Spinoza: Panpsychism

We argue that prevailing definitions of Berkeley’s idealism fail to rule out a nearby Spinozist rival view that we call ‘mind-body identity panpsychism.’ Since Berkeley certainly does not agree with Spinoza on this issue, we call for more care in defining Berkeley’s view. After we propose our own definition of Berkeley’s idealism, we survey two Berkeleyan strategies to block the mind-body identity panpsychist and establish his idealism. We argue that Berkeley should follow Leibniz and further develop his account of the (...) mind’s unity. Unity—not activity—is the best way for Berkeley to establish his view at the expense of his panpsychist competitors. (shrink)

Spinoza attributes mentality to all things existing in nature. He claims that each thing has a mind that perceives everything that happens in the body. Against this panpsychist background, it is unclear how consciousness relates to the nature of the mind. This study focuses on Spinoza’s account of the conscious mind and its operations. It builds on the hypothesis that Spinoza’s panpsychism can be interpreted as a self-consistent philosophical position. It aims at providing answers to the following questions: what is (...) consciousness, for Spinoza, and what are the causes that determine its presence in nature? How can human and non-human individuals be distinguished on account of their mentality? How can Spinoza conceive of the human mind as consisting entirely of conscious perceptions? And how, according to Spinoza’s mind-body parallelism, is the content of consciousness determined so that it reflects in thought the order and connection of the actions and passions of the body? To address these questions, I first determine what Spinoza’s notion of “consciousness” is and how he uses it. Then, I investigate whether he has a theory of recognition capable of accounting for specifically human behaviour and mentality. Further, I examine his description of memory and the way in which memory shapes the framework of human conscious thought. Finally, I look for an account of discursive reasoning, capable of explaining the existence of activities of the mind that, by operating on the content provided by memory, preserve themselves through time and change. (shrink)

In the following article, I aim to elucidate the meaning and scope of Spinoza’s vocabulary related to ‘consciousness’. I argue that Spinoza, at least in his Ethics, uses this notion consistently, although rarely. He introduces it to account for the knowledge we may have of the mind considered alone, as conceptually distinct from the body. This serves two purposes in Spinoza’s Ethics: to explain our illusion of a free will, on the one hand, and to refer to the knowledge we (...) have of our mind as something eternal, on the other. I contend, therefore, that we should not confuse Spinoza’s technical use of the notion of ‘consciousness’ with the ‘degrees of animation’ that he also evokes in the Ethics. Consciousness, for Spinoza, is neither a faculty, nor a property specific to certain minds or ideas. Furthermore, consciousness does not come in degrees. Indeed, Spinoza’s account of consciousness is not intended to differentiate kinds of minds in terms of awareness of their respective ideas. (shrink)

In this article, I am interested in dual-aspect monism as a solution to the mind-body problem. This view is not new, but it is somewhat under-represented in the contemporary debate, and I would like to help it make its way. Dual-aspect monism is a parsimonious, elegant and simple view. It avoids problems with “mental causation”. It naturally explains how and why mental states are correlated with physical states while avoiding any mysteries concerning the nature of this relation. It fits well (...) with our ordinary picture of the world, as well as with the scientific picture. It gives its rightful place to the phenomenal, qualitative, subjective character of experience, instead of reducing it or eliminating it. It does not unnecessarily multiply ontological categories. It can come in many versions, and is compatible with other interesting views, such as panpsychism. (shrink)

This article explores a new reading of an important section of Part II of Spinoza’s Ethics. It recognizes that Spinoza actually differentiates between the human mind conceived from the viewpoint of its cause and the human mind conceived from the viewpoint of its nature. It shows, most importantly, that Spinoza assigns different objects to those ‘minds’. Consequently they represent different knowledge of the body. It will appear that the human mind in respect of its cause represents non-conscious knowledge of the (...) human body and that the human mind in respect of its nature represents conscious knowledge of the human body. It will be shown that knowledge of the inner processes of the human body and of the body per se belongs to the domain of non-conscious knowledge. The same conclusion will be obtained in an analysis that starts from the distinction between the formal and the objective being of the human mind. (shrink)

Benedict de Spinoza, C.S. Peirce, and Gilles Deleuze delineate a trajectory through the history of ideas in the dialogue about the potentials and limitations of panpsychism, the view that world is fundamentally made up of mind. As a parallel trajectory to the panpsychism debate in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology, this approach can inform and enrich the discussion of the role and scope of mind in the natural world. The philosophies of mind developed by Deleuze and Peirce are (...) Spinozistic in their natural monism but move beyond Spinoza to explain mind as a part of the natural world in semiotic terms. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on the ontological status of the mind according to various interpretative traditions of Spinoza scholarship and Indo-Tibetan Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. It compares two texts: Ethics by Spinoza and The Way of the Bodhisattva by Śāntideva. I argue against the materialist interpretation of Spinoza on the basis that it reduces his concept of monism to extension and mistakenly frames Spinoza’s insights in terms of Cartesian rationality. I then explain Śāntideva’s non-dual concept of mind as the middle between the (...) extremes of nihilism and essentialism, and compare these to the materialist interpretation of Spinoza’s concept of mind as non-existent, and the non-materialist view that the essence of the mind is basic self-assertion. I conclude that for Spinoza the mind exists, whereas for Śāntideva the mind is beyond concepts of existence and non-existence. Chapter 1: Spinoza’s concept of mind The concept of monism describes reality as one substance with infinite attributes, which human beings encounter as thought or extension, through the modes of individual minds and bodies respectively. For strict materialists, only extended modes actually exist and the concept of the mind is correlated with changes in the body, such as neural activity, or with the conceivability of the order of nature. I argue that despite rejecting Descartes’ concept of mental substance, materialists have transferred the dualism between intellect and feeling to their interpretation of Spinoza’s concept of mind. The non-materialist interpretation of Spinoza such as that of Deleuze, attends to the distinction between essence and existence, and describes the mind as inherently existing to the extent that it participates in substance. For panpsychists, singular minds exist as subjects striving for existence while immersed in the influences of nature. Chapter two: The Mahāyāna Buddhist Concept of Mind Śāntideva refutes the views of earlier Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools in the famous Wisdom chapter of The Way of the Bodhisattva. Śāntideva argues that the mind is beyond the concepts of existence and non-existence using Nāgārjuna’s view of relative and ultimate truth and Dharmakīrti’s logic of valid cognition. The view of selflessness describes the mind as empty: it appears relatively, but ultimately it does not exist as an independent, permanent thing. It is an ephemeral gathering together of the five aggregates, which describe the interconnectedness of thoughts, feelings and dispositions of the mind and body. Chapter three: A comparison of the monist and non-dualist concepts of mind In this chapter I compare Spinoza’s monism and Śāntideva’s non-dualism and I argue that for Spinoza, the mind exists as “basic self-assertion” whereas Śāntideva presents the view of “selflessness”, which is distinct from a view of nihilism. I recognise that although the cultural and historical contexts are very different there are striking similarities in the structure of Spinoza’s and Śāntideva’s theories, including the relationship between the mind and body, thoughts and feelings, and the interconnectedness with nature. (shrink)