"Mind" (or "consciousness"), therefore, is an activity, or process, and not a thing in Spinoza's ontology — 180 Proof
Elaborate. I'm not following this ...So the hard problem comes down to subtracting something at the beginning and being surprised by its addition. — Valentinus
And substance aka "God" is not an entity – not a "person" – but a process, as S says: nature naturing."Materialism (re: natura naturata, or modes) is not ultimately real (re: natura naturans, or substance) in spinozism and, therefore, it's false to claim so. Also, in spinozism, "consciousness" does not emerge from "unconscious matter" so there's no "hard problem" (just as there's no "mind-body problem"). — 180 Proof
Eugen appears to a dualist — TheWillowOfDarkness
Note.—Some assert that God, like a man, consists of body and mind, and is susceptible of passions. How far such persons have strayed from the truth is sufficiently evident from what has been said. But these I pass over. For all who have in anywise reflected on the divine nature deny that God has a body. Of this they find excellent proof in the fact that we understand by body a definite quantity, so long, so broad, so deep, bounded by a certain shape, and it is the height of absurdity to predicate such a thing of God, a being absolutely infinite. But meanwhile by other reasons with which they try to prove their point, they show that they think corporeal or extended substance wholly apart from the divine nature, and say it was created by God. Wherefrom the divine nature can have been created, they are wholly ignorant; thus they clearly show, that they do not know the meaning of their own words. I myself have proved sufficiently clearly, at any rate in my own judgment (Coroll. Prop. vi, and note 2, Prop. viii.), that no substance can be produced or created by anything other than itself. Further, I showed (in Prop. xiv.), that besides God no substance can be granted or conceived. Hence we drew the conclusion that extended substance is one of the infinite attributes of God. — Spinoza, Ethics
What's the fundamental difference between things that have consciousness and things that don't? — Eugen
Note.—This is made more clear by what was said in the note to II. vii., namely, that mind and body are one and the same thing, conceived first under the attribute of thought, secondly, under the attribute of extension. Thus it follows that the order or concatenation of things is identical, whether nature be conceived under the one attribute or the other; consequently the order of states of activity and passivity in our body is simultaneous in nature with the order of states of activity and passivity in the mind. The same conclusion is evident from the manner in which we proved II. xii. — Spinoza, Ethics
Spinoza might say 'Because it is not in the essence of rocks to have qualia or think as humans do, if at all.' In other words, what makes them distinct kinds of entities is the different degrees of complexity which constitute each, and that the 'functional complexity' of humans is above a threshold sufficient for them to "have qualia" and to "think".Now here's what I wasn't able to understand so far:
1. Why does a man have qualia and think, but a rock cannot have qualia or think? — Eugen
Rocks do not; and even if rocks did, inferring that planets would on that basis is a compositional fallacy or hasty generalization fallacy (e.g. cells that make up your body undergo mitosis but your body does not periodically self-divide into two bodies) premised to begin with on a category error of referring to astronomical bodies (re: "planets") in terms of functions peculiar to ecology-bound organisms (re: "qualia and think"). :roll:2. If rocks do have qualia and think, why doesn't a planet have qualia and think?
Same as 2. Also, according to Spinoza, "the universe" is an infinite mode and therefore lacks "think" and "feel" essences appropriate to its constituent finite modes like human beings.3. Why not the whole universe can think and feel?
Some are 'functionally complex' enough to manifest self-reflexive phenomenal awareness (i.e. "consciousness") and some – the astronomically vast majority – are not. The "fundamental difference", Spinoza might say, is their different essences which, in contemporary computational or systems theoretic terms, correspond to (I term it) 'different degrees of functional complexity'.What's the fundamental difference between things that have consciousness and things that don't?
All modes are under the attribute of mind, not just instances of human conciousness. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Spinoza might say 'Because it is in the essence of rocks to have qualia or think as humans do, if at all.' In other words, what makes them distinct kinds of entities is the different degrees of complexity which constitute each, and that the 'functional complexity' of humans is above a threshold sufficient for them to "have qualia" and to "think".
2. If rocks do have qualia and think, why doesn't a planet have qualia and think?
Rock do not; and even if rocks did, inferring that planets would on that basis is a compositional fallacy or hasty generalization fallacy (e.g. cells that make up your body undergo mitosis but your body does not periodically self-divide into two bodies) premised to begin with on a category error of referring to astronomical bodies (re: "planets") in terms of functions peculiar to ecology-bound organisms (re: "qualia and think"). :roll:
3. Why not the whole universe can think and feel?
Same as 2. Also, according to Spinoza, "the universe" is an infinite mode and therefore lacks "think" and "feel" essences appropriate to its constituent finite modes like human beings.
What's the fundamental difference between things that have consciousness and things that don't?
Some are 'functionally complex' enough to manifest self-reflexive phenomenal awareness (i.e. "consciousness") and some – the astronomically vast majority – are not. The "fundamental difference", Spinoza might say, is their different essences which, in contemporary computational or systems theoretic terms, correspond to (I term it) 'different degrees of functional complexity'. — 180 Proof
Elaborate. I'm not following this ... — 180 Proof
Spinoza says God has intellect. The intellect we know is our own and he says perfect free will is an illusion but also that there are passions of the soul (mind, thought). So God is conscious by analogy, but we really can't understand Him. — Gregory
The reason I say you are a dualist is because you hold experiences are a different type of reality, such that they cannot be affected, explained, related to or accounted for by other things that exist. — TheWillowOfDarkness
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