feedback, less light of the mind. It's more about being an agent - an effector of itself and other beings, and the aspects of being an agent (thoughts, feelings) are couched precisely in those terms of effectivity. Contrast this to a causally isolated Cartesian "soul" or a "free will" which is freed from materiality.
In terms of broader metaphysical categories, ideality vs materiality:
For Spinoza, your mind and your body are both your processes, both expressions of you, neither body nor mind derives from or is subordinate to the other. Mind and Extension are both attributes of substance, ways of conceiving its nature. It is that they are attributes of substance that allows the following kind of example: (with some butchery), if you look at an alcoholic and see someone addressing their sorrows with booze, you see them in the attribute of Mind. If you look at an alcoholic and see an electrochemical process requiring ethanol, you see them in the attribute of Extension. Further for Spinoza, the two motivations of the alcoholic are structurally the same - both strivings, one of an electrochemical process for ethanol, one of a human being for consolation. They're the same being (mode), described under different aspects, neither more real or fundamental than the other, neither causally antecedent to the other.
I hope this clarifies things
Not quite, the existence of an alcoholic who drinks in conjunction with having sorrows is under the attribute of extension. It's meaning in ideas is under the attribute of mind.
Similarly, the existence of electrochemical process requiring ethanol is under extension. But it is also a mode, its significance in ideas, of the attribute of mind. All modes are under the attribute of mind, not just instances of human conciousness.
1. A rock might have experience and think. It's down to whether a rock exists with experience, just as with a human. (a lot of the time people just think rocks do not).
2. Answer as above. Planets can. They just have to exist with experience (people usually think this is false).
3.Just as above , only with the universe.
The difference is the existence of experiences. Beings with experiences exists with experiences. Those without experiences, have no existing experiences. An entity goes from concious to non-conscious when their experiences no longer exist (e.g. an unconscious person, a dead person, etc.). An entity goes from non conciousness to concious when its experiences come to exist.
Quoting Eugen
Spinoza might say 'Because it is not in the essence of rocks to have qualia or think as humans do, if at all.' In other words, what makes them distinct kinds of entities is the different degrees of complexity which constitute each, and that the 'functional complexity' of humans is above a threshold sufficient for them to "have qualia" and to "think".
Rocks do not; and even if rocks did, inferring that planets would on that basis is a compositional fallacy or hasty generalization fallacy (e.g. cells that make up your body undergo mitosis but your body does not periodically self-divide into two bodies) premised to begin with on a category error of referring to astronomical bodies (re: "planets") in terms of functions peculiar to ecology-bound organisms (re: "qualia and think"). :roll:
Same as 2. Also, according to Spinoza, "the universe" is an infinite mode and therefore lacks "think" and "feel" essences appropriate to its constituent finite modes like human beings.
Some are 'functionally complex' enough to manifest self-reflexive phenomenal awareness (i.e. "consciousness") and some – the astronomically vast majority – are not. The "fundamental difference", Spinoza might say, is their different essences which, in contemporary computational or systems theoretic terms, correspond to (I term it) 'different degrees of functional complexity'.
update:
Well, I won't waste any more of your time, Eugen, trying explain something that is not even worth your time to adequately study in the first place in order for you to comprehend that spinozism is about 'the logical structure of reality' – that it is, in his sense, logic – which he attempts to demonstrate. Spinoza ain't, at any point, just making shit up, as you suggest. :shade:
:up:
There isn't much room to speculate with pure pantheism. Hegel explicates this point at the end Philosophy of Mind
Ok, now I pretty much understand. It sounds exactly like materialism. You just need enough complexity and some unconscious elements will form a conscious element. At least, in materialism you have evolution as the basis of explanation, while in spinozism, it is exactly like I thought: ''it's like this because it's like this''. It's in the nature of things to be like that, it's even a threshold, something called ''complex'' (whatever that means), but the whole thing is not complex enough to be conscious...
Another thing is that you get the attribute consciousness/mind, from something ultimately unconscious. That again sounds familiar and I personally don't see how that can happen without answering the question ''How can consciousness/the attribute of consciousness arise from something non-conscious?". I guess in spinozism the answer is simple: because this is how things are.
Now why would one arrive to these conclusions? What's the logic behind all those ideas? So far, spinozism sounds very weird to me.
Flawless metaphysics.
Ah yeah, that's the cliff notes version of Spinoza For Dummies. :meh:
Yes. Grappling with his ideas more thoroughly will make what you previously thought seem weird to you. :razz:
The reason I say you are a dualist is because you hold experiences are a different type of reality, such that they cannot be affected, explained, related to or accounted for by other things that exist. You hold experiences to be other to the things which are caused to exist by other things.
You have a dualism between the realm of experience and a realm of non-conscious things.
Chalmers argued that the "problem" could not be solved by reducing the fact of experience to a result of functions:
"When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the
hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance
of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the
cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination,
categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered
question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple
explanation of the functions leaves this question open."
This is a good observation and the paper goes on to suggest other approaches including the Bateson information parallel between "knowers" and what is known. But if such approaches are possible, the starting point of physical and computational functions that were deemed inadequate for the task at the beginning seem arbitrary in their subtraction from what is possible. I can take away something from the beginning and give it back to myself later on.
So God is conscious after all, the only problem is we cannot understand its consciousness. That's very different than what 180 Proof and TheWillowOfDarkness are saying here.
This is also one of my issues with spinozism - it leaves so much room for interpretation.
If by reality you mean matter, then yes, I don't believe consciousness can be described with that. That's the hard problem. I could be a dualist, but who knows, maybe I'm an idealist and I don't believe in matter at all.
''We know'' materialism is false because of the hard problem and panpsychism is also very problematic. But I'm open-minded to other ideas, this is why I want to understand spinozism better. The problem is that it seems to be highly interpretable and so far I think it is not a serious view in regards to the mind. But who knows... maybe I'll get more information.
Why do you expect consciousness to come come only from another consciousness. In theism God creates consciousness from nothing, not from his nature. If a personal God can create from *nothing*, a consciousness should be able to come out out of an impersonal God
How come a blind God, with no will or with no power to act on its will can be called God in the first place? That's simply nature, it's a materialist view. How can unconscious nature create consciousness? The ''intellect'' you're talking about doesn't sound to me like an intellect at all, and the fact that ''it cannot be understood'' is so vague and leaves so much room for interpretation.
For me it is simple: is consciousness fundamental or emergent? The question covers 100% of the possibilities.
Everything that possesses 0% consciousness is simply nature, nothing divine in it.
degrees, are...animated” - that's what Spinoza says and that's exactly panpsychism.
Your point is well taken that 'philosophy itself is not (equipped to effectively engage) in the 'theoretical explanation' business." In the paper I linked to, Chalmers says he doesn't want to give up on developing testable models. Toward that end, he seems to point toward the sort of work Tononi and Seung are doing with information systems as possibilities. What I was trying to wonder about is: If those efforts bear fruit, isn't that going to change the parameters of the models Chalmers says could handle the "easy" parts?
There is a divine spark in all of us and I call that God. But it emerges from matter. Anything can become actual from potentiality
I agree that Spinoza emphasizes that a vast sea separates human experience from whatever that might mean for the God we are in. But Spinoza goes to a great effort to explain the difference as a category mistake rather than simply a measure of how tiny my mind is compared to God's in the style of Descartes and Anselm.
Probably.
So that's exactly materialism, the only difference is that in materialism there's no ''divine spark".
But something divine from matter...
Quoting Gregory
Conscious intellect - now if a thing is conscious... how in the world isn't personal as well? It doesn't even have to be meta-conscious. That's idealism.
So far, I've seen S being considered ''The father of the German idealism''; on wikipedia and most of the sources he was a panpsychist; even though almost nobody mentions him as a materialist, there is a possibility.
I personally believe he tried to find something like a magic formula impossible to falsify, so he took elements from everywhere and left space for interpretation. I see no difference between him and those who say ''It depends how on your interpretation of the Bible".
Sláinte, tw :party:
You cannot adopt both a mainstream religion and sponozism. Except that, you can be an idealist and argue Spinoza was a great idealist, you can argue he was a panpsychist, and of course you could also say he was a materialist, I've seen even people arguing his metaphysics had dualist aspects in it.
He was against religious dogma, but other than that, he tried to reconcile the goat, the cabbage and the wolf.
That's just my opinion SO FAR.
Whether extension for Spinoza can have life, I do not know. We have souls ("thinking") that he says does not come from extension (matter) however. Intellect comes from the attribute of thinking. So no he is not an idealist or a materialist
My comment would be there is no effective difference, much like Kant's critique of the ontological argument-- one can say there is a necessary real. Or one can say there is a necessary unreal. Only in this case, the difference is only a flavour of description, since this ontological argument is not referencing a difference of possible, counterfactual states (God exist vs God does not exist). Real or unreal, one is merely making an argument for a distinction of absolute infinitity. Either side is just as committed to a positive claim about a distinction known.
I would actually extend such analysis to other philosophers who give ontological arguments. Even those who do make a confusion for the question of whether God exists or not. No doubt they are mistaken, but the mistake is not a presupposition.
Rather, they have confused one distinction they are trying to describe, the necessary infinite, with another distinction they care about, an existing finite entity of a deity of some kind. Insofar as this goes, I don't think anyone ever holds a postion of presupposition. I think the critique philosophers are making presupposition is one of the biggest mistakes in the canon. They aren't presupposing, but confusing one thing for another.
Ahh... ok. Dependent on matter in the sense of ''a bullet in your brain will have some efects''?
Quoting Gregory
Here's the thing frustrating me because I don't understand it: you're mentioning the attribute of thinking, which is one of the infinite attributes. My question is why are there infinite attributes - did something cause them, or they just are?
a. if something caused them, my issue with this is that whatever that is, it cannot create thought and consciousness if it possesses 0% consciousness. Here, you're saying that God's intellect is conscious, so it makes sense, but many (as you've seen in this OP) won't agree with that.
b. nothing caused them, they're there because they're there and they act the way they do because they act the way they do. It assumes to many things.
Panpsychism, in the sense you are thinking, is too reductive for Spinoza. Spinoza says all things are animated even when experience does not exist at all.
This sort of panpsychism makes the same sort of reductive error as a reductive materialist: just as the materialist claims mind is "just the brain", this panpsychism claims mind is "just experience".
Spinoza point is everything is always animated in mind. Even when thinking or experiencing beings do not exist, reality still has its significance in concepts, in the meanings which might appear to experiences. Mind is not experience and is given without experiences.
Then we call it ''mind'' in virtue of what?
Itself. It is mind.
This is why there is no hard problem for Spinoza. Matter does not create mind. Both matter (attribute of extension) and mind (attribute of thought) are necessary.They are never created or caused to come into existence from their absence.
Experiences are just some modes of both matter (in that they are existing things, caused from others) and mind (in that they have a certain meaning in concepts and logical relations).
2. I don't really understand this ''are just some modes of matter and mind''. For me, it sounds like: some combinations of atoms form/are rocks which don't have experience, and other formare humans who have experience. How come this combination doesn't give rise to experience and that gives rise to experience? It seems like the answer is: ''It just does''. How do you get from non-experience to experience? Using this way of answering things, when asked how come two different substances interact, one could answer ''they just do''.
Now it's very important for me to mention that I don't have the intention here to deny S by using the hard problem, or even to argue that the hard problem exists or not, if it has a solution or not.
He explains this in the Ethics:
tl;dr-the divine intellect is the clockwork of the universe, its thoughts are the formation of patterns and what it means to be patterned in any way, it unfolds inexorably, an unstoppable force, as anything that could stop it would be part of it.
1. We are talking about is mind, not ping pong. If we talked about ping pong, we would be describing something else entirely. Why call it mind? That's what we are trying to talk about.
2. It means experiences are of both matter and mind, rather than being a substance opposed to matter. It is not a question of combination because every experience is its own thing, a mode of matter and mind. Whether that experience be of a human or of a rock.
The point is S denies the hard problem. If you think there is a hard problem, you disagree with Spinoza.
That is very helpful to me. The absolute infinity doesn't have a dancing partner in an Antinomy.
*Valentinius smacks forehead*
If you feel that Spinoza should have known of the "hard problem" then either you think he was wrong or you believe he thought God was conscious. BECAUSE he shrouded God in mystery, the second option is open
Ok, that clarifies things. Thanks :smile:
Let me present it from a different angle. For the sake of the argument, let's assume the hard problem and/or the combination problem are both true. In this case, in your interpretation of S, can spinozism still resist?
For example, in TheWillowOfDarkness's view, if the hard problem is true, then spinozism is wrong.
Like a rainbow from God's substance, everything comes from God's attributes. Modes are phenomena and attributes are noumena. So your soul comes right from God's rainbow (the "thinking" color) so yes, it resists the hard problem. Assuming (here's the caveat) that God's inner life is conscious. I think for Spinoza it is
But if we take the other interpretation, where God has 0 will, 0 consciousness, 0 intelligence, can S still be right IF the hard/combination problem is true?
Of course not
I am not sure what you think the "hard problem/combination problem" to be.
In the essay I linked to previously, Chalmers says our experience of consciousness cannot be reduced to a function of our present scientific models developed through hypothesis and experimentation. In your comments made so far, I can't make out how the truth or falsity of that statement establishes the basis to evaluate the philosophy of Spinoza.
The way you put it is far removed from the way Chalmers has presented the problem.
The limits of those models don't establish the limits or capacity of what the models are trying to explore. From this perspective, one cannot prove or disprove that the experience of consciousness derives from "matter." The limit in the ability of those models to reduce consciousness to a function of the phenomena that is narrowly defined through them resembles a viscous circle to some degree.
A testable hypothesis needs to be narrowly defined for the results of experiments to be measured and qualified. The "function" that the phenomena is reduced through is possible because of what the model excludes in order to get closer to what is happening. If a model excludes the phenomena of conscious experience upon an operational basis in order to delineate what is being observed, it cannot be too surprising to find out later that the model doesn't explain consciousness very well.
There is also a circular motion to be observed in your use of "matter" as something that has self evident meaning. The word has developed its meaning through a relationship to something that is "not-matter." For Aristotle, the relationship was expressed as form/matter. For Descartes the relationship was Mind/matter. You seem to be putting Consciousness in one box and Matter in other as a starting point and then asking others to explain what connects them. I don't see how one can move from your presuppositions to any other result than where you started. I cannot improve upon Willow of Darkness' account of the dualism that embraces.
Does that mean you agree with my comments?
Quoting Eugen
I don't understand the use of the term "spinozism". Unlike "Platonism", we are not discussing a class of thinkers who based their ideas upon Plato's works. Spinoza's philosophy is being discussed here by itself.
According to Spinoza, you are not in a position as to ask whether consciousness is an attribute created by a conscious or a non-conscious God because you are a caused being. See Proposition 18, Book 1, Ethics:
"Since God’s intellect is the sole cause (as we have shown) both of the essence and of the existence of things, it must necessarily differ from them both in regard to their essence and to their existence. For the thing caused differs from its cause precisely in what it has from its cause. For example, one human being is the cause of the existence of another human being but not of his essence; for his essence is an eternal truth.
Therefore they can completely agree in their essence; but in their existence they must differ. This is why if the existence of one comes to an end, the existence of the other will not therefore come to an end. But if the essence of one could be taken away and be made false, the essence of the other would also be taken away. This is why something that is the cause of both the essence and the existence of an effect must differ from that effect both in respect of essence and in respect of existence. ?But God’s intellect is the cause of both the essence and the existence of our intellect. Therefore God’s intellect, insofar as it is conceived as constituting the divine essence, differs from our intellect both in respect of essence and in respect of existence, and it cannot agree with it in anything except name, and this is what we set out to prove. One may make the same argument about will, as anyone may easily see."
Thanks for that quote. I read Spinoza from a library book. God and our intellect are more alike than a plant and His intellect, but we don't know WHAT God is
According to Spinoza, natura naturans (i.e. the logical generative-causal structure of reality, or substance) is what we mean – all we can rationally mean – when we say "God".
Yes but knowing what it's like to be God is what knowing what "God" really means
That sort of projection of human experience is precisely what Spinoza went to great effort to reject.
It's not inappropriate to wonder what God's inner life is. Spinoza only said we can't know anything from such mullings
Spinoza went further than that by diagnosing the "wonder" as the result of thinking of God as making stuff to satisfy our ends. To that extent, he is not building a fence we can look through but cannot pass; He is saying that the very speculation is a category mistake.
I don't recognize any of my previous statements in your reply.
Does it really matter if he is conscious or not? Even atheist try to live "by His rules" for the most part. You seem obsessed with knowing if God is conscious and believing that consciousness comes only from consciousness. I think you're wrong on both points
For me, obviously yes.
Quoting Gregory
Why His and not "his"? Does it make any difference?
Quoting Gregory
I am not here to debate my beliefs. I am asking questions. No, I don't believe something with no consciousness can give rise to consciousness. It makes no sense to me and maybe I'm indeed wrong. Does it matter? I asked a simple question in which my personal view doesn't matter.
Again, I asked a simple question, but he avoids a clear answer.
Fortunately, you didn't do the same.
I gave a clear answer. It involved challenging the way you are asking the question.
You aren't doing any work here, just repeating what you think without taking on challenges to your point of view.
Does Spinoza name the category error involved in asking about God's self-awareness?
He describes the error from different points of view. I am not sure about it as an act of "naming." That is an interesting question. I will think about it.
But for the purposes of the present discussion, the error is described in Proposition 18 when he says:
"Therefore God’s intellect, insofar as it is conceived as constituting the divine essence, differs from our intellect both in respect of essence and in respect of existence, and it cannot agree with it in anything except name."
That passage suggests the act of naming is one of the elements that need to be brought into a circle of doubt.
Guys, look! My problem is the following: I am not intelligent enough to conceive more than 2 variants for this one:
A. Either God is conscious and all His creation is the result of His will, He knows about the universe, and even if we couldn't truly comprehend or understand Him, His Intellect is something closer to what we call consciousness than what we call ''dead matter''. And no, that doesn't mean I'm a dualist, I'm just using this language to make a difference.
or
B. God does not know, will, feel, etc., case in which I simply can't see any reason why we should call this God God in the first place, I don't think ''Intellect'' is a proper notion, and there's absolutely nothing spiritual about it. All of these words are pure worthless metaphors for something we could easily define as matter. I don't know how one could convince a materialist that this view is different from his/hers.
C. If there is indeed a third way, one should explain to me how that can happen using some rational arguments, not just by saying ''something that cannot be understood", because that's just BS.
If the answer is B, then how can:
1. How can God or anything for that matter be radically different from what we could call matter or consciousness? And by matter, I don't mean atoms, it could be anything from fields to energies, laws of nature, quantum chaos, whatever ...
2. How can an infinite of attributes come into existence from something radically different from each of these attributes?
Why are you trying to find your philosophical position based on the esoteric writings of a long dead Jewish writer? Just wondering
1. More of a personal one - when I was 18 and didn't care about absolutely anything except for having fun, I thought about God for around 5 minutes and I actually came to a conclusion pretty similar to Spinoza's. It was ''something we could not comprehend''. ''He is everything - both finite in infinite; self-created; it's both different and the same with the Universe; etc.''. Of course, for me it wasn't something I had contemplated before, I guess I just wanted a God who includes everything and in which everyone could find his own truth. And that's the thing: I think Spinoza left too much space for interpretations.
2. Let's start from the following premise: I think the hard problem is real. I believe it's impossible to get consciousness from something with 0% consciousness. I also believe the composition fallacy is real. Starting from this premise, I just want to know if there's an interpretation of Spinoza in which you can get consciousness from something with 0% consciousness, intention, or will even if the hard&combination problems are true. If that's possible, then how? And when I'm saying how, I don't want an answer explaining me how the hard problem is false, I want something that passes the hard problem undetected.
Nobody knows what Spinoza would have said the the "hard" problem. I don't think it's a hard problem to begin with. Why shouldn't concsciousness come from non-consciousness? Could you please write a paragraph explaining it's onto-logically impossible for consciousness to come from matter which has formed into a brain? New things arise. Red and blue make a brand new color (purple). What in the world is no difficult about consciousness coming from energy in the brain and spinal cord? I don't get it. People nowadays fixate on consciousness and ask "why this instead of nothing? What explains it". I don't think they will ever get an answer by fixating on it from that angle. Better to give up the problem and come at it from a different place latter in life
I wanted to ignore your comment and just say that I don't want to explain my position. And I don't have to, because I'm here to ask about Spinoza, not to explain my beliefs. But honestly, your example with red and purple... I can't accept it anymore.
Dude...
1. What you're calling ''red'' is a certain structure that is red because you PERCEIVE it that way. There's nothing ''new'' in that structure if you exclude qualia from the equation.
2. Quoting Gregory
No man, no new things arise, that would be magic. Everything, except consciousness and things related to consciousness, is explainable in terms of weak emergence. Everything can be, in principle, explained through its components.
THE END
I've already told you that you won't find answers in Spinoza. His view of God is to ambiguous. Also, I think you dont understand emergence because you dont know how to philosophize properly. This thread has become ridiculous
1. weak emergence - everything can be explained in principle through its parts and there is no extra-property to that new thing. Imagine a wall composed of bricks. That wall is just the sum of its bricks, nothing more. Calling it a wall is just language.
2. strong emergence (aka. magic) - you get something ''extra''. It's like adding numbers and the result will be their sum + something extra. It's like adding non-sentient bricks and getting a wall with feelings. That's what I call magic.
I maybe don't know how to philosophize properly, but your example with red and blue was anti-logic. I can't believe you really wrote that stupidity. You should have stopped writing after you gave me your final answer to my question. Seriously...
There's nothing so sophisticated about emergence that would make me change my mind if I found out about it. That's just silly.
You are the one who doesn't understand the emergence and your examples prove it.
False on every point. All your questions on this thread have been answered. As for emergence, dead matter makes the subconscious mind and then consciousness. Matter is magical but you're just mad because you dont get it
Ok, you believe in magic. I agree with you, this thread has become ridiculous.
You really can't figure out that your logic is calling you to Christianity? Jezz
I've already been down your road
You did, and some others did it as well. I admit that. I just wanted to know clear answer, like a YES or NO. And then you came back. Why?!?!?
Quoting Gregory
So now you're a magical Christian? :rofl:
I didn't go back. You keep asking questions you already had the answer to. I am no longer a Christian BTW. Im a materialist atheist, as I've already said. And I wouldnt want to be in your head
Quoting Gregory
That was exactly what you did. You answered my question, I thanked you, and then I asked another guy a question. And you came back, watch the thread.
I am not going to get into details with you because you can't think philosophically yet. Go read a Bible instead, bc that's were you mental bent leads to
You can't think yet. Period.
Quoting Gregory
If reading the Bible made you the way you are now, then no, thanks!
Panpsychism has everything being conscious or exhibiting consciousness to some degree. Spinoza's metaphysics does not have everything being conscious or exhibiting consciousness, exhibiting the attribute of mind; being grasped ideally; isn't the same thing as exhibiting a degree of consciousness; having a degree of awareness like an individual agent.
So when Spinoza says: "PROP. I. Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing." He proves it with:
The movement is:
(1) Particular thoughts (in a conditioned way) express the nature of God.
(2) (1) Implies that God therefore possesses the attribute of thought.
(3) that attribute then facilitates the apprehension of the chain of inference from (1) to (2) - from expression to possession, God as the simultaneous generator and sine qua non of that attribute.
tl;dr: a mode expressing the attribute of thought doesn't imply that it exhibits any degree consciousness. A particular thought, like my enjoyment of last night's Scotch bonnet chillis, exemplifies the attribute of mind/thought but is not itself conscious.
I want to see if his vision can be framed in materialism, idealism, etc. or in any metaphysics of the mind, or if it is somehow something truly original and which does not suffer from any fundamental problem of the mind.
I. Quoting fdrake
- I understand the sentence grammatically and it seems identical to saying that God thinks, but it seems to me that it contradicts the idea of ??an impersonal and unwilling God. If we assume that God is the same as the universe, does that mean the universe is thinking? Can the universe have a thought like "I am the universe"?
II.
- here it seems to me that you say that in fact, the universe does not think as a person, but that it possesses the capacity to involuntarily create certain conditions for "thinking things", and one of those conditions is the human form. But if that's the case, I don't see how one might not fall into materialism or panpsychism - that is, one form / combination may think and feel, and another may not. On what criteria is the transition from an object that does not think, such as a stone, to one that thinks? What is the fundamental difference between the two in S's vision?
III.
- this is a type of sentence that I can't even understand with google translate. Possibly also due to the lack of philosophical language as well. Fortunately, I think I understand the main idea, which is that nature is thinking. Again, I don't understand exactly what that means. Does the universe have thoughts? If so, then why do we consider it impersonal? I understand that we could consider that it does not have an ego, but is it correct to resemble the universe with a giant / infinitely living organism that thinks? If so, wouldn't that mean idealism?
I sense that I and III are misinterpretations of mine and that II is closer to what you meant. That is, it is a universe that does not know that it exists, does not feel, does not suffer, does not want, but somehow has the potential to, under certain conditions, give rise to things that possess all that is mentioned, due to its attributes. But I still don't see how anyone could give an explanation for the difference between a stone without qualia and an animal with qualia without resorting to an explanation either: materialist, panpsychist or idealist. Do you think that Spinoza can get rid of these ideologies when it comes to the mind? If not, what do you think his vision is closer to?
What is your native language?
It's not really your fault that you're being misinterpreted, people have a habit of "not understanding" something as a means of criticising it. Expressing lack of comprehension is an effective way of disavowing something and belittling it. And I can't understand how anyone would think otherwise. :wink:
Quoting Eugen
The universe "has" thoughts like the thought I just had about dinner.
It isn't the universe that thinks like a human being, the universe has the attribute of mind which is conceived through us. This goes back to the first comment I made to you regarding Spinoza's attributes and Spinoza's modes, to say that substance "has" the attribute of thought is to say that thought's part of the essence of universe, it's not to say that substance has thoughts like "omg I can't wait for the next season of Witcher on Netflix" as a whole being, which would be a mode of thought - a particular thought.
Spinoza says no to: "I want eggs tonight" the universe thought.
Spinoza says yes to: ("I want eggs tonight" I thought) is something the universe did.
So, the universe can "have" thoughts if the thought of an agent like me is considered as one of its modes, like my thought "omg I can't wait for the next season of the Witcher on Netflix" is still part of the universe. The universe thinks as thinking beings, the thoughts of thinking beings occur as part of it. Those thoughts express the attribute of mind.
So my question still remains. How come some modes have thoughts and others don't? What's the fundamental difference between a human being and a rock in Spinoza's view?
Could Spinoza's idea survive if the hard problem or the combination problem were true? What do you think, ?
Bluntly, I think for Spinoza "they just do", thought is part of the essence of God, rather than a derivative property coming from the combination of finite modes (like neurons and tissues in our bodies).
I also think it's the case that "how do finite modes combine together in order to express the attribute of mind" would be seen as a category error in Spinoza's terms, things of one attribute (extension) don't interact together to produce another (thought). Things (modes) with both aspects can interact, but the extension of one doesn't cause the thought of another, so to speak. Contrast a doctrine like emergence, which says that if you get enough of the right kind of matter doing the right kind of thing, you get consciousness. In emergence you get the aggregate interaction of bodies causing thought. In Spinoza, that would make the attributes productively interact, so that logic of non-delimitation would come into play.
I think, much more tentatively here than before:
Spinoza says no to: Stuff interacts in a human body alone to produce thought.
Spinoza says yes to: Stuff interacts in a human mode during the production of thoughts.
Why no to the first and yes to the second? A human considered as a mode is both a thinking thing and an extended thing, the human body with the mind truncated out of it - a mass of interacting tissues and electrochemical signals - isn't a thinking thing, it's the body of a thinking thing.
Doubtlessly you will find this answer unsatisfying, but the human being is a thinking thing and the rock isn't.
I don't know if you're going to find "bodies interacting to produce thoughts" in Spinoza, to my mind his metaphysics is in part a clever attempt to neuter that issue!
Quoting Eugen
I don't think the hard problem or combination problem are particularly relevant to Spinoza's thought. The claims that "bodies can interact to produce thoughts", or "thoughts are only derivatives of the motion of unthinking substance", or "little conscious things interact to produce big ones" are already in contention with his system. If you take his system at face value, neither the combination problem nor the hard problem could be articulated without a category error. If you take the hard problem and the combination problem as genuine problems, you're already thinking in a manner opposed to Spinoza's philosophy.
That was my intuition at the beginning.
So he didn't have a different explanation for mind, he just assumed that this is how things were.
It is like one would ask a dualist ''How come matter and soul interact?" and the dualist would reply with: ''They just do". Right?
Well, there's an argument for why they can't interact causally at the start of Spinoza's Ethics. It's not as axiomatic as I stated it to you, but it is "close" to the axioms so to speak.
If I asked S. ''How come you have the attribute of mind in the first place?'' and ''How come some combinations of matter (modes) have consciousness and others don't", he would give me the same answer as a dualist would give me when asked about the interaction issue, namely ''They just do". So in both cases, it is a primary assumption with no other grounds. Am I right?
If you asked Spinoza "how come God has the attribute of mind?" he'd respond like he does in the Ethics:
[quote="Spinoza, Ethics Part II'] PROP. I. Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing.
Proof.—Particular thoughts, or this and that thought, are modes which, in a certain conditioned manner, express the nature of God (Pt. i., Prop. xxv., Coroll.). God therefore possesses the attribute (Pt. i., Def. v.) of which the concept is involved in all particular thoughts, which latter are conceived thereby. Thought, therefore, is one of the infinite attributes of God, which express God's eternal and infinite essence (Pt. i., Def. vi.). In other words, God is a thinking thing. Q.E.D.[/quote]
That's a much different question from "why is this particular being conscious and that being is not?". For Spinoza:
Pace @180 Proof, you're gonna get some kind of appeal to "sufficient functional complexity", or the "compound(ing) of a great number of ideas" being constitutive of the mind (mind = idea of the body), for an account of the nature of our (human) agent-hood/mindedness, but if you really wanted to zoom in on "are those individual ideas conscious? If they're not, how do they combine to produce a conscious agent?", you're probably running orthogonal to Spinoza's concerns; he's got some "bunch of ideas interact to produce a mind" thing going on, but not "bunch of particles interact to produce a mind" thing going on, nor a "bunch of little tiny conscious/pre-conscious things interacting to produce a conscious thing" going on. Imputing those latter two goings on to Spinoza misinterprets him. Minds are ideas interacting, but those ideas are not thinking things, they're the product of thinking things per definition III in Part II:
Proof.[/quote]
So he's basically saying that God has thoughts because humans have thoughts and humans are part of God, right?
Why does complexity give rise to consciousness and thoughts? If I asked him this question, he would answer ''It just does", right?
:up:
I didn't intend to give the impression that I was criticising your exegesis, I think we agree on "Spinoza 101" things! My intention was to reference your posts to provide a kind of "united front" for @Eugen here to engage with.
Thanks for the reply.
When I say I don't understand something, I don't mean I don't understand it because that thing is stupid, but because I don't really understand it. I am not a native, and although my English is decent, my philosophical language often causes me problems. Sometimes I have to read something several times to understand it (this does not guarantee success either) even when it comes to the text I read in my mother tongue. I do not intend to discredit a certain vision or convince anyone even if it comes with counter-arguments. So I have no intention of convincing anyone of anything and I would gain absolutely nothing if I convinced someone of something. So as I said, feel free to call me an idiot, but not a cheat.
From your last posts, I understand that the appearance of consciousness (qalia, thoughts, etc.) is due to complexity. That is, one mode (an atom) is not conscious, but another mode (consisting of a "complex" combination of atoms) is conscious.
Which statement is correct?
A. Is a "complex mode" (human) a combination of other modes - the extension/body is composed of smaller extensions and the human mind (consciousness) is composed of other minds?
If this is true, then is it correct to say that consciousness arises from a complex combination of unconscious / according to Spinoza, is consciousness reducible to parts without consciousness?
B. Human body or mind are not composed of other modes, and they are irreducible.
Thank you. Yes, I'm trying to keep it simple, I have to admit I don't have enough patience and philosophical language to read Spinoza, so I'm asking simple questions and I'm looking for simple answers.
The problem is that ''neither'' kind of breaks the limits of my logic. For me, asking if a body is reducible or not to its components comprises 100% of possibilities, and it is a simple yes or no question. It is pretty hard to conceive how come, in a story that contains bodies, or modes, how could one say ''neither'' when asked if a mode is a sum of other modes or not.
Conclusion: I regret my lack of capacity in understanding Spinoza from your perspective. On the other hand, I can't hide the fact that I believe you're making things complicated for me on purpose. The reason is that I think you want to defend his view. I mean I'm not the type of guy arguing that Wikipedia or other very popular sources are the truth, but I have the capacity to understand that it is generally accepted that he was a panpsychist. On the other hand, that last ''neither'' simply makes no sense to me. Don't take it personally, I may be wrong, but this is how I feel.
Thank you!
I think the difficulty you're having is trying to understand Spinoza's perspective without shifting your own frame of interpretation. When people interpret things, they interpret within a context they bring to the interpretation. There's an art to shifting one's way of thinking to productively engage with a text or body of ideas.
EG, if someone says "Abortion is wrong because it's murder", the contextual information that the fetus is a human being that ought to be considered to have the legal rights of the person is doing all the work. But someone could equally say "Abortion has nothing to do with the womb or the baby, it has to do with bodily control" as a retort. That retort would attack the framing of the abortion issue by shifting it. Those two people could argues cross purposes forever and never understand the other's view.
In a similar fashion, the frame you're bringing to interpreting Spinoza, trying to see "where he stands" on those two problems (hard problem, combination problem), is in the context of his thought reframing a few of his key ideas in the attempt to apply his thought to those problems
(1) You seem to be imagining that something material must "produce" thoughts, feelings, perceptions etc, like a stimulus response chain, physical -> mental, that's something Spinoza rejects early on in the Ethics. Ideas lead to and combine with ideas, bodies lead to and combine with bodies.
(2) You seem to be imagining that ideas are "protoconscious", like they're little bits of consciousness that somehow combine into a bit consciousness, or alternatively that "inert matter" somehow combines into a conscious being - those operations, of making a conscious aggregate from little. In Spinoza's terms, none of those little ideas or interacting particles are "thinking things". He is quite quiet (IIRC) on the specific "amount of functional complexity" (so to speak) required for ideas to aggregate into a thinking thing, but it's really a non problem for him because man is already a thinking thing due to how its body works. The problems he cares about "start" at a different point, so to speak.
And it might not necessarily be you that thinks these things, it might be that the perspective you're getting from looking at Spinoza in the context of these two problems you really like is distorting him. What I'd recommend is trying to study his original work in some form - primary and secondary philosophy literature, rather than infotainment summaries. Try to get a feel for what he cares about, rather than these two problems you won't find dealt with in his work.
I recommend that because studying Spinoza's work is an exhilarating shift in perspective (life changing IMO), and you're selling yourself short by being sufficiently curious to engage with us like this and seemingly not to read the original text (or reputable secondary literature guides)!
This is what Spinoza agree or disagree with?
If he agrees, it is correct to say that combinations of ideas represent conscious thoughts?
I don't know if I'm sufficiently evolved to understand him, I have a problem with reading complicated alambicated stuff. But I will try to find more answers.
I think he agrees with that claim. Ideas interact with ideas. Bodies interact with bodies. You don't get causal chains like "this mindless stuff interacts with that mindless stuff and makes a thought", you get causal chains like "this mindless stuff interacts with that mindless stuff and makes more mindless stuff" logical associations of ideas like "this idea interacts with that idea and makes more ideas", and the logical associations mirror the causal chains somehow.
Without the right (or adequate) questions you never will.
I applaud your patience :clap: :100: :fire:
"All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." ~Benedictus de Spinoza
If that's the case, if I asked Spinoza "What kind of interaction creates consciousness?" And "Why does complexity makes me a conscious thing?" What would he answer?
@fdrake
:sweat:
If that is the case, why involve Spinoza at all? You have built a room that you have said you can never enter. What relevance can anything that happens in the room be for you?
You ask for an interpretation made by somebody you listened to somewhere to be disproved. How could one interpretation being more valid than another matter if you place yourself outside of the discussion by a conscious choice?
You speak of Spinoza being a "panpsychist" as a "generally" accepted point of view. As a matter of academic review, that is not the case. You don't cite the references that gave you this impression. That means you are arguing upon a basis of authority but without even saying what that authority is.
You clearly have an idea that you want to understand better. Perhaps you should find another way to bring it forward where you can own all the terms.
Is that a response to my response?
guys are saying here, but when I'm approaching the final confirmation, I receive a long response telling me I am asking the rong question and that Spinoza is special and hard to understand. Frustrating.
I wrote sources like Wikipedia and other pretty official so to say. And my issue is not if S was panpsychist or not.
You are the one who put actually reading Spinoza outside of your possible ranges of experience.
If you want the type, I've given you some kind of answer to that - the interaction of ideas associated with a body; the human mind = the idea of the human body. If you want the how? As in: give the mechanism of the interaction of ideas which suffices to produce a human mind - for Spinoza? I'll quote at length, but I don't think it will be satisfying to you:
Okay so:
(1) The mind is the idea of the body.
(2) And this idea is pretty expansive, it's got a lot of moving parts, as does the body;
"PROP. XVI. The idea of every mode, in which the human body is affected by external bodies, must involve the nature of the human body, and also the nature of the external body."
The human mode stays together in all the different aspects, so to speak.
(3) When those moving parts of the body "move" - be it a body acting as a cause or an idea acting as a pattern generator/logical inference - they bring with them corresponding ideas of the body. (4) Those ideas in their conjunction are "the idea of the body", ie the mind.
I believe you will find that unsatisfying, because it isn't an answer to the question of "how does human consciousness arise from inanimate matter?", it's an answer to the question of "how does human consciousness arise from the human body?". If you want an answer to the first question, see our previous discussion, if you want an answer to the second, I've given you an extremely abbreviated sketch of it.
I'll quote again at length:
I believe one reason why none of this is landing is that, how to put it, I think you're expecting Spinoza's ideas to be continuous with your own intuitions, whereas learning Spinoza requires learning how to reconfigure those intuitions. There's no substitute for actually doing the work.
Yes.
I thought I already had done a lot of work but you, 108, and Willow of Darkness keep reminding me of aspects I had not considered. I keep having to start all over again.
Me too. "The best way to learn a subject is to teach it".
Do those complex individual parts contain consciousness?
In a nutshell:
Guys, I think I understand 90% of what you're saying.
A. The Willow Of Darkness and Gregory simply replied that if the hard problem is true, then Spinozism cannot work.
B. Spinoza does not place much emphasis on consciousness.
C. Spinoza is about parallelism, so matter does not determine consciousness as it does in materialism - it is not materialism.
D. However, as 's quote shows, we can draw a parallel and say that the physical body is made up of the interaction of smaller bodies, and the human mind is made up of the interaction of minds.
Then we can say that consciousness is in fact the result of a complex interaction of minds that, taken individually, are not conscious. In a word, complexity makes the difference between a stone and a man. So there is a threshold between unconscious and consciousness determined by pure complexity.
Even if it is not correct to ask the hard problem question, I can still ask the following question:
If we assume for the sake of the argument that it is impossible for the interaction between elements without consciousness to create human consciousness, no matter how complex this interaction is, then can we say that Spinozism is false?
No. Again, wrong question because your assumptions have nothing to do with Spinozism. And besides, metaphysics is noncognitive (re: not truth-claims about matters of fact) so the question is incoherent on its face.
No
Why do you care if the hard problem would have bothered Spinoza, one philosopher at of thousands? Why not read Aristotle or something? Spinoza wrote, as you've been told a million times, that every comes from God. He thinks God has thoughts but he is ambiguous on this because we can't know God. That's it right there! Your concern answered. I don't think anyone on this thread knows what's really bothering you
Really? Wow
Thank you!
Why can't you just admit you can't understand this stuff?
I mean admit that you will never understand Spinoza. I mean, all the relevant quotes are given above. Why not switch to Aristotle? Do you have an obsession?
Yes.
Quoting Gregory
I don't know the future, maybe I will.
Thank you for your answers and concerns, but I will stop responding to personal stuff.
Ok. It's a free forum. I just don't usually see someone asking the same question so many times on this forum. Anyway I'll go do something else, good luck
That's actually interesting. So Spinoza starts from the idea that consciousness just exists and it appears (for some reason) in complex modes. For him, consciousness is just an attribute manifesting in humans.
But let's assume that one convinced Spinoza that something with no consciousness could not cause consciousness. Would he have admitted that his view is false in this case?
Thanks for the link, I will read it. I am reading something interesting about my curiosity and I understand it so far.
I have a better question. Spinoza had nothing against the idea of something totally unconscious, like a God lacking qualia, will, thoughts, etc. could give rise to something conscious. But he didn't come up with an explanation for how come this can happen, he just assumes it from the start, and he just defines consciousness as being the complexity, but he doesn't bother with explaining how could this really work. Right?
No. :cry:
E.g. Something with no flavor, such as atoms, does cause, as you say, e.g. strawberries to have flavor.
Quoting Eugen Please don't avoid this easy answer.
No. Does cycling (consciousness) contain a bike (ideas)? Note, I didn't write involve a bike, I wrote contain a bike. Ideas are not "thinking things", which seems to be a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for human consciousness.
Quoting Eugen
The mind is an idea of the body. Consciousness isn't a complex interaction of minds. It seems you want one of these to be true, and you assume one must be true:
(1) Consciousness derives from an interaction of physical things and no other type of thing
(2) Consciousness derives from an interaction of mental things and no other type of thing
And in seeing that the exegesis so far has denied (1) (since mind and body are separated aspects of the human mode), you inferred that (2) must be a claim that Spinoza is committed to. However, I believe both (1) and (2) are strictly false for Spinoza, because of the plurality of aspects of modes. Why? This is because the modes have the dual aspects of thought and extension (an infinity of others too maybe), which renders the italicised "and no other type of thing" qualifiers false.
When talking about contingent entities and events: the modes interact, substance does the bookwork of making sure like only conditions like and that the reflection between the attributes of those modes holds up. The "bookwork" there was already done an eternity ago, as that principle of reflection by which the correspondence is assured is thrown into what it means to be a mode. (@180 Proof, requesting sanity check).
Link here.
The inference of the existence of a thresh-hold is something you've brought to the table. Through some argument like: "individual ideas aren't conscious, a sufficient aggregate of ideas are conscious, therefore there is a thresh-hold of complexity"; notice that this is your argument, and it isn't a textual reference.
If one had truly convinced Spinoza that something with no consciousness cannot cause consciousness, would he come to the conclusion his metaphysics was wrong?
While I have a lot of patience for earnest inquiry, I do demand that you engage with what I wrote.
Also, I started to read this: https://eltalondeaquiles.pucp.edu.pe/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Nadler-Spinoa-on-counciousness.pdf
''state of experience we recognize as consciousness.
This latter issue is, of course, Chalmers's 'hard question' about con-
sciousness transposed to the realm of Spinoza's attribute of Thought. It
is one thing to refer to the structures and dynamics that obtain among
ideas that are a reflection of structures and dynamics of the body; it is
another thing entirely to understand how these amount to conscious
awareness (Chalmers 1995). In response to Chalmers, Spinoza might,
on my reading, reply that the question is misconceived. To ask how cer-
tain structural relations among our ideas-a reflection of correlative
structures in the body (the brain and the nervous system) -`give rise'
to consciousness would, Spinoza might insist, be to fail to grasp his
reductive move.24 Consciousness is not generated or caused by or oth-
erwise related to complexity in thinking. Rather, it just is that complex-
ity among and within our ideas -`perceiving many things at once'-
and nothing more. The adequacy of this response, however, will
depend not only on whether Spinoza can specify what exactly is the
complexity and relations among our ideas that constitute conscious-
ness, but also and perhaps more problematically-whether he can
use those persuasively to explain the qualitative feel of consciousn''
So indeed my questions aren't the best, but I'm making progress.
:up:
Not your fault, again. The practice of responding to a very detailed post with a single question is a time honoured internet tradition, and I tend to interpret it as either trolling or otherwise a style of bad faith engagement. If you didn't intend it like that, I apologise for assuming that you did.
What does "if the hard problem is true" even mean? A solution to a problem is "true" but not the problem itself. Btw, there is no "hard problem" just as there is no mind-body/interaction problem. All you've been going on about amounts to saying "if creationism, then dinosaur fossils are fake". :sweat:
Trolling - no way. But my question wasn't a ''response'' to your last post. Was just another question. It's late here and it's kind of hard to read a complex answer. I'll do it tomorrow.
I'm trying to keep thing as simple as possible. So my goal is to find out if:
A. Spinoza simply assumes that consciousness can be caused by non-conscious stuff, without bothering with issues like ''how is that possible in the first place";
B. He doesn't just assume, but he actually has strong arguments for why this works and manages to find a decent explanation for it.
I don't think so? Combination of (1) English is second language (2) isn't used to arguing on forums (3) isn't used to Spinoza (4) is coming at this from a distant vantage point seem to explain it to me. It seems Eugen's also responding to prompts in context and reasoning with analogies, both of which are hard for bots.
Eugen is highly disturbed that everyone does not see the 'hard problem' the way he does so this Spinoza thing is a way of expressing that. The hp is what's really bothering him
Nadler's essay is interesting. I think he is on to something by realizing Spinoza is looking further than the propositions that deal specifically with attributes of mind and body considered as separate realms to talk about experience.
But the reference to Chalmers was disappointing. Nadler assumes Chalmers is objecting to a reduction as a philosophical statement when Chalmers' actual essay talks about what he, as a scientist, cannot reduce to a set of functions. I complained about this earlier in the thread. The hard problem has a gooey center.
All that to the side, Nadler is not on board with your framing Spinoza to be explaining whether "conscious" minds come from "unconscious" sources as you reduced the topic to:
"Just to be clear on what I am claiming: the greater complexity of the
human body does not causally explain consciousness in the mind. This
would violate the causal and explanatory separation that exists between
the attributes of Thought and Extension in Spinoza's parallelism; no
mode of Thought can be causally affected by a mode of Extension, and
no state or property of a mode of Thought has its causal explanation in
a state or property of a mode of Extension. 'The modes of each attribute
have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the
attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered
under any other attribute' (IIP6). Rather, what I am claiming is that for
Spinoza, human consciousness just is the greater complexity of the
human body as this is manifested under the attribute of Thought."
We're separated from Spinoza by centuries of rapid intellectual change, and this conditions the way that we think about the nature of mind, the nature of matter, and so on. The way we think about it today is very different to how such questions were understood then - one of the main challenges with reading philosophy, generally.
There's a useful article on the understanding of 'substance' in 17th C philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/substanc which among other things gives a primer on the concept of 'substance and modes' in Descartes, Liebniz and Spinoza.
There's a paragraph in that article which I have always found crucial:
Bearing in mind here that 'substance' is a translation of the Aristotelian 'ouisia' - 'substance' is definitely not 'a kind of matter with uniform qualities' but 'the bearer of attributes'. It would be nearer in meaning to either 'subject' (as in, 'subject of experience') or 'being'. So here we see at least an echo of the medieval 'chain of being', with the divine intellect (God) at the top of the hierarchy, with the rational intellect being below that but in some sense also reflecting it. This was not so much an articulated premise as an underlying assumption.
Besides that, the Damasio book which @180 Proof mentioned previously might be a useful bridge between Spinoza and modern thinking on neuroscience.
I myself am interested in Chalmers' 'hard problem of consciousness' argument, and furthermore believe that Chalmers is on the right side of that argument against his materialist opponents (e.g. Dennett). But I think the whole 'hard problem of consciousness' debate is more relevant in respect of the implications of Descartes' dualism. I think you're looking at the issue through a 'post-Cartesian' perspective, which is why you're finding it so hard to understand (not that it isn't hard to understand!)
My problem is that I'm trying to frame Spinoza's vision of consciousness in materialism / panpsychism, and Spinoza is neither (at least, he isn't materialist). In Spinozism, consciousness is not emergent, but it simply exists and manifests itself in humans and animals, but not in objects.
The explanations for how the consciousness of something without consciousness emerges through the weak or strong emergence are not unanimously accepted due to the classic hard problem.
I thought that in Spinoza's vision consciousness also appears from something without consciousness, but that he comes with a different explanation from that of the materialists for how this is possible. I mean, we hope he says something like that: and I think consciousness comes from something without consciousness, but not through the weak or strong emergence. And so far I can accept that he actually says that (although I still don't fully understand how). But here it stops and does not seem to offer an alternative to the emergence for "why consciousness in the first place?" and for "why consciousness in humans and not in stones?", but only states that the complexity of the idea is consciousness without offers absolutely no logical explanation for this.
Please answer the following:
A. He claims that consciousness arose from a God/Nature who does not contain consciousness and does not see the issue here. I mean, he doesn't ask himself, "How is it possible to get consciousness out of something with 0% consciousness?", but he simply thinks that's the way it is. Right?
B. For Spinoza, consciousness is not explained, but starts from the premise that it is present in creatures and not in objects, ie it is the idea of ??a human body, and Spinoza limits himself to associating human consciousness with the complexity of the idea of ??human body.
He does not have a logical explanation why complex ideas are qualia, subjectivity, thoughts, etc., but only starts from the premise that it is in the nature of complex ideas to be so. Correct?
That's because, as I explained, the way the problem is discussed in our day is mainly as a response to Descartes. That discussion has been ongoing since Descartes' time and has framed the whole debate in those terms. I think @fdrake and @180proof have provided excellent explanations of what Spinoza said in his own terms - far better than I could as they know the subject better - but what I'm trying to do is situate the issue in terms of 'the history of ideas'.
I don't know if you're familiar with Thomas Nagel's 2012 book Mind and Cosmos, but in it he summarizes the Cartesian picture like this:
So I think you're asking, how to account for consciousness within this framework. And maybe the answer is: it can't be done! Your basic question seems to be what consciousness is 'made of' or where it 'comes from'. To understand something, is to understand it in terms of it's constituents - which is to ask how to provide an objective account. But that is also a product of a reductionist point of view, that seeks to explain consciousness - actually, I prefer 'mind' - in terms of fundamental constituents, in the same way that the physical sciences do. But as has been pointed out already, Spinoza doesn't think about it like that.
To go back to Nagel again:
I doubt that Thomas Nagel, who is a contemporary analytic philosopher, could be described as 'Spinozist' - actually it would be interesting to read what he has to say on Spinoza - but I think he's articulating a crucial point in respect of the question you're asking, but in contemporary terms: that there's a sense in which modern science cannot, as a matter of principle, provide an account of the subjective nature of consciousness (a.k.a. 'being').
The way I put it is, we can't articulate what 'mind' is, because we can never get outside of it, it is never an object to us. This is why eliminative materialism insists that it can't be real, because its very nature challenges materialism i.e. it cannot be represented in the way that the objects of natural science can be.
Mind you, all that said, there are lots of interesting, scientifically-informed explorations of this question, which I think you will find more congenial than Spinoza, including Antonio Damasio (already mentioned), Thomas Metzinger, Christian Koch, and Philip Goff. They're all both philosophically literate and scientifically informed. They might provide approaches to the question that interests you.
The question does not make sense. Spinoza's metaphysics recognise the question has no answer because it fails to understand what it is talking about.
Spinzoa's metaphysical system details how events that occur of the necessary substance and so are explained in the relations of that substance. If a state of consciousness follows out of a state which is not concious, it is explained in that those to events (modes of extension) have relation of substance.
In any case, it is impossible for an event non conscious state followed by a concious state to go unexplained. To understand Spinzoa here, you have to realise his system is saying the hard problem is logically impossible.
In this respect, Spinoza's metaphysics are consistent with materialist style accounts in which states or consciousness are produced out of non-conscious bodies. His metaphysics are also consistent with certain pansychists postion in which each conscious experience is a production of an entity with its own conciousness experience--e.g. an account in which my brain, arms, fingers, cells and atoms each had their own personal experience.
If for example, the being like the Christian God were exist, Spinoza's metaphysics would be true. The being would be modes (God, creator, judge, Jesus, etc.) of Substance, as would the various places (Heaven, Hell, Earth, etc.).
If Zeus existed, Spinoza's metaphysics would be true. Zeus would be a mode of Substance, as would all the pantheon and their realms.
If bodies without conscious experience generate experiences,the Spinoza's metaphysics are true. The mode of a body without consciousness would be followed by a mode of conscious experience, both of substance.
If any body or part of a body that generates a conciousness experience also already has its own experience, then we have the modes of body and its present experience followed by a mode of new experience, all of substance.
Whatever exists, whichever of these possible conunterfactal states of existence happen, they are consistent with Spinoza's metaphysics. Spinoza is talking about what will be true of any of these possible events.
The question makes absolutely 100% sense. We assume one guy convinces Spinoza of something. That can lead to :
A. no difference, the ''something'' is not related to his metaphysics or even if it was, it wouldn't affect it;
B. It does somehow affect it and it would make Spinoza reconsider his own idea.
Any question some of you guys don't like, you just qualify it as a question that does not make sense.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I'm pretty sure Spinoza would understand.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness - could you please find another formulation for this? I tried google translate and I still couldn't understand. The sentence does not make sense in my native language.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness - that is not because he somehow proves that, but simply because Spinozism is not materialism, and the hard problem is framed in materialism. But I'm still failing to understand this:
in Spinozism, everything has a cause. Are those things that cause consciousness conscious? If not, what is Spinoza's explanation for how come non-conscious stuff causes conscious stuff. Simple as that.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
So please be free to explain.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Ok, so in this case, if non-conscious bodies produce consciousness (which I doubt it in Spinoza's parallelism), then one could at least raise the possibility of hard problem. What is the proof in Spinozism (not just assume, because you said it makes the hard problem impossible) that non-conscious bodies produce consciousness?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Combination problem, same thing. What's the proof for that in Spinozism? Why do atoms have consciousness? What's the explanation for that in Spinozism?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness IF!!!!!!!!!!!! But what if they don't? How does Spinoza demonstrate that non-conscious bodies create consciousness? Or he just assumes that?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Well, this is exactly what my intuition was telling me from the beginning.
PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTIONS
Then how exactly does he think about it?
Please give me a short answer for these:
A. He claims that consciousness arose from a God/Nature who does not contain consciousness and does not see the issue here. I mean, he doesn't ask himself, "How is it possible to get consciousness out of something with 0% consciousness?", but he simply thinks that's the way it is. Right?
B. For Spinoza, consciousness is not explained, but starts from the premise that it is present in creatures and not in objects, ie it is the idea of ??a human body, and Spinoza limits himself to associating human consciousness with the complexity of the idea of ??human body.
He does not have a logical explanation why complex ideas are qualia, subjectivity, thoughts, etc., but only starts from the premise that it is in the nature of complex ideas to be so. Correct?
I have always wondered how consciousness is possible. The explanation of the materialists, that is, the emergence, failed to convince me.
In Spinoza, as in materialism, qualia, will, and human thoughts have as a source something without qualia, consciousness, will, etc. But, as far as I understand from you, in Spinoza it is not about emergence as in materialism. But does he come up with an alternative explanation?
For me it is simple. In order to take Spinoza seriously, he has to offer: 1. a logical and coherent explanation for how it is possible that from a God without qualia and will to reach qualia and will; 2. a coherent explanation for how it is possible for something complex (man) to be conscious and something less complex not to possess consciousness, then I can take these metaphysics seriously.
If the answers for 1 and 2 are YES, then I would like to hear those explanations.
If Spinoza does not offer such explanations in his paper, but only starts from the premise that 1 and 2 are simply the case, and we simply have to accept, then this discussion is over from my point of view.
Any metaphysics that does not give me a serious and coherent explanation for consciousness, qualia or will, but that only starts from assumptions related to consciousness, or that contains fundamental problems, is a metaphysics that I cannot take seriously.
He is working a plurimum interrogationum while riding the merry-go-round of a circulus in probando. He may not be a bot but he is hermetically sealed.
You guys are psychos :lol:
I forgot to include the perennial use of Ad hominems.
If you're used to reductive or emergentist physicalisms, Spinoza's parallelism will seem unintuitive, and like it doesn't give "primacy to the body". But...
In historical context, Spinoza forcing a continuity/parallel between the mind and the body was enough of a departure from the doxa+theology of his time to get him branded an atheist and a heretic, and since then he's been seen as a particularly hard line determinist - on the side of the question (roughly): how could a person act if what thus happened was not determined?
Though I can see why you'd think that Spinoza doesn't give "primacy to the body", since Spinoza has mind as a distinct attribute, and that he does not reduce the mental to (emergent properties of aggregates of) the physical. Even though in his historical context, he gave an unprecedented primacy to the body!
Quoting Eugen
(1) I don't really want to go down the rabbit hole for "qualia", which similarly to before is a concept anathema to Spinoza. This would be another debate where you're coming at Spinoza very obliquely and thus glance off his ideas rather than sticking in them.
(2) I already showed you that mind as composition thing earlier, and mind as idea of the body. If you want a scientific answer to that question; ie, a mechanically detailed answer to "how does consciousness emerge from matter?" (nevermind "how does consciousness emerge from the human body?" ... ), you're not going to find it in Spinoza.
And I very much doubt you will find an answer in other philosophers either! If you've put this barrier up against Spinoza, I'd advise you to apply the same barrier to other philosophers who have anything to say about philosophy of mind and see who remains. As a filter for meaningful content, I doubt it would let much (any?) hitherto published philosophy through. Whether that's because philosophy sucks or because the filter works like trying to press oranges to get apple juice, I'll leave up to you to.
So to sum this first part up, Spinoza does not offer an explanation for how come a force with 0 consciousness, will, qualia, etc. can give rise to consciousness, am I right? Please try to answer me in the shortest simplest manner. A yes/no would be perfect, if possible, of course.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, but here's where I'm still failing to see the logic. In Spinozism, I see a human being as a ripple of an ocean with two characteristics (minimum): Extension (body) and thought. Even if we go with the parallelism and for the sake of the argument we leave the physical interaction of atoms apart in order to escape materialism emergence and the hard problem, the problem still remains. In Spinozism, it's all about cause and effect. Are consciousness, qualia, or will caused by something with no qualia and will? If yes, how does Spinoza explain this is possible? Or he just assumes it does?
Even if we go further and eliminate cause-effect at all, I still don't understand WHY do humans have consciousness, but a rock doesn't? It seems to me that the human mind is just defined as ''the idea of the body'' or as a ''composition thing''. but this is not an explanation for why it has qualia or will while other things don't.
For me, saying humans have will because we are more complex than rocks does not explain anything, it is just an assumption that consciousness arises from complexity.
So why exactly ''an idea of the body'' possesses qualia? Or it just does?
PS: I don't demand a scientific proof, but at least a logical explanation. Or at least tell me if there is an explanation at all.
For Spinoza, qualia is modes of substance.
Qualia is both a mode of body and a mode of mind. A mode of body, in that qualia is an instance of existence caused to be. In that qualia has conceptual meaning, it is also a mind of mode.
Whether it is caused be a conscious entity or a non-conscious entity, qualia is explained for Spinoza. Qualia is of both body and mind in either. The combination problem makes no sense, since mind and body are never being combined. Both are always there in parallel.
Let's use the exmaple of qualia coming out from no qualia. For Spinoza, the absence of qualia is body and mind. The occurrence of qualia is body and mind. So when qualia is generated out of its absence, it an event of body and mind (no qualia) going to another event of body and mind (qualia).
Thank you. I have had the most extraordinary time following this discussion and your questions with their reactions. I had no idea Spinoza with a thing with anyone but my mother and a few random academics scattered across the globe.
Just a suggestion - Why not reach out to a philosophy department at a university and talk to a Spinoza scholar - if you can find one? A conversation in real time might cut to the chase.
It seems to me some of your questions are constructed using modern understandings that don't quite fit and may be incompatible with Spinoza. There is an increasing irritation in your tone. Are you feeling frustrated? I am not trying to be a dick, but maybe it will help to reflect on why you are frustrated. Would it help to slow do? What do you think is going on in this discussion between you and the others? Are people refusing to answer you? Or are you making it hard for them to answer?
Quoting Tom Storm That'd be great, but it's basically impossible. I've got a life...
Quoting Tom Storm
Agree, but I'm getting better at this.
Quoting Tom Storm - yes, but also happy. Frustrated because I can't find a way to make myself clear enough and because sometimes I don't exactly understand answers. Happy because I'm making progress, I really do, I think I'm much closer to my goal than I was at the beginning. I'm also happy because people actually put a lot of effort in order to help me, even if I am sometimes a pain in the ....
Quoting Tom Storm
I know the sources of my frustration.
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Tom Storm
Even if most of the guys here are super-cool, I have to say I consider SOME OF them biased and rather prone to defend Spinoza than providing me with straight answers, and others are actually malicious and preoccupied with my person. But no, that doesn't frustrate me.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm struggling to make things simpler.
:rofl: :clap:
Yes! So Spinoza does indeed explain (define) consciousness in this way, but he doesn't provide an answer for the question ''How can qualia be generated out of its absence?'', he just assumes it does. Right?
Ok, I admit! That was actually funny :lol:
Your reply missed an important observation by Willow of Darkness:
"Whether it is caused by a conscious entity or a non-conscious entity, qualia is explained for Spinoza. Qualia is of both body and mind in either. The combination problem makes no sense, since mind and body are never being combined. Both are always there in parallel."
It seems to me it is just defined, not explained. That's exactly my issue.
Quoting Eugen
Sure, you have made yourself clear. That is why you have drawn the interest you have. Not too many people are calling out for a careful reading of Spinoza these days.
Something you have not demonstrated in these interchanges so far is to start from what you are hearing from other people and go from there. That foreign place you can barely imagine. That is the beginning of conversation, not reporting why you cannot leave your bunker.
Spinoza is describing how it happens: if qualia is produced by non-qualia, then it is a mode of substance. We get the causality in the presence of that mode.
That's what makes the difference between it happening or not. If the mode is not present, we do not have qualia caused by non-qualia.
I just wanted to find out if Spinoza offers an alternative response for emergence to the question ''How is it possible to obtain consciousness from non-conscious?". So far, I think he does say consciousness arises from non-conscious, but he does not have an explanation for how this would be possible in the first place.
So the answer would look something like this: It is possible to obtain consciousness from non-conscious, because this and that. The reason why a rock is not conscious and you are is because you are complex, and consciousness arises from complexity because this and that. So far, all I've received is: consciousness it just comes from non-conscious, and complex modes are conscious.That doesn't not mean that nothing will ever convince me otherwise. Maybe some explanation will occur eventually. If that explanation will convince me more than emergence, it remains to be seen, but so far I haven't heard one.
I think you're accusing me for not paying too much respect for Spinoza. It is not my interest to respect or disrespect him. I just want to understand the answer to my question, that's all. Don't take it personally.
I'd love to leave my bunker, but so far I haven't been convinced to do so. But I'll keep insisting until I'll have a final answer. I'm studying Spinoza, trust me :smile:
I think (hope) I understand you perfectly. This is an exposure of how things might happen IF it is possible to get qualia from non-qualia or consciousness from non-conscious, but it is not an explanation for WHY it is possible to get qualia from non-qualia. In Spinozism, I am searching for the latter part.
Consciousness is complexity (re: Spinoza); "consciousness" doesn't "arise" from "complexity". There are an infinity of essences in substance (which causes them to exist) according to Spinoza and, therefore, infinite degrees of complexity, and, at or above (some) threshold, the attribute of mind 'exhibits' consciousness in parallel with the attribute of body 'exhibiting' methodical, purposeful behavior.
Are these essences "just there", you keep asking? No. They must be there because they constitute substance which necessarily exists. Spinoza discusses this, as I've pointed out already, in section I Of God (Ethics); and like Euclid's geometry, definitions and axioms are posited the truth or validity of which are borne out by the demonstration of the entire system of postulates (or in Spinoza's case propositions).
So, every entity, every property, every relation (i.e. modes and their affects, in Spinoza's terms) always already exists, nothing "emerges" from the perspective of eternity (re: substance); in fact, this is what he means by reality, or "God". Like chess: logically every match and every configuration of the pieces are inherent in the rules which constitute the game of chess itself; the only novelty, the only surprises, result from the players' finite perspectives – observing from the perspective of time – and that they cannot comprehend the game from perspective of eternity. For Spinoza, if X exists, then it necessarily exists as an essence (i.e. mode) caused to exist by substance.
In this case, X being "consciousness", "consciousness" is a degree of complexity manifest in the attribute of mind which doesn't "just exist" (or could just as well not exist), but necessarily exists, necessarily cannot not exist, because it is an essence inherent to reality (i.e. substance). Like valid moves in chess – whether or not you make them or you are aware of them – they are entailed by the chess ruleset.
Your questions, Eugen, make no sense in a Spinozist metaphysical framework because your assumptions are 'empirical' (and borrowed from mysterians like Chalmers, Nagel, et al). But you'd know that if you'd bother to closely read Spinoza and stop relying on videos or shallow summaries on him with which to frame questions on topics of no concern to his 17th century metaphysics. No doubt you will persist on incorrigibly; my sketchy elaboration here, hopefully, will be of use to someone else who wishes to study Spinoza on his terms, in his historical context, rather than merely projecting their own misplaced, confused, agendas on to him. It doesn't matter that your answer is "Spinoza is wrong because the hard problem is true" because interrogating Spinoza's metaphysics about "the hard problem" only amounts to asking the wrong question (e.g. Why don't fish like ice-skating or bowling?): any answer given to the wrong question (such as yours, Eugen) is not only wrong, it's not even wrong.
Nobody can suspect me of being friend, but I have to admit his last reply was probably the most helpful for me in order to understand what you guys are saying.
I have to say the analogies and simple language you gave there were super-helpful.
Now it makes sense to me what you're saying (or, at least I hope so :rofl: ). But before adding my opinions, I'd like you to confirm if I'm getting you right:
It will probably sound cheesy but I cannot find a better one.
So in the let's say ''abstract'' part of reality, there are infinite necessary essences. But even if we're talking about infinite here, it does not include for example magic, because magic is supernatural, and God is just natural under Spinoza.
So there is something like a necessary law which states something like 100 = complexity and complexity = consciousness. 1 means simplicity and simplicity is NOT consciousness, but 1+1+....+1 = 100, and 100 means complexity.
So back to the ''happening reality'', when we get 100, we get consciousness.
In a nutshell:
In the abstract it is necessary: 1+1+...+1 = 100 and 100 = complexity; complexity = consciousness.
This, in turn, translates into the ''happening world'' something like that:
a rock = 1+1+1 = 3, simplicity +simplicity + simplicity = unconscious +unconscious +unconsious, which is not complexity, so it is not consciousness
a human: 1+1+....+1 = 100, simplicity +....+ simplicity = unconscious + unconscious +...+ unconscious = complexity = consciousness
So 100 is composed of many ''1''s translates into complexity is composed of many ''simplicities'', which in the ''happening world'' it translates something like consciousness is composed of ''unconscious'' things.
And even if in the ''happening world'' we could call it emergent because certain interactions have to happen in order to obtain the complexity (please correct me if I'm wrong again), it is not fair to call it emergent from the point of view of the whole reality, because it was already there in an abstract form. All that happens in the ''happening world'' is just an expression of those necessities from the "abstract", and because the reality is infinite, then it will 100% happen when the right combinations occur.
I hope I'm getting it right, or at least to have made some progress.
In regards to the wrong question, I admit that the hard problem applies to materialism, and Spinozism is not materialism.
:up:
Good.
It seems so.
Correct.
I've got 2 questions for you, 1 related to Spinozism, 1 not directly connected to the topic of this OP, it is related more to the concept of emergence, because I want to understand better how Spinozism is related to naturalism.
1. Under Spinozism, the laws of nature have to be logic? E.g. you cannot have 2+2=6, you MUST have 2+2=4. And from this logic derive the physical laws of nature, ie things attracting or repelling each other, etc. Am I right?
2. As far as I know, there are 2 types of emergence: weak and strong.
The whole is the sum of its parts, ie consciousness is matter and only matter. E.g. some compositions of matter are pain, thoughts, etc. So there's absolutely nothing new on the table, just combinations of matter, and we could also draw the conclusion that it is emergent only from our perspective, but at the level of reality, it is just laws manifesting.
Strong emergence - consciousness is created by matter, but it cannot be deduced only from its components, so the whole is more than the sum of its parts. But it would be also fair to state that even if it is not deductible from our perspective, we could still not call it emergent from the universe's perspective, because there are also laws playing their roles after all, exactly like in Spinozism.
E.g. if we were to rewind the universe a billion times, we would also obtain the strong emergence, because it is in its laws to do so.
Which one of two would be more appropriate for Spinozism?
Am I wrong about the emergence?
I wouldn't put things that way. Rather, for Spinoza (I think): logic is reality, reality is nature naturing (i.e. infinite-eternal substance) from the perspective of eternity; "natural laws" are interpretations of (entailed) interactions of nature natured (i.e. infinite/finite modes of parallel (complementary) attributes of thought (mind) & extension (body)) from the perspective of time, thus discoverable and revisable. Mathematics is a subset, or artifact, of logic and useful for interpreting (i.e. describing, modeling) "natural laws" yet without being determined by "natural laws".
In chess terms: logic corresponds to the ruleset entailing every valid move and position, therefore every possible chess match; mathematics – since you brought it up – describes the finite domain of all alternatives moves implied by each position (piece) at each turn; and the "laws of nature" correspond to (the) archive of known strategies, tactics, gambits, etc. The game of chess is logic (eternal-pov) and valid, better, strategies are "natural laws" (temporal-pov) – the latter is constrained by, but not equivalent to, the former.
Am I? :point:
Quoting 180 Proof
It's currently unknown whether "consciousness" is (a) an emergent property or (b) a glitchy computational output of the human brain-CNS system; what's known experientially as well as experimentally is that "consciousness" (i.e. phenomenal self-modeling (Metzinger)) is brain-dependent as well as brain-blind, and that most of human subjective 'mental life' is confabulated (e.g. intentionality, introspection, mind-body duality, soul/spirit, (collective) unconsious agency, panpsyche, etc) in the brain-blind (to itself) gap, or the cognitive blindspot facilitating cognition (à la the visual blindspot enabling vision).
Quoting 180 Proof
I've got one on this: let's assume 2+2=5. If that were the case, we would be considered logic and accepted as the only way under Spinozism and there could be no other reality where 2+2=4. But 2+2=4, and it is the one and only way, so there could be no other reality where 2+2=5. So my assumption that, in theory, there could be a reality where 2+2=5 is simply wrong and makes no sense, right?
So yes, maths is a tool, but by using it, can we deduce what's logic and what is not, ie what is real and what isn't real?
And if the answer is yes, should we adapt our maths as well? E.g. we put 2 apples in a box, then we put another 2 and we get 6 apples out of the box instead of what we expected from our mathematical model, ie 4. If that were the case, should we conclude 2+2=6?
You said 2+2 can be 6 in maths. But in reality, if we take 2 objects and we add another 2, we always get 4, not 6. So even if we could in theory obtain 6, the only possible reality is 4. But if we somehow do obtain 6 in the real world by adding two more things next to other 2, do we jump to the conclusion that 2+2=6, or we conclude that there is something hidden in our experiment that we hadn't thought about before and 2+2 will always be 4 in the ''happening world''?
How can we deduce if 2+2 =4 is logical or not?
I think I've lost my inspiration. If my questions still make no sense, please give me a few days to formulate them the right way.
Thanks!
1. Logic predominates in Spinozism - can we say that logic is the most fundamental in his vision?
Everything that is logical exists and everything that is illogical does not exist. Correct?
2. Do we have an infinity of laws of nature and things of nature?
3. As regards the free will, if there is no causal relationship between mind and extension:
A. would everything have happened the same even if the mind had not existed (for example I would have written this O.P.)?
B. would everything change and the world would look different if the mind did not exist?
Thank you!
Yes.
Logic is everything, or all there is. Whatever is "illogical" only seems so due to what Spinoza calls our "inadequate ideas" or "imagination" (i.e. first kind of knowledge).
Sub specie aeternitatus (from the perspective of eternity), Spinoza claims that that is necessarily the case.
A. The Attribute of Thought (mind) is real, or constitutes Substance necessarily according to Spinoza in section I Of God and, therefore, cannot not "exist" – from the perspective of eternity. Why? Because the Attribute of Thought (mind) is not contradictory, or ruled out by Logic; and everything is – belongs to – Logic.
(And yes you would have written the OP because the conditions which determined that you 'freely chose' to write it necessarily obtain; choosing – willing – seems "free" only in so far you are ignorant of, or have "inadequate ideas" about, the [INTELLECTUAL, or active rather than passive (see sections III & IV)] causes and conditions that have determined the choices you make, which are "free" to the degree you – in my words – deliberately affirm them.)
B. This question makes no sense in Spinozism for the reason reality necessarily could not be any other way than it is in so far it is logically non-contradictory. In other words – my words – whatever is possible is necessarily real (i.e. belongs to Substance or exists as an effect (i.e. mode) caused by the real (i.e. Substance).
Don't thank me yet. I suspect your questions, Eugen, aren't done with either of us ...
I'm neither at war, nor fight. I'm just trying to obtain all the information I need before drawing the final conclusion.
So far I have drawn the following conclusions from Spinozism. Please let me know if they are correct.
1. Logic is fundamental, and everything that is logical to exist exists due to infinite nature, but everything that is illogical does not exist. From logic, we obtain an infinity of laws of nature - from laws we obtain concrete things from nature that are 100% subject to the laws of nature.
2. There are no things that break the laws of nature.
3. Regarding consciousness - there is a law that is logical and says that consciousness is the complexity of the mind. Basically, it is a law that allows emergence, but at the level of nature, it is nothing new, because the law precedes the emergence itself. It is like saying a chess player didn't invent a new move, because the move was already there when chess rules were made.
4. Simple minds have no consciousness, complex minds are consciousness. - No panpsychism, no combination problem
5. There is no causality - the mind is not dependent on matter, and vice versa. - No materialism, no hard problem
I think that the unbridgeable gap between us consists in the radically different vision that we have, and that somehow starts from consciousness: I don't think that consciousness can be obtained from something without consciousness. I hope that in Spinozism I will find concrete explanations for the opposite opinion, but I have not found them yet.
You believe that consciousness can arise from something with 0% consciousness, thus Spinoza makes sense. But for me, a law of nature that says that elements possessing 0% consciousness can give birth to consciousness is not logical yet. However, things could change and I could be convinced of Spinoza's metaphysics if:
1. It would explain exactly why I am wrong, that is, why the law by which things without consciousness form consciousness is logical. It seems illogical to me, but an explanation in this sense might convince me. Is there an explanation in Spinoza's work?
2. It would explain exactly how he knows that there is a law of nature in which complexity is consciousness. It seems logical to me as well that simplicity is consciousness. Why consciousness = complexity, but consciousness differs from simplicity. Is there an explanation for the form of this law?
3. He would explain how he came to the conclusion that these are the laws of conscience and not others. Is there such a thing in his work?
I've not stated what I "believe" about consciousness so this statement is, at best, unwarranted.
I've studied Spinoza's writings for decades and that has most to do with why he makes sense to me. Nowhere does he claim, as I and others have repeatedly pointed out, that "consciousness can arise from something with 0% consciousness"; again just a strawman on your part.
No. Spinoza is a philosopher, not a scientist. He reflects on a logic-derived conceptual system and does not construct and propose 'experimental tests for explanatory hypothetical models of phenomena'. More incoherence on your part, Eugen, expecting a philosopher to do with philosophical speculation what cannot be done – namely, "explaining" matters of facts (e.g. "consciousness" in the human brain-CNS) – Spinoza being no different than any other metaphysician.
As for the rest of your post, the answer is the same as it's always been from the start: study Spinoza for yourself in his terms and historical context, according to his stated concerns, and with the aid of a few secondary scholarly sources. If you can put your own anti-physicalist/anti-materialist/pseudo-scientific biases, or dogma, aside while doing so, then you might come away with the recognition that you have been asking the wrong questions of the wrong source(s) all along, as you still are. Maybe, through the process, you'll even become intellectually honest enough to actually learn some philosophy from Spinoza too (but I doubt it).
Anyway, apparently you've come as far as I can take you, Eugen, so with this post I leave you to the tender mercies of those willing to be more patient and indulgent than I'm no longer willing to be. Take 'my interpretation of Spinoza, my metaphors & analogies, my paraphrases and recommended books' (on this thread) with a pinch of salt and make of them what you can. Good luck with all your 'panpsychist' titling at windmills.
No strawman. He doesn't state it, of course, but in his metaphysics the substance is not conscious. So consciousness truly arises from something that has 0% consciousness. 1 (0%) +1 (0%)+...+1(0%) = 100 (0%) in my opinion. There's no counter-argument in his work.
Quoting 180 Proof - I don't need scientific proof, I just need an explanation for why it is logical. Now I get it, there is none. There's no common ground and there could be none in the absence of counter-arguments.
If everything reduces to statements like ''You get consciousness from unconscious things exactly like you get purple from red and blue", I will never be convinced.
Quoting 180 Proof
Just because materialism doesn't convince me doesn't mean I'm dogmatic or unscientific. Also, it doesn't mean I'm not open to change my opinions if logical/scientific proof is made.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm simply not convinced why my questions don't make sense, and the more you say it, the more I believe otherwise.
1. The hard problem, at a more fundamental abstract level is basically the problem I've raised throughout my time here, ie you cannot obtain consciousness from non-consciouss stuff, you cannot reduce consciousness to the things that supposedly compose it.
I may have asked the wrong questions at the beginning, but it was not me making no sense. I had a big hunch there's no strong account for consciousness in Spinoza, no more than assumptions, but no explanations for my questions. You told me that there was something when in fact there was nothing.
2. I think they are simple questions. One can say that Spinosism is not about my questions, and that his view on consciousness was already established by denying my assumptions with 0 arguments. Yes, I admit that I could make a parallel between my questions and asking a Christian where in the Bible is a logical proof for how matter and soul could interact. The answer could be ''there is no such thing'', but not ''your question makes no sense''.
3. I've asked clearly for several times ''Is there an explanation for this or that or just assumptions?" and the rest of the guys told me that there are no explanations and that he basically just assumed all those stuff related to consciousness. You were the only one telling me otherwise.
4. There are many other experts in Spinoza who raise this problem and their questions are pretty similar to mine, so I kind of doubt I make no sense. And I'm being totally honest with myself.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not a panpsychist (blind assumptions again) and I'm not sure anymore if Spinoza was one. I admit you've made a strong case against that.
Quoting 180 Proof
I think my journey here has reached its end.
.
Dude, try to understand that I'm just trying to find answers. If I don't agree doesn't mean I'm this or that. With enough arguments, maybe I will change my mind, maybe not. Don't take it personally.
Quoting 180 Proof
You've done a great job. You couldn't convince me otherwise, but you've earned my respect.
Thank you for all the great job you've done!
Thanks again for all your explanations, I think you are well versed in this topic.
- Thank you for all the effort you've made. Super-comments, I need to re-read some of your explanations. You're a pro!
Thank you! You offered me one of the first and concise answers.
Thank you! Yes, I'm a real bot with IQ 3.000.000 and I hold the truth. I just wanted to play with your minds.
- You started a war against my person, but I have to admit you gave me some decent answers. So I guess thank you too... a$$#013!
Thanks for your effort, man!
To be precise, I argued that you had insulated yourself from new information, not that you were robotically incapable of doing so.
I looked into Romanian translations of Spinoza and the options are not clear from an English speaker point of view. There are references to 19th century text but that is not clearly cited as a reference.
Is there a Romanian translation of Spinoza that you count worthy of reading?
Who is the translator?
My searches of Romanian academy has gotten me interested in their different language studies.