Yes, but I was going for a little bit more than just oppourtuinistic defences.

I'm saying, in this case, we actually have thesis no-one can make a mistake in the words they use. It's not just that people ought to be able to tell lies, flasehoods, vilifications, but that there are no grounds to even assert these are occurring.

In the case of allowing such speech, it is still false/unjustified, etc., we just grant a permission to speak the words. NOS4A2 appears to be taking a postion beyond even this, where any speech is completely fine.

It's probably a duck and a rabbit.

I think frank missed more though. Or at least something important in the context of the discussion.

I get the point frank was going for too. The pheneonma of an all green world is something utterly alien to those who live in a world of distinctions. Can you imagine a world on which everything is green?

I mean it could be our world: let's say there was a being who encountered objects of our world but only ever saw the colour green. Such a being would never get our distintion of green from emprical observation. With green being constant, it's questionable whether they would even register it as distinct. They might be more inclined to think of it like we do "existence" or "world."

But such limits aren't really limits. One can always imagine much more than is ever in front of them. Just as we can imagine a world which is all green, they might imagine one which has more than green. Distinction isn't closed to them because they just see green. With the right imagination, they might speak of anything. They might even make the move of denying their own world is green.

I'd go at this from a related but different angle. All language functions in thidsmanner of talking about something.

If NOS4A2's postion is taken to be the case, There are no rules or justifications for.the use of.langauge . We are not just free to say anything we want, but incapable of being wrong in our language use. Anyone could take any statement by another and claim it said anything. We could give any description of any one, no matter how false or deflamantory and it would be fine.

This is not just a defence of racial slurs in the end, but a defence of any lie or flasehood told about anyone or anything.

I was going to go on a big rant about how green still had a use in an all green world, but wasn't sure I since its been dead for months.

I'll just say this: if green is useless in an all green would, to what are we referring to with our statements of "All green world?" There is some private langauge nonesense going on here.

You're contradicting yourself: in your first post you claimed it wasn't just a question of terms. Now your running back to an insistence others cannot demand you use terms.

What's more, they (we all should) can indeed demand it. Misgendering them tells a falsehood about them, casts aspersions upon them as a trans person, denies there very existence, etc.

We have many ethical and descriptive reasons to respect.their identity, using the language which recognises it. Using it amongst others, in the "third person" is actually really important. It means we've recognised their identity for the objective truth of is, rather than disrespecting it as a delusion we only entertain for their feelings.

Completely untrue.

We know stuff, make claims, describe what's happening to us all the time. Our lives are filled with experiences of what's going on around us. People speak truths all the time without jumping through some triplicate justification game.

In most respects, knowledge and justification are actually separate axis. The former is to understanding something is true, the latter is to engage in some game with others which allows your statements to be justified.

As I spoke about a few posts up, there is no question of biology here. An identity is not the presence of a body. Pronouns are not given in the existence of a body. They are a social fact about people with bodies.

Such "doubt" is dime-a-dozen and not at all instructive. Anyone can "doubt" quite literally anything in this way. Just see a claim, assert we don't know anything about it.

It's lazy and directed at "winning" an argument. The question of what is true is not even approached.


If we are concerned with what is true and what we know, this approach is closed to us. We have to turn upon our own "doubt." For if something is true, if there is good reason to accept it, taking a postion in which we just reject anything is a gross error.

That's why they matter in the first place: to misgender speaks an untruth about someone.

Demands are made prescisly because what is thought untrue is actually true. After all, it is this truth speaking the terms is about. The language was never isolated to "terms" which were just a fun, arbitrary nickname.

I agree you have understand states of consciousness are present. My point wasn't to suggest we didn't know they existed.

Rather, it was about what their existence entailed. If I am speaking existing experinces, I am no longer in the space of imagined definitions.

Yes, I might imagine a definition of consciousness and who has it, but this is not how any state of conciousness
exists.

If we are dealing with existence, something more than our imagination is involved. We are speaking about a supposed presence in existence. A truth determined not by our imagination, but by existence of one state or another.

Let me show you are example. I can imagine definitions where you think the world is without consciousness. Does the fact I've imagined thus make it true?

No, it does not. Since your understanding of consciousness is an existing state, that I've imagined it doesn't make it true.

You exist with states of consciousness that hold the world has consciousness. What I imagined is false by what exists.

That's why you realise no state is given by the definition of a form. Definitions of properties are indeed imaginary.

They are also necessary, since definitions don't change.

All together incapable of giving existence, since that depends upon whether or not a being exists (states of consciousness included).

Nope.

A diamond is a diamond. Atoms are just some material states. They are not them all. And although a diamond may involve atoms, it is not just atoms. It has its own particular existence beyond just any of its atoms.

Neither, I'm saying there specific states of matter which are conscious experiences. There's no need for all states of matter to be conscious.

All that's required is some states of matter (conscious experiences) be caused. No magic wand or hat. Just states of matter producing different outcomes. Sometimes we get diamonds, other times we get states of conscious experience.

There is no "evidence" for matter for a very good reason: it's not an emprical state we might observe. It's a logical/metaphysical category.

Not a worry here, since conscious instances are just another state of matter.

There are states of the brain interact with other states (bodies, the environment, etc.) to produce states of consciousness. Causality is functioning like anything else where interacting states produce a new state.

The states in question are just brains and instances of conscious experience, rather than say a germ and an illness or carbon under heat and pressure forming diamond.

Causality is not any sort of acting entity. It's a reference to what various states are doing and what results from their interaction.

I missed the part where brains were nothing.

Perhaps we should all put a little hatch in our skull, to use the empty space for a handy storage compartment.

...

To say concousness cannot be caused by brains because it cannot come from nothing is incoherent. Brains aren't nothing. There is no cause which is nothing. The entire point of giving any causal account is that something is involved in producing something else--i.e. to claim a causality is to assert something came for something else.

One must one ask what exactly we are resisting. The problem with stoic account is it assumes an adversary. In the context of nihlism, it needs us to already be nihlists to mean anything.

The one who is not a nihlist has no such adversary to overcome. For them, there is no pain of nihilism to resist and endure. Those with more than a minimum of.moral fibre are already swimming.

No, it's more than that: they don't even need to think about swimming. It doesn't matter, to them, they can breathe water. Oceans are no adversary for them.

Yes, we do claim states otherwise. He outright states substance is conceived through itself.

By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself [emphasis mine]: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. — Spinoza, Ethics Part 1, Prop III.

Substance is itself and also conception through itself. It's not just no other conception, but the conception of itself too. It's not independent of everything (that would be an oxymoron; it would have to independent from itself), just everything but substance (i.e. everything else, rather than everything).

They're also wrong if being conceived not does count as conception, since it would render Substance not a conception.

In this case, Substance would not involve conception to obtain, so the contradiction they suppose would not be present.

Spinoza is making this precise distintion to over come the problem dualism has for accounting for finite/contingent states.

Substance is of a different kind than other things, an absolute infinite, without the sort of contingent form or limitation which defines both the body (each limited state) and the mind (each limited thought).

Rather than being dependent on conception (a singlaur form of thought), Substance is itself a conception which is always. It has no particular form which makes it true over false. Unlike modes of thought and extension, it does not dependent on a specific limited form to be true. Substance is true and the same, no matter which modes are present or true.

Put in your terms, Substance is ALWAYS conceived. There is no moment without the conception of Substance.

If you do not grasp this, if you think Substance might or might not be conceived, you do not understand what Spinoza is arguing.

Any objection to Spinoza made on this terms does not carry. Spinoza was never claiming a conception of Substance which might or might not be, which had to be conceived through a specific, limited/contingent conception to be.

it's a claim about a group of individuals, but you cannot apply it to all members of the group without generalizing, which is where i think there's room for error. — VagabondSpectre

One cannot ever apply it to an individual. The mass measurement is a different order claim. If I'm talking about a certain trend of occurance in a population, I'm not talking about an individual, not even individuals who are part if the trend.

If I want to describe the individual, I need a different concept, a specific description of them. "X group are 30% poorer" does not give "Sam is of X group and they own 30% less money" and vice versa.

The enduring problem i can get past is that trying to understand individuals as a function of their race or other identity leads to a lower-resolution understanding of any given individual (that is to say: to understand the individual, we must look most closely at the individual). When it comes to those who bear guilt, the same statistics based heuristic becomes rhetorically problematic.

Following on from the above, this does not happen. There is no move to a lower understanding of an individual because the measurement of trend was never measurement of an individual in the first place.

Trends descirbe a social trend, not an individual. We cannot draw implications about an individual from a trend. The trend is it's own particular fact of society, concurrent to individuals who we might describe. (which is why, for example, the presence of a rich black individual doesn't take a away the trend poverty amongst black people as a group. Or convesely, why the destitute whitw person doesn't take away a trend of wealth in thre group).

There are no generalisations to make. All are false because they amount to a catergory error, a confusion of one kind of description (trends in a population) for another (description of an individual), even in cases where an individual might have a trait identified in a trend.

I'm out of time again, the rest will have to wait for another day.

I don't have time to respond at length, but I wanted to clarify what I meant it the last quote because it is so crucial. When I speak of the "devaluing", I am talking about improving conditions at the bottom.

The billionare is being "devalued' in the improving of conditions at the bottom. In virtue of the system which improves the life of.people on the bottom, the billionaire loses some of his status over those on the bottom. "Devaluing" is a material condition of improving lives on the bottom. If the people on the bottom are richer, the billionaire loses some of the status he has over them.

It is our end which "devalues" here, no matter which metric (wealth, race, sex, etc.) might be invoved. When the bottom is no longer the slave, the top is no longer the master (i.e. the top is "devalued" ).

"Devaluing" is descriptive fact of the material social condition of any relationship of emainpation.

I'm pointing out this is mistaken.

Claiming some properties are absent when we aren't looking is commiting oneself to a presence of contingent states without these properties. It functioning on the same level as any claim for a state with those properties. Both arguments are claiming contingent states of certain properties. My point is they are of the same class.

My point was rejecting these properties is to suppose a world of a certain form (absence of these properties) exists. It's actually proposing the world is things which do not have these properies.

As such, the rejection of properties is not an agnostism, but an alternative emprical account. It is a claim that, when no-one is around, things exist without these properties.

So the trouble with this line of argument is an absence of these properties also amounts to concepts.

How can we say there are an absence of these properties when we aren't even taking in the part of the world in question?

There is nothing wrong with supposing an absence of certain properties of course, the unobserved world might exist without them. The trouble is this commits to as much of a postion of what is there, nothing with these properties, as claiming everything we see was there when no-one was looking.

Either way, our concepts are not just our own, they are of what the world is doing.

I get this, but I can’t square it with opposing color-blindness… — VagabondSpectre

It's descriptively wrong.

Since issues of structural racism have genesis the class structure, it is a material fact that our society/class structure forms a structural racism. One's race cannot said to be irrelevant because it has a social significance. In our society, it's a carrier of class prejudice towards some individuals (POC), but not others (white). To be colourblind is to ignore the significance of people, race and this manifestation of class in our society. It's to pretend an aspect of our society isn't there.

Or to borrow 180's analogy, to be colourblind is to think here is only a central nervous system, rather than there being a peripheral one as well. Do you think we would be doing a good job of describing the body if we only mentioned the CNS?

How do you get "identity only matters as a position in a hierarchy" from my moral claim that "race should not confer societal advantages and disadvantages"? — VagabondSpectre

The colourblind is a response to the idea of people gaining merit over others by identity. We ought to, according to the colourblind approach, not recognise or describe differences of identity, for identity is only ever a means by which someone gains merit.

In other words, it is an approach afraid of recognising who people are, for it thinks identity is nothing more than a trick to obtain merit. The position is running on an underlying idea people obtain merit through who they are (i.e. their identity).

It tries to eliminate this by giving everyone the same singular identity (person, human, man, citizen, etc. ), so everyone is granted the same merit. We are all just free citizens (unlike those slaves, immigrants, non-citizens, aliens, etc., who do not belong), so we must be of equal merit. Not only does the colourblind approach fear identity gives merit, but it ironically believes it too.

If identity wasn’t consider to grant merit, the colourblind approach makes no sense. If we are people of equal merit, what do we have to fear in our differences being recognised? We have nothing. Since we are people of equal merit, we are valuable no matter how we might differ from others. Our differences can be bold, on show, recognised constantly.

My point here is the colourblind approach begins in a fucked understanding of people.

It understands people have to take some specific form (the differentlessness, universal subject) before they have merit. It rejects, like the racists, the sexists, etc al., people have merit in themselves (whatever differences that might entail). Rather than grasping people have merit, a colourblind approach just continues the squabble over being “the right sort” to have merit.

I understand that subcultures can run along ethnic or racial lines, but they don't actually. Groups are collections of individuals that all share something in common. Race can be used to define groups.but they're only as culturally, conceptually, materially, and economically homogeneous as the width and standard deviation of the bell curves that measure in-group diversity (that is to say, individuals are not actually defined or necessarily accurately described by the average situation of other members of their identity group). If you tried to define someone's identity based on their race, and they disagreed with your assessment, then you would have likely been employing a racist stereotype (although you could always accuse them of having "internalized white supremacy"). The moment someone says "All black people", or "All white people", they've departed from reality. — VagabondSpectre

Subcultures never run along racial or ethnic lines. Arguing so is a category error. Cultural actives one partakes in are distinct from having one particular identity or not. Former outsiders become part of groups all the time. Supposing a subculture only involves people of a certain racial or ethic group is just a form of racial essentialism.

Some subcultures might have a certain connection to people of particular racial or ethnic identity, but that doesn’t make belonging to the subculture only for that group of people. Family, relationships location and circumstance can always toss people of expected race or ethnicity into that culture.

Race, like any other identity aspect, cannot be used to defined groups. Identity is of the individual. If we are to speak about an identity, we are speaking about individuals. There is nothing homogenous about it. In any given ethnic group, there will be all sorts of people. Different cultural aspects, different concepts of self, variance in material and economic conditions. Identity specifically crosses in-group diversity, to include all sections of the bell curve. Rather the race defining groups, individuals of race define the group. A racial group is an identification of a similarity (racial identity) between these individuals of race.

The statistics you speak of here is a misstep. Or rather, the way you are using them is backwards. We can measure in group diversity, draw out particular relations, general trends, etc., of the group in society. What does this tell us? Certain numbers of people of the group are in particular cultural, material and economic conditions. It’s not a description of any one individual. Nor is it any absurd claim about what “all people are.” Measurement of masses of people are only useful for telling us a relationship of individuals in a social context about masses.

I'm trying to understand how ability relates to race, gender, or religion. I don't think ability is irrelevant, and since I think we should always be striving toward "equity" for those suffering the most, I fully support the initiatives required to help the disabled lead lives worth living. In assenting to this, I am tacitly admitting that disability is an intrinsic disadvantage; that it is better to be not disabled than to be disabled. Many disabilities are unique, but I think to be counted as a "disabled" an individual has to have some sort of reduced capacity that interferes with the normal living of life, hence, "all disabled people suffer as a result of their disability". We need not employ statistics at any point except when looking for the best bang for our investment buck when we erect or modify institutions to better accommodate the disabled, and at the same time, offering help that is tailored specifically to each disabled individual is how we can (at least forseeably) reduce the most amount of suffering among the disabled.

If we focus on the specific suffering and needs of individuals, regardless of group identity, I think we stand a better shot at delivering more change. We do need to recognize the ways in which we treat people unfairly because of their race, religion, or creed, so that we can cease the unfair treatment (which is the crux of 'colorblindness'). If poverty, immoral outcomes in the justice system, and a lack of access to quality healthcare or education are the things that disproportionately cause suffering in the black community, let's just address those problems directly, on the individual to individual level, and community to community level — VagabondSpectre

You misunderstand. I wasn’t trying to say ability relates to race, gender or religion in any particular way. I was referring to ability as identity. Just as someone might have a race, gender or relation, they have abilities which society might recognise or not. My point was an equitable society will recognise a person’s abilities as valuable, rather than trying to just ignore them (as the colourblind approach does with race).

In the case of disability for example, it means recognising the are valuable people in what they can do (assisted or otherwise). They don’t occupy some special category of lives not worth living. Sure, there is stuff they cannot do, but that is true of everyone else. An able-bodied person collapsed from hunger can no more walk then a legless person. Everyone relies on someone else. The need of a wheelchair to move around easily is no more of a “special” problem than able-bodied people needing farmers or/and environment to grow them food. It’s just a different need from the society or community to live a fulfilling life.

If a disability is to amount to a life not worth living, it’s got to be on features which define it (like terrible suffering, disconnection, etc. ), as for any able-bodied person. Anything else is just prejudice, a supposition the able-bodied get merit over the disabled by their able bodied existence.

With disability, we also the direction reaction between recognition and addressing problems. How can we hope to address the needs of this with a disability, if we ignore how they are different, the specific needs they have? To be blind to the difference means we cannot take directed action towards it. Addressing the problems on the individual and community level needs recognition of the individuals of the community.

Affirmative action, at least as it usually practiced, fails to address most structural problems for this reason. Giving a some individuals a position in a college or a company doesn’t address needs of the many which constitute that structural disadvantage, let alone other structural disadvantages of those of different identities.

Indeed, when affirmative action is mistaken for an exhaustive approach to racial disadvantage, it’s because people of a racial identity have been ignored. Imagined this way, it is effectively colourblind. It's repeating the same structural disadvantage, perhaps wth a limited number of people being able to break out due to getting a position. The work to recognise many individuals of a racial group and what they need for a structural disadvantage hasn't been done. Affirmative action needs to be understood for what it is, a potential way to bring diversity into a local culture/give select individuals a position.

(note: I think there are much more effective ways of affirmative action, ones which could seriously dent structural disadvantage, but they are much more complex and long term efforts. Stuff like giving people property, resources and building accompanying community and culture, but these aren't likely to be popular with capitalist developers or white inclined wealthy communities).

So my rebuke is that you're ultimately advocating we rhetorically divide ourselves into ideologically rigid groups in order to assign collective guilt or virtue, where you ought to be focusing on individual needs.

But symmetry doesn't speak to absolute suffering; we could arrive at symmetry by "devaluing" the whites currently at the top, but that doesn't guarantee any changes for the individuals who suffer at the bottom (the Bolshevics brought about more up-down symmetry, but they certainly didn't do it by valuing individuals or menshevics). — VagabondSpectre

I've put these together because they speak to the same issue: focusing on individual needs in a social context is always a question of collective guilt or virtue. Not in the sense you would seem to assume here, where a person is supposedly especially good/bad in their identity and obtains merit/lose merit for it, but in the sense our society will be guilty or virtuous towards individuals. We cannot focus on what an individual needs from society without a notion who the individual is, how they belong, and how society has a collective responsibility to deliver what they need.

Addressing an issue of structural racism is question of dealing with a guilt our society has generated for a group of people. Our society is guilty of a mistreatment. Fixing this wrong is a collective responsibility which will have consequences for particular people. Certain white people, for example, will lose their vision of an all white community. Some white rich people will have to be less rich, more money going to black people on the bottom (amongst others as well, assuming we are also fixing some things for other groups on the bottom).

A "devaluing" of those at the top, many of those who are white, is exactly what it takes to change something for those at the bottom. I don't mean some violent revolution where everyone's property is being seized, just that those on top lose certain aspects of wealth, status and power when those on the bottom are understood to have merit and get a greater slice of the economic pie.

A simple example is a billionaire will only be able to say they have $2999985000 more than a poor person, rather than $3000000000. But that $15000 of "devaluing" is enough to drive some people to racial hatred or neo-liberal insanity.

“Both insentience and sentience are of reality. Simultaneously of substance.” — Both are of “reality”, sure, the point is just that they’re not the same or identical realities. Simultaneity of being isn’t identicality. — aRealidealist

Spinoza's point is they are of identical reality. The a priori definition of the modes insentience and sentience in the attribute of thought are of the same reality. Both definitions are true of reality. It isn't the case we have one otherworldly plane with just the definition of sentience and another with just the definition of non-sentience.

And indeed, simultaneity of being isn’t identically. The beings (modes) of insentience and sentience are not identical. It's reality which is identical. Insentience and insentience, are not the same thing, just of the same reality.

Much like all the books on my shelf are entirely different objects, yet all of them are identical in being of my shelf.

This is wrong, firstly because “reality”, per se, cannot actually predicate or support anything, in as much this is merely a subjective categorical term that’s applied onto or over designated things/objects (it isn’t really a thing or object itself); & secondly because predication isn’t real outside of conception or judgement (it cannot be a reality independently of these), & therefore remains (as the categorical term of “reality”) wholly ideal or subjective in nature & character. — aRealidealist

This is mistaken. For Spinoza, substance isn't predicated over other objects. It's self-defined. There is a thing, the absolute infinite of substance. It is not merely a subjective categorial term. Nor is it a mode of extension (e.g. an empirical state, an instance of some thinking the concept, etc.). Nor is it a mode of thought (e.g. an a priori definition of a mode of thought, like the meaning of sentient or non-seinteint).

It is real outside anyone existing conception and judgement. It is, in the the terms you are using, a thing-itself. Substance is there whether or not anyone thinks about it.

One doesn’t “have” insentience or sentience, one either is sentient or insentient. This is a very important distinction, for it excludes sentience & insentience from being viewed as contingent states, such that they cannot rationally/logically be maintained as being modes of a substance, since they aren’t possessions of, i.e., they cannot be “had” by, it. — aRealidealist

I wasn't suggesting they were contingent states. For that, I would have to be referring to a contingent entity which was sentient or non-sentient. I was talking about the a priori (so definitely not contingent) and how as a mode of thought, it could not justify itself. The point being explaining a priori concepts is more complex than just asserting their necessity (though asserting their necessity is a description enough to describe that feature).




This conceiving through itself, yes.

Since it is substance doing the conceiving, and substance is not a mode, this is not conceiving or conception of a mode.

But race, religion, gender, and ability should not matter, at least in some sense (they should not confer advantages and disadvantages, whether intrinsically or extrinsically). The problem is that anything other than neutrality toward individuals of these demographics winds up being stereotyping/hasty generalizing, and mistakes ensue. — VagabondSpectre

This misunderstands identity as a question of merit. Stereotyping, generalising, etc., happens when we take an identity category, such as race religion, gender or ability, to mark the value of one person in comparison to others. We stereotype "X (identity) is...," "X (identity) can only...," etc., ascribing that belonging to identify is an a priori means of achieving value over the valueless mass of humans. Even the supposition that identity should not matter is caught in these terms. It holds the only way identity could matter is if it were a stereotype to gain merit over others.

Identity has another side, the binding of an existing person, in a social environment, under a concept of who they are. This side (which is a social construct, as are all our identity categories) of race, religion, gender, ability, etc. is real, the people who are distinguished by concepts, who exist is certain material conditions, who are related in specific ways to culture an organisation of society.

Race, religion, gender, ability, etc., always matter because they belong to the people of these identities. Not in the sense of the being some kind of special merit, but rather because they are of people who live within society. For these people, a society which values these identities is inseparable from one which values them.

A society which values equality does not see race, religion, gender or ability as irrelevant. It understands people with those identities are valuable. It sees them as part of society and recognises society will not be equitable if it ignores them.

You have said that color-blindness is just an excuse for white conservatives to justify the status quo by denying racism, but isn't color-wokeness just another status-quo-justifying lens of its own? One that says: It doesn't matter if our society psychopathically chews up and destroys those at the bottom of the bucket, just so long as the up-down color gradient has horizontal symmetry... — VagabondSpectre

Correct, if we are talking about capitalist-wokeness (disproportionately with a white flavour). The problem is capitalist-wokeness shares certain descriptive accounts with genuine investigation of issues. As is always the capitalist way, it commodifies and develops whatever ideas it wants in a way to maintain itself.

The problem for us philosophers and sociologists is it doesn't make those accounts any less accurate. If we are to describe a social situation of a particular group or individual, to use in our efforts to understand and address a problem, we're going to have to use some ideas the capitalist has/admit the capitalist has got something right.

There is also a bit of tension with individualist culture here. If we are in a position of respecting notions of individual freedom, we have to admit the woke-capitalist more than just getting some ideas right. We would have to admit the up-down color gradient of horizontal symmetry (note: we do not really have this now, only certain touches here and there) is an improvement, since it will have altered society in which individuals of certain identities are better valued than before.

Spinoza's point is that the question of rational/logical grounds has been misunderstood. It is other than to that kind of transcendent account you suggest here.

Only reality (substance/justification) can predicate an instance of insentience or/and sentience (depending on what modes we are talking about).

Since neither the distinction of insentience or sentience is justified on its own (what do either of those concepts mean? Are there any sentient beings in a backyard? What about non-seinteint ones?), they can only be justified under the same substance. To have insentience, it must be of reality. To have sentience, it must be of reality. To have both, they must be of reality.

This is a feature, not a bug. Consider the a priori definitions of sentience and insentience under the attribute of thought. Are these true? Yes, both definitions are necessary so. Why? They are of reality. The words sentience and insentience pick out a specific definitions of meaning as opposed to not. Both insentience and sentience are of reality. Simultaneously of substance.

As for subject and object, this is not true. Substance is not a mode. It's lacks the finite definition of modes. Unlike a sentient mode or a insentience mode, substance is not limited to being only of one. It's of all. As such, it is of all modes which are opposite each other, sometimes simultaneously (if reality happens to have those opposite modes together).

I know... but my pointed question was directed at whether the non-innocent deserve to suffer or lose their dignity? If the only evil thing in the world is if innocent life suffers, there is a clear path for a moral procreation: make sure there is no innocent life. If we are all heinously torturing each other, life is apparently fantastic. Suffice to say, this seems a strange conclusion about morality.

I find something strange going on here.

What does the innocence of sentient creatures or otherwise have to to with the moral character of introducing life into the world? Should we find a way to make every baby a serial killer to allow our procreation to be moral?

But that's the very approach Spinoza is abandoning: it is substance which justifies, not a priori mental concepts. Mental concepts are just modes in the attribute of thought.

Substance is not modes (of the attribute of thought).

Spinoza does not exclude the rational/logical possibility of justifying or explaining the reality of physical, extended or bodily, phenomena. In fact, he outright holds the opposite: that these are justified by substance.

Faith is gone in that context.

The necessity of ground of being allows for no counterfactual. If we understand the ground of being, we know nothing is given without it. We have nothing to just trust, sans reason.

Indeed, we are in the exact opposite position to faith: reason has given us understanding of that which is beyond death and possibility.

Modes in the attribute of thought also have to be justified in something else (substance) because there are a priori distinctions which are not part of reality (contradictions, misidentifications, etc.).

Substance isn't specifically mental either. It's not the mental substance being posed against the physical substance. Spinoza is rejecting such a separation of substance (hence one substance rather than two). His point is substance is the same for both the mental and physical. The mental and physical share the same substance (i.e.are justified in the unity of reality).


You are misreading Spinoza as a dualist, suggesting he poses separate mental and physical substances.

Woke people are against it because the question of "individual merit" turns the value of people into a counterfactual question within racial relationships with in society.

Instead of understanding an individual of a racial group belongs to a society, the question of "individual merit" is pulled up before that belonging is granted. People are thought to have to something before we consider them to belong. When the merit understood by society (e.g. wealth, status,etc) is divided along some racial line, the notion of individual merit turns into a judgment of the belonging of people in that group.

In the racial context, individual merit is a problem. We need to understand even those of what might be deemed of lesser individual merit to have full value and belonging to society. Otherwise, our notion of individual merit is just acting as a proxy a racism.

Clearly your OP does not because it tries to assert we would use substance to define which mode was present.

You've not understood Spinoza is speaking from a view of substance. The modes are justified by something different because an idea or conception of a mode is not enough to justify it, not because substance is capable of giving the specifics or form (e.g. tree, car, computer, train station, etc. ).

To merely have a distintion "Tree in my backyard" is not enough to justify it. The distinction might not be true at all. When Spinoza says modes are justified by something else, he means there is a particular feature (self-defintion, being of the unity of reality), which justifies a given mode as part of reality over not. It is in this sense which modes are justified through something else. I need to do more than just posit a distintion of " Tree in my backyard" to justify such a mode.

The point was never that he didn't grant reality to both (acomist speech aside, of course), but rather they are not each other.

Reality of substance is not reality of a mode. To speak about substance is to talk about what is not a mode at all. As such, substance cannot account for a mode in terms of the mode (e.g. what exists, how things are caused, which states are caused). It can only account for the self-defintion of a mode. (i.e. that a given mode is itself and can only be justified through itself).

You're confusing substance with modes. Spinoza' s point is to only assert reality with substance. It offers no determination of modes itself. For that, we must name modes in question.

So Spinoza agrees substance cannot be the definition of a mode. In your terms, modes are not the first or second being, so speaking of doesn't help us identify any mode.

Let's not forget that every scientific observation is also someone personal experience. Then entire displine is formed in the aggregate of our personal experiences.

What limit seems meaningless to science and what Wayfarer seems concerned about holding is some notion of consciousness which is beyond experience. A consciousness which is not any instance of first person experience, but some notion of a necessary type which makes our experiences possible.

This does not make sense. If consciousness is a necessary type, it has no counterfactual. In this situation we have no context to claim a juxtaposition of the presence or absence of consciousness. This consciousness would be necessary and couldn't be any sort of account of instances which come in and out of being.

Conscious beings are existing states. There can be no necessary consciousness. The context of a conscious being supposes the existence or non existence of an entity with experience.

Necessary being, by definition, cannot be subject to such possibilities because it is always true. It cannot be a conscious being because necessary being is so regardless of what exists. When conscious beings do not exist at at all, necessary being is still the case, same as when conscious beings do exist.

Hume is also the better scientist because he takes what the world does. He allows for instances of the world breaking our expectations. When it happens, he won't get caught rejecting. He hasn't predismissed the possibility of such a state. If the world we observe happens to break a law, so much worse for the law.