Given that education is generally understood as a cognitive process with a focus on the mind at the expense of the body, Spinoza’s insights are particularly interesting. ![]() As Damasio (213) explains, Spinoza “is stating that the idea of an object in a given mind cannot occur without the existence of the body or without the occurrence of certain modifications on that body as caused by the object, No body, never mind”. Measures (such as geometrization), numbers, signs, images are all occurring in mind or thinking, not in extension itself.In a recent book, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio used the phrase “No body, never mind” to sum up the ways in which Spinoza prefigured much recent neurobiology in his conception of a psychophysical parallelism. what it could do in affectus, affectio or essence). The Kelvin knot type of idea is interesting but I don't think he would see that type of qualification as necessary for defining the essential character of extensionality, which he aligned more to the idea of Power of action (i.e. I think there is the extent to which he postulates on the quality of extension-in-and-of-itself. Any type of body presupposes an existence which exists in extension and which can be affected by and can affect other bodies. Put another way, all extension is determined by its extensive parts/relations. "The mind is therefore the idea of the corresponding body" Book II Prop 11)Īll bodies thus refer to the other finite existing modes that determines it. And more importantly, this parallelism exists in complex relationships of reciprocity (e.g. All deriving from God as modes of extension and modes of thinking. Then, this parallelism runs throughout all attributes of substance. Proposition 2 establishes that God exists in extension. Proposition 1 establishes that God thinks and He wrestles the most and fleshes out his thinking on this topic mostly in the Treatise on the Intellect.Īnyhow, starting from the beginning of the Ethics: It sounds minor but he wrests a lot on establishing a sort of isomorphic non-causal interaction between these two separate planes of modality. One would be thinking in images of existence instead of being in relation to the existent. Thus one is not in the same plane of discussion as with simple bodies in extension. Or to use his terminology, as an "imagining" and not a comprehension (understanding the composition of relations constituting a body). Geometric being would be an attribute as perceived by intellect or mind, as a mental aid in measure. To understand extension I do not believe you need to understand his idea of geometric being (or objects as conceived geometrically). It is not simply identical with the space that the body occupies. Which implies that (material) extension for Descartes is not simply identical with spatial, geometrical extension. That is, a condensed body, though smaller in spatial extension, is not smaller in (material) extension. The body, however, when condensed, has not, therefore, less extension than when the parts embrace a greater space. For example, he notes that a body may get condensed, or rarefied. On the other hand, many assertions of Descartes' imply that matter, for him, was more than mere geometrical extension. In this way we will discern that the nature of matter or body, considered in general, does not consist in its being hard, or ponderous, or coloured, or that which affects our senses in any other way, but simply in its being a substance extended in length, breadth, and depth. ![]() Spinoza in this issue, as in many others, stood on the shoulders of Descartes.ĭescartes officially identified matter with geometrical (three dimensional) extension. The geometrization of matter is a large issue, and is very relevant in present day physics (through General Relativity theory).
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