Spinoza on Mind, Body, and Numerical Identity
نویسنده
چکیده
Spinoza claims that the mind and body are “one and the same.” But he also claims that the mind thinks and does not move, whereas the body moves and does not think. How can we reconcile these claims? As a way of sharpening the challenge, let’s restate it as a puzzle involving Spinoza’s favorite philosophical character: Peter. Suppose that Peter woke up one morning and decided to go for a run. Let BODY be the body that went running, and let MIND be its mind.
منابع مشابه
In Spinoza ’ S Philosophy of Mind
Axiom 6 of Part I of Spinoza’s Ethics, in the most widely used English translation, reads: “a true idea must agree with its object.” Spinoza also claims in Part II of the Ethics that every idea has an object with which it is parallel in an “order and connection” of causes (E2p7, E2p11, E2p13)—and, indeed, with which it is identical or “one and same” (E2p7s, E2p21s). Jonathan Bennett has maintai...
متن کاملRepresentation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination
Spinoza identifies the minds or souls of finite things with God’s ideas of those things. Margaret Wilson famously suggests that this identification prevents Spinoza from giving an adequate account of the human mind: Descartes’s position on the mind-body issue is notoriously beset with difficulties. Still, [his] theory of res cogitantes does recognize and take account of certain propositions abo...
متن کاملReply to Nadler: Spinoza and the metaphysics of suicide
Steven Nadler has argued that Spinoza can, should, and does allow for the possibility of suicide committed as a free and rational action. Given that the conatus is a striving for perfection, Nadler argues, there are cases in which reason guides a person to end her life based on the principle of preferring the lesser evil. If so, Spinoza’s disparaging statements about suicide are intended to app...
متن کاملA note on Spinoza's contribution to systemic therapy.
Writing 300 years ago the philosopher Spinoza anticipated some of the fundamental principles of systemic therapy, notably a respect for the remorseless logic of natural systems and the value of positive connotation. In the debate about the ethics of paradoxical methods, he offers a logical, and humble, defense. Spinoza wanted to show that the universe is necessarily and logically the way it is ...
متن کاملSpinoza on Method
By interrupting the traditional approach to the distinctiveness of the order of knowledge and the order of nature (which was the procedure of many philosophers like Aristotle, and his scholastic disciples, more especially of Thomas Aquinas and even Descartes and Cartesian), and acquiring a unified science, Spinoza changes the customary order of philosophizing and begins his famous book, Ethics,...
متن کامل