The question does not make sense. Spinoza's metaphysics recognise the question has no answer because it fails to understand what it is talking about. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The question makes absolutely 100% sense. We assume one guy convinces Spinoza of something. That can lead to :
A. no difference, the ''something'' is not related to his metaphysics or even if it was, it wouldn't affect it;
B. It does somehow affect it and it would make Spinoza reconsider his own idea.

Any question some of you guys don't like, you just qualify it as a question that does not make sense.

it fails to understand what it is talking about. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'm pretty sure Spinoza would understand.

it is explained in that those to events (modes of extension) have relation of substance. — TheWillowOfDarkness

- could you please find another formulation for this? I tried google translate and I still couldn't understand. The sentence does not make sense in my native language.

you have to realise his system is saying the hard problem is logically impossible. — TheWillowOfDarkness

- that is not because he somehow proves that, but simply because Spinozism is not materialism, and the hard problem is framed in materialism. But I'm still failing to understand this:
in Spinozism, everything has a cause. Are those things that cause consciousness conscious? If not, what is Spinoza's explanation for how come non-conscious stuff causes conscious stuff. Simple as that.

In any case, it is impossible for an event non conscious state followed by a concious state to go unexplained — TheWillowOfDarkness

So please be free to explain.

In this respect, Spinoza's metaphysics are consistent with materialist style accounts in which states or consciousness are produced out of non-conscious bodies. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Ok, so in this case, if non-conscious bodies produce consciousness (which I doubt it in Spinoza's parallelism), then one could at least raise the possibility of hard problem. What is the proof in Spinozism (not just assume, because you said it makes the hard problem impossible) that non-conscious bodies produce consciousness?

His metaphysics are also consistent with certain pansychists postion in which each conscious experience is a production of an entity with its own conciousness experience--e.g. an account in which my brain, arms, fingers, cells and atoms each had their own personal experience. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Combination problem, same thing. What's the proof for that in Spinozism? Why do atoms have consciousness? What's the explanation for that in Spinozism?

If bodies without conscious experience generate experiences,the Spinoza's metaphysics are true. — TheWillowOfDarkness

IF!!!!!!!!!!!! But what if they don't? How does Spinoza demonstrate that non-conscious bodies create consciousness? Or he just assumes that?

Whatever exists, whichever of these possible conunterfactal states of existence happen, they are consistent with Spinoza's metaphysics. Spinoza is talking about what will be true of any of these possible events. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, this is exactly what my intuition was telling me from the beginning.

PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTIONS

My problem is that I'm trying to frame Spinoza's vision of consciousness in materialism / panpsychism, and Spinoza is neither (at least, he isn't materialist). In Spinozism, consciousness is not emergent, but it simply exists and manifests itself in humans and animals, but not in objects.

The explanations for how the consciousness of something without consciousness emerges through the weak or strong emergence are not unanimously accepted due to the classic hard problem.

I thought that in Spinoza's vision consciousness also appears from something without consciousness, but that he comes with a different explanation from that of the materialists for how this is possible. I mean, we hope he says something like that: and I think consciousness comes from something without consciousness, but not through the weak or strong emergence. And so far I can accept that he actually says that (although I still don't fully understand how). But here it stops and does not seem to offer an alternative to the emergence for "why consciousness in the first place?" and for "why consciousness in humans and not in stones?", but only states that the complexity of the idea is consciousness without offers absolutely no logical explanation for this.

Please answer the following:

A. He claims that consciousness arose from a God/Nature who does not contain consciousness and does not see the issue here. I mean, he doesn't ask himself, "How is it possible to get consciousness out of something with 0% consciousness?", but he simply thinks that's the way it is. Right?

B. For Spinoza, consciousness is not explained, but starts from the premise that it is present in creatures and not in objects, ie it is the idea of ​​a human body, and Spinoza limits himself to associating human consciousness with the complexity of the idea of ​​human body.
He does not have a logical explanation why complex ideas are qualia, subjectivity, thoughts, etc., but only starts from the premise that it is in the nature of complex ideas to be so. Correct?

You just can't resist :rofl:

I'm just going to assume your answer to my simple question would be yes

I don't share your opinion on that.

Now it is pretty clear to me you're actually avoiding the answer. I can accept that my earlier questions make no sense, this one really does. It is a very simple question and it makes sense. Why are you referring to older posts of mine? Are you disrespecting me?

Trolling - no way. But my question wasn't a ''response'' to your last post. Was just another question. It's late here and it's kind of hard to read a complex answer. I'll do it tomorrow.
I'm trying to keep thing as simple as possible. So my goal is to find out if:
A. Spinoza simply assumes that consciousness can be caused by non-conscious stuff, without bothering with issues like ''how is that possible in the first place";
B. He doesn't just assume, but he actually has strong arguments for why this works and manages to find a decent explanation for it.

and - I could have stopped asking questions here after several people had already confirmed that if the h.p were true, Spinozism would be false. The only reason I'm asking questions is because your opinions matter to me.

I actually do, but I need to read it several times. Patience please :smile:

Also, I started to read this: https://eltalondeaquiles.pucp.edu.pe/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Nadler-Spinoa-on-counciousness.pdf

''state of experience we recognize as consciousness.
This latter issue is, of course, Chalmers's 'hard question' about con-
sciousness transposed to the realm of Spinoza's attribute of Thought. It
is one thing to refer to the structures and dynamics that obtain among
ideas that are a reflection of structures and dynamics of the body; it is
another thing entirely to understand how these amount to conscious
awareness (Chalmers 1995). In response to Chalmers, Spinoza might,
on my reading, reply that the question is misconceived. To ask how cer-
tain structural relations among our ideas-a reflection of correlative
structures in the body (the brain and the nervous system) -`give rise'
to consciousness would, Spinoza might insist, be to fail to grasp his
reductive move.24 Consciousness is not generated or caused by or oth-
erwise related to complexity in thinking. Rather, it just is that complex-
ity among and within our ideas -`perceiving many things at once'-
and nothing more. The adequacy of this response, however, will
depend not only on whether Spinoza can specify what exactly is the
complexity and relations among our ideas that constitute conscious-
ness, but also and perhaps more problematically-whether he can
use those persuasively to explain the qualitative feel of consciousn''

So indeed my questions aren't the best, but I'm making progress.

If one had truly convinced Spinoza that something with no consciousness cannot cause consciousness, would he come to the conclusion his metaphysics was wrong?

Let's assume that Spinoza was finally convinced that something with no consciousness cannot cause consciousness. Would he also come to the conclusion his metaphysics/ idea of reality, call it however you want, was wrong? — Eugen

Please don't avoid this easy answer.

Ok, I can understand and I can accept that something with no consciousness can create consciousness. But let's just assume for the sake of the argument that someone had convinced Spinoza that this is impossible. Let's assume that Spinoza was finally convinced that something with no consciousness cannot cause consciousness. Would he also come to the conclusion his theory was wrong?

I have a better question. Spinoza had nothing against the idea of something totally unconscious, like a God lacking qualia, will, thoughts, etc. could give rise to something conscious. But he didn't come up with an explanation for how come this can happen, he just assumes it from the start, and he just defines consciousness as being the complexity, but he doesn't bother with explaining how could this really work. Right?

That's actually interesting. So Spinoza starts from the idea that consciousness just exists and it appears (for some reason) in complex modes. For him, consciousness is just an attribute manifesting in humans.

But let's assume that one convinced Spinoza that something with no consciousness could not cause consciousness. Would he have admitted that his view is false in this case?

Thanks for the link, I will read it. I am reading something interesting about my curiosity and I understand it so far.

Do you have an obsession? — Gregory

Yes.

I mean admit that you will never understand Spinoza. — Gregory

I don't know the future, maybe I will.

Thank you for your answers and concerns, but I will stop responding to personal stuff.

I did it many times. That's why I'm keep asking questions. D'ooh

Dude, that's your opinion. I know your opinion and that of some others who have clearly stated that if the hard problem is true, then Spinozism is false.

Thank you!

I'm here to talk about philosophy, not about my personal desires, and even if I've already answered you about my motives, you're keep coming back and talk about my person. My person is not relevant here. You said this thread sucks, so I suggest you to leave the things as they are. Maybe I am not coherent and I ask the wrong questions, but I will keep asking until I get what I want.

He would say ''You are conscious because your body is complex"?

So if I were to ask Spinoza ''Why humans are conscious?'' he would say ''They just are", right?

The idea constituting the actual being of the human mind is the idea of the body (II. xiii.), which (Post. i.) is composed of a great number of complex individual parts — Spinoza, Ethics, Part II

Do those complex individual parts contain consciousness?

In a nutshell:

Guys, I think I understand 90% of what you're saying.

A. The Willow Of Darkness and Gregory simply replied that if the hard problem is true, then Spinozism cannot work.

B. Spinoza does not place much emphasis on consciousness.

C. Spinoza is about parallelism, so matter does not determine consciousness as it does in materialism - it is not materialism.

D. However, as 's quote shows, we can draw a parallel and say that the physical body is made up of the interaction of smaller bodies, and the human mind is made up of the interaction of minds.

Then we can say that consciousness is in fact the result of a complex interaction of minds that, taken individually, are not conscious. In a word, complexity makes the difference between a stone and a man. So there is a threshold between unconscious and consciousness determined by pure complexity.

Even if it is not correct to ask the hard problem question, I can still ask the following question:

If we assume for the sake of the argument that it is impossible for the interaction between elements without consciousness to create human consciousness, no matter how complex this interaction is, then can we say that Spinozism is false?

I understand 99% of what you
guys are saying here, but when I'm approaching the final confirmation, I receive a long response telling me I am asking the rong question and that Spinoza is special and hard to understand. Frustrating.

I wrote sources like Wikipedia and other pretty official so to say. And my issue is not if S was panpsychist or not.

I'm trying and I will use my logic in the simplest way.

What is complexity?

Let me get this right. So mindless stuff interacting with mindless stuff won't produce mind stuff, and only mind interacting with mind produces more mind, right?
If that's the case, if I asked Spinoza "What kind of interaction creates consciousness?" And "Why does complexity makes me a conscious thing?" What would he answer?

Ideas lead to and combine with ideas, bodies lead to and combine with bodies — fdrake

This is what Spinoza agree or disagree with?

If he agrees, it is correct to say that combinations of ideas represent conscious thoughts?

I don't know if I'm sufficiently evolved to understand him, I have a problem with reading complicated alambicated stuff. But I will try to find more answers.

I would love to hear your answers on my last questions. Thank you!

Eugen Neither. If my (@fdrake's) summary sketched are not clear enough for you, then I suggest you give up on Spinoza (assuming you've closely read and reread sections I & II of the Ethics – his treatise and an interlocking system of mutually supporting concepts and statements that cannot be adequately understood out-of-context, which almost all of your questions attempt to do). IMO, it's not language difficulties you're have, Eugen, is that you're reading of Spinoza is, in unfortunately typical "student" fashion, quite shallow. — 180 Proof

Thank you. Yes, I'm trying to keep it simple, I have to admit I don't have enough patience and philosophical language to read Spinoza, so I'm asking simple questions and I'm looking for simple answers.

The problem is that ''neither'' kind of breaks the limits of my logic. For me, asking if a body is reducible or not to its components comprises 100% of possibilities, and it is a simple yes or no question. It is pretty hard to conceive how come, in a story that contains bodies, or modes, how could one say ''neither'' when asked if a mode is a sum of other modes or not.

Conclusion: I regret my lack of capacity in understanding Spinoza from your perspective. On the other hand, I can't hide the fact that I believe you're making things complicated for me on purpose. The reason is that I think you want to defend his view. I mean I'm not the type of guy arguing that Wikipedia or other very popular sources are the truth, but I have the capacity to understand that it is generally accepted that he was a panpsychist. On the other hand, that last ''neither'' simply makes no sense to me. Don't take it personally, I may be wrong, but this is how I feel.

Thank you!

Thanks for the reply.

When I say I don't understand something, I don't mean I don't understand it because that thing is stupid, but because I don't really understand it. I am not a native, and although my English is decent, my philosophical language often causes me problems. Sometimes I have to read something several times to understand it (this does not guarantee success either) even when it comes to the text I read in my mother tongue. I do not intend to discredit a certain vision or convince anyone even if it comes with counter-arguments. So I have no intention of convincing anyone of anything and I would gain absolutely nothing if I convinced someone of something. So as I said, feel free to call me an idiot, but not a cheat.

From your last posts, I understand that the appearance of consciousness (qalia, thoughts, etc.) is due to complexity. That is, one mode (an atom) is not conscious, but another mode (consisting of a "complex" combination of atoms) is conscious.

Which statement is correct?

A. Is a "complex mode" (human) a combination of other modes - the extension/body is composed of smaller extensions and the human mind (consciousness) is composed of other minds?
If this is true, then is it correct to say that consciousness arises from a complex combination of unconscious / according to Spinoza, is consciousness reducible to parts without consciousness?


B. Human body or mind are not composed of other modes, and they are irreducible.

PROP. I. Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing.

Proof. — "

So he's basically saying that God has thoughts because humans have thoughts and humans are part of God, right?

The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas.

Proof. — Spinoza Ethics Part II

Why does complexity give rise to consciousness and thoughts? If I asked him this question, he would answer ''It just does", right?

I didn't want to mix Spinoza with the interaction problem. I just wanted to make a parallel.

If I asked S. ''How come you have the attribute of mind in the first place?'' and ''How come some combinations of matter (modes) have consciousness and others don't", he would give me the same answer as a dualist would give me when asked about the interaction issue, namely ''They just do". So in both cases, it is a primary assumption with no other grounds. Am I right?

Bluntly, I think for Spinoza "they just do" — fdrake

That was my intuition at the beginning.
So he didn't have a different explanation for mind, he just assumed that this is how things were.


It is like one would ask a dualist ''How come matter and soul interact?" and the dualist would reply with: ''They just do". Right?

Spinoza's worldview is often equated to PanPsychism, but I think PanTheism or PanDeism or even PanEnDeism (PED) are more accurate labels. PanPsychism tends to view the "universal substance" as a multipurpose form of mechanical Energy (Chi), and is equivalent to the early human beliefs of Animism. Yet, although Baruch was an outcast Jew, he described that essence of all things as "God". However, he was not referring to the traditional tribal god-models of Judaism or Christianity, but to the abstract philosophical notion that has come to be labelled as the "god of philosophers". My own concept of a PED universal substance is "BEING". Obviously, the "power to exist" is essential to all things in reality. But it doesn't just "animate" dead matter, it also produces all other properties, including Mind, that characterize living beings. :cool: — Gnomon

I think it is pantheism, because it denies something ''extra''. But this pantheism can go with everything. You cand be an idealist, panpsychist or even a materialist atheist or Christian and still be a pantheist. I'm more into the mind view of Spinoza. So what's the difference between ''animated'' and having mind?

Spinoza states:
The things we have shown so far are completely general and do not pertain more
to man than to other Individuals, all of which, though in different degrees, are
nevertheless animate.

The scholium to p13, which plays a pivotal role in both the textual as well as the
systematical approach, reads (in part):
no one will be able to understand [the union of mind and body] adequately, or distinctly, unless he
first knows adequately the nature of our body. For the things we have shown so far are completely
general and do not pertain more to man than to other Individuals, all of which, though in different
degrees, are nevertheless animate.

Give me more time to find it, please. Are you suggesting all those people were lying?

OK, so you're basically saying what I said in II. It is like the universe ''thinks'', but only through its modes - us. Hope I finally got it right.

So my question still remains. How come some modes have thoughts and others don't? What's the fundamental difference between a human being and a rock in Spinoza's view?

Could Spinoza's idea survive if the hard problem or the combination problem were true? What do you think, ?

https://philarchive.org/archive/MELTCO-14
https://btcphilosophy.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/spinozas-panpsychism-a-supportive-evaluation/
https://books.google.ro/books?id=pfuBAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT111&lpg=PT111&dq=2p13s+spinoza+animated&source=bl&ots=zNpUdzzxm8&sig=ACfU3U3gcR8ooG3qBF3WeLYWjuS7_LDy2g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdjOSWl-XvAhVKzRoKHdGcCMkQ6AEwAXoECAEQAw#v=onepage&q=2p13s%20spinoza%20animated&f=false

I hope this helps

Romanian

Thanks for the effort to explain, I really appreciate it. My problem is that English is not my native language, and complicated sentences can confuse me. That is why, very often, the answers on this forum are confusing to me. Some interpret my insistence as an attempt to criticize an ideology, but in fact, I am only interested in better understanding a phenomenon. Unfortunately, I may not have understood much of the last answer you wrote to me, so feel free to call me an idiot, but I give you my word that I don't want to be malicious of Spinoza.
I want to see if his vision can be framed in materialism, idealism, etc. or in any metaphysics of the mind, or if it is somehow something truly original and which does not suffer from any fundamental problem of the mind.

I.

Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing. — fdrake

- I understand the sentence grammatically and it seems identical to saying that God thinks, but it seems to me that it contradicts the idea of ​​an impersonal and unwilling God. If we assume that God is the same as the universe, does that mean the universe is thinking? Can the universe have a thought like "I am the universe"?

II.

Particular thoughts, or this and that thought, are modes which, in a certain conditioned manner, express the nature of God

- here it seems to me that you say that in fact, the universe does not think as a person, but that it possesses the capacity to involuntarily create certain conditions for "thinking things", and one of those conditions is the human form. But if that's the case, I don't see how one might not fall into materialism or panpsychism - that is, one form / combination may think and feel, and another may not. On what criteria is the transition from an object that does not think, such as a stone, to one that thinks? What is the fundamental difference between the two in S's vision?

III.

God therefore possesses the attribute (Pt. i., Def. v.) of which the concept is involved in all particular thoughts, which latter are conceived thereby.

- this is a type of sentence that I can't even understand with google translate. Possibly also due to the lack of philosophical language as well. Fortunately, I think I understand the main idea, which is that nature is thinking. Again, I don't understand exactly what that means. Does the universe have thoughts? If so, then why do we consider it impersonal? I understand that we could consider that it does not have an ego, but is it correct to resemble the universe with a giant / infinitely living organism that thinks? If so, wouldn't that mean idealism?

I sense that I and III are misinterpretations of mine and that II is closer to what you meant. That is, it is a universe that does not know that it exists, does not feel, does not suffer, does not want, but somehow has the potential to, under certain conditions, give rise to things that possess all that is mentioned, due to its attributes. But I still don't see how anyone could give an explanation for the difference between a stone without qualia and an animal with qualia without resorting to an explanation either: materialist, panpsychist or idealist. Do you think that Spinoza can get rid of these ideologies when it comes to the mind? If not, what do you think his vision is closer to?

I read multiple sources, and most of them indicate Spinoza was a panpsychist. In this OP, many argued he wasn't. Therefore, what's the fundamental difference between panpsychism and his metaphysics?