8. - Affirmation

Summary

Affirmation (affirmatio; bevestiging) is a doxastic attitude we exhibit when we accept something as true, or judge it to be true. It differs from other doxastic attitudes such as denial or negation [negatio] or doubt [dubitatio], which we adopt, respectively, when we reject something as false, or when we are undecided about its truth or falsity. In E2p49s, Spinoza develops an account of affirmation in opposition to Descartes, who characterizes affirmation as a voluntary act by which a rational subject accepts a perceived idea as true (Fourth Meditation, AT 7.56–58). More precisely, Descartes construes affirmations (and judgments in general) as arising from the interplay of two cognitive faculties, will and intellect. According to Descartes, we perceive ideas by the intellect, but we only adopt a specific doxastic attitude toward them due to our will, by affirming or denying them, or by refraining from judging altogether. According to Spinoza, this account relies on a radically distorted picture of ourselves: the picture of ourselves as individual thinking substances endowed with cognitive faculties on which it is up to us to endorse certain ideas or not. Spinoza rejects virtually all elements of this picture.