Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mind-Body Problem (By Spinoza's Philosophy) : 1.1 Rene Descartes and Dualistic Theory
Mind-Body Problem (By Spinoza's Philosophy) : 1.1 Rene Descartes and Dualistic Theory
Mind-Body Problem (By Spinoza's Philosophy) : 1.1 Rene Descartes and Dualistic Theory
Rather than the necessary presence of anthropomorphic God in every single mental-
material transition, Spinoza offered a different explanation of perceiving mental and
material world. For Spinoza there is no God as an anthropomorphic being which would
create or destroy things, or had any other direct casual cause on nature. Actually he
considered God and nature only as two different forms for the same thing. In his most
famous work Ethics he invented a whole set of mathematically logical axioums out of
which he derives all his conclusions. One of that axioms stated that there is only one
substance, because the definition of the substance is to be perfect, and if there would be
anything outside this substance to differ it from, it would not be perfect anymore, because
it would not posses everything (which is the essential definition of perfection). This
derives to the conclusion there must be only one God and he must be everything in order
to be perfect. So even mental and material worlds, which seem to be completely different
with completely different properties, they still have the same ontological origin; God. So
they are basically only two different ways of perceiving one thing and one thing only,
they are only two out of infinite extensions of perceiving God. And so if both material
and physical things can be both explained through God, there must exist a common
denominator for them. And there is. Because The face of the whole universe and The
order of thought are extensions infinite in its own kind, they must include everything,
what God is, under it’s form, or they would not be infinite. And if one includes
everything and the other includes everything and they have the common denominator,
that means whatever exists as a thing also has to exist as an idea, and vice versa. But then
they are not two things anymore, but rather only two different ways of perceiving a single
thing.
And there is the interaction between body and mind, it does not exist(KAJ?). It is the
same thing so there could not be any casual cause to affect mind that would have an
origin in body, because it would mean the same as to say that mind has been affected
because of itself. And that is also why Spinoza was Einstein’s favorite philosopher. What
did Spinoza prove in philosophy, Einstein tried to back up with some experimental proofs
in physics. Einstein believed that the universe under all its complexity hides a simple
connection/equation with which it would be able to explain everything. And he also
succeeded to some degree. His most famous equation E=mc2 is a tremendous(pocasi
shakespear) loud(evo ti če češ bit umetniški) proof for Spinoza’s philosophy, that even
things that seem immaterial in its own kind have components in matter. Or even a better
example;the light. It is possible to describe light as electro-magnetic waves (e.g. energy)
or as photons (e.g. particles of matter) (ti ne razlagas fiziko ampak odnos materija vs. ne
materija). So light is an immaterial process and a particle at once. And as one changes the
other is also affected, but not through the casual cause of the other but rather by other’s
immanent cause.
So here it is, the logical and physical proof of the monistic theory. Sufficient enough? If
energy is viewd as substance than I’m guessing not… (ne to napisat)