Wilson, Margaret - Objects, Ideas and "Minds": Comments on Spinoza's Theory of Mind

05/21/2010

Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy Ch 9, Princeton University Press

This paper attempts to show that Spinoza's theory of a human mind isn't close to what we understand a human mind to be, especially something considered in Descartes as a thing capable of conscious representation of objects, real or imaginary. Author begins by contrasting Spinoza's conception of minds with Leibniz's 'complete concept' and Descartes' 'res cognitantes' (thinking things).

The first is Leibniz, who gives metaphysical space between God's ideas of objects and the objects themselves. The complete ideas exist within God, but the objects themselves are God creatures. Further, they could be different, as God could have created a different world. So it is likely that for Leibniz, God has complete ideas of even non-existent entities. (pg127) Spinoza seems at odds with both of these positions: objects are attributes of God, and it is unclear if God has ideas of non-existent objects (of extension). (pg127-8)

Author secondly examines Descartes, acknowledging the common problems with the Cartesian picture. However, some of the intuitions are shared by most: anything that occurs in the mind is, by definition, conscious. Secondly, the mind has the ability to have ideas of many different things, whether imaginary or right-in-front-of-your-eyes (formal). Lastly, the mind is supposed to be a marker for rationality, giving mind-substance to some creatures and not to others. On most of these positions it seems Spinoza also disagrees. Spinoza doesn't exactly have an explicit account of consciousness, but for him the mind has an idea of everything-- everything-- that occurs in its body. Spinoza's mental ideas are also limited to just the things that happen in the body; finally, all extended things are also mental things-- that is there is two attributes to every mode of God's action-- even a stone has some level of mentality. (pg129-130)

Author moves on to consider a defense of Spinoza (in section III), but first levels the primary objection of her paper: Spinoza fails to give an account of human mental representation that is anything like what we consider it to be. The reason is that he is committed to minds being about the bodies whose mode they share, which explodes the concept of mental representation. It is exploded (pg131) by failing to find a sufficient condition for a subset of what is going on in the body to be represented in the mind.

Section III deals with the problem of mental representation of objects-- author believes that for Spinoza a human mind can only represent what is happening in its body. Ok, but how do the representations that we have filter up from our bodies? The rub is that it is obvious that not everything that happens in our bodies is represented in our minds. So where's the difference? Author argues there is not one to be found (pg132).

Section IV is an in-depth analysis of the various texts of Spinoza that commentators have claimed purport to show a distinction between conscious and non-conscious thought. Author argues against this interpretation.

Author concludes that without a sufficient condition for human mental representation (as opposed to representing everything in our body) and without a robust distinction between conscious and non-conscious ideas, Spinoza does not have a theory of mind that captures anything like the human mind.