[Draft; forthcoming in: Intentionality, ed. by Alessandro Salice with an introduction by John Searle, München: Philosophia-Verlag (Basic Philosophical Concepts) 2012] Intentionality without Objectivity? – Spinoza’s Theory of Intentionality1 Martin Lenz (HU Berlin) Abstract Although we commonly take our thoughts to be about external things that exist independently of ourselves, Spinoza’s notion of intentionality suggests that our ideas are primarily about our own bodies. What are we to make of this somewhat revisionary tenet? Do our thoughts never reach out to the things themselves? This paper attempts to reconstruct Spinoza’s notion of intentionality in two steps. Firstly, I will place his position in the larger context of his metaphysical tenets and discuss how his theory of ideas provides an explanation of intentional content. Secondly, I will address the question of how Spinoza accounts for what we customarily take to be thoughts about external things as such. I shall argue that, for Spinoza, intentional content always involves propositional attitudes which are ultimately governed by our striving for self-preservation (conatus). In accentuating the links between his theory of propositional attitudes and his conatus principle, I hope to show how he challenges the traditional view of intentionality as grasping objects in a mind-independent world in favour of the thesis that we represent things as they are beneficial to us. A common way to tackle the problem of intentionality is to address the question of how something, say a mental state, can be about something else. Putting the question like this seems to presuppose the notion of objectivity, i.e. the idea that there is a world to be thought about existing independently of ourselves. If, for instance, I think about the tree at my window, then my thought can be said be about or in some way related to that tree (or, incidentally, to the poem ‘Tree at my window’ by Robert Frost). Although this feature of thoughts and other mental states is certainly well-known, it is still hard to understand. What does this relation between my thought and the object consist in? Is my thought really related to the tree? A simple counter-argument consists in pointing out that I am able to think about this tree, even if it had been felled long ago. In this case, then, my thought would be about noth1 Previous versions of this paper have been presented at workshops in Berlin. I am particularly grateful to Maren Drewes, Dominik Perler, Paolo Rubini, Alessandro Salice, Eric Schliesser and Stephan Schmid for their insightful comments. ing, since the supposed relatum (i.e. the tree) simply does not exist. To put this point more generally, we can have true beliefs about objects that do not exist. But if my thought is not related to the tree, what is related to? Is there a special kind of inner object that my thought is about? An ontologically neutral way to indicate the relata of thoughts and other mental states is to say that thoughts have content. But even if we set aside ontological questions regarding the nature of content, we just seem to have shifted the initial question. Since now we can ask about the relation between the thought’s content and the tree: is it really the tree at my window that determines the content of my thought? Among the more recent philosophers of mind, the positions regarding the question of content determination can be divided into two camps: according to externalism the content of our thoughts depends on the external things that we’re thinking about, while internalism claims that the content determining factors are located inside the thinker. At a first glance, this opposition might appear pointless. Thinking does of course, in some sense, take place in the mind, but if we think of things outside our minds, it seems natural to assume that thought content is determined by these very things. If I think of the tree at my window, then it is the tree outside my mind I am thinking about, or so one might argue. Yet, thinking of the tree obviously involves thinking of it as something, say, as the tree at my window or as green or what have you. Accordingly, thinking involves representing something under a certain aspect. So, I might think of the tree as something that is green but – lacking certain botanical knowledge – not as an apple tree. But if it is this aspectual element that determines what it actually is I think about, then the content of my thought seems to depend on the concepts that are available to me. However, what both camps seem to presuppose is the idea of objectivity. Indeed, the very notion of intentionality (or aboutness or ofness) seems to rely on the intuition that, in thinking about something, we are cognitively related to something else, to something that is or at least represents something external and independent of ourselves. Now one might wonder: what is so special about presupposing objectivity in an explanation of intentionality? Well, in presupposing objectivity we assume a general standard or norm that is separate from beliefs or – more generally – intentional states, a standard with which thoughts can then be said to agree or disagree. Often this standard is cashed out in terms of truth and falsity: if I think that the tree at my window is green while in fact there is no such tree at my window, then my thought deviates from the actual states of affairs; my thoughts about the world can be mistaken, whereas the world is as it is. Another way of answering the question is to imagine what it might be like to account for intentionality without recourse to objectivity. Quite often objec2 tivity is contrasted with subjectivity, so one possible scenario is that all our beliefs would be subjective in that there would be no standard or measure of truth available. Seeing the tree at my window, I could believe, say, to see the tree’s brown colour, but I could not believe (or at least wouldn’t be entitled to believe) that the tree (itself) is brown. To be sure, this does not mean that every theory of intentionality is committed to objectivity in the sense of metaphysical realism. What many theories of intentionality do seem to take for granted, however, is that, in attributing a thought to someone, we at least have to assume that the thinker is in some sense cognitively related to something that exists independently of thought.2 Let’s call this notion of objectivity the assumption of mind-independence. It is precisely this intuition that is challenged in Spinoza’s theory of intentionality. Of course, even for Spinoza, we commonly suppose to be thinking about something external when we think about things such as trees. But whenever we suppose to have beliefs about external things as such we are making a mistake, since, for Spinoza, intentionality does not consist in being related to something else but primarily in being related to one’s own body. So the primary intentional relation holds, not between the thought and something independent, but between the thought and its physical counterpart, as it were. Making a mistake, then, means, not to deviate from external facts, but to erroneously take features of my body as something else. I shall set out Spinoza’s ‘intentionality thesis’ in two steps. Firstly, we will look at the thesis in the larger context of his metaphysical tenets. Secondly, I will try to address the question of how Spinoza can account for the intentionality of ordinary human beings and show how Spinoza’s account dismisses the problematic notion of objectivity with regard to things as such in favour of the tenet that we represent things as they are beneficial to us.3 I. Intentional Content Five Basic Tenets At least since Descartes, early modern philosophers mostly discuss the problems related to the phenomenon of intentionality within the framework of the theory of ideas. Although the no2 3 Some philosophers even claim that objectivity (or the concept of objective truth) is a precondition of rationality and intentionality. See, for instance, Davidson 2001. To be sure, Spinoza and most other early modern philosophers did not use the term ‘objectivity’. And the pre-Kantian use of related terms such as ‘obiectivus’ even rests on an understanding more or less reverse to our modern use of the terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, where ‘objective’ was taken to indicate something that exists only in being present to the mind; see Daston and Galison 2007, 27-35. – I use ‘objectivity’ in the modern sense, aiming at the assumption of mind-independence, not at a terminological point. 3 tion of idea was itself hotly disputed, it is safe to say that, on many accounts, it was designed to capture the phenomena that contemporary philosophers now call ‘mental states’ and ‘contents’, ‘representations’, ‘concepts’ or even ‘thoughts’.4 As we shall see shortly, Spinoza conceives of ideas mainly as conceptual thoughts and volitions. Before we look at Spinoza’s theory of ideas, however, we ought to place it in the context of some of the main tenets of his Ethics. As is well-known, Spinoza claims that there is just one substance, namely God or nature, whereas all other things such as stones, cats and humans are just modes of this substance. That’s what’s known as Spinoza’s substance monism.5 One important difference between the substance and its modes is that the essence of the substance is said to comprise its existence, it is causa sui, whereas finite modes such as humans do not exist as such. Accordingly, the actual essence of these modes is said consist in their striving (conatus) to preserve their being. This is known as the conatus-doctrine.6 Now, all things can be considered under at least two attributes, namely thought and extension, such that each mental state, i.e. an idea, can be described as parallel to a physical state.7 That’s known as the parallelism of mind and body, implying that the causal explanation of ideas is not to be given with recourse to physical events but to other ideas, just like physical states are causally explained by other physical states. Now, while God or nature is the totality of ideas or parallel physical states respectively, an individual thing such as a stone or a person, is just a part of that totality. You might think of nature as huge net of physical and mental states which are all causally and conceptually related to each other. Your mind, then, is a fairly complex part of this net parallel to the fairly complex state of your body.8 This thesis nicely links in with Spinoza’s holism. Our physical and our parallel mental states are embedded in a net of causal or conceptual relations. This means, amongst other things, that the contents of our mental states are adequately determinable only in relation to other mental states. Now, since we are only part of the whole net, as it were, our cognitions are just as partial and thus (mostly) inadequate. Only from a divine perspective would one be 4 5 6 7 On early modern theories of ideas and discussions of intentionality see Haag 2010. References to the Ethica (in Opera II, ed. Carl Gebhardt [Heidelberg: Winters, 1925]) are indicated in the standard way: Roman numerals correspond to parts; abbreviations (often along with Arabic numerals) specify appendix (= app), corollary (= c), definition (= def), demonstration (= d), proposition (= p), and scholium (= s). Translations are taken, sometimes with slight modifications, from Edwin Curley, A Spinoza Reader (Princeton, New Jersey, 1994). – For the doctrine of substance monism see Spinoza, Ethica I p 1415. See Della Rocca 2008, 46-69, for a thorough exposition of Spinoza’s theory of substance and modes. See Cook 2006 for a concise exposition of the conatus-theory. The fact that Spinoza takes the attributes of extension and thought as something under which things can be considered might raise the question of who actually conceives these things. However, the point of this distinction is not to introduce a special perspective, but rather to distinguish between separate explanatory levels, namely levels of physical and conceptual or psychological explanation. See Spinoza, E II p 7 s. 4 able to access the whole net of causal and conceptual relations. Instead of grasping all the conceptual relations you grasp yourself and the things around you, not from the holistic perspective but in an associative manner.9 Finally, Spinoza holds a version of necessitarianism. So, even if things might look as if they happen contingently from our point of view, everything that happens could not happen otherwise than it actually does.10 Given these tenets, it is easy to see that Spinoza does of course adhere to a metaphysical ideal of objectivity in some sense, namely in the sense that he assumes that there is one substance and – in God’s mind at least – one true description of the world, as it were. In claiming that Spinoza’s theory of intentionality challenges the common intuitions of objectivity I don’t mean to downplay this realism. Rather I hope to show that his account undermines a certain notion of objectivity, namely objectivity taken as mind-independence. As we shall see shortly, then, Spinoza doesn’t conceive of the world grasped by us through intentional relations as objective in the sense that it is mind-independent. But that doesn’t mean that the world is mind-dependent either, in that it depends, say, on the ways we grasp the world. Spinoza’s point is rather that we don’t need to pose a dualism of mind and world in order to make sense of a mind grasping the world. Thus, dismissing objectivity in the sense of mind-independence doesn’t lead to subjectivism, but is an outcome of dismissing the dualism of mind and world. The intentionality thesis A common way to introduce talk of intentional relations is to discuss the mind’s relation to an external material object such as a tree, and ask what this relation involves. However, this is not the way Spinoza introduces intentionality. Given Spinoza’s substance monism, finite human minds are ultimately parts of God’s infinite intellect. Thus, we should not consider human minds as substantial bearers of mental states or as having such states. Rather, a given human mind consists in intentional mental states, i.e. ideas of something. Accordingly, Spinoza writes: “The first thing which constitutes the actual being of a human Mind is nothing but the idea of a singular thing which actually exists.” (E IIp11) 8 9 10 See on the parallelism thesis Della Rocca 2008, 99-104. See Spinoza, Ethica II p 11 c. On Spinoza’s holism see 2002, 34-40. See Spinoza, Ethica I p 29 and p 33. Necessitarianism is of course a much stronger tenet than mere determinism. The difference can be illustrated with regard to the question of God’s freedom of choice. On a determinist account, God chooses and fixes the course of the universe (the optimal course, for instance); on a necessitarian account, God’s plan is determined in such a manner that there are no other possible worlds. See Perler 2006 and Della Rocca 2008, 69–78, for a defence of a necessitarian reading. 5 Given Spinoza’s parallelism of thought and extension, the thing that the human mind is the idea of is of course not any old thing but the very human body parallel to the mind (E IIp13). In other words: my mind consists in the idea of my body. Let’s call this Spinoza’s intentionality thesis. In putting forward this thesis, Spinoza kills two birds with one stone. He can deny the prevalent claim of minds being substances, while countering the charge of Averroism in showing how minds can be individuated without having to be taken as substances.11 The human mind just is individuated by being the idea of its body. Of course, there are further theoretical intricacies lurking here,12 but for our purposes it is enough to see that, for Spinoza, the intentionality of the mental is firmly rooted in his metaphysics. If humans are seen as units of mental and physical states and if to be a mind just is to be an idea of the body, then this notion of ofness or intentionality obviously is the immediate outcome of parallelism. Although Spinoza’s intentionality thesis might appear somewhat peculiar at this point, we will see that it does account for all the customary cases once we recognise that ideas, in being about one’s body, they also indicate the things that affect one’s body: so once the tree at my window affects or has affected my body and left impressions on my sensory organs, the idea also indicates these affections and thus is, in that sense, an idea of the tree. To be sure, both the parallelism and the intentionality thesis raise various questions. To begin with, what does it mean for a mind to be parallel to the body? Does my body cause my mental states? Descartes’ dualistic theory construes mind and body as separate types of substances and then has to provide an explanation as to how the two realms interact. So, one way of explaining the intentional relation between a material object, say a tree, and an idea of the tree is to assume a causal relation between the two realms. The material object affects my cognitive system and thus causes an idea of that object in my mind.13 By contrast, in Spinoza’s monistic theory thought and extension are but two attributes or aspects under which the one substance (i.e. God or nature) or its modes can be conceived (E II p1-2). Thus, there is no causal interaction between extended objects and the mental, since these two realms are simply aspects of one and the same thing. So, the tenet is not that my or indeed any body causes my mind to form an idea of something. Rather, physical states cause other physical states, while the parallel mental states or ideas follow from other mental states or ideas. 11 12 13 See Renz 2006. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to address questions of individuation, it is important to note that, given the explanatory parallelism of extension and thought and the absence of any causal interaction between these attributes, the individuation of bodies is not sense prior to the individuation of ideas (or vice versa). Ultimately, Spinoza can be seen as defending an identity theory of body and mind. See Della Rocca 2008, 99-104. On Cartesian and post-Cartesian theories of cognition see Hatfield 1998. 6 But now the question is even more pressing: what does it mean to say that these realms are parallel, and in what sense can we speak of an intentional relation between ideas and extended things? Now, the fact that one and the same thing (or mode) can be considered under different aspects is of course quite common. Take, for instance, a clock. A clock can be considered under a physical aspect in that it has certain mechanical features that determine how the clock works; but it can also be considered under a mental or conceptual aspect, as it were, namely in that it measures or indicates time. The mechanical and mental motions of the clock parallel one another. Describing the motions of the clock, we do not say that its physical states cause the indicated time. We would rather say that a physical state causes another physical state in the clock in accordance with mechanical laws, while the mental or temporal order of hours indicated runs parallel to the mechanical motions. We can either talk about the succession of time the clock indicates or about the succession of the mechanical clock hand. Both levels of description capture different aspects of the same thing, namely the clock. In the same vein, Spinoza holds that every mode can be considered under the different, yet parallel attributes of thought and extension: “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (E IIp7) Just as the mechanical and temporal successions are ordered states of the same clock, the ideas and material things form aspectually different yet parallel orders of the same substance. The upshot is that the mind and the body are ultimately the same thing, namely the same human being (pertaining to the one substance) that can be considered under different aspects (E II p21 s).14 But if this is correct, how can we say that my mind is an idea of my body? One way to spell this out is to say that my idea is myself considered under the aspect of thought and that it is an idea of my body insofar as my body is myself considered under the aspect of extension. While my body can be said to consist of a causal succession of physical states (in interaction with the rest of the world), my mind can be said to consist of a succession of ideational states running parallel to the physical states. 14 See on this reading of the parallelism Pauen 2006. 7 The dual content of ideas Given Spinoza’s intentionality thesis, the mind is not just defined by consisting of ideas that are about something, but by being about my body. Without further qualification, this does sound absurd. Are my ideas really about nothing else? At first sight, this theory does not only seem internalist in that the content of ideas is determined by my psychological states but in that I do not represent anything except for my body. So how do I ever come to represent the tree at my window? Even if we were to grant that, properly speaking, we do not represent external things as such, we need at least some explanation as to why we might suppose to represent external things. Yet, once we consider Spinoza’s tenets more closely, we will quickly see that the supposed absurdity is not owing to the admittedly revisionary intentionality thesis but to the fact that we are inclined see ourselves as independent substances confined within the limits of their own bodies, when in fact we are parts embedded in the rest of nature (cf. E I app). What’s more, the fact that our ideas primarily represent our body does not mean that they represent our body as our body (E IIp19). Of course there are ideas that represent the tree at my window, but this presupposes that the tree affects my body by affecting my visual system for instance. So, let’s look more closely at the content of our ideas.15 The first thing to note is that the idea our mind consists of is not a simple idea but one that is made up of many ideas (E IIp15). Thus, our mind actually is a bundle of ideas. But given parallelism, these ideas are all ideas representing my body. So how do we ever get to represent anything else? Spinoza explains this as follows: “The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same time the nature of the external body.” (E IIp16) Since my mind consists of ideas representing my body, the ways in which my body is affected by external bodies are also represented. Now, if my body is affected by something external, the parallel idea representing this bodily state represents at once the nature of the external thing as well as the nature of my body. So if my visual system is affected by a tree, my idea of this affection will comprise my own state as it is affected by that tree, and thus primarily represent my own body as well as the tree. In fact, our mind cannot perceive external bodies “except through the ideas of the affections of its own body.” (E IIp26) 15 The following draws on the instructive paper by Schmid and Stoichita 2010. 8 Those who are familiar with the theories of ideas in the 17th century will recognize this move as a peculiar way of incorporating the doctrine of secondary qualities, according to which we perceive other things mainly by means of qualities (such as colour, taste etc.) that pertain not precisely to the ‘thing itself’ but occur when the perceiving subject is affected by external things.16 At any rate, by invoking our constant interaction with external things, Spinoza can easily explain how we form ideas of external things, even though our ideas are primarily ideas of our own body. So, if we assume that our thoughts are about external things as such, and thus presuppose some sort of objectivity, this assumption is shown to rest on a misunderstanding of our thoughts’ causal history and on a misattribution of what our thoughts are about. They are not caused by the physical objects they indicate but by preceding ideas of affections; and they are not about things in a world independent from us but about our own body. Accordingly, Spinoza maintains that, insofar “as the human mind imagines an external body as actually existing, it does not have adequate knowledge of it.” (E IIp26c) However, Spinoza’s qualification of our ideas’ relation to our body as a ‘primary’ one suggests that there are, in fact, more relations involved; namely the primary relation to our body and a secondary relation to the thing that affects us (cf. II p 16 c2). The following sketch should illustrate these different relations: my body O1 → O2 → O3 I1 → I2 → I3 my mind The square illustrates a certain state of an individual (say me) under the two aspects of extension and thought. The arrows illustrate causal relations between physical objects or states (O) and the respective inferential relations between ideas (I). Note that the space outside the square illustrates external to me and would have to be extended to the totality of God’s mind. So if an apple (O1) affects part of my body (O2), the idea in my mind (I2) primarily represents my physical state (O2) and secondarily indicates the external object (O1). Yet, given our epistemic limitations, we cannot distinguish between these two representational relations, and this is why our knowledge remains inadequate. At this point, we should 16 See Wilson 1996, esp. 102, who also highlights the link to the doctrine of secondary qualities. 9 briefly return to our initial question regarding the relation between intentionality and objectivity. After all, the distinction between confused and distinct ideas seems to presuppose an objective world independent of the ways one thinks about them, since only with regard to such a presupposition there seems to be room for a normative distinction between true and false or appropriate and inappropriate ways to think about the world. But this presupposition does not seem to be open to Spinoza. How then can he help himself to such a normative distinction between confused and distinct ideas? It is important to remember that I did not claim that Spinoza’s system has no room for objectivity at all; as I have pointed out above, his substance monism clearly speaks to the contrary. My point is rather that he does not need to rely on the notion of an independent world to introduce intentionality. The intentionality thesis certainly doesn’t appeal to an objective world. Indeed, our ideas about a supposed world independent of our bodies are construed as false or deprived. But since Spinoza takes humans to be parts of nature – parts, that is, of the single substance – there are indeed two ways to describe the content of ideas: (1) on the one hand, there is the succession of ideas in our individual minds corresponding to ways in which our bodies are affected; (2) on the other hand, our mind can be seen as embedded in the whole and thus the ideas as embedded in the totality or net of God’s mind corresponding to the totality of bodies (E II p11C). This holistic picture entails that the content of an idea is only determinable in relation to the content of other ideas. Insofar as ideas are related to God, they are true and adequate (E IIp36d), while the ideas in our minds are inadequate or, as Spinoza also puts it, like “conclusions without premises” (E II p 28d). A simple illustration of this is the example of the tree at my window. In order to have an adequate idea of that tree it is not enough to experience its impact on my visual system; rather I would have to know its causal history as well as all its properties and the way they agree with other properties etc. (E II p 3840 s) As we have seen, though, my idea is not only inadequate in that it doesn’t comprise all that much, but also in that I cannot distinguish the tree from the effects on my body. What makes things worse still is that, rather than knowing the essential properties that necessitate these effects, I experience the tree within associative patterns of successive happenings. To give another example: the fact that people often put salt and pepper on the table and that I always happen to see the two together and associate one with the other does not reveal any essential relation between salt and pepper.17 The upshot is that, for each idea, there are two kinds of content, namely (1) the mind-relative associatively determined content it has according to the way in which it is placed among my other ideas; the (2) holistically determined con17 See Spinoza, E II p 18 and II p 44. 10 tent it has according to its being embedded in God’s mind. With this dual content approach in place it seems much easier to make sense of the distinction between our ideas’ primary relation to our body and their secondary relation to the thing that affects us. While our ideas are confused, it is possible to construe them as distinct ideas in God, such that there are distinct ideas of our bodies as well as of the things affecting our bodies. The holistic approach clearly provides an externalist framework according to which the content of ideas is determined by all other ideas in God’s mind with regard to their bodily counterparts. The content determining factors, then, are not rooted in an objective world independent of us but in our being part of that whole. To be sure, in holding that there is one true description of the world (in God’s mind, as it were), Spinoza does adhere to a fairly strong idea of objectivity. What is dismissed, however, is the idea that this world is representable objectively in the sense that it is representable independently of us. The fact that God or nature is not taken as a transcendent being but the reality that we are part of, also commits Spinoza to the claim that ideas are not about something independent but primarily about their physical counterparts. However, this general framework seems far too broad to provide a succinct account of our intentional states, since it renders most of our ideas simply inadequate. II. Intentional Attitudes So, although this bird’s eye view on content might help to understand its place in the overall theory it doesn’t provide a satisfactory account of what determines the content of our ideas, that is, what determines the content of ideas as they are in our minds or rather as they constitute our minds. So far, Spinoza’s dual account of content seems to suggest that only the second kind, namely the holistically determined content is properly fixed. In God’s mind, the idea of the tree (at my window) is fully determined by the relations to all other ideas corresponding to its causal history and its properties. By contrast, the idea in my mind might pick out its current shape and colours and perhaps the memories I associate with it. If I happened to be a botanist, I would perhaps know a bit more about the (supposed) essential features of trees in general, and relate these to the tree at my window (cf. E II p 18 s). But whatever I might add to that, in comparison to the idea in God’s mind it is still simply a vastly underdetermined and thus inadequate idea of the tree. Something crucial is missing in this picture of content determination for us. Unlike in the case of holistically determined content, we still don’t have any notion of how exactly the con11 tent of a given idea is fixed (except in comparison with the content of the idea in God’s mind). What we have, instead, is but part of the associative mechanism by means of which content might possibly be fixed. It looks, then, as if my encounter with the tree at my window could randomly bring about any old content. But in the necessitarian account of Spinoza this cannot be the case. More specifically, we need an account of content determination and an account of the normativity of content irrespective of the ideas in God’s mind: (1) there must be an explanation as to why I have one idea rather than another. That is, there must be an explanation as to why I think of the tree as being thus and so rather than under a different description. (2) And there must be an explanation as to why it is more apt for us to have one idea rather than another (even though most of our ideas are inadequate in comparison to God’s mind). Of course, given the mind-relativity of the content of an individual’s ideas, one might simply say that it is the totality of one’s subjective states that determines the content of a given idea. Yet, besides the obvious shortcomings of such an approach,18 it doesn’t seem to be Spinoza’s received view, or so I shall argue. Neither does Spinoza adhere to an intersubjective account of content determination. True, the speech community certainly has its share in determining what we think, but given Spinoza’s critique of linguistic conventions, it cannot be what he takes to be the governing principle either.19 Of course, one could eventually appeal to the objectivity of the ideas in God’s mind, but at least in the course of our life as finite modes this does not provide a sufficient framework. On my reading, it is the conatus doctrine that offers a route to the desired explanation. The reason why our idea of the tree picks out the tree as being thus and so lies in our striving for self-preservation. The following section provides an attempt to set out this view. Fortunately, in order to see how the conatus doctrine governs content determination, we don’t need to start from scratch. Rather, I will try to try to present a refined view of the thesis that our mind is an idea of our body, i.e. the intentionality thesis. Ideas as propositional attitudes So far we have mainly looked at the content of ideas. As we have seen, our mind is primarily a highly complex idea of our own body. Now we ought to ask again what this means. As we shall see, having an idea of one’s body is not a matter of mere contemplation. It is not as if I would simply consider my body or whatever else affects it from an unconcerned perspective. 18 19 The most common issue is the problem of privacy or solipsism. If the content of an idea is determined by the totality of the subject’s ideas and if every subject has different sets of ideas (which is plausible given different biographies), then it is unlikely that the same type of idea has the same content (if entertained by different subjects). For example, if you think that the moon is shining and I think that the moon is shining then, given different sets of ideas, our thoughts have different contents despite the fact that they are expressed by the same types of sentences. See Jongeneelen 2008 for a concise overview on Spinoza’s reflections on language. 12 In order to see how intentional content is fixed, then, it is not enough to look at Spinoza’s account of ideational content but also at the mental attitudes involved. To have or be an idea of my body ultimately means that I want my body to exist. For that reason, the intentionality thesis has to be viewed with regard to the conatus doctrine, according to which all our actions (including mental actions) are rooted in our striving for self-preservation. This has immediate consequences for the theory of ideas. Ideas are not just ‘mute pictures’ but complex and forceful mental states that manifest our striving. The first thing to note, then, is that, for Spinoza, there is no content without attitude. That is, our ideas always involve some affirmation or negation (E II p 49s). This view seems to resemble our modern notion of belief. A common way to introduce beliefs is to analyse them as consisting of two components: content and attitude. Accordingly, my belief that there is a tree at my window can be taken to consist of the content that there is a tree at my window and of my affirmative attitude towards that content, namely my believing that things are thus and so. Conversely, my desire that there be a tree at my window consists of the content that there is a tree at my window and of my attitude towards that content, namely my desiring that things be thus and so. In setting out the tenet that ideas always involve a (propositional) attitude, Spinoza explicitly refutes the Cartesian ‘mute picture model’ and states that we cannot first just entertain some content and then choose to affirm or deny it.20 In other words: in having ideas we are committed to what we take to be the case but we are not freely committed and, thus, cannot choose to believe what we wish to believe. Accordingly, we are driven to have the ideas we have. In fact, for Spinoza, the Cartesian mute picture model rests on an illusion produced by a device that is so very dear to contemporary holists: namely language. According to Spinoza, it’s thinking in language that suggests that we can choose to believe what we want, suspend our judgment or, generally speaking, that our will is free: “[T]hose who confuse words with the idea, or with the very affirmation which the idea involves, think that they can affirm or deny with words something contrary to what they are aware of.” (E II p 49s) A good example of Spinoza’s point is the sentence “Pigs might fly”. Although you can understand the sentence, you probably do not believe it. Assuming a basic knowledge about pigs and their abilities, the only sense in which you can affirm it is that you can utter this sentence; but that does amount to a real affirmation. It is not a belief. According to Spinoza, then, (for 20 See Spinoza, E II p 43 s. 13 us) every idea is a belief, and if we believe something we are determined to believe what we believe. So the crucial question is: what is it that determines the ideas or beliefs we have? In order to see this, we ought to note that beliefs are not merely affirmative acts but, at the same time, tantamount to volitions. That is: to believe is to will. Yet, before we head for more details, I had better give you the gist of the answer to the question of what determines our beliefs. While the divine holism mentioned above entails that the content of ideas is determined by its relation to all other contents, this is not true of ideas taken as the beliefs of individual human beings. So what determines the content of my (mostly) inadequate ideas? As we have noted above, the content of my beliefs is determined by my other beliefs, which are – unlike the ideas in the divine mind – mainly connected by associative succession. The question we are now asking is: what governs these connections? What is the glue that holds them together and makes me pick out one property rather than another? What is it that makes me think of the tree at my window as nourishing or beautiful rather than, say, as thirty years old as having this or that structure? As we shall see shortly, our beliefs are instantiations of our conatus, our striving. If this is correct, it’s our striving that fixes the content of our given beliefs.21 According to Spinoza, an individual’s striving for self-preservation is tantamount to its essence. But besides the metaphysical role Spinoza attributes to it, the conatus is explicitly linked to the intentionality thesis: in striving to preserve ourselves, we affirm and want our body’s existence. (IIIp10d: 243) It might seem, then, as if the governing principle for our beliefs is simply given by whatever it is we want. If this were correct, the conatus would render our beliefs completely subjective. But the normative distinction between adequate and inadequate ideas that we have encountered in comparison of our ideas with those in the divine mind is mirrored on the level of our conatus. For what we deem self-preserving and what actually is self-preserving can come apart. In this sense, even the recourse to the individual conatus provides a dimension of objectivity against which our actual beliefs can be measured. Since we are in constant interaction with the world and merely part of the whole, our striving is also determined by factors external to our conatus, producing inadequate ideas. And since we are not in God’s position, we don’t clearly see which factors are external and which are internal, that is: we don’t know which factors actually contribute to our preservation. Accordingly, we can be misguided (by associatively built up linguistic conventions) and might fail to form beliefs in accordance with successful striving. So, our beliefs can be more or less appropriate 21 See Spinoza’s variant of the so-called voluntarist principle in E III p9 s: “From all this, then, it is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it.” 14 in that we can fail to believe (and will) what is actually in accordance with our essence as it is located within the order of nature. In other words: if we fail in this way, we are living according to (linguistically and associatively enforced) convention, and our beliefs are not wholly our beliefs, as it were. The intentionality thesis and the conatus Before we look at the normative dimension of the conatus, let’s first consider in more detail how the conatus doctrine and the intentionality thesis are connected. I have said that to have an idea means to have a belief, which, in turn, means to be committed to something (ultimately to our preservation of course). Although Spinoza maintains (against the Cartesian doctrine) that we cannot choose to withhold our judgment, the talk of commitment is quite appropriate, since, for Spinoza, an act of affirmation is not different from an act of will (IIp49d: 201). Having an idea, then, amounts to willing or desiring something. But how can this be the case? How can, say, the idea that there is a tree at my window amount to desiring something? It’s not surprising that this claim caused much confusion.22 In order to understand Spinoza’s account, we must see it in conjunction with his parallelism and the conatus-doctrine according to which we strive to persevere in interaction with other things. Given parallelism, the essence of a human mind consists in the idea of its own body; this is tantamount to what I called the intentionality thesis (IIp13; IIIp3d). Your mind is an idea parallel to your own body. Yet, since you are but part of the causal network of nature, you’re constantly interacting with many other external bodies of which your mind also forms ideas, namely inasmuch as these affect your own body. Now one might ask: does my seeing the tree entail that I want the tree to exist? Certainly not as such. But remember that I do not grasp the tree as such. For, I can perceive other bodies as existing only insofar as they affect my own body (IIp26). As we have noted above, my idea primarily indicates my physical state, but inasmuch as this state is caused by external bodies my idea also indicates the external thing. Therefore, my idea of the tree primarily is the idea of an affection of my body (IIp13, p16 f, p26). Given the distinction between the idea’s primary and secondary indication, it’s fairly easy to understand how an affirmation is tantamount to a volition. What I primarily want and affirm to exist is – generally speaking – my body;23 along with affirming the existence of my own body I want or affirm the existence of the tree inasmuch as it (positively) affects my 22 Helpful interpretations pointing in a fruitful direction are proposed by Della Rocca 2003 and Steinberg 2005. 15 body (say, as something beautiful, as a shelter or as something that provides food). So we could say that the interaction of my body with other bodies is the source of the contents that my mind affirms. But how are the contents determined? It will be revealing to consider this question first with regard to Spinoza’s famous physical digression: your body can be seen as a highly complex individual that is made up of parts which are kept in balance according to a rule of motion and rest. This rule is the conatus under a mechanistic description. If you like, you can see this rule (ratio) as an individual law governing the physical and biochemical processes, maintaining the body as a functional unit during its interaction with external bodies.24 Some of these external bodies such as healthy food, for instance, actually contribute to or even increase the functioning of your body, whilst others, such as poison, distort or decrease its functioning. Now, inasmuch as the motion of bodily parts – no matter whether these parts are, strictly speaking, parts of my body or external bodies – is in accordance with this rule they can be said to belong to the essence of the body that is governed by this rule (IIp24d). So long as this is the case, my striving can be said to be successful and fulfil a natural norm, instantiated by the given interactions and my will to persist through them. Given the parallelism of body and mind, the rule (and the interactions it captures as maintaining or increasing the integrity of the body) must be mirrored under a psychological description. This was, remember, the idea of its own body as existing (intentionality thesis). Considering the essence with regard to both attributes, extension and thought, you consequently get the notion of the striving for self-preservation, that is: the conatus as the essence of the human being (IIIp7). Accordingly, Spinoza writes: “Since … the first thing that constitutes the essence of the mind is the idea of an actually existing body, the first and principal [tendency] of the striving of our mind is to affirm the existence of our body.” (IIIp10d: 243) So, the bottom line is: the mind is a highly complex idea that wants the body to exist. This is also what lies behind the thesis that every idea is an affirmation and tantamount to a volition. Now, whatever then my mind affirms in interaction with other things, it affirms for the sake of my persistence. Thus, my individual beliefs mirror the general teleological structure of my 23 24 This does not imply, however, that, in affirming, we have a conscious volition or desire (cupiditas); see E II p 48 s, III p 2 s and III p 9s. See Spinoza, E II p 13-14, and Cook 2006. 16 striving: in affirming p I want q, such that, for instance, in affirming the tree’s existence as it relates to my body (p), I want to maintain the existence of my body (q). While the interaction with other things, then, provides the source of the contents, my striving determines those contents. The interaction provides, as it were the cognitive contact to the tree, while the tree’s positive or negative impact on my body determines my conatus to pick out the tree’s properties relevant to my persistence. Generally speaking, my striving determines the contents of my beliefs, whereas the teleological structure of my striving determines this content in a normative way, since it can fail or succeed with regard to its desired contribution to the power of my being. The normativity of ideas Considering the tree at my window from no particular perspective, it is the source of infinitely many pieces of information that one could think about: its shape and structure, its molecular constitution, its duration, its growth, its relation to other things, the flowers underneath, the ants running up and down its trunk, the people who tried to climb it, its beauty, the apples it carries, the apples impact on my stomach, other trees of the same kind etc. Whichever idea we concentrate on, in the divine intellect its content would be determined by all other ideas. The assumption that my or your individual mind lacks huge portions of information renders the determination of their content incomplete or inadequate. But as we have noted above, even if we take the restricted information in a given human mind, this by itself cannot determine the content of a given idea. Yet as we have seen, there is another source of content determination for non-divine beings like us, namely our striving. The reason that I believe the tree at my window to be nourishing or beautiful rather than, say, thirty years old or to have grown from this or that seed is rooted in my conatus, my strive for self-preservation. Given the conative character of our ideas or beliefs, we seem to grasp the things around us in some sense as that what James Gibson introduced as affordances, that is: relational properties disposing us to act. Affordances are, as Gibson puts it, “what the environment offers to the animal, what it provides or furnishes, for good or ill.”25 Yet, human beings are not solely acting on affordances but are – to some extent at least – conscious of their desires. While we interact with the world, the rise and fall of our power is registered by emotions. This is why Spinoza provides not only an account of ideas but also a careful analysis of the intentionality of our emotions.26 25 26 Gibson 1979, 127. See Perler 2011, ch. V, for a thorough analysis of Spinoza’s theory of emotions. 17 However, given our epistemic shortcomings, what we experience and consider as good for us or self-preserving and what actually is self-preserving can come apart. In our interactions with the world we do not solely register the rise an fall of our well-being and power. At the same time, we presuppose an objective world independent of ourselves. That is, we tend to ascribe the positive or negative impact to the things themselves and evaluate them accordingly as good or bad.27 So when we experience a certain food as increasing our power, we evaluate it as good and tend to associate food that looks or tastes similar with the same evaluation. What we do, in effect, is to project evaluative norms onto things. Given that we are raised in societies with moral and conceptual ingrained in their linguistic conventions, this projective practice is multiplied in various ways. In this sense, our conscious ideas are not solely conative states, i.e. states driven by the conatus; rather they are what I would like to call – with a nod to Bernard Williams – thick beliefs in that they involve emotions and evaluations established by association and shaped into patterns by custom and convention. Based on previous experience or trustworthy hearsay we will look out for certain properties in things, and search or avoid them. Now, since we are always affected in ways that are good or bad for us, while we might be confused or even ignorant as to why we are in fact so affected, it depends on what we take to be the thing’s contribution to our self-preservation whether our mind will be directed at thinking of it. Spinoza puts this point as follows: “Of ourselves and of a thing we love, we strive to affirm whatever we imagine to affect ourselves or the loved thing with pleasure, and, by contrast, to negate whatever we imagine to affect ourselves or the loved thing with sadness.” (E III p 25) In opposition to the natural normativity rooted in our essence or conatus, the conventionally established and socially consolidated normativity obviously is not based on what actually contributes to our power but on what we or the people around us take to be good for us. What we do, in effect, is to ascribe the goal-directedness inherent in our striving to the things that, taken as such, have no purpose at all. In striving to be nourished, for instance, we tend to recognize only those features of things that are contributing to this goal, taking the tree not as what it is but as, say, a shelter or as providing food. Yet, since we commonly ignore the relational or response-dependent character of these features and rather attribute these features to the things ‘as such’, we tacitly determine the 27 Amann 2006 notes that, while we experience the affect as a result of the affection of the external thing, on 18 things themselves as the objects of our attitudes, and take them to exist independently of us. The upshot is that the way we categorize things in the first place – the properties we attribute to them –, depends how they affect us and on what we take to be good for us in them. (cf. E II p 40 sI) In linguistically affirming, say, the tree’s existence we might think that we are doing nothing beyond stating an objective fact. In fact, however, we affirm it with regard to the response-dependent properties relevant to our preservation. For in fact we are affirming it, and that means: want it, inasmuch as it affects us and increases our essence. Even seemingly neutral or detached categorizations such as our sorting things into species and genera are owing to our striving, instantiated in thick beliefs, which display no principled difference between cognitive, conative and evaluative attitudes. According to Spinoza, then, in following the practice he analyses we tend to categorize things in agreement with their experienced impact and to project our resulting attitudes onto the things themselves, thereby creating the illusion of an objective world detached from our minds. At the same time, Spinoza does acknowledge that we are at least in principle capable of acting out of our conatus (E IV p 59). Briefly speaking, this would be the case if we had adequate ideas, had grasped the causes that determine us and appropriated them as our reasons for actions. Conclusion I hope it has become clear that Spinoza defends an elaborate, if somewhat revisionary account of intentionality. The overall framework is provided by a distinction between the holistic view of ideas as they are in God’s intellect and an associative view of (mostly inadequate) ideas as they constitute human minds. This distinction allows for a succinct diagnosis of misattributions that epistemically inferior beings such as humans are prone to. As we have seen, the starting point of Spinoza’s theory of ideas is the aspectual parallelism of thought and extension and the ensuing tenet that ideas primarily represent our own body and only secondarily indicate the things affecting our bodies (intentionality thesis). A first misattribution that Spinoza identifies is causal impact of things on our minds. According to him, our ideas are not caused by material things outside but follow from preceding ideas. Thus, he can claim that we misunderstand intentional relations if we construe them as inversions of erroneously supposed causal relations between things and ideas. A resulting misattribution is that we confuse the effects on our body with external things and presume to grasp them ‘as such’. Both misattributions presuppose a dualism of mind and world that Spinoza clearly wishes to reject. InSpinoza’s analysis the causal route is rather the other way round. 19 stead he defends a monist view that leaves no room for the common notion of a mindindependent ‘objective’ reality grasped by detached subjects. Analysing intentional content against the framework of the divine holistic net, however, does not by itself account for the determination of content. As Spinoza himself emphasises, ideas ought to be seen as states that always involve a (propositional) attitude that can be considered a set of various cognitive, conative, evaluative and emotive components (thick beliefs) ultimately rooted in our strive for self-preservation (conatus). Whereas our interaction with the world provides the source of contents, the question what and why we think what we actually think has to be settled with regard to the conatus doctrine. Given our predominant striving for self-preservation, it becomes clear that, according to Spinoza, we cannot grasp things as such but always pick them out with regard to what is good and bad for us. Here, we encountered again a normative distinction between what is conventionally taken to contribute and what actually contributes to our preservation. Given these distinctions between (1) God’s intellect and our limited minds as well as between (2) the true conatus and merely supposedly self-preserving features, we might ask again: what actually is it that fixes the content of our ideas? Even if we do not presuppose a mind-independent objective world that we are related to, Spinoza’s account runs on distinctions between what is and what isn’t accessible to our minds, when he calls most of our ideas inadequate, while pointing at the net of divine ideas or the underlying yet (mainly) undiscovered conatus determining whether our ideas are true or apt. The following example might illustrate the point more clearly: suppose you think something like ‘Oh, there’s a lovely apple’ and act on the idea that the apple in front of you will be good for you. What actually is the content of that thought? – Given your epistemic limits and the conventions you were raised in, the content will perhaps indeed be something that is expressed by the sentence that there is a lovely apple. Although this might cohere with many other beliefs and be a good reason to act on, it probably neither captures the object you suppose to be referring to (the apple), nor the true reasons that prompt your ensuing actions. In fact, there might be something nutritious in the thing’s hidden microstructure that affects your body without your taking any notice. So what you have epistemic access to and what your idea is actually picking out might come apart. In other words: your epistemic access and the conceptual content of your idea might differ. (And so long as they do your ideas would have to be called inadequate.) Coming back to the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of content in the contemporary philosophy of mind, we can ask again: what is it that ultimately fixes the 20 content of ideas, the internal states epistemically accessible to us or the ideas external to our minds, too? While Spinoza can certainly be called an epistemic internalist,28 the question of conceptual content is neither clearly separated nor addressed exhaustively. Therefore, it is difficult to decide whether Spinoza comes down on the externalist or internalist side with regard to conceptual content. Perhaps the moral to be drawn from this is that the distinction does not really apply to Spinoza’s theory of intentionality, since on his account, content is not ultimately determinable for one single individual mind at a given time, but is established by the whole network of individuals in nature.29 28 29 Epistemic internalism is the doctrine that knowledge requires the ability to (consciously) justify one’s beliefs. Epistemic internalism, however, can be held, without being committed to content internalism. A similar point is urged by Wolfe 2010. 21 Bibliography Amann, F. (2006), “Liebe und Haß (3p13-21): Intentionalität, Repräsentation und Bewußtsein”, in M. Hampe and R. Schnepf (eds), Baruch de Spinoza - Ethik in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt, Berlin, 171-182. Brandom (2002), Tales of the Mighty Dead, Cambridge/Mass. Cook, Th. (2006), “Der Conatus : Dreh- und Angelpunkt der Ethik”, in M. Hampe and R. Schnepf (eds), Baruch de Spinoza - Ethik in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt, Berlin, 151-170. Davidson, D. (2001), “Rational Animals”, in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford, 95-105. Daston, L. and P. Galison (2007), Objectivity, New York. Della Rocca, M. (2003), “The Power of an Idea: Spinoza’s Critique of Pure Will”, Nous 37, 200-231. –– (2008), Spinoza. New York. Garrett, Don (1996), “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory”, in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge, 267-314. Gibson, J. (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, London Haag, J. (2010), “Ideen – Systematischer Ausblick”, in D. Perler and J. Haag (eds), Ideen: Repräsentationalismus in der frühen Neuzeit, vol. 2, Berlin, 463-510. Harris, E. (1992), Spinoza's Philosophy: An Outline. Atlantic Highlands. Hatfield, G. (1998), “The Cognitive Faculties”, in D. Garber and M. Ayers (eds), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Cambridge, vol. II, 953-1002. Jongeneelen, G. (2008) “Semantic change and the semantics of Spinozism”, Lexicon Philosophicum, 111-128. Nadler, S. (2006), Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction, Cambridge. Pauen, M. (2006), “Spinoza und die Identitätstheorie”, in M. Hampe and R. Schnepf (eds), Baruch de Spinoza - Ethik in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt, Berlin, 81-100. Perler, D. (2006), “Das Problem des Nezessitarismus”, in M. Hampe and R. Schnepf (eds), Baruch de Spinoza - Ethik in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt, Berlin, 59-80. –– (2008), „Begriffliche und psychologische Ordnung bei Spinoza“, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 90, 188-215. –– (2011), Transformationen der Gefühle, Frankfurt/Main. Renz, U. (2006), “Die Definition des menschlichen Geistes”, in M. Hampe and R. Schnepf (eds), Baruch de Spinoza - Ethik in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt, Berlin. –– (2010), Die Erklärbarkeit von Erfahrung, Frankfurt/Main. Schmid, S. and P. Stoichita (2010), “Erkenntnis, Bedeutung und Wahrheit – faktischer und epistemischer Gehalt von Ideen”, in D. Perler and J. Haag (eds), Ideen: Repräsentationalismus in der frühen Neuzeit, vol. 2, Berlin, 142-160. Spinoza, Baruch de, Spinoza Opera, ed. by C. Gebhardt, 5 vols, Heidelberg 1925, reprint 1972. ––, A Spinoza Reader, ed. by. E. Curley, Princeton, New Jersey 1994. Steinberg, D. (2005), “Belief, Affirmation, and the Doctrine of Conatus in Spinoza”, The Southern Journal of Philosophy XLIII, 147-158. 22 Wilson, M. (1996), “Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge”, in D. Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge, 89-141. Wolfe, Ch. (2010), “From Spinoza to the Socialist Cortex: Steps towards the Social Brain”, in D. Hauptmann and W. Neidich (eds), Cognitive Architecture: From Biopolitics to NooPolitics, Rotterdam, 190-207. 23