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124. - Mind–Body Identity

from M

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Martin Lin
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

According to Spinoza, the mind and the body are “one and the same thing but expressed in two ways” (E2p7s). A natural interpretation of this doctrine is that the mind and body are numerically identical: there is a single mode of God that is expressed both under the attribute of Thought as mind and under the attribute of Extension as body. This is an important doctrine for Spinoza.

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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 356 - 360
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Curley, E. (1988). Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Della Rocca, M. (1996). Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, D. (2017). The indiscernibility of identicals and the transitivity of identity in Spinoza’s logic of the attributes. In Melamed, Y. (ed.), Spinoza’s Ethics: A Critical Guide (pp. 12–42). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gueroult, M. (1974). Spinoza. 2 vols. Aubier-Montaigne.Google Scholar
Hübner, K. (2022). Representation and mind-body identity in Spinoza’s philosophy. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 60(1), 47–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koistinen, O. (1996). Causality, intensionality and identity: Mind body interaction in Spinoza. Ratio, 9(1), 23–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, M. (2019). Being and Reason: An Essay on Spinoza’s Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loeb, L. E. (1981). From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, C. R. (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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, J. (2017). Two puzzles about thought and identity in Spinoza. In Melamed, Y. (ed.), Spinoza’s Ethics: A Critical Guide. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

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