DOCSLIB.ORG

Spinoza's Theory of the Human Mind

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Spinoza's Theory of the Human Mind SPINOZA’S THEORY OF THE HUMAN MIND: CONSCIOUSNESS, MEMORY, AND REASON 1A_BW_Marrama .job © Oberto Marrama, 2019. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-94-034-1568-0 (printed version) ISBN 978-94-034-1569-7 (electronic version) 1B_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason PhD thesis to obtain the degree of PhD at the University of Groningen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof. E. Sterken and in accordance with the decision by the College of Deans; and submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements to obtain the degree of PhD in Philosophy at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Double PhD degree This thesis will be defended in public on Thursday 16 May 2019 at 11.00 hours by Oberto Marrama born on 27 April 1984 in Arzignano (VI), Italy 2A_BW_Marrama .job Supervisors: Prof. M. Lenz Prof. S. Malinowski-Charles Assessment Committee: Prof. M. Della Rocca Prof. S. James Prof. C. Jaquet Prof. D. H. K. Pätzold 2B_BW_Marrama .job Table of Contents Table of Abbreviations 7 Editorial Note 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction 13 Methodological Note 15 Outline of the Chapters 16 Chapter 1: Consciousness, Ideas of Ideas, and Animation in Spinoza’s Ethics 19 1. Introduction 19 2. Two issues concerning Spinoza’s panpsychism 21 3. The current debate 27 4. The terminological gap: conscientia as “consciousness” 31 5. The illusion of free will and the theory of the “ideas of ideas” 35 6. Animation, eternity, and the “third kind of knowledge” 43 7. Two issues concerning Spinoza’s panpsychism solved 54 8. Conclusion 58 Chapter 2: “A Thing Like Us”: Human Minds and Deceitful Behaviour in Spinoza 61 1. Introduction 61 2. Spinoza’s panpsychism 65 3. Mindless automata and spiritual automata in the TIE 72 4. Automata, beasts, and other incomprehensible minds 79 5. Humans beings as “things like us”: the “imitation of the affects” 88 6. “Humanity” as a shared affect 94 5 3A_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason 7. Conclusion 100 Chapter 3: Networks of Ideas: Spinoza’s Conception of Memory 107 1. Introduction 107 2. Episodic and semantic memory 110 3. Semantic memory in the TIE 115 4. Episodic memory in the TIE 121 5. Memory in the Ethics 127 6. Memory, associations of affects, and human desire 136 7. A remedy for the affects: rearranging one’s own memories 141 8. Conclusion 148 Chapter 4: “The Habit of Virtue”: Spinoza on Reason and Memory 151 1. Introduction 151 2. Human virtue: actions vs passions of the mind 154 3. Spinoza’s account of associative memory: images, affects, and decisions 157 4. Reason and its power over the affects 161 5. Common notions, the “foundations of our reasoning” 165 6. The “habit of virtue” as discursive reasoning 171 7. Conclusion 177 Conclusion 179 Bibliography 183 Primary sources 183 Secondary sources 186 Samenvatting 213 6 3B_BW_Marrama .job Table of Abbreviations Spinoza’s texts: CM Metaphysical Thoughts. E Ethics, followed by the Part number (in Arabic numerals) and the abbreviations hereunder: a Axiom Ad Definition of an affect App Appendix c Corollary d Definition / Demonstration, when it appears after a proposition number exp Explanation lem Lemma p Proposition post Postulate Pref Preface s Scholium Ep Letters, followed by the Letter number (in Arabic numerals). The numeration is the traditional one, also followed by Edwin Curley (Spinoza 1985-2016). KV Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, followed by the Part number (in Roman numerals), the Chapter number (in Arabic numerals), and the Section number (in Arabic numerals). The division into sections is that proposed by Christoph Sigwart (Spinoza 1870), also followed by Curley. 7 4A_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason PPC Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy”, followed by the Part number (in Arabic numerals). Further abbreviations are identical to those used for the Ethics. TIE Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, followed by the Section number (in Arabic numerals). The division into sections is that proposed by Carl H. Bruder (Spinoza 1843- 1846, vol. 2), also followed by Curley. TP Political Treatise, followed by the Chapter number (in Roman numerals) and the Section number (in Arabic numerals). TTP Theological-Political Treatise, followed by the Chapter number (in Roman numerals) and the Section number (in Arabic numerals). The division into sections is that proposed by Bruder (Spinoza 1843-1846, vol. 3), also followed by Curley. ADN Adnotations to the TTP, followed by the note number (in Roman numerals). Spinoza’s editions and translations: C The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985-2016). G Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1925). NS De Nagelate Schriften van B. d. S. (Amsterdam, 1677). OP B. d. S. Opera Posthuma (Amsterdam, 1677). 8 4B_BW_Marrama .job Abbreviations and Editorial Note Other Authors’ texts, editions and translations: AG Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber, eds. G. W. Leibniz. Philosophical Essays (Indianapolis / Cambridge: Hackett, 1989). AT Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds. Œuvres de Descartes, 12 vols. (Paris: L. Cerf, 1897-1913). CSM John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, trans. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). CSMK John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, trans. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3, The Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Ge Carl I. Gerhardt, ed. Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 7 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1875– 1890). L Leroy E. Loemker, ed. and trans. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, 2nd ed., (Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989). W John Locke. The Works of John Locke. A New Edition, Corrected. 10 vols. (London: T. Tegg and others, 1823). Editorial Note All English quotations of Spinoza are from Curley (1985-2016). I have retained his use of the italics to indicate when “or” translates the Latin sive or seu. Generally, sive and seu mark an equivalence, rather than an alternative. I 9 5A_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason have omitted the use of capital letters for terms as “mind”, “body”, “thought”, “extension” and “individual” (which, in Curley’s edition, is meant to reproduce the capitalisation found in the OP, yet only inconsistently present in the NS), in all cases in which it did not appear necessary for the general comprehension of the text quoted. I have substituted personal pronouns and possessive determiners referring to God with the neuter “It” and “Its” (capitalised). All other departures from Curley’s translation are specifically signalled. Corresponding terms or passages from the original Latin are inserted in the quotations between square brackets. All references to the Latin version of Spinoza’s works are to Gebhardt (1925). 10 5B_BW_Marrama .job Acknowledgments The research and the writing of this text were made possible thanks to the generous support of the following institutions and organisations: the Laboratoire sur l'histoire et la pensée modernes (16e – 18e siècles) at the UQTR, the Décanat des études of the UQTR, the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC), and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen. I am deeply grateful to my supervisors, Syliane Malinowski-Charles and Martin Lenz for their advice, patient guidance, and constant encouragement. The pursuing of my doctorate has also greatly benefited from discussions and interactions with Raphaële Andrault, Sébastien Charles, Filippo Del Lucchese, Keith Green, Mogens Lærke, Beth Lord, Karolina Hübner, Jon Miller, Luca Moretti, Vittorio Morfino, Lodi Nauta, Dominik Perler, Jimmy Plourde, Andrea Sangiacomo, Hasana Sharp, Justin Steinberg, and Bart Streumer, to whom I am thankful. Since I started my doctorate I witnessed, and contributed to, the creation of two intellectual societies devoted to Spinozistic studies. These initiatives have provided further stimulus to my passion for philosophical studies and great opportunities to expand the scope of my research and activities within the philosophical community. I would therefore like to thank my friends and colleagues of the Italian Societas Spinozana, in particular, Domenico Collacciani, Giovanni Croce, Daniele D’Amico, Marta Libertà De Bastiani, Sandra Manzi-Manzi, Saverio Mariani, Massimo Ricchiari, and Francesco Toto. Similarly, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues of the Spinoza Society of Canada / Société canadienne d’études sur Spinoza, Thomas Colbourne, Torin Doppelt, Sarah Kizuk, Róbert Mátyási, and Alexandre Rouette. 11 6A_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason The cooperation of the administrative staff of the UQTR and the University of Groningen has been of much help during these years, and a fundamental contribution to the success of this endeavour. In particular, I owe a word of gratitude to Isabelle Dupuis, Sylvie Frenette, Sébastien Gauthier, Élise Lebordais, Mireille Lehoux, Raphaëlle Morin, and Josée Viau of the UQTR, as well as to Marga Hids and Fré Moorrees of the University of Groningen. I would also like to thank all the fellow students in philosophy and post-doctoral researchers with whom I had the good fortune to exchange views in the Département de philosophie et des arts of the UQTR and in the Department of the History of Philosophy of the University of Groningen. I would like to explicitly acknowledge Joël Boudreault, Jean-François Houle, Claudine Lacroix, and Samuel Lizotte at the UQTR, and Laura Georgescu, Sjoerd Griffioen, Corijn van Mazijk, and Doina-Cristina Rusu at the RUG. Jasper Geurink and Linda Ham translated the thesis summary into Dutch. In Trois-Rivières I very much enjoyed the company and friendship of Evaldo Becker and his beautiful family, Rodolfo Garau, Matteo Giacomazzo, and Alberto Luis-López.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Expressions of Mind/Body Dualism in Thinspiration
    MIND OVER MATTER: EXPRESSIONS OF MIND/BODY DUALISM IN THINSPIRATION Annamarie O’Brien A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2013 Committee: Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Dr. Rebecca Kinney Dr. Jeremy Wallach © 2013 Annamarie O’Brien All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Thinspiration images, meant to inspire weight-loss, proliferate online through platforms that encourage the circulation of user-generated content. Despite numerous alarmist critiques in mass media about thinspiration and various academic studies investigating ‘pro-anorexia’ sites, surprisingly little attention has been given to the processes of creation and the symbolic potential of thinspiration. This thesis analyzes the formal hybridity of thinspiration, and its use as an expressive medium. The particularities of thinspiration (including its visual characteristics, creative processes, and exhibition) may be considered carefully constructed instances of self- representation, hinging on the expression of beliefs regarding the mind and body. While these beliefs are deeply entrenched in popular body management discourse, they also tend to rely on traditional dualist ideologies. Rather than simply emphasizing slenderness or reiterating standard assumptions about beauty, thinspiration often evokes pain and sadness, and employs truisms about the transcendence of flesh and rebellion against social constraints. By harnessing individualist discourse and the values of mind/body dualism, thinspiration becomes a space in which people struggling with disordered eating and body image issues may cast themselves as active agents—contrary to the image of eating disorders proffered by popular and medical discourse. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my thesis committee chair, Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Groningen Spinoza's Theory of the Human Mind
    University of Groningen Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason Marrama, Oberto IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2019 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Marrama, O. (2019). Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason. University of Groningen. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 27-09-2021 SPINOZA’S THEORY OF THE HUMAN MIND: CONSCIOUSNESS, MEMORY, AND REASON 1A_BW_Marrama .job © Oberto Marrama, 2019. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-94-034-1568-0 (printed version) ISBN 978-94-034-1569-7 (electronic version) 1B_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason PhD thesis to obtain the degree of PhD at the University of Groningen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophisches Seminar Kommentiertes
    Philosophisches Seminar Kommentiertes Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommersemester 2013 Stand: 05.03.2013 Inhalt: Übersicht 6 Vorlesungen 6, 17 Hauptseminare 7, 22 Propädeutikum 6, 21 Proseminare 10, 36 Hauptseminare 7, 47 Kolloquien 14, 49 Fachdidaktik 14, 50 Ethisch-Philosophisches Grundlagenstudium – EPG 15, 51 Kommentare 17 Hinweise und Abkürzungen 5 Dozenten: Aleksan, Gilbert EPG I: Einführung in die antike Ethik 51 Aleksan, Gilbert EPG I: Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft 52 Álvarez-Vázquez, Javier PS: Historisch-genetische Theorie der Kognition 36 Arnold, Florian EPG I: Fichtes Bestimmungen des Gelehrten 52 Arnold, Thomas PS: Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie 36 Corall, Niklas EPG I: Moralkritik von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit 53 Cürsgen, Dirk V: Kants praktische Philosophie 17 Dangel, Tobias HS: Phänomenologie des Geistes II 22 Dangel, Tobias PS: Platon, Sophistes 37 Diehl, Ulrich PS: Kants Konzeption der Würde. Interpretation und Dis- kussion 37 Dierig, Simon PS: Einführung in Descartes’ Philosophie 39 Dilcher, Roman EPG I: Platon, Gorgias 54 Dilcher, Roman PS: Aristoteles, Nikomachische Ethik 39 Enßlen, Michael EPG II: Das deutsche Atombombenprojekt 59 Flickinger, Brigitte EPG I: Soziale Gerechtigkeit – eine künstliche Tugend? 54 Franceschini, Stefano EPG II: Spinozas Reflexion über den Mensch 59 Freitag, Wolfgang HS: Grundlegende Texte zur philosophischen Semantik 40 Freitag, Wolfgang Kolloquium 49 Freitag, Wolfgang PS: Einführung in die (analytische) Philosophie der Zeit 22 Freitag, Wolfgang V: Sprachliche Bedeutung:
    [Show full text]
  • Descartes and Spinoza
    OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Thu Dec 29 2016, NEWGEN 229 chapter nine Descartes and Spinoza Two Approaches to Embodiment Alison Peterman 1. Introduction Descartes1 (1596– 1650) and Spinoza (1632– 1677) each gave us interest- ing and infuential approaches to answering what I’ll call “embodiment question”: what is the relationship between a mind and its body— the one that it seems to inhabit, feel, control or otherwise be uniquely involved with?2 In Spinoza we fnd (at least) three diferent answers, the ingenuity of all of which is attested to by their long reception in the philosophical tradition. Descartes was an important infuence on Spinoza, but on many others, too, ushering in the era of the “mind- body 1 I am grateful to Colin Chamberlain, Michael Della Rocca, Keota Fields, Kristin Primus, and Alison Simmons for discussion, and also to the other contributors to this volume. 2 Tis question is broader than one than one about the constitutive or essential relationship between a mind and its body. 229 02_acprof-9780190490447_Ch7-11.indd 229 12/29/2016 2:13:15 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Thu Dec 29 2016, NEWGEN 230 230 Embodiment problem” in the form that many philosophers still grapple with. Here, I’ll by no means attempt a comprehensive treatment of their contribu- tions. Instead I will try to uncover an unnoticed similarity between the two, and apply it to understanding the coherence of Spinoza’s account of embodiment. I’ll argue that Descartes and Spinoza both approach the embodiment question in two diferent ways: one approach starts with some metaphysical commitments about the kinds of entities, properties, and interactions there are in the world, and the other starts by attending to the experience of an embodied subject.
    [Show full text]
  • Locke, God, and Materialism (Preprint)
    Locke, God, and Materialism Stewart Duncan Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 1. INTRODUCTION Early modern philosophers discussed several versions of materialism. One distinction among them is that of scope. Should one be a materialist about animal minds, human minds, the whole of nature, or God? Hobbes eventually said ‘yes’ to all four questions, and Spinoza seemed to several of his readers to have done the same. Locke, however, gave different answers to the different questions. Though there is some debate about these matters, it appears that he thought materialism about God was mistaken, was agnostic about whether human minds were material, and was inclined to think that animal minds were material.1 In giving those answers, Locke famously suggested the possibility that God might have ‘superadded’ thought to the matter of our bodies, giving us the power of thought without immaterial thinking minds. He thus opened up the possibility of materialism about human minds, without adopting the sort of general materialist metaphysics that Hobbes, for example, had proposed. This paper investigates Locke’s views about materialism, by looking at the discussion in Essay IV.x. There Locke—after giving a cosmological argument for the existence of God— argues that God could not be material, and that matter alone could never produce thought.2 In 1 On Locke on animals’ minds, see Lisa Downing, ‘Locke’s Choice Between Materialism and Dualism’ [‘Locke’s Choice’], in Paul Lodge and Tom Stoneham (ed.), Locke and Leibniz on Substance (New York: Routledge, 2015), 128-45; Nicholas Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 33-49; and Kathleen Squadrito, ‘Thoughtful Brutes: The Ascription of Mental Predicates to Animals in Locke’s Essay’, Diálogos 58 (1991), 63-73.
    [Show full text]
  • Idealism: Problematic, Visionary, Critical
    Kant | Prolegomena 11 Idealism: problematic, visionary, critical There are many passages in the Prolegomena where Kant distances himself from a particular variety of idealism (e.g., Notes II and III, §32, Appendix), even though he is explicitly defending a version of idealism himself. In broadest outline, realism is the view that things in the external world are independent of human cogition; their nature and existence is unrelated to us. (This is how Kant charcterises ‘transcendental realism’ in CPR A368–9.) In contrast, idealism is the view that reality is mind-dependent or mind-correlative. An onto- logical reading suggests that there are no mind-independent things, that there is no ‘ready-made’ world out there; or it is the view that the external world exists only as an object of the mind. But it can also be the view that the fundamental entities are ideas (as opposed to matter), and thus something that is essentially mental or non-material. This is Berkeley’s ‘dogmatic’ idealism (cf. the sheet with extracts). An epistemic reading suggests that what we can know about reality is largely due to our cognitive faculties, and hence our grasp of reality is shaped not by the things themselves, but by the way in which we cognise that reality. This is Kant’s ideal- ism, which thus by no means rejects the claim that there is a world out there, for it plays a role in making possible experience as we have it. But we lack epistemic access to it: we do not have insight into ‘the inner [das Innere, roughly, the intrinsic nature] of things’ (CPR A277/B333), regardless of our cognition of them.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is a Mode Account of Collective Intentionality? Michael Schmitz
    What is a mode account of collective intentionality? Michael Schmitz (Penultimate draft; final version published in Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Raimo Tuomela with his Responses; Springer 2017, pp. 37-70; please refer to the published version.) 1. Mode vs. content and subject approaches to collective intentionality Many attempts to understand collective intentionality have tried to steer between two extremes. We want to understand how the members of a group are bound together, what turns them into a group, so we don’t want to think of the group as a mere sum of individuals. At the same time, we don’t want the group to be free-floating with regard to the members. It should not come out as just another individual, as an additional person as it were, nor should it be emergent in a radical sense. It’s useful to distinguish attempts to accomplish this balancing act in terms of where they solely or predominantly locate collectivity: in the content of relevant intentional states (or speech acts), in their mode, or in their subject(s) (Schweikard and Schmid 2012). A content approach tries to understand collectivity in terms of the contents of the subjects’ intentionality, where content is understood in the standard fashion, namely as what the subjects believe, intend, hope, feel, and so on. So on this kind of view, collectivity is just a matter of certain kinds of things that individuals believe, intend, and feel with regard to each other. On this perspective, the best- known representative of which is Michael Bratman (1992; 2014), there may be a ‘we’ of joint action as represented in the content of intentions, but these intentions are always of the form ‘I intend that we J’, so that no collective ‘we’-subject of intentional states is represented.1 Now, this kind of approach is in danger of erring on the side of being too individualistic.
    [Show full text]
  • Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics the Ontological Status of Bodies
    Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics The Ontological Status of Bodies: A Study of the Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics By SCOTT STAPLEFORD, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University C> Copyright by Scott Stapleford, August 1998 MASTER OF ARTS (1998) McMaster University (Philosophy) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: The Ontological Status of Bodies: A Study of the Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics AUTHOR: Scott Stapleford, B.A. (Brock University) SUPERVISOR: Professor Wilfrid Waluchow NUMBER OF PAGES: iv, 169 ii Table of Contents Introduction 1 The Problem 2 Collateral Issues 3 Procedure Part I 4 Some Working Deftnitions 5 Phenomenalism 5.1 Linguistic Phenomenalism 5.2 Berkeleian Phenomenalism 6 Leibniz and Phenomenalism 6.1 Macintosh's Interpretation 6.2 Jolley's Interpretation 6.3 Wilson's Interpretation 111 Part II 7 Recapitulation and Procedure 8 Athenian and Darwinian Approaches 8.1 Woolhouse's Interpretation 8.2 Adams' Interpretation 8.3 Hartz's Interpretation 8.4 Loeb's Interpretation 8.5 Rutherford's Interpretation 9 Psychology and Ontology 9.1 Mind and Matter in Descartes and Locke 9.2 Leibniz's Analysis of Mind and Matter 9.2.1 The Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction 9.2.2 Physical Considerations 9.2.3 Metaphysical Considerations 9.2.3.1 Substance as Unity 9.2.3.2 Substance as Activity 9.2.3.3 Substance as Subject 9.2.4 Psychological Considerations 10 Levels of Discourse 11 Leibniz's Epistemological Realism 11.1 Requirements of the System 11.2 The Contrary Proposition 11.
    [Show full text]
  • Conflicts Between Science and Religion: Epistemology to the Rescue
    Conflicts Between Science and Religion: Epistemology to the Rescue Moorad Alexanian Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography University of North Carolina Wilmington Wilmington, NC 28403-5606 (Dated: April 23, 2021) Both Albert Einstein and Erwin Schr¨odinger have defined what science is. Einstein includes not only physics, but also all natural sciences dealing with both organic and inorganic processes in his definition of science. According to Schr¨odinger, the present scientific worldview is based on the two basic attitudes of comprehensibility and objectivation. On the other hand, the notion of religion is quite equivocal and unless clearly defined will easily lead to all sorts of misunderstandings. Does science, as defined, encompass the whole of reality? More importantly, what is the whole of reality and how do we obtain data for it? The Christian worldview considers a human as body, mind, and spirit (soul), which is consistent with Cartesian ontology of only three elements: matter, mind, and God. Therefore, is it possible to give a precise definition of science showing that the conflicts are actually apparent and not real? I. INTRODUCTION In 1950, Albert Einstein gave a remarkable lecture to the International Congress of Surgeons in Cleveland, Ohio. Einstein argued that the 19th-century physicists’ simplistic view of Nature gave biologists the confidence to treat life as a purely physical phenomenon. This mechanistic picture of Nature was based on the casual laws of Newtonian mechanics and the Faraday-Maxwell theory of electromagnetism. These causal laws proved to be wanting, especially in atomistic phenomena, which brought about the advent of quantum mechanics in the 20th-century.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy of Mind
    Part Two Philosophy of Mind 9781350067301_txt_prf.indd 179 21-08-2018 11:42:33 9781350067301_txt_prf.indd 180 21-08-2018 11:42:33 6 Spinoza’s Two Claims about the Mind-Body Relation Alison Peterman Introduction How is a particular mind related to its body?1 There are many ways to understand this question, and many different answers for those different ways. Spinoza makes a number of claims about this relationship, all of which are independently interesting. But it is not clear that they are compatible. In this chapter, I would like to focus on two of those claims, and to argue that although Spinoza sometimes run these two claims together, in fact he does not succeed in making them compatible with one another. I suggest that the illusion that they are compatible comes from an equivocation between two ways of using the phrase “insofar as” [quatenus], and that this type of equivocation runs deep in Spinoza’s metaphysics. Those two claims are: (1) Parallelism: the mind is causally and structurally linked to other minds in the same way that its body is linked to other bodies; (2) Idea-of: the mind is the idea of its body; or, the body is the object [objectum] of its mind. In focusing on these two, I will ignore some of those other interesting things that Spinoza writes about the mind-body relationship. For example, I will for the most part ignore his account of it in the earlier Short Treatise, where he claims that love constitutes the union of the mind with the body.2 But I will also ignore another of Spinoza’s commitments that might look more relevant: that the mind and the body are “one and the same thing, understood in two different ways” (E2p7s).
    [Show full text]
  • Evaluating the Metaphysical Realism of Étienne Gilson
    Studia Gilsoniana 4:4 (October–December 2015): 363–380 | ISSN 2300–0066 Brian Kemple Center for Thomistic Studies University of St. Thomas, Houston Texas, USA EVALUATING THE METAPHYSICAL REALISM OF ÉTIENNE GILSON It is true to say that there would likely be far fewer students of Thomas Aquinas in North America today if not for the work of Étienne Gilson; it is equally true to say that Gilson’s work has made significant contributions both to the overcoming of modern philosophy and to the understanding of Thomas himself, particularly as regards the Angelic Doc- tor’s metaphysics and philosophy of knowledge. The resurgence of genu- ine Thomism—as opposed to the Suarezian impostor which had come to dominate—which followed Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris had much to over- come, not the least of which was the preponderance of modernity’s idealist epistemology. Descartes’ mathematicism, the insistence that all things lacking the certitude of mathematics cannot truly be called “knowledge,”1 begot Cartesian idealism, which in turn launched a centuries-long quest, carried out by numerous philosophers, for an answer to what might be best described as “the wrong question,” namely: “How is it that we can know things outside the mind?” This question, particularly in the most thorough treatment among moderns given it by Kant, coursed through philosophy so strongly that even many Thomists were swept along by its current. Enter Gilson. By participating in the recovery of the thought of the scholastics, especially Thomas Aquinas, Gilson was able to formulate a theory of knowledge which, though aimed at answering the question of the moderns, avoided their fundamental errors.
    [Show full text]
  • Conciencia Y Paralelismo En Spinoza
    Discusión Conciencia y paralelismo en Spinoza Luis Ángel García Muñoz Departamento de Filosofía Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes [email protected] En su obra más representativa, la Ethica ordine geometrico demostrata (específi camente en su segunda parte), Spinoza sugiere que todo individuo, sea humano, animal o un objeto extenso cualquiera, está animado en cierto grado (E IIP13s). Y por si fuera poco, que los indi- viduos inferiores como animales u objetos extensos tienen mente. Este asunto, potencialmente agresivo para el sentido común, es tratado por Edwin Curley, quien trata de ofrecer una distinción entre los hombres y los demás individuos con la fi nalidad de expli- car el sistema de Spinoza sin caer en sugerencias tan problemáticas. Esta distinción se encuentra en su libro Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation publicado en 1969, en el que defi ende que, en Spinoza, todos los individuos que están en Dios tienen mente. Pero los hombres se distinguen de los demás individuos (rocas, animales, etc.) porque sólo los primeros, además de tener mente, tienen conciencia. Lo que caracteriza a la conciencia en Spinoza, se- gún Curley, es la posesión de ideas de ideas o bien de proposiciones de proposiciones.1 Así, aunque todos los individuos, en Spinoza tengan mente, los hombres se distinguen de los demás individuos porque sólo ellos poseen ideas de ideas o proposiciones de proposiciones. 1 Esta caracterización de la conciencia es adoptada por Curley al haber reinterpretado la teoría de las ideas en Spinoza y al haber encontrado en ellas ‘un elemento de afi rmación’ que permite equipararlas con las proposiciones.
    [Show full text]