Notes on Spinoza's Ethics

(Originally written February 13, 2006 in Book 22)

Hobbes to Hume pp. 206-209

Ideas an their objects

Spinoza contends that all ideas are always true in a sense. Ideas are always about their objects because the object of an idea simply another attribute of the cognitive situation. Error occurs when the object of an idea does not match with the real object. i.e. A person can believe that there is a polk-a-dot elephant outside. This is an obvious error because there is no such thing as a polk-a-dot elephant. That doesn't mean that the idea of a polk-a-dot elephant doesn't have an object, the object of this idea is the amount of alcohol in this person's bloodstream or what ever mental defect that is causing their belief in polk-a-dot elephants.

Most people today would state that alcohol is not the object of that idea, it is the cause. Spinoza would counter that by stating that to formulate it that way is to confuse language and mix it around in an odd way. Spinoza may actually have been correct in his counter. Many profound metaphysical truths are the result of linguistic trickery.

Spinoza states that perception is always inadequate without exception. For him, the object of an idea is never what is out there, but is how my mind is being effected by what is out there. Adequate ideas are those that are used to form some deductive system. The object of perception must be replaced by either the science of the perceiver's body or the science of the object's body in the idea for it to become .

Thus, an adequate idea, according to Spinoza, is an idea of reality. Adequate ideas occur when the mind traces out the implicative relations, which the total of those relations in the universe. And, since reality is one whole, there is only one wholly adequate idea. Since ideas and objects of ideas are just different modes of the some substance they are, in reality, identical.

Physics

Spinoza believed that psychology was the science of the attribute of thought, whereas physics was the science of the attribute of extension. Spinoza took the laws of physics as a set of theorems whose relations reflect the necessary properties of reality. They are reality because they are rational and all rational things are real.

Classics of Philosophy pp. 580-596
Spinoza's Ethics

Proposition 18 states: God is the immanent, and not the transitive cause of all things. His proof for this is that all things that are must be in god and conceived through god and that outside god nothing can exist. God (god) is therefore the immanent and not transitive cause of all things.

Proposition 19 states: god is eternal, or, in other words all his attributes are eternal. His proof for this is that god is substance and substance necessarily exists. Substance must exist eternally, thus god exists eternally.

Proposition 20 states: the existence of god and his essence are one and the same thing. Since god and all his attributes exist eternally and god's essence is the same as his existence both must be eternal.

Proposition 21 states: all things which follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of god must forever exist and must be infinite; that is to say through that same attribute they are eternal and infinite.

Proposition 22 states: Whatever follows from any attribute of god in so far as it is modified by a modification which through the same attribute exists necessarily and infinitely.

Proposition 23 states: every mode which exists necessarily and infinitely must necessarily follow either from the absolute. Nature of some attributes of god, or from some attribute modified by a modification which exist necessarily and infinitely.

Proposition 24 states "the essence of things produced by god does not involve existence.

Proposition 25 states "god is not only the efficient cause of existence of things, but also of their essence.

Proposition 26 states "a thing which has been determined to any action was necessarily so determined by god, and that which has not been thus determined by god cannot determine itself to action.

Proposition 27 states "a thing which has been determined by god to any action cannot render itself indeterminate"

Proposition 28 states that an individual thing or a thing which is finite and which as a determinate existence, cannot exist nor be determined to existence and action by another cause which is also finite and has a determinate existence; and again, this cause cannot exist nor be determined to action unless by another cause which is also infinite and determined to existence and action, and so on ad infinitum

Proposition 29 states "in nature there is nothing contingent, but all things are determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and act in a certain manner"

Proposition 30 states "the actual intellect, whether finite or infinite, must comprehend the attributes of god and the affections of god, and nothing else.

Proposition 31 stes "the actual intellect, whether it be finite or infinite, together with the will, desire, love, etc. must be referred to the natura natura and not to the natura naturons

Proposition 32 states "the will cannot be called a free cause, but can only be called necessary"

Proposition 33 states "things could have been produced by god in no other manner and in no other order than that in which they have been produced

Proposition 34 states "the power of god is his essence itself"

Proposition 35 states "whatever we conceive to be in god's power necessarily exists

Proposition 36 states "nothing exists from whose nature or effect does not follow