Does anyone here know anything about Spinoza? I'm just curious. I really haven't read much philosophy. In the Bertrand Russell book I had been reading he mentioned something about Spinoza that made me want to read some of his stuff.

Spinoza is a wonderful, systematic early modern philosopher. He often gets negelected in Great Philosophers and Intro Courses because he, like Kant, has a complex and intricate philosophy that really needs to be explored in full to truly understand it. When people read those dubbed the "Continental Rationalists", they focus on Descartes and Leibniz, and not as much on Spinoza.

If you've ever heard arguments to the effect of "God is in all of us...we're all inhabited by God"...that's a short take on Spinoza's view. His belief is that there is only one substance, with dual attributes: God is the substance, with nature and the natural world one of his attributes. He is also a raging determinist and argued (in the 1600s, a bold move) that most religion is merely superstition while being convinced of God's existence.

The best place to start with Spinoza are the Edwin Curley edited Collected Works of Spinoza which are, I think, in two volumes.

Antonio Damasio (sp?), the author of Descartes' Error, has a book on Spinoza (which I've not read) called, I think, Looking For Spinoza.

Thanks, pE. Sounds interesting. I reserved a Collected Works of Spinoza book at our library and'll pick it up in the next few days. I was a little surprised that only 5 results showed up when I searched the library catalog for Spinoza. We have a really great library near where I live and I thought that guy was pretty well-known.

Here's a nice intro essay on Spinoza from the amazingly-good-because-it's free Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/

For years, Spinoza was the red-headed stepchild of the rationalists. More and more, I think people are coming to realize that he's an extremely important figure, a brilliant mind, and probably more relevant to modern philosophy than Descartes.

Does anyone know anything about the split-brain experiments that Roger Sperry and Joseph Bogen worked on to help severe epileptics?

There was a small blurb about it in Brain-wise, Patricia Churchland's book, and it seems like some pretty strong evidence against dualism. She is not all that forthcoming with the facts of the experiments though, and I am curious whether that is because they are not as convincing as she wants to make them out to be, or if she is just trying to keep an already long book from getting any longer. Links to any good write-ups would be helpful.

I try to constantly have at least two non-work related books going at any given point. Usually one music book (band biogs, etc) and one philosophy book that's not related to my current research. Over the last three weeks I've read:

Shaun Nichols' Sentimental Rules, an empirical discussion of moral sentimentalism.

Nancy Sherman's Stoic Warriors, an essay on the mindset of the soldier and whether the warrior-mentality can be attributed to the Stoics.

Dan Dennett's Sweet Dreams, a collection of lectures he gave in Paris ostensibly tying up loose ends in his theory of consciousness. If you are irked by the 'hard problem' of consciousness, I don't think this book really helps. But he's a great, clever writer, even if he doesn't really get the answers he wants to...

How was that Shaun Nichols book pE? I really like what I've read from him, and I'm looking forward to his talk at Emory next Thursday.

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Originally posted by keylimetrev:
How was that Shaun Nichols book pE? I really like what I've read from him, and I'm looking forward to his talk at Emory next Thursday.

Quite good, although I think the payoff is in the chapter about psychopaths which was previously published as a stand-alone article. He's got a nice approach, though, tackling the emotive/sentimental approach to ethics by checking what people ACTUALLY think about things versus what our intuitions might say they say. It's a good read, but the paper on psychopaths and the rationality of amoralism might give you all you really need.

I've read the psychopath paper. Really good stuff. I can't believe how much Nichols publishes. He must just constantly be writing.

Right now, I'm quickly reading through Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Distinction to set me up for his newest book, Ethics Without Ontology, which I'm reviewing for Essays in Philosophy. I really don't know Putnam's ethics stuff at all...I mainly know him (as most do) for brain-in-a-vat and other mind-related stuff.

pE what do you think about greeks like Socrate, Plato and Aristotle? I had read a bit of Machiavel, Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, etc. but no one is as powerful as Socrate (or Plato). In fact, we know anything and will probably discover anything about the essentials questions about life and we will never understand how to live and what a great life is. And I hate Machiavel and all the "Philosophes des Lumières" from the french revolution (Rousseau, Kant). "Reason" will never solve anything, but love can do it. But love is a failure without the intelligence. In fact, Saint-Augustin was right.

The thing about Socrates is that we know practically nothing about what he actually thought, he refused to write anything. Everything that is known about his philosophy is through his mentor Plato. I read most of Plato's work and I find it rather interesting but I am not sure how much faith we can put in Plato.

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Originally posted by Mike:
The thing about Socrates is that we know practically nothing about what he actually thought, he refused to write anything. Everything that is known about his philosophy is through his mentor Plato. I read most of Plato's work and I find it rather interesting but I am not sure how much faith we can put in Plato.

A few things need to be corrected: first of all, Socrates didn't REFUSE to write things down. He was widely beleived to be illiterate. Also, you have the relationship backwards: Socrates was Plato's mentor, not vice versa. Lastly, there are other references to Socrates (the person, not the PLatonic character) historically, so our knowledge of him is not solely based on the writings of his student and friend (which, as you point out, would be pretty biased). But your point is a good one: it's dangerous to regard Socrates TOO highly because, in many cases, it's hard to tell where Socrates ends and Plato begins, although detailed textual analysis and chronlogy can give us a pretty good idea of when Plato is telling us what Socrates actually thought and when Socrates becomes the mouthpiece for Plato's own views. I will say, though, there are few pieces of philosophy (or literature) more compelling than the PLatonic dialogues that tell the tale of the trial and exectuion of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo).

My answer to eggTweedyegg would be that I hold the ancients in great respect, although I'm more of a Stoics guy than a PLatonist or an Aristotelian, but I'm also a fan of later philosophers. For my money, if I was teaching a course and could only study three major figures, I'd go with Aristotle, Hobbes, and Hume. Aristotle for the richness of his account of human life, Hobbes for the realism and physicalism that he brings to the table, and Hume for the broad-ranging and scientific way he validated skepticism.

Personally, I think Descartes is overrated (after the cogito, he's not got a lot to say) and Kant is too hard to get (for students) unless you know his whole body of work. Leibniz and Spinoza both deserve to be held in equal regard as Descartes, but neither have an arugment as sexy as "I think, therefore I am."

Thanks for the corrections, PE. I knew that Plato was Socrates student but I typed my intended sentence backwards. I thought that I read somewhere that Socrates looked down on writing or something among those terms, but I will certainly take your word for it, professor.

As far as Socrates trial is concerned, I have respect for his morals. When given the option of setting his own punishment he spits in the panel's face by offering an offensively small amount of money. He then refuses to escape as many of his close friends suggested he do.

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Originally posted by Mike:
As far as Socrates trial is concerned, I have respect for his morals. When given the option of setting his own punishment he spits in the panel's face by offering an offensively small amount of money. He then refuses to escape as many of his close friends suggested he do.

See, now I think that not escaping was just stupid. How was that a moral thing to do? He sacrificed his life for nothing.

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Originally posted by keylimetrev:

I was mainly interested in the idea because a non-reductionist physicalism seems like a really nice path for philosophy of mind. Unfortunately, I still don't buy it. Using supervenience to explain the relation between the mind and the brain stil seems like a poor way to avoid reductionism. I'd be more inclined to agree with some kind of functionalist explanation of mental states than this supervenience explanation, and I'd still put my money on it all boiling down to brain states when all is said and done.

Isn't Functionalism the most popular theory in the field right now? Reductionism has a long way to go, and eliminative materialism can be a little impractical and mumbo jumbo. The language proposed by the eliminitavists is just not happening.

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Originally posted by philosopherEric:

If you've ever heard arguments to the effect of "God is in all of us...we're all inhabited by God"...that's a short take on Spinoza's view. His belief is that there is only one substance, with dual attributes: God is the substance, with nature and the natural world one of his attributes. He is also a raging determinist and argued (in the 1600s, a bold move) that most religion is merely superstition while being convinced of God's existence.

I haven't read any of Spinoza's work as yet, but from what you've described, pE, his view seems to be a derivative of some of the medievals (correct me if I'm wrong) that the the universe was a necessary effect of an efficient cause (in this case, God). To say that something is a necessary effect would imply that it is more of an attribute or a manifestation (analogy: the sun's rays are a necessary effect of the sun), exactly like Spinoza believes, rather than a creation from a divine free will.

Just a few thoughts for discussion.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Carlito's Way,

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Isn't Functionalism the most popular theory in the field right now? Reductionism has a long way to go, and eliminative materialism can be a little impractical and mumbo jumbo. The language proposed by the eliminitavists is just not happening.

I guess functionalism might still be the dominant view, although I think some supervenience-based non-reductive physicalism is the most popular view among the philosophy of mind community. Also, property dualism is really popular at the moment, although I refuse to accept it as anything other than a fad until some better argument is given than the zombie argument, which I just don't think works.

I'm still a pretty confident reductionist myself, and learning more neuroscience this year hasn't not in any way made me waiver from that position. On any given day, I could easily call myself a proponent of the identity theory (but only if it is a necessary identity) or an eliminitivist. I don't think eliminitivism is nearly as crazy as people say. It is clear (to me) that our folk psychology is inadaquate, and I see no reason to think that replacing it with scientific terminology would be so bad. I'm actually fond of the term "revisionist materialist," in the sense of revising folk psychology as is necessary, but not to the full scale that eliminitivism calls for.

I've toyed with the idea of writing a paper which says that in effect, the problem with eliminitivism is that the terms they are trying to replace folk psychology with have no meaning...yet. This comes from my belief that Wittgenstein got at least something right in saying that meaning is determined by use. Any thoughts?

I think the big hurdle for the elimination of folk psychological terms from the vocabulary (and replacing them with purelt scientific ones) is that people don't talk that way, and it seems like they don't WANT to. This assumption comes from teaching this stuff to students in intro level classes...of course, people with some philosophical leanings would be willing to consider ditching folk science for "real" science, but most people won't. They're comfortable talking about their pains, their beliefs, their desires...and they don't want to substitute talk of brain states or talk of c-fibers. Does that make eliminativism WRONG? Of course not. It just makes not practical for common use.

I'm really not sure which is the most common theory in the field (not that popularity has any effect on truth!). I'd guess that, outside of the people actively WORKING in philosophy of mind, some version of functionalism is the most common. Once you get into the active participants, I think it evens out more: you have a cluster of folks who are eliminativists or reductivists. You have the trendy attempt to defend some form of dualism (property dualism is hot, but I'm guessing substance will come back at some point), but I'd guess many of the people who aren't proposing new arguments are comfortable with some derivation of functionalism.

No, eliminitavism is not wrong. But if their goal is to eliminate folk psych terms in language, it might take a while. As keylimetrev has pointed out, eliminativist terms have not acquired meaning yet for the general public. Someone can also throw the ball back into the eliminitavist's court. Are the words "I believe", "I hope", and "I desire" illegitimate that we ought to eliminate them? Because mental states are not important? Maybe...


I think Functionalism is dominant because it's safe and it's got the best of all worlds. The way philosophy is currently embracing scientism makes it a little hard to believe that substance dualism will come back. But who knows. Like you said, Descartes made a name for himself when he made that sexy quote. You're right, he's a little overrated, but people still read him.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Carlito's Way,

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Antonio Damasio (sp?), the author of Descartes' Error, has a book on Spinoza (which I've not read) called, I think, Looking For Spinoza.

I really enjoyed Looking for Spinoza. It's right at my level of philosophic expertise, which is comfortably non-existent