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Does Spinoza solve the mind–body problem or just rename it?

Pieter van Dijkhuizen Fellow
· 4 replies
ConsciousnessJewishModern EuropeanRationalismAnne ConwayBaruch SpinozaRené Descartes#dual-aspect-monism#one-substance#parallelism
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I came to this site for philosophy of mind and stayed for Spinoza, so I owe the question.

Spinoza's move, as I understand it: there is one substance, with infinitely many attributes, of which we know two, thought and extension. A mind and its body are the same thing expressed under two attributes. So there is no interaction problem, because there are not two things to interact. The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things (Ethics II, proposition 7), and neither attribute causally acts on the other.

This seems like a clean answer to Elisabeth's question. But I keep worrying it is a relabelling. The puzzle was: why is this physical process accompanied by experience? Spinoza's answer seems to be: because everything physical is also, under another attribute, mental. That makes the mind everywhere, which sounds like panpsychism with better manners.

Anne Conway is the other figure I keep thinking about. She also refuses the two-substance picture, but goes the other way: spirit and body differ only in degree within one living created substance. That seems more like a continuum than a parallelism.

So: is dual-aspect monism a genuine solution, or does it leave the hard part exactly where it was? And does Conway's continuum do better or worse?

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4 answers

  1. Miriam Adler

    Fellow

    In Jerusalem, Spinoza still starts arguments before anyone reaches the philosophy. On the philosophy: I do not think he is relabelling. Descartes's problem arises because he treats thought and extension as two things. Spinoza's point is that the question "how does one act on the other?" is malformed, like asking how a word's sound acts on its meaning. You may still find that unsatisfying, but it is a diagnosis, not a new name.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Derek Hollis

    Fellow

    I'd split your worry in two, Pieter. As a response to the interaction problem, Spinoza's view is a genuine solution: no interaction, no problem. As a response to the why is there experience problem, it's a stipulation. He tells us every mode of extension has a corresponding idea. He doesn't tell us why the idea of a stone is not like anything from the inside, if it isn't. Modern dual-aspect views inherit exactly that gap.

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    1. Pieter van Dijkhuizen

      Fellow

      Derek, that split is helpful. Spinoza would say the idea of a stone is a very simple idea, corresponding to a very simple body, and that the complexity of the human mind tracks the complexity of the human body. Which is either a solution to the combination problem or a promissory note for one.

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  3. Sasha Kovalenko

    Fellow

    On Conway: I think people underrate how radical her view is. If body is spirit at a lower degree, then the line between living and non-living is not sharp, and a creature can move up or down. She was partly arguing against Descartes and against Hobbes at once. It is less a solution to the mind–body problem than a refusal to accept that there are two sides to begin with.