SPINOZA AND CONSCIOUSNESS. A Thesis. Presented to the. Faculty of. San Diego State University. In Partial Fulfillment

Transcription

1 SPINOZA AND CONSCIOUSNESS A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of San Diego State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Philosophy by Sam Entin Zahn Fall 2013

2

3 iii Copyright 2013 by Sam Entin Zahn All Rights Reserved

4 iv DEDICATION rest in peace This thesis is dedicated to Peter, Rachel, Irwin, Florence, Megan, and Jerry, may he

5 v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS Spinoza and Consciousness by Sam Entin Zahn Master of Arts in Philosophy San Diego State University, 2013 The identity of the physical and the mental in Spinoza entails that for every physical object there is corresponding mental content. This means that even rocks and shovels have minds. For this reason, commentators find it important that Spinoza have a theory of consciousness, more specifically, a theory of selective consciousness or at least degrees of consciousness. But Spinoza does not offer any explicit views on consciousness. Scholars have drawn several interpretations of consciousness in Spinoza from key passages in the Ethics, for example, that conscious thoughts are ideas whose objects are other ideas. Michael LeBuffe contends that conscious ideas are those with the most power. I argue that this interpretation is on the right track, and that consciousness is an idea's relation to the nexus of other ideas in a mind. What does this mean for mind-relativity? Is God conscious?

6 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT...v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY OF CONSCIOUSNESS SPINOZA S THEORY OF MIND AND IDEAS CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATIONS MY VIEW CONCLUSION...76 REFERENCES...80

7 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Steve Barbone for his tremendous help, both for his translations and his wealth of Spinoza knowledge. I would also like to thank my other thesis committee members, Robert Francescotti and Jane Robinett, for their time and excellent input.

8 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Spinoza is primarily remembered for his metaphysics, but in fact the majority of his magnum opus, the Ethics, is spent building very modern views on human psychology. That is why it is surprising that he be lacking an obvious or developed theory of consciousness. An understanding of consciousness is as important to our experience as an understanding of time or space it is the lens through which we know the world. Even in the early seventeenth century, philosophers were analyzing the ability of certain minds to know their own thoughts. Descartes, a paramount influence on Spinoza, and one whom he called a great and illustrious man, 1, 2 had already hailed consciousness as the only indubitable fact. Though in the Ethics Spinoza refers to conscious thoughts intermittently, and uses the Latin word conscia throughout his analysis of mind and the affects, it is never confronted directly as a problem or puzzle to be deciphered; rather, it is taken as a given and used to bolster those real areas of concern how to live the good life, how to dominate the negative emotions, how to know God. Even without any explicit remarks on the subject, scholars have pulled interpretations of a Spinozistic account of consciousness from the text, things Spinoza might or should have 1 From here on I will cite Spinoza's Ethics in footnotes by part number, then section, in addition to the typical style. The sections will be abbreviated as follows: a = axiom, d = definition, app = appendix, p = proposition, s = scholium, c = corollary, dem = demonstration, le = lemma, pref = preface, exp = explication. For example, the scholium to Proposition 39 in Part IV will be cited 4p39s. I use the Shirley translation for quotations (Benedictus Spinoza, Ethics, in Spinoza: Complete Works, trans. Samuel Shirley [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002], ), with some key words and passages translated from the original Latin with the help of Steve Barbone. 2 5pref (Spinoza, Ethics, 363).

9 2 believed. My goal is to look at the texts and these interpretations and construct a theory of consciousness that is consistent with Spinoza's metaphysics, his theory of mind, and the spirit of his philosophy. I will not be attempting to find the theory of consciousness that lies hidden in the Ethics, for it is clear that there is none. Nor will I be speculating about what Spinoza did or did not believe in his private moments. This project takes certain scholarly liberties in order to err on the side of completion and plausibility rather than maintaining strict adherence to textual content. With that said, I will be careful to keep the interpretation consistent with Spinoza's views, only adding what seems to be an outflow of the ideas themselves. The relevant history begins with Descartes; he is generally considered to be the first to conceive of consciousness as a purely psychological phenomenon. For him, consciousness was an intrinsic property of thoughts, leading to the simple conclusion that all thoughts in a mind are conscious the mind being a clear glass. 3 As to the fact that there can be nothing in the mind, in so far as it is a thinking thing, of which it is not aware [conscius], this seems to me to be self-evident. 4, 5 When asked by Arnauld how infants can have the power of thought (minds) and yet not be aware of those thoughts, Descartes replied that although infants have minds and, thus, conscious thoughts, they are unable to commit them to memory, giving them the appearance of being unconscious. 6 3 Larry Jorgensen, Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta (2010). Accessed February 2, Descartes references will be cited in footnotes by the standard shorthand for the English translations: edition, volume, and page number. The Adam and Tannery edition (Rene Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 vols, ed. and trans. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery [Paris: J. Vrin, 1996]) will be cited 'AT' and the Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch and Kenny edition (Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols, ed. and trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, Anthony Kenny [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991]) will be cited 'CSMK.' 5 CSMK 2, / AT 7, 246 ([Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, ] and [Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 246]). 6 CSMK 2, 150 / AT 7, 214 ([Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, 150] and [Descartes, The Philosophical

10 3 Descartes' theory is, perhaps, naïve in light of contemporary views on unconscious and subconscious mental content, but it is consistent with his beliefs about what kinds of things have minds. According to him, no non-human animals have minds (a belief that, he thought, morally permitted his vivisection habit). This is because they do not display behavior that seems to be backed by conscious intention. This makes mental substance selective; it will not unite with just any physical thing. Since Descartes equated the mind with the soul, the selectivity of the mental, a more liberal view of which conforms to the common belief about minds and objects, entails the religious conclusion that consciousness is the mark of a chosen class of beings. Angels, humans, and whatever other soul-having things there might be are thus partitioned from the rest of nature by this supernatural attribute. In this sense, consciousness is the line between the earthly and the divine. Spinoza, on the other hand, did not want to create barriers between things in nature. He was a naturalist in the grandest way. If we consider [quantity] intellectually and conceive it insofar as it is substance and this is very difficult then it will be found to be infinite, one, and indivisible. 7 Unlike Descartes, who thought that the mental and physical substances were distinct from one another and from God, Spinoza asserted that there is only one substance God, or Nature all individual things being modifications of this one substance. Each of us is a part of God as are all other things, seen and unseen. Another significant break from Cartesian ontology lies in his solution to the mind-body problem. Descartes has been criticized for the last four hundred years for his ineffectual answer to the question of how a non-material entity the mind can inhabit, or communicate with, a material entity the body. That question required no answer for Spinoza because it was Writings of Descartes, 214]). 7 1p15s (Spinoza, Ethics, 225).

11 4 predicated on false terms. In fact, the physical and the mental are merely two attributes of the same substance, God. They are two of an infinite number of ways that God's essence can be conceived. 8 So for every physical object, there is a corresponding idea, and vice versa, each being a different aspect of a chunk of God. For the Spinoza scholar attempting to discern a theory of consciousness, the identity of the physical and material is quite an obstacle. Despite all his problems, Descartes, at least, had a theory of mind that easily distinguished between conscious and non-conscious beings. For Spinoza, all objects, be they plants, animals, rocks, or buildings, have corresponding minds. We have reason to believe that Spinoza did not intend this panpsychism to be a panconsciousness. So what is it about the human mind that makes it conscious, while the mind of a stone remains in the dark? Humans as a species are distinguished by the liveliness of our inner experience, which translates to highly developed and colorful cultures, technologies that allow us to change the Earth more than any other single species, and a whole host of gifts and atrocities that we bestow upon one another throughout our lives. This is not to mean that we are apart from nature, but rather that we are on the far end of some spectrum of consciousness that requires an explanation. A theory of selective consciousness within a panpsychic system is crucial, more crucial than within in a selective-minds system, for the panpsychic is burdened with fighting the strong current of skeptics shouting accusations of mysticism and spiritualism accusations that are wholly warranted in light of this strange position. Therefore, the search for a Spinozistic theory of consciousness is not just a scholarly exercise or some fastidious preoccupation; it seeks a missing link that could render 8 1p10s (Spinoza, Ethics, 221).

12 5 this suspicious fruit of an otherwise precociously modern philosophy more digestible to the critical reader. In chapter 2, we will look at the study of consciousness from the vantage point of contemporary philosophy of mind and review some theories that might help us analyze the existent interpretations of Spinoza. Additionally, we will determine what constitutes a theory of consciousness, not merely by the nascent standards of Spinoza's time, but by contemporary standards. Chapter 3 will be a review of Spinoza's philosophy of mind with the intention of understanding the special problems it poses for a theory of consciousness, as well as the benefits of his metaphysical commitments, for we will see that one of the great impasses in the study of consciousness is how the qualitative feel of subjective experience can arise out of purely physical processes, a problem Spinoza avoids altogether by his strict segregation of the physical and mental. In chapter 4, we will analyze each of the key interpretations of Spinozistic theories of consciousness proposed by scholars, and in chapter 5 I will further develop the one that seems to me most plausible: the power of ideas interpretation.

13 6 CHAPTER 2 A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY OF CONSCIOUSNESS In the effort to construct a theory of consciousness for Spinoza, it is necessary to first establish what a theory of consciousness is and what it should do. We could look to Descartes for an answer to this question, or perhaps Leibniz, and fit our Spinozistic theory in as a progression from one to the other; in doing this we could compare our construct to the standards and expectations of the era. But this would not do justice to the philosopher or ourselves. While it could be argued that on many philosophical topics, little progress has been made since the 17 th century, consciousness is not one of them. Even if we put aside the leaps of scientific advancement made in the last four hundred years, the attention that has been given to the phenomenon of consciousness alone, especially in the last century, has made it an incredibly rich and nuanced area of inquiry. So it is best to begin with a general discussion of consciousness that includes contemporary definitions and contemporary concerns, in order that we may be better prepared to evaluate scholars' accounts of Spinoza's views. To avoid any confusion, I would like to define some metaphysical terms before broaching the subject of consciousness. Though each of these terms is actually a category composed of many different theories, it will suffice for our purposes to define them generally. By idealism, I mean the theory that the only things that exist are minds and ideas, physical objects being ideas in minds. By dualism, I mean the theory that there are two different categories of existence: the physical and the mental. For early modern philosophers,

14 7 like Spinoza, Cartesian (substance) dualism, or the notion that the physical and mental are two independently existing substances that causally interact, was the prevailing dualism to be argued for (or against). But since then, more subtle theories have emerged, such that dualism might be more carefully described by the phrase: not everything can be explained in wholly physical terms, or, in the case of idealism, in wholly mental terms. By materialism, or physicalism, I mean the theory that the only things that exist are physical things, and that what we commonly think of as mental things are really, at bottom, physical. Because Spinoza asserts that the mental and physical are one and the same thing, conceived of in different ways, 9 one might call him a physicalist or an idealist because neither can exist independently. I believe these labels are misleading. When I refer to Spinoza's ontology, I will use monist, or sometimes neutral monist, to distinguish it from the other three. But a full review of Spinoza's metaphysics will come in the next chapter. Because consciousness is a large and thriving, not to mention controversial, area of study within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is important to pinpoint those areas that are relevant to Spinoza's theory of mind. Many contemporary philosophers of mind are strictly physicalists, and Spinoza is not, so a survey of those theories that preclude Spinoza's metaphysics would not be helpful in discovering what he would have, should have, or might have thought. And yet, we will see later that Daniel Dennett, a physicalist, has a theory of consciousness that may illuminate some aspects of Spinoza's thought that bear on the question of which ideas ascend to consciousness in a mind. So I will present a general discussion of consciousness, including what a theory of consciousness should attempt to 9 Thinking substance and extended substance are one and the same substance, comprehended now under this attribute, now under that. So, too, a mode of Extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, expressed in two ways. (2p7s [Spinoza, Ethics, 247]) One might liken the relation of body to mind in Spinoza s metaphysics to the relation of particle to wave in light. The particle and the wave are actually the same thing, only conceived in two different ways.

15 8 explain, and then describe briefly a few theories that are most relevant to the area of consciousness in Spinoza. Consciousness is inherently difficult to define and explore because it is so foundational to our existence, especially the reflective aspect of being it is our experience of the world. What we will attempt to account for in our Spinozistic theory of consciousness is what is often referred to as phenomenal consciousness, or the qualitative feel of experience. Thomas Nagel describes phenomenal consciousness as what it is like to be an X. 10 It is the subjective quality of experience, as David Chalmers puts it. 11 It is the way things appear to us in their raw, sensory aspect. These mental states, which have a qualitative feel, are often referred to as qualia. Chalmers states that phenomenal consciousness stands in opposition to the functional types of consciousness, which fall under the category of what he calls psychological consciousness, which is roughly synonymous with Ned Block's access consciousness. 12 These are the cognitive faculties that seem, for the most part, to require phenomenal consciousness for their performance, and yet none of them are necessary for the existence of phenomenal consciousness. They include self-consciousness, reportability, introspection, and knowledge. 13 While these modes seem inexorably linked with phenomenal consciousness in humans, an example will suffice to show that it is possible for phenomenal consciousness to exist without its attendees in the functional realm. We can imagine a person with a terrible brain injury his ability to experience qualia is left intact, but he has lost all functionality. Imagine that this man is charged by a bull. He Thomas Nagel, What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 436. David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) 6. Ned Block, On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness, in Consciousness, Function, and Representation: Collected Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, 26-7.

16 9 experiences the colors with typical vivacity, all shapes are truly represented, and yet the picture has no meaning for him all he sees is an irregular black shape growing larger and larger, taking up more of the other colors that we perceivers would call the background. Any categories or information that a typically functioning person would gain from this experience are left out, and only the raw phenomena are felt. If you or I were substituted for this man, our perceptions would surely include things like object getting closer, object is animal, I am distinct from animal, etc. Certainly a being like this brain-damaged man is possible; perhaps infants experience phenomena like this. To invert the question, it is quite possible that human higher functionality is not necessarily linked to phenomenal consciousness. To be clear, this higher functionality is not access consciousness, or psychological consciousness, because it lacks the consciousness part; it is action that, from the outside, seems to be inextricably related to what we commonly ascribe to conscious causes, only the consciousness is not there. Chalmers explores this in his functional zombie thought experiment. 14 Imagine you have a twin who is like you in every objectively discernible way he looks like you, acts like you, talks like you, claims to think like you, etc. Imagine, too, that the only difference between you and your twin is that your twin lacks phenomenal consciousness. This seems possible, given that a kind of high functionality occurs without consciousness in computers. If a human could respond to stimuli based on the laws of nature and his own physiology alone, then there seems to be no functional necessity for qualia. What one has in one's twin, then, is a kind of zombie. The zombie behaves like a normal person in every way; the only difference is that there is nothing that it is like to be that zombie. Thus, even though one with access consciousness might look, 14 Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, 94-5.

17 10 to the outside observer, exactly like these functional zombies, access consciousness is still consciousness, and so, there is no conflict between the propositions that, on the one hand, the former is necessarily conscious, and, on the other, the latter is clearly not. Explaining the psychological, or functional, elements of consciousness is relatively attainable; in fact, it is well within the domain of empirical science. For example, one might be able to link damage in a certain part of the brain to loss of memory, or depth perception, or abstraction; and with this data, it is certainly possible to map the neurological processes that correspond to many of the functional faculties of the human brain. This is what Chalmers calls the easy problem of consciousness. 15 And yet, the existence of qualitative experience seems to evade this kind of explanation. This is the explanatory gap in consciousness studies (not to be confused with the explanatory gap between the attributes of Thought and Extension in Spinoza, though both relate to the mind-body problem one as a species of the problem and the other as a purported solution). What is the relationship between the human nervous system and qualia? Though an interesting debate between physicalists and dualists in philosophy of mind, we are fortunate not to have to enter into this vast and contentious world because, working within the metaphysics of Spinoza, we are assuming that the mind and the body are one and the same thing, conceived under the attributes of Thought and Extension respectively. 16 And due to the causal barrier between the attributes, conscious thoughts do not emerge from the brain or vice versa. Rather, according to Spinoza, a thought corresponds Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, xi-ii. 2p7s (Spinoza, Ethics, 247).

18 11 to something physical in the body, and yet is causally independent from it. 17 Therefore, the story of consciousness will have to reside within the realm of Thought alone; but we are getting ahead of ourselves. The central point, and one that will be returned to again, is that in order to understand an account of consciousness, the prejudice that phenomenal consciousness is necessarily linked with what we commonly call intelligence whether it be planning, the use of tools, or the ability to use complex languages to communicate needs to be expelled. The essential mark of consciousness is that it has a subjective quality, a vividness. Now that we have made the important distinction between phenomenal consciousness and functional types, we can ask the important question: What are the constituents of a complete theory of consciousness? This is a difficult question to answer generally because one's metaphysical stance dictates to a significant degree what kind of answer one must give. For a physicalist, who believes that conscious mental states reduce to brain states, a theory could be constructed wholly from neurobiological data, while for substance dualist like Descartes, the answer will require an explanation of how a non-physical soul interacts with a material body. Also, one might think he is giving an account of consciousness when, in fact, he is only describing one or several of its functional aspects. For example, it is a common belief among scholars that, for Spinoza, consciousness is having an idea of an idea. 18 While this has intuitive appeal insofar as it explains how an entity may be self-conscious, the 17 The modes of any attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under that attribute, and not insofar as he is considered under any other attribute. (2p6 [Spinoza, Ethics, 246]) Like in the fourth footnote, we can use the wave/ particle analogy to illustrate this thesis. In light, the wave and the particle are two aspects of the same thing; one is not the cause of the other because they are conceptually separated. This is the same as the relationship between corresponding modes. Spinoza believes that if one is serious about the identity of modes under different attributes (e.g. mind and body), then there must be a strict causal barrier between those attributes. For further discussion of attributes, see chapter To be discussed below. See Curley (Edwin Curley, Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969], 126).

19 conscious idea being intentionally directed at the idea of the self, the idearum, it is difficult to find a reason how or why a mental state whose content is another idea must be conscious. Regardless of the philosopher's metaphysical bend, Robert Van Gulick 19 gives three types of questions that should be answered by any substantial account of consciousness: 1. The Descriptive Question: What is consciousness? What are its principal features? And by what means can they be best discovered, described and modeled? 2. The Explanatory Question: How does consciousness of the relevant sort come to exist? Is it a primitive aspect of reality, and if not, how does (or could) consciousness in the relevant respect arise from or be caused by non-conscious entities or processes? 3. The Functional Question: Why does consciousness of the relevant sort exist? Does it have a function, and if so what it is it? Does it act causally and if so, with sorts of effects? Does it make a difference to the operation of systems in which it is present, and if so, why and how? Though these three kinds of questions are inherently connected, it is useful to look at them as individual criteria for a viable theory of consciousness. The benefit of working with a systematic metaphysician like Spinoza is that despite the fact that Spinoza offers no obvious theory of consciousness, nor does he very often use the word 'conscious,' several of these questions come to us already answered. Under the Functional Question: Does [consciousness] act causally and if so, with what sorts of effects? 20 Surely for Spinoza each idea has a causal effect, 21 but insofar as we are interested in determining whether consciousness is the guarantor of freedom of the will, which is a widespread intuitive belief, Robert Van Gulick, Consciousness, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta (2011). Accessed February 2, Van Gulick, Consciousness. 1p36 (Spinoza, Ethics, 238).

20 13 we must answer that due to his strict determinism, there is no free will 22 and, therefore, consciousness cannot be the home of agency. Does this mean that Spinoza is an epiphenomenalist? Does he believe that conscious mental states are just ideas that attend the non-conscious human functions and have no causal power? Are qualia merely side effects? We will explore that possibility in chapter 5. But even with Spinoza's vast metaphysical foundation, the most fundamental of the criteria, the what and the how questions, stand largely unanswered. In addition to addressing the three questions above, answers to which are useful in understanding consciousness as a general phenomenon, or consciousness at the level of mind, an account of consciousness should also address consciousness at the level of individual ideas. What makes one idea conscious over another? What is the relationship between one conscious idea and the subsequent conscious idea in a stream of consciousness? In what sense does an idea exist when it is not conscious? One might also add a question that may only be relevant for Spinoza: is it possible for the exact same idea to be conscious in one mind and unconscious in another, for example, conscious in God's mind but unconscious in mine? 23 Here it will be helpful to introduce, in a general way, a few theories of consciousness that relate to commentators' existing interpretations of consciousness in Spinoza to be discussed in chapter 4. As stated above, many physicalist theories are irrelevant to a possible Spinozistic theory of consciousness, yet some staunch materialists, including D.M. 22 God is said to be the only free cause (1p17c2 [Spinoza, Ethics, 228]), and yet, not even God acts from freedom of will (1p32 [Spinoza, Ethics, 235]). God is free insofar as God is not constrained by any other substance, but free will requires contingency, which does not exist in Spinoza's system (1p29 [Spinoza, Ethics, 234]). All things that occur in God do so out of necessity. 23 For a discussion of the mind relativity of consciousness, see chapter 5,

21 14 Armstrong, have theories of consciousness that, wholly or in part, make reference to intramental relationships that could constitute even an idealistic account. My hope is that in sacrificing an exhaustive or balanced discussion of the topic, we gain a more focused understanding of the problems and solutions going forward. And having accepted the metaphysics, at least for the purposes of this project, insofar as the goal is to find a consistently Spinozistic account of consciousness, it would only add undue confusion to build up a heap of contradictory theories whose foundations we have already implicitly denied. Because every physical thing in Spinoza's world corresponds to an idea, he seems to support a kind of panpsychism the notion that all physical things have or are, in some sense of the word, minds, or at least ideas. Surprisingly, this theory has supporters even among the ranks of contemporary philosophers of mind. Both Nagel 24 and Chalmers 25 seem to support panpsychism. Chalmers describes a possible formulation of his view, panprotopsychism, that is, that consciousness is a basic element of the natural world, and so it exists to some degree in all things that bear any information, which basically means systems that undergo change. Chalmers speculates that even thermostats could have phenomenal experiences. 26 This universal mentality need not be dogmatic or lead to apparent absurdities. Chalmers remains in a state of suspended belief on the subject of conscious rocks, and though Spinoza himself wrote that rocks are, in some sense, animate, 27 we need not assume this means Spinoza was committed to pan-consciousness. It is certainly possible that Spinoza believed that a rock 24 Thomas Nagel, Panpsychism, in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), Chalmers, The Conscious Mind. 26 Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, p13s (Spinoza, Ethics, ).

22 15 necessarily corresponds to an idea in the attribute of Thought, and yet that idea is not a conscious one. 28 Given that Spinoza's mental theory, unlike Descartes, suggests that at least some ideas are not conscious, an acceptable theory of consciousness should be able to determine which ideas are conscious over others and why. As mentioned above, some commentators have suggested that conscious ideas are certain ideas whose contents are other ideas. Contemporary philosophers call these meta-intentional or higher-order mental states. 29 Under this theory, consciousness consists in having a thought that is aware of another thought, sensation, desire, etc. a flashlight of consciousness shining into the stock of unconscious ideas. Some higher-order theorists argue that the mind has some inner sense that scans the sensations and thoughts, picking them out like eyes scanning a landscape. 30 Others argue that higher-order states are not unified under a faculty like sense organs, but are merely ideas of a different type that are caused by those ideas that are candidates for conscious content. 31 Daniel Dennett offers an interesting schema for which ideas become conscious. He contends that there is no inner sense that is the central subject. He calls that view the prejudice of the Cartesian Theater, 32 or the intuitive belief that there is an indivisible center of consciousness, akin to the Cartesian ego, that is the haver of conscious ideas. Instead, Dennett proposes the Multiple Drafts model of consciousness, in which he states that an idea For a defense of the view that Spinoza did not subscribe to pan-consciousness, see chapter 3, 22. David Rosenthal, Two Concepts of Consciousness, Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 49 (1986): D.M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind (New York: Rutledge, 1968), 17. Rosenthal, Two Concepts of Consciousness, Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1991), 101.

23 16 becomes conscious based on its cerebral celebrity, 33 or its effectiveness relative to the rest of a system. The consciousness of any given idea at a certain time is dependent upon factors that give that idea effective power, including probing by researchers, the production of physical action, and even stimuli that occur after the idea has supposedly become conscious. Dennett cites research on a strange phenomenon called Koler's color phi that sometimes occurs in the reporting of visual phenomena. 34 In the experiment cited, a subject sits and watches a red dot flash on a screen for just a moment, then there is a very short lapse with no dots, and then a green dot appears just to the right of where the red dot was. Instead of seeing the phenomena in this way, the subjects report seeing a red dot moving to the right and turning green. What is interesting is that the subjects claim to see the red dot morph into green with a moment where the dot was of an intermediate color. For this perception to have occurred in real time, the subject would have had to anticipate that the second dot was going to flash green but there was no knowledge of this fact. What happened, Dennett argues, is that once the dot flashed green, the mind went back and revised its story of the time between the red flash and the green flash, portraying the event as a single dot moving and changing color, and it is this revised story that became conscious. Revised drafts of events, or what content attains the requisite cerebral celebrity to be conscious at any given moment, is fluid and based on the context, which often includes what kind of questions are asked about events afterwards. 35 This is a sharp divorce from the notion that there is an observer who is constantly recording final drafts of experience the moment that they occur. Though Dennett's view is decidedly physicalist in the end, these notions of the decentralized mind, and also the Daniel Dennett, Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet? Cognition 79 (2001): 224. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 137.

24 17 cerebral celebrity of conscious ideas, will resurface when we discuss the power of ideas interpretation of consciousness in Spinoza. A final contemporary issue in the study of consciousness that relates to Spinoza, and one mentioned briefly above, is the role of consciousness in operations of the individual who experiences it. We must ask: does the phenomenal consciousness of a thought do anything? That is, do the qualia that we experience, things like the pain of being burned by a fire, or the pleasure of listening to one's favorite album, or the mental experience of working one's way through a difficult math problem, do these qualia bear any causal power? or are they merely effects? As T.H. Huxley famously stated, are mental states just the steam whistle on the locomotive? 36 The story goes that all physical things, including conscious individuals, are wholly determined by physical laws, and so their behavior can be explained solely in terms of material bodies causally interacting. Causation flows from the physical to the mental, but not vice versa. Perhaps more than Dennett's view, epiphenomenalism inverts our intuitions about the mind. Most of us want to believe that our love for another is at least partially determined by the loftiness of our feeling and not merely the firing of neurons and the gushing of hormones, or that we can make decisions based on a rational faculty, or that there is some significant difference between how Einstein functioned and how a fungus does. It is important not to conflate the question of epiphenomena with that of free will, though the two have some points of intersection. It is at least logically possible for our bodies to be causally guided by mental states while those mental states are exclusively outside of our control, which would preclude both epiphenomenalism and freedom of the will. But theories of epiphenomenalism do not seem to leave the same possibility for free will. In fact, 36 T.H. Huxley, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History, in Method and Results: Essays by Thomas H. Huxley (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898), 240.

25 18 they seem to allow for a clean determinism: physical laws determine all things in the universe while mental phenomena are recognized as existent but stand out of the way of the physical engine. If some kind of epiphenomenalism were to be true for Spinoza, though, it would not be because of any ontological priority of the physical but by virtue of his strong metaphysical determinism. Each of these theories of consciousness will be revisited later in the context of Spinoza's philosophy of mind each twisted into the philosopher's unique and strange metaphysical system, and so, in a sense, made clearer and less piecemeal. The reader should not be concerned by the brevity of the descriptions or lack of arguments and critiques, for the heart of the controversies lies in the metaphysical foundations of the views. Were all thinkers to agree on the metaphysics, the study of consciousness would neither look so colorful, nor so bleak. And yet, the few interpretations of consciousness in Spinoza are remarkably divergent. This is easily attributable to the utter deficiency of treatment on the philosopher's part (and, as we shall see later, some ambiguous uses of the word 'conscious'). I trust this discussion has served to raise a few of the nuances in the study of consciousness that will render our investigation of Spinoza a bit more lucid.

26 19 CHAPTER 3 SPINOZA S THEORY OF MIND AND IDEAS Spinoza's theory of ideas is unique and odd, and this is due to metaphysical obligations imposed upon it by his monism. As we saw in the last chapter, one cannot just force Spinoza's metaphysics into one of the categories of contemporary philosophers who theorize about consciousness for he is neither a dualist, nor a materialist, nor an idealist. He is a monist and perhaps is best described as a neutral monist, meaning his ontology favors neither the material nor the ideal. And even within the misfit crew of neutral monists, including James and Russell, Spinoza is unique, such that some refuse to even include him in the category. 37 This makes it very difficult, and unadvisable, to cut a theory of consciousness from another philosopher's theory of mind and transplant it into Spinoza's system (assuming, of course, that Spinoza has no identifiable views on consciousness that would be supplanted, which is not quite the case). In this chapter, we explore Spinoza's theory of mind and ideas, first with an overview of his metaphysics, then an explanation of the relevant areas of his mental theory, and finally with a focus on a few passages several commentators have identified as being crucial to unlocking Spinoza's leanings on consciousness. Substance is the only thing that exists in Spinoza's metaphysics, and he uses the words 'God' and 'Nature' interchangeably as names for substance. 38 In Part I of the Ethics, Spinoza defines 'God' as an absolutely infinite being, that is, substance consisting of infinite 37 Leopold Stubenberg, Neutral Monism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition), ed. Edward n. Zalta (2010). Accessed February 2, p4dem (Spinoza, Ethics, 324).

27 attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. 39 That only one thing exists and not many is an immense and controversial claim, yet I do not want to get bogged down in reasons for and criticisms of this thesis, as it is better treated elsewhere. 40 It serves us best to proceed with a general understanding of Spinoza's system and an attitude that forces us to repeat given Spinoza's metaphysical commitments and theory of mind..., with the ellipses being questions or assertions about a theory of consciousness. With that in mind, Spinoza's proofs for the existence of one substance are contained in 1p11 and are ontological in style. The reader is more inclined to accept the thesis, or at least suspend judgment, because the God in question is not anthropomorphic. Perhaps 'Nature' is the better name for substance, though it does connote something merely physical and also suggests something distinct from humans and human activities. Spinoza's God is similar in description to Brahman in the Upanishads all things seen and unseen. A secular person in our own culture might call substance the universe. Those who confuse the divine nature with human nature easily ascribe to God human emotions, especially so long as they are ignorant of how the latter are produced in the mind. 41 Substance is neither divisible nor dependent upon any other entities for its existence or qualities. It exists independent, one, and whole. The indivisibility of substance entails a nominalism of things. Objects and ideas as we perceive them are modifications, or modes, of substance. Modes are inextricably connected to one another, and, though we perceive and speak of them as distinct individuals, any distinction between them is ultimately illusory. Spinoza attributes this mistake the divisibility of substance into modes to humanity's d6 (Spinoza, Ethics, 217). See Della Rocca (Michael Della Rocca, Spinoza [New York: Rutledge, 2008] 33-88). 1p8s2 (Spinoza, Ethics, 220).

28 21 natural inclination to represent things as distinct in the imagination. 42 This inclination proves useful to our survival but misleads in the pursuit of knowledge. Modes must be conceived in their relation to each other. A particular mode exists because of the sum of the conditions that produced the mode. For example, an individual lava rock exists because of a volcano that shot lava into the air, and that lava was cooled into rock. But that lava came from a tectonic plate that was pushed under another into the hot magma where it was melted and formed into liquid rock, rising to the top to be blown from a volcano. The lava s individual relationship with the air particles in the atmosphere caused it to be formed into a hard, jagged shape. The proximity of the earth to the sun and its chemical composition are responsible for the movement of the tectonic plates and the convergent boundary above which the volcano was formed. The story could go on indefinitely, for the causal net is so vast that our limited intellects cannot understand it in full. Modes, then, must be seen collectively as a net of interdependence, reminiscent of Quine s holism of beliefs in epistemology. Though, as noted above, modal distinctions are ultimately illusory, the mind still perceives modes individually, and insofar as they are perceived individually, the relations between them are causal ones. God did not directly cause the lava rock from his nature, instead he directly caused the attributes, and through the medium of these primary things are produced the infinite affectations of substance. 43 Modes are intelligible only within a specific attribute. An attribute is that which the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence 44 and roughly means an ontological domain, like the mental or the physical. Spinoza says that God consists of p15s (Spinoza, Ethics, 225). 1p28s (Spinoza, Ethics, 233). 1d4 (Spinoza, Ethics, 217).

29 22 infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. 45 It is an area of contention as to whether Spinoza meant that God contains an infinite number of attributes, or that all the attributes God contains are infinite in themselves. It seems that an infinite, perfect substance should be able to be conceived in an infinite number of ways, and so the definition should be taken quantitatively, as well as qualitatively. Spinoza says that God is absolutely infinite and so whatever expresses essence and involves no negation pertains to [His] essence. 46 This seems to mean that having infinite attributes means having all the attributes. 47 Regardless of Spinoza s ambiguity on the number of attributes, it remains reasonable to conclude that God contains all the attributes, of which humans are able to perceive two: Thought and Extension. 48 It is important to keep in mind that Spinoza is not a Cartesian; he did not think that Thought and Extension were two different substances, or even two distinct things, but the same thing conceived of in two different ways. And so, when a mode of thought is to be conceived, it is to be so under the attribute of Thought and not under any other attribute. For it would be inconsistent and erroneous to conceive of a mode of thought, which exists under the attribute of Thought, and then shift one s conception of substance to the attribute of Extension and still consider the thought; these attributes are two different ways of conceiving the same thing. So for Spinoza, there is a strict conceptual barrier between the attributes, Thought and Extension, such that there exists no causal relation between them. All modes of thought are conditioned by the modal web under the attribute of Thought, and likewise for objects in Extension. Furthermore, because attributes d6 (Spinoza, Ethics, 217). 1d6exp (Spinoza, Ethics, 217). Michael Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Hereafter the capitalized form of these words will denote the attribute.

30 23 are different ways of conceiving of the same substance, a mode of Extension and the idea of that mode [in Thought] are one and the same thing, expressed in two ways. 49 So, according to Spinoza, for every object in Extension, there is necessarily a corresponding idea in Thought, divided by the dualistic perceptual faculties of the human mind. Spinoza makes another surprising claim about the relationship between attributes: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. 50 This doctrine is what Spinoza scholars refer to as parallelism, that the causal relationship of modes in Extension is the same as the causal relationship of the corresponding modes in Thought. It is somewhat difficult to see why Spinoza needed such a strict relationship between two attributes that seem to require serious explanatory differences and whose conditions are so particular that they perhaps share no similarity other than existence in time. Yet we can try to work out an example given by Spinoza s theory of the relation between the individual human mind and body to explain this theory in the world of experience. Spinoza says, the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body i.e., a definite mode of extension actually existing, and nothing else. 51 So the human body is the corresponding object in Extension to the mode of Thought that is the human mind. And so, since each individual idea in the human mind is a mode of Thought, it must correspond to a mode of Extension that is part of the human body. We can imagine that my idea of my dog is a cell in my body; this idea exists, this idea changes in isomorphic relation with how my dog changes, and when my dog dies, the idea of the living dog that exists in my mind disappears. Does the cell that was the correlate of the idea of my living dog die along with the idea? Perhaps, though it could merely undergo a change. That is p7s (Spinoza, Ethics, 247). 2p7 (Spinoza, Ethics, 247). 2p13 (Spinoza, Ethics, 251).

31 24 not to say I don t have an idea that is a memory of my dog, but this memory is a different idea and so corresponds to a different cell in Extension that perhaps changes with time as I grow fonder of my old dog and perhaps less sad. The point Spinoza is trying to make with his theory of parallelism is that if object A in Extension causes a change in object B, which then causes a change in object C, then there must be a corresponding idea in Thought, call it A, which causes a change in idea B, which then causes a change in idea C, each idea corresponding to its letter object in Extension, and furthermore, these corresponding sets of [A, A ] are the same thing in God, conceived by humans in two different ways. We now have a general outline of Spinoza s metaphysics: all that exists is one substance, God. 52 God has infinite attributes or ways in which an intellect perceives his essence. Each attribute has modes or modifications of God as substance under the given attribute. Humans can only perceive two attributes Thought and Extension, or the mental world and the physical world. For every idea in Thought, there is a corresponding object in Extension, and the order of causes within the attributes are the same, though there exists no causal relation between them. In Spinoza's ontology, the human mind is a complex mode of Thought composed of individual ideas, which are also modes in their own right. The ideas that compose a mind are, in some sense, independent features of Thought because, as Della Rocca argues, they exist simultaneously as part of a finite mind and part of God's infinite mind, though we will explore the effects of this phenomenon later. 53 Because parallelism entails that each mode conceived under a certain attribute has a correlate mode in every other attribute, every 52 Only substance exists; modes are parts of that substance (though only phenomenally) and attributes are ways in which limited minds, who are also part of substance, perceive it. 53 Della Rocca, Representation, 73.

32 25 physical mode corresponds to an idea. The strange consequence of this is that just as the human mind is the body's correlate in Thought, so, too, must there be a mind, or at least idea, for every rock and, too, every grain of sand on the beaches of the earth. Though certainly non-intuitive and even mystical in appearance, this brand of panpsychism may be more benign than it reads. Spinoza never claims that the minds of rocks are conscious, though he does write that all individuals are: animate, albeit in different degrees. For there is necessarily in God an idea of each thing whatever, of which idea God is the cause in the same way as he is the cause of the idea of the human body. And so whatever we have asserted of the idea of the human body must necessarily be asserted of the idea of each thing. 54 The Latin word translated by Shirley here as 'animate' is animata, which generally means animate in the sense of alive, endowed with spirit, moving. This is in opposition to anima, which is used to denote a soul or life principle. 55 Because Spinoza uses animata, it is unlikely that he believed that rocks have conscious thoughts or perceptions, but only that they express a non-physical aspect an unintuitive demand of his monism. Thus, without any clear evidence to warrant a mystical interpretation, it is most charitable to view this panpsychism as a consequence of Spinoza's metaphysics, one that is not intended to revolutionize our perception of nature or to force us to wear pillows on our feet so as not to injure the dirt. What Spinoza focused on, and what we should when reading him as scholars, are two scopes: (1) God's view, the monistic reality in which all things are infinite, eternal, one, and undivided, beyond categorizing and beyond mind/body duality; and (2) The attributes of Thought and Extension as they pertain to the human mind and its relationship to the body. A synthesis of these two scopes seems to be the ultimate goal and the Stoic mission p13s (Spinoza, Ethics, ), my emphasis. Thanks to Steve Barbone for this distinction and the translations.