Spinoza and consciousness
Mind 117 (467):575-601 (2008)
| Abstract | Most discussions of Spinoza and consciousness—and there are not many— conclude either that he does not have an account of consciousness, or that he does have one but that it is at best confused, at worst hopeless. I argue, in fact, that people have been looking in the wrong place for Spinoza's account of consciousness, namely, at his doctrine of "ideas of ideas". Indeed, Spinoza offers the possibility of a fairly sophisticated, naturalistic account of consciousness, one that grounds it in the nature and capacities of the body. Consciousness for Spinoza, I suggest, is a certain complexity in thinking that is the correlate of the complexity of a body, and human consciousness, for Spinoza, is nothing but the correlate in Thought of the extraordinarily high complexity of the human body in Extension. In this respect, Spinoza anticipates the conception of mind that is presently emerging from studies in the so-called embodied mind research program. Moreover, this research program, in turn, may hold out hope for a clearer understanding of some of Spinoza's more difficult claims. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? | |||||||||
| Keywords | ||||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,709 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesColin R. Marshall (2009). The Mind and the Body as 'One and the Same Thing' in Spinoza. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (5):897-919.
Michael Della Rocca (2007). Spinoza and the Metaphysics of Scepticism. Mind 116 (464):851 - 874.
Lee C. Rice (1984). Spinoza's Account of Sexuality. Philosophy Research Archives 10:19-34.
Colin Marshall (2011). Spinoza on Destroying Passions with Reason. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (1):139-160.
George Louis Kline (1952/1981). Spinoza in Soviet Philosophy: A Series of Essays, Selected and Translated, and with an Introduction. Hyperion Press.
Don Garrett (2008). Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza's Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination. In Charles Huenemann (ed.), Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays. Cambridge University Press.
Olli Koistinen & J. I. Biro (eds.) (2002). Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes. Oxford University Press.
Simon B. Duffy (2009). Spinoza Today: The Current State of Spinoza Scholarship. Intellectual History Review 19 (1):111-132.
Christopher Martin (2007). Consciousness in Spinoza's Philosophy of Mind. Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2):269-287.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads165 ( #2,057 of 550,917 )Recent downloads (6 months)4 ( #19,337 of 550,917 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
