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The Mind's Body: The Body's Self-Awareness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Frank S. Lucash
Frank S. Lucash
Affiliation:
University of Nevada–Reno
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Extract

In order to find out how successful or unsuccessful Spinoza's philosophy of mind is, I will examine what Spinoza says about (1) the nature of mind, (2) its relation to the body, (3) its adequate/inadequate and true/false ideas. In doing so I will see what problems critics say he runs into and then find out if what they say about these difficulties can be resolved. If these difficulties can be resolved within Spinoza's own framework then his theory of mind is a success. If not, then it is a failure. I shall argue that his theory of mind is a success because the problems that his critics say he has are not really problems at all or if there are problems they can be resolved within his own system.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 619 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984

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References

1 All references to the Ethics (E) are taken from both the William Hale White (1883) translation as revised by Amelia Hutchinson Stirling (1894, 1899) and edited by James Gutmann (New York: Hafner, 1949) and the Shirley, Samuel translation of The Ethics and Selected Letters, ed. Feldman, Seymour (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1982)Google Scholar. References to the Correspondence and Short Treatise (ST) are taken from the A. Wolf translation.

2 Parkinson, G. H. R., Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 102–105Google Scholar.

3 Odegard, Douglas, “The Body Identical with the Human Mind”, in Freeman, Eugene and Mandelbaum, Maurice, eds., Spinoza: Essays in Interpretation (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1975), 62–65Google Scholar.

4 Joachim, Harold, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (New York: Russell and Russell, 1901; reissued 1964), 141Google Scholar.

5 Wolf, A., ed. and trans., The Correspondence of Spinoza (London: Frank Cass, 1928; reissued 1966), 460–461Google Scholar.

6 My purpose here is not to attempt to outline, discuss, or resolve the substance-attribute controversy but merely to show which view of the attributes is compatible with the discussion of the mind and body in Part 2.

7 Barker, H., “Notes on the Second Part of Spinoza's Ethics”, Mind 47 (1938)Google Scholar, reprinted in Kashap, S. Paul, ed., Studies in Spinoza (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 101, 108, 132–134Google Scholar. Taylor, A. E. agrees with Barker that knowledge is always of something other than itself. See his “Some Incoherencies in Spinoza”, Mind 46 (1937)Google Scholar, reprinted in Kashap, ed., Studies in Spinoza, 200–204. Wallace Matson holds the view that having an idea is the same as knowledge. See his “Spinoza's Theory of Mind”, in Freeman and Mandelbaum, eds., Spinoza, 59. Errol Harris talks about the self-awareness of the body. See his “Mind and Body Relation in Spinoza's Philosophy”, in Wilbur, James, ed., Spinoza's Metaphysics: Essays in Critical Appreciation (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), 14Google Scholar. For an illuminating discussion on this subject and also on the problem of the attributes mentioned earlier, see Gueroult's, MartialSpinoza, vols. 1 and 2 (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968, 1974)Google Scholar.

8 Radner, Daisie, “Spinoza's Theory of Ideas”, Philosophical Review 80 (07 1971), 346–350CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Wilson, Margaret, “Objects, Ideas, and ‘Minds’: Comments on Spinoza's Theory of Mind”, in Kennington, Richard, ed., The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1980), 103–120Google Scholar.

10 Steinberg, Diane, “Spinoza's Theory of the Eternity of the Mind”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11/1 (1981), 35–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Barker, , “Notes”, 160–164Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., 166.

13 Mark, Thomas Carson, “Truth and Adequacy in Spinozistic Ideas”, in Shahan, Robert and Biro, J. I., eds., Spinoza: New Perspectives (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1978), 22, 32–33Google Scholar.

14 Radner, , “Spinoza's Theory”, 351–355Google Scholar.