I am not going to get into details with you because you can't think philosophically yet. — Gregory

You can't think yet. Period.

Go read a Bible — Gregory

If reading the Bible made you the way you are now, then no, thanks!

But a materialist believes only in weak emergence, so you'd probably have to endorse the Identity Theory or Functionalism. It seems to me you like strong emergence/magic.

I didn't go back. — Gregory

That was exactly what you did. You answered my question, I thanked you, and then I asked another guy a question. And you came back, watch the thread.

All your questions on this thread have been answered. — Gregory

You did, and some others did it as well. I admit that. I just wanted to know clear answer, like a YES or NO. And then you came back. Why?!?!?

You really can't figure out that your logic is calling you to Christianity? Jezz
I've already been down your road — Gregory

So now you're a magical Christian? :rofl:

Matter is magica — Gregory

Ok, you believe in magic. I agree with you, this thread has become ridiculous.

lso, I think you dont understand emergence — Gregory

There's nothing so sophisticated about emergence that would make me change my mind if I found out about it. That's just silly.
You are the one who doesn't understand the emergence and your examples prove it.

There are 2 types of emergence:

1. weak emergence - everything can be explained in principle through its parts and there is no extra-property to that new thing. Imagine a wall composed of bricks. That wall is just the sum of its bricks, nothing more. Calling it a wall is just language.

2. strong emergence (aka. magic) - you get something ''extra''. It's like adding numbers and the result will be their sum + something extra. It's like adding non-sentient bricks and getting a wall with feelings. That's what I call magic.

I maybe don't know how to philosophize properly, but your example with red and blue was anti-logic. I can't believe you really wrote that stupidity. You should have stopped writing after you gave me your final answer to my question. Seriously...

Why can't you just accept that I start from the premise ''the hard problem'' is real? I am interested in what comes after. Or at least, if Spinoza had something to say. If I was interested in debating the hard problem, I would open an OP related to that.

Red and blue make a brand new color (purple) — Gregory

I wanted to ignore your comment and just say that I don't want to explain my position. And I don't have to, because I'm here to ask about Spinoza, not to explain my beliefs. But honestly, your example with red and purple... I can't accept it anymore.

Dude...
1. What you're calling ''red'' is a certain structure that is red because you PERCEIVE it that way. There's nothing ''new'' in that structure if you exclude qualia from the equation.

2.

New things arise. — Gregory

No man, no new things arise, that would be magic. Everything, except consciousness and things related to consciousness, is explainable in terms of weak emergence. Everything can be, in principle, explained through its components.

THE END

1. More of a personal one - when I was 18 and didn't care about absolutely anything except for having fun, I thought about God for around 5 minutes and I actually came to a conclusion pretty similar to Spinoza's. It was ''something we could not comprehend''. ''He is everything - both finite in infinite; self-created; it's both different and the same with the Universe; etc.''. Of course, for me it wasn't something I had contemplated before, I guess I just wanted a God who includes everything and in which everyone could find his own truth. And that's the thing: I think Spinoza left too much space for interpretations.

2. Let's start from the following premise: I think the hard problem is real. I believe it's impossible to get consciousness from something with 0% consciousness. I also believe the composition fallacy is real. Starting from this premise, I just want to know if there's an interpretation of Spinoza in which you can get consciousness from something with 0% consciousness, intention, or will even if the hard&combination problems are true. If that's possible, then how? And when I'm saying how, I don't want an answer explaining me how the hard problem is false, I want something that passes the hard problem undetected.

Guys, look! My problem is the following: I am not intelligent enough to conceive more than 2 variants for this one:

A. Either God is conscious and all His creation is the result of His will, He knows about the universe, and even if we couldn't truly comprehend or understand Him, His Intellect is something closer to what we call consciousness than what we call ''dead matter''. And no, that doesn't mean I'm a dualist, I'm just using this language to make a difference.
or
B. God does not know, will, feel, etc., case in which I simply can't see any reason why we should call this God God in the first place, I don't think ''Intellect'' is a proper notion, and there's absolutely nothing spiritual about it. All of these words are pure worthless metaphors for something we could easily define as matter. I don't know how one could convince a materialist that this view is different from his/hers.

C. If there is indeed a third way, one should explain to me how that can happen using some rational arguments, not just by saying ''something that cannot be understood", because that's just BS.

If the answer is B, then how can:

1. How can God or anything for that matter be radically different from what we could call matter or consciousness? And by matter, I don't mean atoms, it could be anything from fields to energies, laws of nature, quantum chaos, whatever ...

2. How can an infinite of attributes come into existence from something radically different from each of these attributes?

Does it really matter if he is conscious or not? — Gregory

For me, obviously yes.

Even atheist try to live "by His rules" for the most part — Gregory

Why His and not "his"? Does it make any difference?

You seem obsessed with knowing if God is conscious and believing that consciousness comes only from consciousness. I think you're wrong on both points — Gregory

I am not here to debate my beliefs. I am asking questions. No, I don't believe something with no consciousness can give rise to consciousness. It makes no sense to me and maybe I'm indeed wrong. Does it matter? I asked a simple question in which my personal view doesn't matter.

Again, I asked a simple question, but he avoids a clear answer.

Fortunately, you didn't do the same.

Is Spinoza's God conscious or not in your opinion?

OK, what about this: in your opinion, in spinozism, the consciousness is an attribute created by a conscious or a non-conscious God?

Let's put it this way: if mind, consciousness, experience, qualia, etc. cannot derive from matter, and cannot come into existence from unconscious pure quantitative physical stuff, can spinozism (in your interpretation) remain true under these conditions?

To make things clear - in your own interpretation of S, assuming the hard problem/combination problem were true, would spinozism still work?

Thanks, man!

Ok, if God's conscious, we can definitely agree the hard problem dissapears.
But if we take the other interpretation, where God has 0 will, 0 consciousness, 0 intelligence, can S still be right IF the hard/combination problem is true?

If you feel that Spinoza should have known of the "hard problem" then either you think he was wrong or you believe he thought God was conscious — Gregory

Let me present it from a different angle. For the sake of the argument, let's assume the hard problem and/or the combination problem are both true. In this case, in your interpretation of S, can spinozism still resist?

For example, in TheWillowOfDarkness's view, if the hard problem is true, then spinozism is wrong.

The point is S denies the hard problem. If you think there is a hard problem, you disagree with Spinoza. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Ok, that clarifies things. Thanks :smile:

1. Why call it mind? I see no reason. Why not ping-pong?

2. I don't really understand this ''are just some modes of matter and mind''. For me, it sounds like: some combinations of atoms form/are rocks which don't have experience, and other formare humans who have experience. How come this combination doesn't give rise to experience and that gives rise to experience? It seems like the answer is: ''It just does''. How do you get from non-experience to experience? Using this way of answering things, when asked how come two different substances interact, one could answer ''they just do''.

Now it's very important for me to mention that I don't have the intention here to deny S by using the hard problem, or even to argue that the hard problem exists or not, if it has a solution or not.

Mind is not experience and is given without experiences. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Then we call it ''mind'' in virtue of what?

The divine part of our subconscious is dependent on matter but superior to it in a sense by way of emergence — Gregory

Ahh... ok. Dependent on matter in the sense of ''a bullet in your brain will have some efects''?

So no he is not an idealist or a materialist — Gregory

Here's the thing frustrating me because I don't understand it: you're mentioning the attribute of thinking, which is one of the infinite attributes. My question is why are there infinite attributes - did something cause them, or they just are?
a. if something caused them, my issue with this is that whatever that is, it cannot create thought and consciousness if it possesses 0% consciousness. Here, you're saying that God's intellect is conscious, so it makes sense, but many (as you've seen in this OP) won't agree with that.
b. nothing caused them, they're there because they're there and they act the way they do because they act the way they do. It assumes to many things.

To make things clearer.
You cannot adopt both a mainstream religion and sponozism. Except that, you can be an idealist and argue Spinoza was a great idealist, you can argue he was a panpsychist, and of course you could also say he was a materialist, I've seen even people arguing his metaphysics had dualist aspects in it.
He was against religious dogma, but other than that, he tried to reconcile the goat, the cabbage and the wolf.
That's just my opinion SO FAR.

There is a divine spark in all of us and I call that God. But it emerges from matter. — Gregory

So that's exactly materialism, the only difference is that in materialism there's no ''divine spark".
But something divine from matter...

He thought we had to think of him as conscious intellect, but also that we know nothing of His inner life. — Gregory

Conscious intellect - now if a thing is conscious... how in the world isn't personal as well? It doesn't even have to be meta-conscious. That's idealism.
So far, I've seen S being considered ''The father of the German idealism''; on wikipedia and most of the sources he was a panpsychist; even though almost nobody mentions him as a materialist, there is a possibility.

I personally believe he tried to find something like a magic formula impossible to falsify, so he took elements from everywhere and left space for interpretation. I see no difference between him and those who say ''It depends how on your interpretation of the Bible".

'all [individual things], though in different
degrees, are...animated” - that's what Spinoza says and that's exactly panpsychism.

And by the way, I don't care much about theism. For me, getting to conscious from something that possesses 0% consciousness simply makes no sense, and that makes me neither a theist nor a dualist.
How come a blind God, with no will or with no power to act on its will can be called God in the first place? That's simply nature, it's a materialist view. How can unconscious nature create consciousness? The ''intellect'' you're talking about doesn't sound to me like an intellect at all, and the fact that ''it cannot be understood'' is so vague and leaves so much room for interpretation.

For me it is simple: is consciousness fundamental or emergent? The question covers 100% of the possibilities.

Everything that possesses 0% consciousness is simply nature, nothing divine in it.

in theism, God is conscious.

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

If by reality you mean matter, then yes, I don't believe consciousness can be described with that. That's the hard problem. I could be a dualist, but who knows, maybe I'm an idealist and I don't believe in matter at all.
''We know'' materialism is false because of the hard problem and panpsychism is also very problematic. But I'm open-minded to other ideas, this is why I want to understand spinozism better. The problem is that it seems to be highly interpretable and so far I think it is not a serious view in regards to the mind. But who knows... maybe I'll get more information.

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

So God is conscious after all, the only problem is we cannot understand its consciousness. That's very different than what 180 Proof and TheWillowOfDarkness are saying here.

This is also one of my issues with spinozism - it leaves so much room for interpretation.

Spinozism in a nutshell: there is an infinite number of attributes caused by something totally unconscious called God, but we can call it nature, the universe, or even Boogeyman. How come something unconscious gives rise to an attribute called consciousness? - It just does; Why are there infinite attributes and not just 25? - Because God; Why this gave rise to something in the first place? - Necessity; Why was it necessary? - It just was; How does this parallelism in cause-effect work if attributes don't interact? - It just does; Why are some things conscious and some aren't? - Complexity; How come the whole is not complex enough to be conscious? - It just isn't.

Flawless metaphysics.

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

Ok, now I pretty much understand. It sounds exactly like materialism. You just need enough complexity and some unconscious elements will form a conscious element. At least, in materialism you have evolution as the basis of explanation, while in spinozism, it is exactly like I thought: ''it's like this because it's like this''. It's in the nature of things to be like that, it's even a threshold, something called ''complex'' (whatever that means), but the whole thing is not complex enough to be conscious...

Another thing is that you get the attribute consciousness/mind, from something ultimately unconscious. That again sounds familiar and I personally don't see how that can happen without answering the question ''How can consciousness/the attribute of consciousness arise from something non-conscious?". I guess in spinozism the answer is simple: because this is how things are.

Now why would one arrive to these conclusions? What's the logic behind all those ideas? So far, spinozism sounds very weird to me.

Eugen appears to a dualist — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'm neither a dualist nor any other of the four mentioned. I'm pretty much an agnostic trying to find answers. I do understand the 4 types of ideologies I've mentioned and their problems, but I still don't understand Spinoza. It seems to me that there's no logic in his view of the mind. For me, it just sounds like ''It's like that because it's like that''.

Ok, now I feel I know even more due to your explanation, thank you!
Indeed, as you put it, God is not an entity, therefore it doesn't think, will, and it cannot be called personal.
Moreover, one could argue that there's no God at all, there's just a process that can be called natural.
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?
2. If rocks do have qualia and think, why doesn't a planet have qualia and think?
3. Why not the whole universe can think and feel?
What's the fundamental difference between things that have consciousness and things that don't?

That makes it clearer now. But if that's the case, that's pretty much a personal God. It thinks, it wills...

Yes. "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

Thank you!
I think there are only 4 ways in which mind can exist (or not): materialism (mind emerges from matter); dualism/pluralism; panpsychism (small minds get together and form other minds); idealism (mind is fundamental, not emergent, and everything else emerges from it).

In your opinion, which one is closest to Spinoza's view? Or maybe you think he somehow manages to escape all 4 and come up with something totally different?

Thanks!

Thank you, I've written you a private message :)

For me, materialism makes no sense. And it is not because I don't want to, or because I'm biased, by the contrary, I find people who believe in it being biased atheists. It just doesn't add up, it makes no sense, it has no logic. I've seen tons of people thinking like me, so I think ''we know'' is purely your personal opinion.
But I'm not here to argue about that.

We know there isn't a hard problem — TheWillowOfDarkness

By ''we'' you mean like a secret society made up of people who think they know everything?:joke:

The only thing I'm struggling with is to find out if spinozism can still work if the hard problem were true and materialism false. Could you please offer me a precise answer to this one?

I'm not interested if the hard problem is real or not, I am interested if spinozism can still work if the hard problem were true and materialism false.
So please give me a precise answer in this sense.

Thanks!