A scientific conference on Consciousness research (on Spinoza)

[Guest guest]

Namaste Sri Hersh-ji,

 

 

advaitin, "hersh_b" <hershbhasin@g...> wrote:

 

> You were right in pointing out that the mind/matter debate did

> not start with Spinoza. I think it was with Descartes.

 

 

Though it is difficult to exactly locate the origin of the mind-

matter debate, it would be reasonable to say that it gained momentum

with Descartes. But it is to the credit of Spinoza that he was

perspicuous enough not to fall into the trap of this duality and at

the same time avoid the pitfalls of idealism. I might have been a bit

harsh when I said that you had misrepresented Spinoza. My remark was

a rather spontaneous reaction to the suggestion that Spinoza was the

originator of the mind-matter duality. My apologies to you if I hurt

your feelings.

________________

> Spinoza did say that Thought and Extension derived from the

> same substance and he provided a means of reconciling the two.

 

 

Yes, but Spinoza would use the term 'derive' as we would in

saying 'logically follows from'. Let us see how Spinoza derives

Thought and Extension as two modes of Substance without slipping into

duality.

>From Part I: CONCERNING GOD

 

Definition 3: "By substance I mean that which is in itself and is

conceived through itself; that is, that the conception of which does

not require the conception of another thing from which it has to be

formed.

 

Definition 4: "By attribute I mean that which the intellect perceives

of substance as constituting its essence".

 

Proposition 7: "Existence belongs to the nature of substance".

 

Proposition 14: "There can be, or be conceived, no other substance

but God".

 

Thus, there is only one Substance, God, and it follows logically from

this that existence, which belongs to the nature of substance,

belongs to God alone in so far as there is no other substance but

God. Thought and Extension are thus attributes of the One God i.e.,

being attributes they are what the intellect perceives of God as

constituting His essence. Therefore, when we speak of Thought and

Extension, there are no two existentials in Spinoza's philosophy

because they are both modes of existence of the One God. It would be

necessary to constantly keep in mind here that existence belongs to

God alone. There is here a striking similarity to Visistadvaita.

________________

 

> My central position was that Spinoza tries to reconcile mind

> and matter and the way he does this is by saying that the body

> is an idea of the mind.

 

 

Actually Spinoza is not saying that the body is an idea of the mind.

He makes a very fine distinction here – he says that the body is an

OBJECT of the idea of the mind.

 

Prop 13 of Part II: "The OBJECT of the idea constituting the human

mind is the body – a definite mode of extension actually existing,

and nothing else."

 

Again, the object of the mind may be the mind itself.

 

Proposition 21 (of Part II): This idea of the mind is united to the

mind in the same way as the mind is united to the body.

 

Spinoza explicates this further in the Proof of the

proposition: "That the mind is united to the body we have shown from

the fact that the body is the OBJECT of the mind (Props. 12 and 13),

and so by the same reasoning the idea of the mind must be united with

its OBJECT – that is, to the mind itself – in the same way as the

mind is united to the body."

 

It is clear that Spinoza uses the word 'object' as the ancient

philosophers and scholastic philosophers had used it – as the target

to which the mind the directed. The difficultly we face in following

Spinoza arises from the fact that today we have become habituated to

consider objects as physical bodies, but in ancient philosophy (both

Indian and Western) the object is a 'thing' that may be either sensed

or ideated upon. When the target of the mind is the mind itself i.e.,

when the object of thought is the mind itself, it is important to use

the word 'object' in such a way that it retains the essence of the

mind because the object in question here is the mind itself.

Therefore, Spinoza says in the scholium to Prop. 21: "For in fact

the idea of the mind – that is, the idea of an idea – is nothing

other than the form (forma) of the idea is so far as the idea is

considered as a mode of thinking without relation to its object."

___________

 

> <quote>

> In very simple terms it was maintained that the body is an

> "idea" of the mind. All the parts of the body have a

> corresponding map in the mind. And that is how they are

> co-joined (maintains Spinoza in the year 1632).

> <end quote>

 

This quote seems to be not of Spinoza's own words but of somebody

interpreting Spinoza. It is true that there is in Spinoza a perfect

unity of mind and body, but this unity is not meant in an idealistic

sense, which is what would result if we said that the body is an idea

of the mind.

______________

 

> Spinoza is not merely saying that the mind springs fully

> formed from substance on equal footing with the body. He is

> assuming a mechanism whereby the equal footing can be realized.

> When I say that that the body is an idea of the mind, I do not

> see how I am misrepresenting his philosophy.

 

Mind and body are so well orchestrated in Spinoza's philosophy – like

the concave and the convex - that it would hardly do it justice to

call it a mechanism. But yes, there are parts of The Ethics which

would lead us in that direction if we are not careful with the

reading. (Actually, I think we would need to go into the scholastic

doctrine which says that "the essence of an object is prior to its

existence" to appreciate why Spinoza often speaks in a language that

may be construed as if he is espousing mind-body parallelism – but

that is another discussion topic by itself).

_______________

 

> You yourself quote Scholium of Proposition 7 (Part II):

>

> "For example, a circle existing in nature, and the idea of the

> existing circle - which is also in God - are one and the same

> thing, explicated through different attributes."

> I interpret this as meaning that just as the thought of a physical

> circle is an abstraction of the physical circle , the body's

> representation in mind is an abstraction (or an idea) of the body

> conceived in the mind.

 

 

What the term 'abstraction' means to us today is different than what

it did to the scholastics. To us, an abstraction is a concept and not

an existential. This is how Gottleb Frege and Bertrand Russell use

the term in Analytical Philosophy, and it is this idea

of 'abstraction' that has gained wide currency in contemporary

philosophy. The origin of the modern idea of abstraction is

Frege's 'Sense-Reference theory' wherein what is in the mind is the

sense of the object whereas the object itself is the

concrete 'instantiated' thing referred to by the sense in the mind.

But Spinoza has no use for the sense-reference theory because he

considers that "the object of the idea constituting the human mind is

the body – a definite mode of extension actually existing, and

nothing else". In Spinoza, there is no mediate thing called 'sense'

between the mind and the body. Abstraction for the ancients meant

merely making a distinction.

_______________

 

> Spinoza advanced the notion of the human mind which he defines

> transparently as consisting the idea of the human body. Spinoza

> uses "idea" as a synonym for image or mental representation or

> component of thought.

 

 

It is interesting that you should be saying this. Please see what

Samuel Shirley, the English translator of The Ethics, says in the

forward to the book regarding Spinoza's use of the term 'Idea':

 

"It is an extremely important term in Spinoza's philosophy. It is not

usually equivalent to the English 'idea', when the latter is

synonymous with 'notion' or 'image'. In fact, Spinoza warns us not to

construe 'idea' as signifying a pictorial representation of a thing,

a 'dumb picture on a tablet'. An idea, for Spinoza is an act of

thought; it is almost a transitive verb having an object, its ideate

('ideatum'), i.e., 'that which is idea-ed'."

 

In Spinoza, the idea and the object ideated are two aspects of a

single orchestration.

________________

 

> Prop 13 of Part II: "The object of the idea constituting the

> human Mind is the Body"

>

> This statement is reworded and elaborated in other propositions.

>

> -For example proof of Prop. 19, Spinoza says " The human mind

> is the very idea or knowledge of the human body."

>

> -Prop. 23 states " The mind does not have the capacity to

> perceive .. except so far as it perceives the ideas or

> modifications of the body."

>

> -Prop 15: "the human mind is capable of perceiving a great

> number of things and is so in proportion as its body is

> capable of receiving a great number of impressions"

>

> Now this is the interpretation taken of Spinoza reconcilation

> of mind matter taken by the neurologist Antonio Damasio in

> his book "Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling

> Brain"

 

 

While the interpretation proffered by Antonio Damasio may be in

conformance with popular interpretations of Spinoza, I don't believe

that it is correct. The propositions reproduced by you above are to

be seen alongwith the propositions that precede them in Part 2,

because together they provide an explanation of the relationship

between God and man. Earlier we said that Spinoza had no use for the

sense-reference theory, but this leaves Spinoza with the problem of

explaining why merely thinking of an object fails to actualise the

object in the world. He provides an explanation in Part II. Let us

look at some of the relevant propositions from Part II so that we may

gain an insight into what Spinoza is saying:

 

Prop 1: Thought is an attribute of God; i.e., God is a thinking thing.

 

Prop 2: Extension is an attribute of God; i.e., God is an extended

thing.

 

Prop 3: In God there is necessarily the idea of both of his essence

and of everything that necessarily follows from his essence.

 

Prop 6: The modes of any attribute have God for their cause only in

so far as he is considered under that attribute, and not in so far as

he is considered under any other attribute.

 

Prop 10: The being of substance does not pertain to the essence of

man; i.e., substance does not constitute the form (forma) of man.

 

Now, let us see these propositions together with those that you have

quoted.

>From Prop 10, it follows that the existence of man is not constituted

in man himself, but in God. That is, God is the existence of man, and

though man is also a thinking thing and extended thing, he is thus

only by being a mode of God. Moreover, from Prop 6, man as a mode of

God must be considered only under the attribute commensurate with the

mode of attributes in God that brings him forth as man and not under

any other attribute. Now, from the words quoted by you from the proof

of Prop 19, "the human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the

human body". If you look at proposition 19 in full, it reads:

 

"The human mind has no knowledge of the body, nor does it know it to

exist, except through ideas of the affections by which the body is

affected."

 

Now from Prop 3 and Prop 19, we know that God necessarily has

knowledge of everything, but man who is God seen in the limited mode

(as man) knows only the human body and the affections of the human

body. Thus even though God necessarily knows everything, when he is

considered under the mode of attributes as man, he has no knowledge

of the body except for his own body, and he is constrained to know

other bodies only in so far as they are affected through his body.

 

In so far as the existence of man is concerned, his existence is God

Himself, but man is God limited through the mode of attributes in God

wherein His knowledge is limited by knowing only the body, and

knowing the world outside his body only in so far as they are

affections of the body.

 

But even though man is limited as a mode of God's being, he is

capable of attaining to freedom by the third kind of knowledge which

Spinoza introduces in Scholium 2 of Proposition 40: "Apart from these

two kinds of knowledge (those derived through the senses and reason)

there is, as I shall later show, a third kind of knowledge, which I

shall refer to as 'intuition'. This kind of knowledge proceeds from

an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God

to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things."

 

 

If I may be permitted to digress somewhat from the main thread of

this discussion, I would like to present some words from 'The Ethics'

to show how close Spinoza comes to the Indian doctrine of liberation:

 

Prop 47 of Part II: "The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the

eternal and infinite essence of God."

 

Prop 28 of Part IV: "The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God,

and the mind's highest virtue is to know God."

 

Prop 31 of Part V: "The third kind of knowledge depends on the mind

as its formal cause in so far as the mind is eternal."

 

Prop 32 of Part V: "We take pleasure in whatever we understand by the

third kind of knowledge, and this is accompanied by the idea of God

as the cause."

 

Prop 33 of Part V: "The intellectual love of God which arises from

the third kind of knowledge is eternal."

 

Prop 35 of Part V: "God loves himself with an infinite intellectual

love."

 

Prop 36 of Part V: "The mind's intellectual love towards God is the

love of God wherewith God loves himself not is so far as he is

infinite, but in so far as he can be explicated through the essence

of the human mind considered under a form of eternity. That is, the

mind's intellectual love towards God is part of the infinite love

wherewith God loves himself."

 

Part 42 of Part V: "Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but

virtue itself."

 

Though the language is different, the kind of freedom Spinoza speaks

about is similar to what the soul obtains in darshanas such as

Vishistadvaita.

 

Lastly, I would like to thank you Hersh-ji, for it has been a

pleasure to discuss Spinoza. I consider him to be the greatest

philosopher in the Western tradition after Socrates and Plato.

Spinoza was excommunicated from the Chruch for heresy, but if he had

been born in the Vedic culture of India he might have been an eminent

Vedantin.

 

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

 

PS. I'd be happy if you continue to call me Chittaranjan without the

prefix 'ji'. :-)

[Guest guest]

Namaste Chittaranjan and friends:

 

Vedantin is term which is often used in "upahaasaarthaka" context.

Especially when the knowledge "baudhika" is not integrated

with "heart" (the core principle) and does not find application in

practical life. That is why there is a famous saying -

 

"kalau vedaantino bhaanti phlagune baalakaa iva"

 

For this reason I was trying to ask the question

(advaitin/message/27980) and

understand the purpose in our lives rather than remaining the

subject matter of academic interest.

 

Vedantins are often compared with "a ladle that is not capable of

tasting the soup". This is clearly expressed in the following lines:

 

adhitya caturo vedaandharmashaastraaaNyanekashaH |

brhamtatvaM na jaanaati darvii paakarasaM yathaa ||

 

I was not familiar with Spinoza's work and I have to thank you for

discussing it.

 

Other day, Ranchandra-Ji had correctly refocused us by narrating

Chainmananda's story (You may have gone through giitaa 10 times but

how many time has giitaa gone through you?) by placing the emphasis

on our understanding, realization and then utilization.

 

This reminds me of a practical advice found in manusmR^iti when it

comes to vedaabhyaasa –

 

aj~nebhyo granthinaH shreShThaa, granthibhyo dhaariNo varaaH |

dhaaribhyo j~naaninaH shreShThaa, j~naanibhyo vyavasaayinaH ||

manusmR^iti 12-103||

 

Meaning - Someone who has studied a little is better than totally

ignorant. Someone who has memorized them are better than someone

who knows a little. One who knows the meaning is superior to those

who memories. However, one who practices it definitely the most

superior.

 

Again thank you for the enlightening discussion.

 

Warm regards,

 

Dr. Yadu

 

 

advaitin, "Chittaranjan Naik"

<chittaranjan_naik> wrote:

>

> Namaste Sri Hersh-ji,

>

>

> I consider him to be the greatest

> philosopher in the Western tradition after Socrates and Plato.

> Spinoza was excommunicated from the Chruch for heresy, but if he

had been born in the Vedic culture of India he might have been an

eminent Vedantin.

>

>

> Warm regards,

> Chittaranjan

>

[Guest guest]

Namast Dr. Yadu-ji,

 

advaitin, "ymoharir" <ymoharir> wrote:

> Vedantin is term which is often used in "upahaasaarthaka"

> context. Especially when the knowledge "baudhika" is not

> integrated with "heart" (the core principle) and does not

> find application in practical life. That is why there is

> a famous saying -

>

> "kalau vedaantino bhaanti phlagune baalakaa iva"

>

> Vedantins are often compared with "a ladle that is not

> capable of tasting the soup". This is clearly expressed

> in the following lines:

>

> adhitya caturo vedaandharmashaastraaaNyanekashaH |

> brhamtatvaM na jaanaati darvii paakarasaM yathaa ||

 

 

Thank you, Sir, for bringing the connotations of the word 'Vedantin'

to my notice.... I was not aware of it. It is true that the

intellectual pursuit often leads to dry intellectualism, and that is

perhaps one reason why we need to approach Vedanta with the heart as

well as the intellect. Since the context of the discussion was

Spinoza, it might be in order here to say that Spinoza practiced what

he preached. He was a man of austerity, leading a Christian life in a

truer spirit that many of the votaries of the Church, and above all

he was a person who had the courage to stand by his convictions even

though he was excommunicated and driven out of his homeland. He lived

as he says in the Ethics "Blessedness is not reward for virtue, it is

virtue itself".

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

[Guest guest]

Dr. Yadu-ji and Chittaranjan-ji

 

Further on the comments by Shri Chittaranjan-ji on Spinoza (*He lived

as he says in the Ethics "Blessedness is not reward for virtue, it is

virtue itself etc*), I would like to add that Romain Rolland in his

Autobiography "Journey Within" describes arriving at a non duel

realization of God after reading Spinoza (the exact preposition(s) is

mentioned in the book but I do not recollect it).

 

Romain Rolland received the Nobel Prize in Literature 1915. He was

the one who influenced Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade) to work with

Mahatma Gandhi. Roman Rolland was an excellent musician and an

authority on Beethoven. Mirabehn was passionate about Beethoven and

met Romain Rolland in this connection. In this meeting Romain told

her about the Mahatma. This meeting is described in Mirabehn's

autobiography "Spirit's Pilgrimage ".

 

Romain Rolland also wrote an excellent book on Ramakrishna Paramhansa

and Swami Vivekananda. This book is called "Prophets of the new

India". I would like to add that my personal quest to Advaita was

initiated by reading Rolland and Spinoza.

 

with regards

Hersh