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Spinoza's Critique of Cartesian Will

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Spinoza's Critique of Cartesian Will

Dunamis
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Posted 05/02/08 - 02:50 PM: Subject: Spinoza's Critique of Cartesian Will	#1
Michael Della Rocca, one of the best elucidators of Spinoza, writes of the way in which Spinoza works to undermine the Cartesian notion of Will. Central to this is the idea that a non-ideational thing (willing) cannot determine ideational things (ideas), for they would have nothing in common. Della Rocca founds this argument on two core texts: Spinoza, regarding the mind's affirmation that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles wrote: This affirmation involves the concept or idea of the triangle, i.e., it cannot be conceived without the idea of the triangle. For to say that A must involve the concept of B is the same to say that A cannot be conceived without B. Further this affirmation (by 2ax3) also cannot be without the idea of the triangle. Therefore this affirmation can neither be nor be conceived without the idea of the triangle. 2p49d Della Rocca then turns to the cited, 2ax3: Spinoza wrote: There are no modes of thinking, such as love, desire, or whatever is designated by the word affects of the mind, unless there is in the same individual the idea of the thing loved, desired, etc. But there can be an idea, even though there is no other mode of thinking. There he finds what for him is the anti-Cartesian principle: "...if an affirmation exists, its presence is due simply to the presence of a certain idea" arguing that for Spinoza all mental actions are both ideas and affirmations (214). This leads one against the Cartesian approach which takes ideas to be passive states, upon which a contentless will acts and discriminates. For Spinoza, indeed, any idea is already an affirmation (and/or a negation), it is already a belief of a kind, and does not enter in a neutral fashion. It can only be overcome by a stronger affirmation. There is no conceptual place for a Will, which operates as the causal explanation for belief in contentful ideas. In other words, the way the mind works is NOT that a bunch of ideas come across our desk like memos to whose contents we are neutral, or images on a movie screen, which we sort through as an executor. Ideas themselves are already affirming expressions of Substance. The problem is that as Della Rocca concludes, Spinoza holdsthat if a mode of thought interacted with anything other than ideas when we would have a violation of what Spinoza sees as the conceptual and causal self-sufficiency of thought. This is quite a general claim; it rules out not only interaction between ideas and bodies, but also between ideas and non-ideas. This has strong ontological foundation in Spinoza, since all modal expressions of Substance occur in either one Attribute or another (in the same order), but there is a problem that I see. That is, Spinoza's reference to "modes of thinking" such as love and desire, which arise out of the inadequate ideas of external causes, must be it seems distinct from the ideas which give rise to them, hence when affects are missing "...there can be an idea, even though there is no other mode of thinking" (2ax3). There can be an idea (an adequate one) which does not give rise to some "other" (non-ideational) mode of thinking (affections as affirmations of the body). The very axiom which Della Rocca cites to prove that there cannot be an non-ideational mode of thought seems to present just such a mode. The difference from Descartes is, of course, rather than acting as a determining (free) cause of what Ideas we hold, it is a product of the Ideas we hold. There is no "inter-action" as Della Rocca says, but there is action, that is there is determination and causation, from the kind of Ideas we hold (their degree of perfection), to the kinds of affective states we are in. In fact, Spinoza is one of the first Western Phillsophers to mimimize what is taken to be the seat of human distinction, the chain of thoughts that flow all day long, forming the contents of our mind. These, instead of being the products of an contentless (and free) Will, that exercises automony over the passive perceptions and ideas we recieve, is rather the product of a chain of ideational associations, the product of our contingent interactions with external bodies as they impinge on us: Spinoza wrote: And in this way each of us will pass from one thought to another, as each one's association has ordered the images of things in the body. For example, a soldier, having seen traces of a horse in the sand, will immediately pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a horseman, and from that to the thought of war, etc. But a Farmer will pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a plow, and then to that of a field. etc. And so each one, according as he has been accustomed to join and connect the images of things in this or that way, will pass from one thought to another. 2p18s Yes. Substance expresses itself solely in terms of the Attributes of Thought and Extension, such that the causal explanations of either require ideational explanations, such that pure Will, empty of content, cannot function as an explanation of what ideas we hold (free will being an illusion, a product of our ignorance), but it seems that Spinoza himself allows for idea-to-non-idea causation, the other way down, where affects are the products of inadequate ideas (representations) but are not ideas (or representations) themselves. To come full circle, Spinoza's optimal example of triangles, and how a certain relation between angles cannot be affirmed without affirming the very idea of a triangle, the nature of this affirmation is somehow internal to the very defintion and idea of such an Idea (that is, it is of an triangle and not a circle), but in the realm of affects (and inadequate ideas, or images of representation), the affirmation actually occurs at the level of the power of the body itself, as he writes of in the defintion of the affects: An Affect that is called a Passion of the mind is a confused idea, by which the Mind affirms of its Body, or some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing than before, which, when it is given, determines the Mind to think of this rather than that. General Defintions of the Affects This all important defintion serves to explain the very nature of consciousness as its is commonly experienced, how the mind is drawn to think of this rather than that. What at an asymptotic limit is an affirmation of distinctions at the highest level of ideas, expresses itself in degrees of power in the body, which vary, become manifold, according to how the human being is manifold (Definition of the Affects, I) through the history of its affections (2p18s), ideational traces left by foriegn bodies. All ideas therefore are already affirmations, that is, are beliefs. To think something is to believe it (however briefly), unicorns and all, and these beliefs play out along a vector bodily power, which expresses itself in our Joys and Sadnesses. These internal affirmations at the most intellectual level are alternately in the imagination experientially affirmations of the body itself, and as such seem to express themselves in non-representational terms, and pure expressions of power to act. In this way, beliefs respond to both internal rational coherence (the affirmation of what is by reasoning implied), and an affective Joy in the bodily increase in power. Is Micheal Della Rocca correct that there is no room for non-idea causation in Spinoza, even if the non-idea are taken as a product of ideas, as they seem to be in the instance of affects? If so, how is it that affects are to be called "ideas" since they are defined as a certain "transition" coupled with an attendant inadequate idea of an external thing? What would possibly be the idea-standing of this transition itself? Edited by Dunamis on 05/02/08 - 03:35 PM
Attached Files: The Power of An Idea_ Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will.pdf (189 KB, 15 downloads) _____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

rakis
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Posted 05/03/08 - 07:25 AM:	#2
Spinoza managed to connect ontological monism with perceptive dualism. Mind and body is one thing. But we examine them as two discrete and asymmetrical systems. From E 2, 7 is shown that the order and mixing of ideas is the same with that of beings. From E 3, 2 comment we can conclude that there is no problem concerning the mind – (independent) object correlation.(So I think Della Rocca misunderstood Spinoza.) An idea exactly corresponds to its ideatum as an external point of truth: E 2, definition 4. Because Spinoza thought that perceiving does not offer a correct guidance for truth, he based his theory of cognition on the rationalist assumption that there is a scientia intuitiva which can have sufficient proofs. (I personaly think Spinoza’s rationalism and correspondence theory are problematic, although I ‘m in sympathy with the way he treats the mind-body relation) (Did you abandon the other thread?dont you have any comments on Wittgenstein?) Edited by rakis on 05/03/08 - 07:30 AM

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Posted 05/03/08 - 09:47 AM:	#3
rakis wrote: An idea exactly corresponds to its ideatum as an external point of truth: E 2, definition 4. Well, this is the thing. The ideatum of the (inadequate) idea of an affect/passion (for instance in the defintion of love: joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause), is not the supposed cause of love (which it is thought to represent), but when combined with the experience of transition, is actually of the body being in a certain state, which it "indicates or expresses". Hence it is confused. But really, because an affect is constituted by the very transition from or to perfection (and its inadequate idea), the change in a degree of being, this change itself is not really represented by an idea. This seems reflected in the very defintion of affects, which are composed of their affect state, love, hope, fear, etc. (mode of thinking) and their confused idea. Deleuze writes in a way that I have always found elucidating, contra Della Rocca's position, regarding the difference between affects and ideas: First point: what is an idea? What must an idea be, in order for us to comprehend even Spinoza's simplest propositions? On this point Spinoza is not original, he is going to take the word “idea” in the sense in whicheveryone has always taken it. What is called an idea, in the sense in which everyone has always taken it inthe history of philosophy, is a mode of thought which represents something. A representational mode ofthought. For example, the idea of a triangle is the mode of thought which represents the triangle. Still from the terminological point of view, it's quite useful to know that since the Middle Ages this aspect of the idea has been termed its “objective reality.” In texts from the 17th century and earlier, when you encounter theobjective reality of the idea this always means the idea envisioned as representation of something. The idea, insofar as it represents something, is said to have an objective reality. It is the relation of the idea to the object that it represents. Thus we start from a quite simple thing: the idea is a mode of thought defined by its representational character. This already gives us a first point of departure for distinguishing idea and affect (affectus) because we call affect any mode of thought which doesn't represent anything. So what does that mean? Take at random what anybody would call affect or feeling, a hope for example, a pain, a love, this is not representational. There is an idea of the loved thing, to be sure, there is an idea of something hoped for, but hope as such or love as such represents nothing, strictly nothing. Every mode of thought insofar as it is non-representational will be termed affect. A volition, a will implies, in all rigor, that I will something, and what I will is an object of representation, what I will is given in an idea, but the fact of willing is not an idea, it is an affect because it is a non-representational mode of thought. That works, it's not complicated. "Lecture Transcripts on Spinoza's Concept of Affect" Cours Vincennes, 24/1/78 As sympathetic to Deleuze's reading as I am, and as intuitionally correct it seems to be, in looking closely at Spinoza's General Defintion of the Affects, it appears that perhaps Della Rocca may be right, in the sense that the very apparition of an idea IS both an expression, and a representation, and thus an affirmation of the body. There may not be room for a non-idea thinking mode. But then again, Spinoza's treatment of Desire (and conatus, and appetite), which I imagine that Deleuze has in mind, taken apart from both Joy and Sadness, as a third term, may signal the unrepresented, non-idea condition of transition, a nexus point of thing and idea. But Spinoza's definition might be decisive: 1. A passion of the Mind is a confused idea (identity) 2. Through which the Mind affirms (action) 3. Of its Body, a greater or lesser degree of existing (ideatum) And then in explanation: 4. This idea constitutes the form of the affect. 5. This idea indicates or expresses the arrangement of the Body. 6. An arrangement the Body has because of its power of acting. 7. A power of acting that is greater or lesser than before (transition). taken from, General Defintion of the Affects There does not seem room for any non-idea thinking mode. The transition, which is expressed in terms of a power to act, in an arrangement of the body and an idea which seems a compound of this very experience of transition, and an inadequate idea about an external cause. When Deleuze says that the loving itself, and not the object loved, represents nothing, it must be that what it is representing is actually the degree of being (in transition) of the body. It is slippery. Perhaps the difficulty is in the original identity, "A passion of the mind is a confused idea" for it is unclear to me if this "idea" is the name of the affect, for instance "Love" or if it is the inadequate idea of the external cause itself (object thought to be a cause). (Did you abandon the other thread?dont you have any comments on Wittgenstein?) Yes, and not so much. I could not see how your thoughts on Wittgenstein and your ability to transcend him pertained to the question of the thread, whether bees had language under the Wittgensteinian criteria, in fact I still could not follow the why you brought up the Tractatus in the first place, and I didn't wish to visit the thread you directed me to. Edited by Dunamis on 05/03/08 - 10:10 AM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/03/08 - 10:10 AM:	#4
Dunamis wrote: Is Micheal Della Rocca correct that there is no room for non-idea causation in Spinoza, even if the non-idea are taken as a product of ideas, as they seem to be in the instance of affects? If so, how is it that affects are to be called "ideas" since they are defined as a certain "transition" coupled with an attendant inadequate idea of an external thing? What would possibly be the idea-standing of this transition itself? God, Spinoza is hard work! Rocca has me about convinced. P 210/11 put me in mind of OCD, which Spinoza's coception gives a very reasonable explanation of. It just makes sense to me that ideas are 'active' and 'affect laden'. The thought that the door 'might not be locked' has its own power, which is stronger than the memory of locking the door... I have expressed before the idea that will and choice are always an expression of conflict - like for example between desire and morality. I don't have an adequate idea of what an inadequate idea is, so I can't comment on that. Another relation that came to mind, is the non-distintion in computing between program and data. One tends to think of programs (will) acting on data (ideas) but in fact they are 'the same thing' (binary information). In this context, is it reasonable to say that a transition is a transformation of the 'program'???
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/03/08 - 10:22 AM:	#5
unenlightened wrote: God, Spinoza is hard work! Rocca has me about convinced. P 210/11 put me in mind of OCD, which Spinoza's coception gives a very reasonable explanation of. It just makes sense to me that ideas are 'active' and 'affect laden'. The thought that the door 'might not be locked' has its own power, which is stronger than the memory of locking the door... Nice description, I like that. I agree, there is something fundamentally simple about Spinoza's notion fo strength of affect or of ideas, as they compete. In a strange way, this competition actually reminds me some of Dennett's Multiple Drafts view of consciousness. Perhaps, he, like his precursor Quinean Davidson, was also inspired by Spinoza's anti-Cartesianism. Another relation that came to mind, is the non-distintion in computing between program and data. One tends to think of programs (will) acting on data (ideas) but in fact they are 'the same thing' (binary information). In this context, is it reasonable to say that a transition is a transformation of the 'program'??? Yes. I think that that is an apt metaphor, in a sense. The transition of the program though, results in Spinoza's view, in an ontological shift (an actual increase or decrease in the power to act and BE), which is experienced as Joy or Sadness (along with whatever in-program-like idea of what is causing this shift). In a sense if we follow this metaphor, the human being is a program within the master program of the universe, an organization of information within the overall organization of information, and whose affective states express its real power to act in that master program, necessarily always inadequate to what it is within.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/03/08 - 10:37 AM:	#6
unenlightened wrote: I don't have an adequate idea of what an inadequate idea is, so I can't comment on that. He is a kind of Spinozist iconoclast, but you may find Deleuze's approach a valuable insight into inadequate ideas, if you are interested. Deleuze is know for his florid and opaque writing style, but because it is a lecture the first few pages read very, very easily (for a Spinoza commentary).
Attached Files: Lecture transcripts on Spinoza's concept of affect.pdf (642 KB, 11 downloads) _____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/03/08 - 11:19 AM:	#7
unenlightened wrote: Another relation that came to mind, is the non-distintion in computing between program and data. One tends to think of programs (will) acting on data (ideas) but in fact they are 'the same thing' (binary information). In this context, is it reasonable to say that a transition is a transformation of the 'program'??? This analogy actually has me thinking of something that has always tugged on me. No commentator I know of has made much of the ideas implicit in Spinoza's means of survival. In fact it strikes me as dramatically under studied. He was a lens grinder (in fact it is assumed that he died an early death from the glass inhalations of that work). If one thinks about what lens grinding is, it is the shaping of a material thing, glass, according very precise mathematical ideas (calculations), the result of which is the change in the idea (representations) that are produced by that lens. In a sense, the lens holds the analogy whereby the material expresses an idea, whose product is a representation. The better the math, the clearer (literally), the image. Spinoza lived at the rise of the use of the camera obscura (Hockney), and it was the master painter Rembrandt who lived down the street in his childhood neighborhood. One fantasizes that he as a child gained access to that studio, and stared at the remarkable camera. Could it even have been in 1642 when Spinoza was 10, with Rembrandt drawing a portrait of Spinoza's Cabalistic rabbi teacher, Rabbi Menassah ben Israel, and the tremendous chiaroscuro "Night Watch" was being completed. In the age of representation, that is just after Descartes, when ideas will be thought of clear and unclear representations of reality, Spinoza had a priviledged position. He actually was a grinder of a mechanism of representation, so he understood both the ideational and the material aspects of what makes representations happen. In this way, he is not interested so much in the Cartesian theatre, that is what he calls “fictions we feign from the illusion of free will": Spinoza wrote: We must investigate, I say, whether there is any other affirmation or negation in the Mind except that which the idea involves, insofar as it is an idea...so that our thought does not fall into pictures. For by ideas I understand, not the images that are formed at the back of the eye (and if you like, at the middle of the brain), but concepts of Thought [or the objective Being of a thing, insofar as it exists only in Thought] 2p48s The pictures made, the imaginary images that supposedly occur to us in our Cartesian theatre, are really of less interest to Spinoza. And perhaps this is because he was a lens grinder. What he imagines is that if we get more adequate ideas, not our pictures will become sharper, but the lens itself will become more capable of acting, more Joyful, more expressive. In a sense perhaps, as a lens grinder, Spinoza was a first primative computer programmer, to return to your illustration, in that he took a program (a mathematical formula) and programmed a piece of material (glass), so as to produce some capacity of informing action. He imagined though, that the ideas that were important were not those that were supposedly projected at the back of the head (in a Cartesian world), to be viewed by an abstract will, but were the very ideas which constituted the material organization of the body, in a kind of mobius loop. That is, like a program, the ideas we hold shape, and express our very construct, and end up producing our very affective experience of ourselves and the world. While we spend much time looking the the Cartesian movie show, and thinking about just what is going on there, what it means, I think Spinoza wants us to spend more time thinking about what it means to be, and what it feels like being, a lens. An interesting turn on Plontus' analogy of the Mirror and light. The very least, I think that being a lens grinder convinced him of the absolutely material, and parallel manifestation of any idea. Some thoughts brought on by your analogy. Thanks. Edited by Dunamis on 05/03/08 - 01:25 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/03/08 - 12:02 PM:	#8
rakis wrote: (I personaly think Spinoza’s rationalism and correspondence theory are problematic, although I ‘m in sympathy with the way he treats the mind-body relation) To call Spinoza's theory of truth a "correspondence theory" is, in my opinion, to misunderstand the full consequences of his approach. Spinoza, epistemologically actually holds something much closer to a Coherence Theory of Truth, while his ontological commitments assume a correspondence. Attached is Ralph C.S. Walker's "Spinoza and the Coherence Theory of Truth" which helps make this clear. This is the description of a Coherence Theory of Truth to which Walker sees Spinoza attaining: Edited by Dunamis on 05/03/08 - 12:48 PM
Attached Files: Spinoza and Coherence Theory of Truth.pdf (556 KB, 10 downloads) _____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/03/08 - 02:37 PM:	#9
A coherence theory(or Spinoza’s, Austin’s, Tarski’s, Wittgenstein’s theory) is no more than a sophisticated and formalized encoding model. To suppose that an encoding system L is adequate i.e. to its own semantics — can represent its own encoding representational relationships — is precisely to suppose that L can bridge the incoherence of encodingism and provide representational content to its foundational encodings. It is to assume that the language L can escape the solipsism of encodingism — that it can provide an observer semantics from outside of itself onto its own epistemic relationships to its represented world. The incoherence problem itself focuses not on how encoding representations can be checked, nor on which ones to construct, but rather on the more foundational problem of how any (re)presentational content can be provided for a foundational encoding, and, thus, on how any logically independent encoding could exist at all. The answer is simple: it can’t: • There is no way to specify what such an encoding is supposed to represent; • There is no way to provide it with any representational content; • Thus, there is no way for it to be constituted as an encoding representation at all. Non-derivative, logically independent, foundational, encodings are impossible. To postulate their existence, either explicitly, or implicitly as a presupposition, is to take a logically incoherent position. A coherence perspective (not even Spinoza's perspective concerning the body – mind problem) does not provide a way in which representation can emerge out of phenomena that are not themselves already representational. [Because you talked about computer I must say that I disapprove such an analogy among computers (Artificial Intelligence) and human beings. For, it is assumed that a symbol represents a particular thing, and that it — the symbol — somehow informs the system of what that symbol is supposed to represent. This is a fatal assumption, in spite of its seeming obviousness — what else could it be, what else could representation possibly be? The first sense in which this assumption is problematic is simply that both Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science take the carrying of representational content as a theoretical primitive. It is simply assumed that symbols can provide and carry representational content, and, thus, are encoded representations. Representation is rendered in terms of elements with representational contents, but there is no model of how these elements can carry representational content. Insofar as programmatic Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science have aspirations of explicating and modeling all mental phenomena, or even just all cognitive phenomena, here is an absolutely central case — representation — in which they simply presuppose what they aspire to explain. They presuppose phenomena of representation — symbols having content — in their supposed accounts of cognition and representation. Both fields are programmatically circular .]

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Posted 05/03/08 - 02:47 PM:	#10
rakis wrote: A coherence theory(or Spinoza’s, Austin’s, Tarski’s, Wittgenstein’s theory) is no more than a sophisticated and formalized encoding model. How does this jibe with your very recent claim that Spinoza's was a Correspondence Theory? (I am reminded of when you mistakenly went off on Wittgenstein's Tractatus, thinking you were responding to his PI criteria.) Again you seem to be veering quite far from the subject of the thread. I really am not interested in arguing whether you think Spinoza is right or not, but am interested in elucidating what it was that Spinoza was forwarding, what positions he held. I really am unsure that you understand Spinoza at all (as you seemed to show with Wittgenstein), so your critique of him is less than illuminating for me [I mean absolutely no offense by this, I'm sure that you understand many interesting things, many of which I do not, but I don't know how else to sincerely respond]. Edited by Dunamis on 05/03/08 - 03:12 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/03/08 - 04:31 PM:	#11
Dunamis wrote: unenlightened wrote: Another relation that came to mind, is the non-distintion in computing between program and data. One tends to think of programs (will) acting on data (ideas) but in fact they are 'the same thing' (binary information). In this context, is it reasonable to say that a transition is a transformation of the 'program'??? This analogy actually has me thinking of something that has always tugged on me. No commentator I know of has made much of the ideas implicit in Spinoza's means of survival. In fact it strikes me as dramatically under studied. He was a lens grinder (in fact it is assumed that he died an early death from the glass inhalations of that work). If one thinks about what lens grinding is, it is the shaping of a material thing, glass, according very precise mathematical ideas (calculations), the result of which is the change in the idea (representations) that are produced by that lens. In a sense, the lens holds the analogy whereby the material expresses an idea, whose product is a representation. The better the math, the clearer (literally), the image. Spinoza lived at the rise of the use of the camera obscura (Hockney), and it was the master painter Rembrandt who lived down the street in his childhood neighborhood. One fantasizes that he as a child gained access to that studio, and stared at the remarkable camera. Could it even have been in 1642 when Spinoza was 10, with Rembrandt drawing a portrait of Spinoza's Cabalistic rabbi teacher, Rabbi Menassah ben Israel, and the tremendous chiaroscuro "Night Watch" was being completed. In the age of representation, that is just after Descartes, when ideas will be thought of clear and unclear representations of reality, Spinoza had a priviledged position. He actually was a grinder of a mechanism of representation, so he understood both the ideational and the material aspects of what makes representations happen. In this way, he is not interested so much in the Cartesian theatre, that is what he calls “fictions we feign from the illusion of free will": Spinoza wrote: We must investigate, I say, whether there is any other affirmation or negation in the Mind except that which the idea involves, insofar as it is an idea...so that our thought does not fall into pictures. For by ideas I understand, not the images that are formed at the back of the eye (and if you like, at the middle of the brain), but concepts of Thought [or the objective Being of a thing, insofar as it exists only in Thought] 2p48s The pictures made, the imaginary images that supposedly occur to us in our Cartesian theatre, are really of less interest to Spinoza. And perhaps this is because he was a lens grinder. What he imagines is that if we get more adequate ideas, not our pictures will become sharper, but the lens itself will become more capable of acting, more Joyful, more expressive. In a sense perhaps, as a lens grinder, Spinoza was a first primative computer programmer, to return to your illustration, in that he took a program (a mathematical formula) and programmed a piece of material (glass), so as to produce some capacity of informing action. He imagined though, that the ideas that were important were not those that were supposedly projected at the back of the head (in a Cartesian world), to be viewed by an abstract will, but were the very ideas which constituted the material organization of the body, in a kind of mobius loop. That is, like a program, the ideas we hold shape, and express our very construct, and end up producing our very affective experience of ourselves and the world. While we spend much time looking the the Cartesian movie show, and thinking about just what is going on there, what it means, I think Spinoza wants us to spend more time thinking about what it means to be, and what it feels like being, a lens. An interesting turn on Plontus' analogy of the Mirror and light. The very least, *I think that being a lens grinder convinced him of the absolutely material, and parallel* manifestation of any idea. Brilliant, Dunamis** -- a great "feast for thought"! Bon Appétit.
_____________________ If faith is irrational, then it is rational to dismiss "faith-based claims" out of hand. If faith is rational, then "faith-based claims" must be testable and/or sufficient -- but they are neither. If faith is a-rational, then "faith-based claims" are inexplicable and thus cannot explain anything.

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Posted 05/03/08 - 06:19 PM:	#12
180 Proof wrote: Bon Appétit. Thank you. It is interesting, for when Spinoza says, "...by ideas I understand, not the images that are formed at the back of the eye (and if you like, at the middle of the brain)" he is likely thinking specifically of the back at the eye as a focal point of a lens, and his reference to the middle of the brain is thought to be a bit of an ironic reference to Descartes idea of the pineal gland being where thoughts and bodies touch. He distinctly, unlike Descartes, and probably due to his profession, understood ideas not to be "pictures" nor even our visualized thoughts of how the world really is. "I own a first-class microscope made by that Benedictus Spinoza, that noble mathematician and philosopher, which enables me to see the lymphatic vascular bundles . . . . Well, this that I have clearly discovered by means of my marvelous instrument, is itself still more marvelous." - Kerckrinck T., 1670 Edited by Dunamis on 05/03/08 - 09:30 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/04/08 - 05:39 AM:	#13
Dunamis, (I’m desperate, From the beginning (on Heidegger) you asked me for my “theory”, I‘ve written, but I didn’t take an answer. Then, you asked me if I see a theory of unconscious in Tractatus. I’ve written something, but I didn’t take an answer. Now, you put a comment that Spinoza’s theory isn’t a correspondence but a coherence theory. I’ve written my disagreement, and you, without argumentation, have a comment that what I write is irrelevant to the thread, and I have no idea about Wittgenstein or Spinoza. If you need a thread only to enhance your self-esteem, just say it. What to do? You disagreed with me and I disagree with you. You take excellent in rhetoric. From now on I’ll send you personal e-mail to ask you if I’m relevant, and after your approval I’ll submit. Anyway, Coherence is, just as correspondence theory, a form of encodingism. The above is a parenthesis, you don’t have to answer. ) Edited by rakis on 05/04/08 - 06:24 AM

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Posted 05/04/08 - 06:59 AM:	#14
Dunamis, You’ve written: “"A passion of the mind is a confused idea" for it is unclear to me if this "idea" is the name of the affect, for instance "Love" or if it is the inadequate idea of the external cause itself (object thought to be a cause).” Well, there is a difficulty because it is uncertain if Spinoza used the words “affectio” and “affectus” as synonyms, considering “passio” But I think because of his monism, the question if there is or not room for a "non-idea" is a pseudo-dilemma. I think Spinoza thought that with his perspectivist dualism he solved the mind-body problem. What I mean is that for him it is useless to explain mind with physical terms or vice versa. Edited by rakis on 05/04/08 - 07:32 AM

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Posted 05/04/08 - 11:50 AM:	#15
rakis wrote: Dunamis, (I’m desperate, From the beginning (on Heidegger) you asked me for my “theory”, I‘ve written, but I didn’t take an answer. Don't be desperate. What I think is of little matter really. But if you must know, I just find your subsuming comments incoherent, that is incoherent to the degree that it is not worth while for me to pursue if they are really incoherent, or just so brilliant that it is me that is faulting, (I honestly grant both possibilities). It is just not a path worth walking down for me. Grouping Austin (have you have read him?) with Tarski, with Wittgenstein (I assume you mean BOTH his early and his later work, since you don't really seem to make a distinction) in some grand judgment of "encodement" is nearly meaningless to me. What can I say. Your observations seem all over the place, (which does not mean that you don't have some very powerful idea working in your brain). It just is not my obligation to find out what is happening, APART from the subject of the thread. I did not come to this site to discover your THEORY. Rather, it is to investigate very particular gradations of meaning, of very specific thinkers, and in that way to explore my own. If you don't care to answer the specific questions of thread, as they arise, why not start your own thread on the topic that interests you, and focus all questions there. You don't have to pm me, just post want you want as we all do, and others will respond as it interests them. People ignore my posts here all the time. Again, don't be desperate. What I think of you, and your words, is pretty much inconsequential. Edited by Dunamis on 05/04/08 - 12:16 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/04/08 - 11:55 AM:	#16
rakis wrote: Well, there is a difficulty because it is uncertain if Spinoza used the words “affectio” and “affectus” as synonyms, considering “passio” Read the Deleuze lecture notes that I provided, who treats this difference specifically. Here he is defining "affectus". But I think because of his monism, the question if there is or not room for a "non-idea" is a pseudo-dilemma. I think Spinoza thought that with his perspectivist dualism he solved the mind-body problem. What I mean is that for him it is useless to explain mind with physical terms or vice versa. Sure. Edited by Dunamis on 05/04/08 - 12:13 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/05/08 - 12:55 PM:	#17
Ok, Deleuse has somewhat enadequated my understanding of inadequate ideas - and his own reputation in my eyes; that was a good piece, thanks. So now I will risk opening my mouth and putting both feet in it on the subject of mysticism. How can a monist not sometimes resort to the chant of "All is one"? But in seeing, in the affection of things one to another, there is a necessary distinction: all is one and undivided, but the eye is its own horizon, and the line that separates is the condition of seeing, thinking, talking. It's curious how close Spinoza is to Death Monkey, except that his reductionism is more even-handed, and more radical. One might say that the life of inadequate ideas is the everyday life of most of us, and that it is 'mechanical' and that there is a call implict in Spinoza to a more adequate way of seeing/living/thinking. It is striking that his talk is always a unfied field of psychology and physics, and one's habits of thought have to work hard to hold the two aspects together. Deleuse wrote: As Spinoza says: if you imagine the being that you hate to be unhappy, your heart experiences a strange joy. One can even engender passions. And Spinoza does this marvelously. There are joys of hate. Are these joys? We can at least say, and this is going to advance us a lot for later, that these joys are strangely compensatory, that is indirect. What is first in hate, when you have feelings of hate, always look for the sadness at base, that is your power of acting was impeded, was decreased. And even if you have, if you have a diabolical heart, even if you have to believe that this heart flourishes in the joys of hate, these joys of hate, as immense as they are, will never get rid of the nasty little sadness of which you are a part; your joys are joys of compensation. The man of hate, the man of resentment, etc., for Spinoza, is the one all of whose joys are poisoned by the initial sadness, because sadness is in these same joys. In the end he can only derive joy from sadness. Sadness that he experiences himself by virtue of the existence of the other, sadness that he imagines inflicting on the other to please himself, all of this is for measly joys, says Spinoza. These are indirect joys. We rediscover our criteria of direct and indirect, all comes together at this level. What a wonderful explanation of human evil! And one sees the futility, because the initial sadness is maintained by it. But I want to jump into a comparison of Spinoza and Krishnamurti. As far as I know, the latter was not influenced by the former, and the language is very different, but there seem to me to be some fairly direct equivalences which might be illuminating. Where S talks of sadness and joy K tends to talk of fear and desire; where S says power, K says freedom; instead of adequate ideas, K mentions insight. I'll try to go into this a bit more later,I have to go to work. There is something to be compared too in their understanding of time. The book 'The Ending of Time' is a discussion with David Bohm the physicist, which I am thinking of particularly.
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/06/08 - 04:42 AM:	#18
unenlightened wrote: It's curious how close Spinoza is to Death Monkey, except that his reductionism is more even-handed, and more radical. Yes. Even more radical. (It has been noted that Davidson, the author that Death Monkey refuses to read, is extremely close to Spinoza's position, a kind of Spinoza-post-linguistic-turn). What makes him more even handed is to see that all of our descriptions, that is ALL of them, are either of one attribute or another, without either being caused by something separate, and that no one Attribute description is more "real", or more "actual" than another. Further, our interactions with each other, are seen as REAL material assemblages of bodies: bodies and ideas in combination. One might say that the life of inadequate ideas is the everyday life of most of us, and that it is 'mechanical' and that there is a call implict in Spinoza to a more adequate way of seeing/living/thinking. That is a good way of putting it. For Spinoza there is two things. One is the embrace of an necessarily inadequate ideational view of the world (our thoughts as they run through our minds), and also a call to a more adequate way of seeing (driven by Joy). It is striking that his talk is always a unfied field of psychology and physics, and one's habits of thought have to work hard to hold the two aspects together. I would say so. What a wonderful explanation of human evil! And one sees the futility, because the initial sadness is maintained by it. I'm glad you see it that way. But I want to jump into a comparison of Spinoza and Krishnamurti. As far as I know, the latter was not influenced by the former, and the language is very different, but there seem to me to be some fairly direct equivalences which might be illuminating. Where S talks of sadness and joy K tends to talk of fear and desire; where S says power, K says freedom; instead of adequate ideas, K mentions insight. I'll try to go into this a bit more later,I have to go to work. There is something to be compared too in their understanding of time. The book 'The Ending of Time' is a discussion with David Bohm the physicist, which I am thinking of particularly. There is much that has been compared between Spinoza and Eastern Thought. There are strong but subtle Cabalist influences I think, and his whole depersonalization of God, mimimization of the "ego", free will and consciousness, leads in this direction. I don't know the Bohm reference, but I do know that Bohm was influenced by Nicholas de Cusa, who serves as a kind of late-middle ages, early renaissance forerunner to Spinoza.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/07/08 - 06:51 AM:	#19
a Spinoza discussion site wrote: I got the following off a tape of a conversation > between David Bohm and > Krishnamurti recommended by Sunhunter. > > Krishnamurti asks "Is it possible for the mind to go > beyond reactions?" Then > he says ":Insight into the nature of reactions ends > psychological reaction." > then, "Insight is beyond matter and affects." Then > when Bohm raises > Aristotle's unmoved mover as an analogue > Krishnamurti responds (so beautifully, I think) > "But was Aristotle's unmoved mover an intellectual > construction or an > experienced reality?" Now it seems to me that this is a perfectly good example. The transformation consists, in spinozistic terms, in acquiring an adequate idea of the conditions of one's affections by stages until one reaches the state, if possible, in which one experiences the that intellectual love of "god" which is "God's" love of oneself. I stole this mainly to reassure myself that the fox I'm chasing is not entirely invisible to the rest of the world. The way K talks about insight, it is instantaneous, and definitely not a deliberate or willed thing. I think one could say that it is not a thought even, at least in the sense that thought is a process that proceeds through time - like this sentence. Rather it is a flash of understanding, or perhaps the completion ( and so the end) of a thought. So for example, if from the Deleuse quote above, one had an insight into the nature of evil, and the futility of trying to avoid sadness by imposing it on others, then one would be free from any inclination in that direction, and that on a permanent basis. So once one has this insight or this adequate idea, one is no longer reacting to the moment to moment increase and decrease of power on the basis of one's sadness and joy alone, but there is this adequate idea of the whole that can respond more completely. So then the question is how is one to obtain this insight? To me this is where philosophy can stop being just a game of chess, and start to have real importance for life. edit. Because one responds, to say another person, on the basis of one's own understanding rather than as a reaction to their impact on one, the causeis internal to oneself rather than external, and thiscorresponds to an increase in power overall, or as K would put it 'freedom.' I noticed in Deleuse, there was a distincion between power as puissance and as pouvoir, which we do not have in English; in pouvoir there is something close to 'ability' which implies 'freedom'. K maintains that 'all choice is conflict', and that freedom has noconnection with 'will'. Edited by unenlightened on 05/07/08 - 07:14 AM
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/07/08 - 08:58 AM:	#20
unenlightened wrote: I stole this mainly to reassure myself that the fox I'm chasing is not entirely invisible to the rest of the world. The way K talks about insight, it is instantaneous, and definitely not a deliberate or willed thing. I think one could say that it is not a thought even, at least in the sense that thought is a process that proceeds through time - like this sentence. Rather it is a flash of understanding, or perhaps the completion ( and so the end) of a thought. So for example, if from the Deleuse quote above, one had an insight into the nature of evil, and the futility of trying to avoid sadness by imposing it on others, then one would be free from any inclination in that direction, and that on a permanent basis. This is the reasoning behind Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge. Imaginary, then Rational, then Intuitional (which is really the near instanteous processing of the Rational). So once one has this insight or this adequate idea, one is no longer reacting to the moment to moment increase and decrease of power on the basis of one's sadness and joy alone, but there is this adequate idea of the whole that can respond more completely. So then the question is how is one to obtain this insight? To me this is where philosophy can stop being just a game of chess, and start to have real importance for life. That is Spinoza's (and Deleuze's) whole point. edit. Because one responds, to say another person, on the basis of one's own understanding rather than as a reaction to their impact on one, the causeis internal to oneself rather than external, and thiscorresponds to an increase in power overall, or as K would put it 'freedom.' I noticed in Deleuse, there was a distincion between power as puissance and as pouvoir, which we do not have in English; in pouvoir there is something close to 'ability' which implies 'freedom'. K maintains that 'all choice is conflict', and that freedom has noconnection with 'will'. For Spinoza, this entirely can be organized on the idea of becoming more active. In his arguments against freewill, he uses examples of those that think that they are exercizing freewill, how a child will get mad to a punch, how a drunk person will do such and such. They feel "free" but are "determined". His thought process is that once one "sees" the determination, and understands it, it stops affecting you in the same manner. It is probably his view that one is always passive to the world, but there is a path to joy. Spinoza shares many ideas with Buddhism I think, which gives him the Krishnamurdi connection (sorry, not a huge fan of Krishnamurdi, but I understand that you are).
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/07/08 - 10:23 AM:	#21
Dunamis wrote: (sorry, not a huge fan of Krishnamurdi, but I understand that you are). No problem, I just wanted to relate this to other stuff in my head to be more clear. Back to your question: Dunamis wrote: Is Micheal Della Rocca correct that there is no room for non-idea causation in Spinoza, even if the non-idea are taken as a product of ideas, as they seem to be in the instance of affects? If so, how is it that affects are to be called "ideas" since they are defined as a certain "transition" coupled with an attendant inadequate idea of an external thing? What would possibly be the idea-standing of this transition itself? Let me take an example I am familiar with - smoking. I have an affection for smoking. So at a certain moment I light a cigarette and start to smoke, and without going into the details of addiction, there is a certain joy that I feel, which is the affect. And after a while the joy wears off and then I want another, and this is a transtion. So I am going through all these transitions from sadness to joy and back, and that is my relationship with smoking, that I have an affection for smoking and a disaffection(?) for not smoking. Now my wife does not smoke, so it is clear that the cigarette is not the cause in all this, but it is all 'ideas' that I have. Where I think there is a confusion, is that there is the affect - the change of feeling that I have, but there is also the idea that I have of that feeling. So when I have not had a cigarette for some time, I start to feel sad, but then I have the idea that if I had a cigarette, then I would be happy, and of course it is the idea that causes me to smoke, not the sadness. So then, Dr Descartes tells me that smoking is bad for me and for everyone, and I ought to stop. And he makes an argument and gives me evidence until I agree with him, and now I have these ideas that are in conflict with my affection, and he tells me to make an effort of will and stop smoking. But these ideas are just as inadequate and partial as my previous ideas, which I still have so whichever is the more powerful idea will win out, and the other will be frustrated and make me sad. And Spinoza says, 'no, what you need is an adequate idea of your whole relationship to smoking, and then there will be no more conflict, and loss of joy. I think this is the crucial distinction - between the affect and the idea of the affect; the world is continuously affecting me, but then my ideas about how I will be affected also affect me, and usually it is these ideas that have causal effect - desire and fear. It's like a gun held to the head; the gun does not control you, but your fear does. Sadness does not make you act, but the attempt to escape it.
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/07/08 - 11:31 AM:	#22
unenlightened wrote: Let me take an example I am familiar with - smoking. I have an affection for smoking. So at a certain moment I light a cigarette and start to smoke, and without going into the details of addiction, there is a certain joy that I feel, which is the affect. And after a while the joy wears off and then I want another, and this is a transtion. So I am going through all these transitions from sadness to joy and back, and that is my relationship with smoking, that I have an affection for smoking and a disaffection(?) for not smoking. Now my wife does not smoke, so it is clear that the cigarette is not the cause in all this, but it is all 'ideas' that I have. Where I think there is a confusion, is that there is the affect - the change of feeling that I have, but there is also the idea that I have of that feeling. So when I have not had a cigarette for some time, I start to feel sad, but then I have the idea that if I had a cigarette, then I would be happy, and of course it is the idea that causes me to smoke, not the sadness. So then, Dr Descartes tells me that smoking is bad for me and for everyone, and I ought to stop. And he makes an argument and gives me evidence until I agree with him, and now I have these ideas that are in conflict with my affection, and he tells me to make an effort of will and stop smoking. But these ideas are just as inadequate and partial as my previous ideas, which I still have so whichever is the more powerful idea will win out, and the other will be frustrated and make me sad. And Spinoza says, 'no, what you need is an adequate idea of your whole relationship to smoking, and then there will be no more conflict, and loss of joy. I think this is the crucial distinction - between the affect and the idea of the affect; the world is continuously affecting me, but then my ideas about how I will be affected also affect me, and usually it is these ideas that have causal effect - desire and fear. It's like a gun held to the head; the gun does not control you, but your fear does. Sadness does not make you act, but the attempt to escape it. Yes, all very much so. But as a point of narrow distinction, the question is whether the inadequate idea that cigarettes cause you to have pleasure, is a sufficient description of the process of having an affect (the transition from a lessor to a greater perfection, in this case of pleasure). That is, is your affect itself made up of anything else OTHER than the ideas you hold. Is the transition itself, an "idea" or a "non-idea" (that is, a relation of your ideas to a vector of power, being, perfection, action, etc.).
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/08/08 - 07:07 AM:	#23
I think it's a question of time. At any instant - now - my power is whatever it is. I cannot even name my affect as joy or sadness except by comparison with a memory of what it has been, which is to say I come to an idea of it. The idea that I have then is inadequate because it is relative. But presumably, Spinoza has a more adequate idea, so when he is talking, the answer is different. In that sense , it is rather a trick question. My answer is 'no', but then I am unenlightened, so what do you expect. My 'no' admits that I live in a relative world of inadequate ideas,and not an absolute world of 'lived experience'. But of course in theory, I can see that I can live without all this comparison of now and then, indeed I can well live without any inadequate ideas, and then my affect will still be whatever it is, and going through transitions in response to my relations with the world, but my ideas of all this would be completely different - it would be of very little concern.
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/08/08 - 08:27 AM:	#24
unenlightened wrote: I think it's a question of time. At any instant - now - my power is whatever it is. I cannot even name my affect as joy or sadness except by comparison with a memory of what it has been, which is to say I come to an idea of it. Well, this is the thing. In Spinoza's take on the affects, the mind actually does not compare on state of its power to another, that is, the joy or sadness which involves a transition is not an event of comparison: as Spinoza wrote: But it should be noted that, when I say a greater or lesser force of existing than before, I do not understand that the Mind compares its Body's present constitution with a past constitution, but that the idea which constitutes the form of the affect affirms of the body something that really involves more or less reality than before. The General Defintion of the Affects So the transition itself is registered solely at the ontological level, though experienced on the personal level, and is not an act of comparison. When I feel Joy, not matter what its cause seems to be, what Spinoza says is that what its cause really is, is the ontological transition to perfection, power, cacapity to act, which expresses itself in both a material and ideational increase in adequacy. The affect itself, the experience, is no illusion. It is the most real thing in the world. But it is the product of the illusionary condition of ideas (just how adequate they are). But of course in theory, I can see that I can live without all this comparison of now and then, indeed I can well live without any inadequate ideas, and then my affect will still be whatever it is, and going through transitions in response to my relations with the world, but my ideas of all this would be completely different - it would be of very little concern. But these ideas are more than of "little concern" because for Spinoza they are not simply theories about what is happening, but rather the very things that determine consciousness itself, what Spinoza says, "...determines the Mind to think this rather than that" (GDA). This is the thing about Spinoza, the ideas we have are constitutive of our experience, that is, they determine it to be such and such. But, back to my original question, there does seem to be a surplus in this equation, an non-idea product, (or at least an idea which does not represent) in the causal chain of ideas, and that is the experience itself. Spinoza seems to posit this at both ends, making Desire the very generative essence of a body (the conatus) and also the illusionary-not-so-illusionary experience of Joy or Sadness. He places the Will of Descartes in what seems a kind of absolute bracket on the inside and outside of Being.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

unenlightened
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Posted 05/08/08 - 01:14 PM:	#25
Dunamis wrote: Well, this is the thing. In Spinoza's take on the affects, the mind actually does not compare on state of its power to another, that is, the joy or sadness which involves a transition is not an event of comparison: as Spinoza wrote: But it should be noted that, when I say a greater or lesser force of existing than before, I do not understand that the Mind compares its Body's present constitution with a past constitution, but that the idea which constitutes the form of the affect affirms of the body something that really involves more or less reality than before. The General Defintion of the Affects This is the distinction I am making; Spinoza sees the real, onological body in movement, but at the moment, I have to take his word for it, because I am not fully present, but living in inadequate ideas. Dunamis wrote: So the transition itself is registered solely at the ontological level, though experienced on the personal level, and is not an act of comparison. When I feel Joy, not matter what its cause seems to be, what Spinoza says is that what its cause really is, is the ontological transition to perfection, power, cacapity to act, which expresses itself in both a material and ideational increase in adequacy. The affect itself, the experience, is no illusion. It is the most real thing in the world. But it is the product of the illusionary condition of ideas (just how adequate they are). So we play a game of chess, and you feel a real joy at 'winning' an invented imaginary game. All I am saying is that that is one thing, the affect, and when you actually say to yourself, 'what a fine clever fellow I am to beat unenlightened', that is another, an inadequate idea of your joy. Dunamis wrote: But these ideas are more than of "little concern" because for Spinoza they are not simply theories about what is happening, but rather the very things that determine consciousness itself, what Spinoza says, "...determines the Mind to think this rather than that" (GDA). This is the thing about Spinoza, the ideas we have are constitutive of our experience, that is, they determine it to be such and such. But, back to my original question, there does seem to be a surplus in this equation, an non-idea product, (or at least an idea which does not represent) in the causal chain of ideas, and that is the experience itself. Spinoza seems to posit this at both ends, making Desire the very generative essence of a body (the conatus) and also the illusionary-not-so-illusionary experience of Joy or Sadness. He places the Will of Descartes in what seems a kind of absolute bracket on the inside and outside of Being. Sorry, I wasn't clear. The 'little concern' is for the moment to moment transitions. Obviously, Spinoza's concern is for ideas. You'll have to educate me on this, but desire is surely both of these things; the body's needs on one side, and projections of experience as ideas on the other - that is there are two very different things which are called desire and confused. Where I see will is in the conflict between two ideas, one of which may be an idea of the body's needs and the other of the mind's projections.
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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