I've been lazy, I know...

I was yelled at about a week ago by a good friend for having not updated my blog in a tremendously long time. As the semester progressed and I found myself attending two Forensics national tournaments -- AFA in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and NFA in Athens, Ohio -- and rushing to finish my papers for finals, my blog sat nicely on the back burner. I suppose it's time to bring it back out again and continue sharing my life.

First, I'm going to use a few posts to publish some papers. WARNING: This post will be my midterm paper for modern philosophy on Baruch Spinoza's Ethics. Please only read if you are really, really, really sure that you are interested.

Cass Lowry
March 20, 2010
PHI 272 – The Unity of Essence


René Descartes revolutionized philosophy when he developed his theory of substance dualism. Commonly referred to as the “Father of Modern Philosophy”, Descartes’ arrival at this theory started a tradition of radically reevaluating previous philosophical knowledge. Continuing in the newly established tradition, which we now refer to as “modern philosophy”, Baruch Spinoza contested Descartes’ established ideas of substance and interaction. In his posthumously published work, The Ethics, Spinoza uses Descartes’ conception of ideas such as God, substance, and modes in philosophic geometric proofs to reach different conclusions. Hurling substance dualism to the ground, Spinoza argues in favor of substance monism, which, in his case, is the belief that God is the only substance and all things are modes and affectations of his essence. His version of monism asserts that Thought and Extension (attributes of God concerning minds and bodies respectively) cannot directly cause each other, but are only linked through God. The implications of such an explanation of reality are staggering. Due both to the metaphysical questions such a view of reality call into mind and his philosophy’s impact on history, it is essential that we closely examine Spinoza’s, sometimes hard to follow, proofs. In a study of The Ethics, it seemed to me Spinoza made a contradiction when describing the nature of substance and attributes. In this paper, I will present the relevant elements of Spinoza’s argument beginning with his definitions of substance and attributes and proceeding to his conclusion that God is the only substance with attributes that cannot be causally linked, before continuing to refute his premise that attributes cannot interact in a substance by appealing to the absurdity that something cannot be both one and many. I will respond to my critique in Spinoza’s voice, and then reply to Spinoza’s critique to strengthen my original assertion.

Spinoza’s Argument for Substance Monism:
To begin, Spinoza lists several definitions, which, although tedious, are necessary to understand his argument. Self-causation refers to the characteristic present when a thing can only be conceived as existing. A substance is that which is only conceived through itself and therefore does not require the conception of another thing from which it is formed. An attribute is a perception of a substance’s essence. A mode, or affectation, is something that can only be conceived through something else. His most important definition is that of God, which describes God as “an absolutely infinite being, that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence” in which anything that expresses essence, without involving a negation, is a necessary element of its essence. Next, he poses several axioms that will aid his argument. First, he deals with cause and effect: “the knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of the cause,” and “things which have nothing in common with each other cannot be understood through each other. “ From these foundations, he begins to build his propositions. It is self-evident that substance is prior to its affectations because substance can only be conceived through itself, while affectations must be conceived of through something else, i.e. its substance. Also, no two substances can have the same attributes, for if they were to have the same attributes, they could not be distinguished from each other, and therefore would be the same substance. If no two substances can have the same attributes, and therefore cannot cause each other, because knowledge of effect depends on knowledge of cause, then a substance must necessarily exist always (i.e. contain existence in its essence) since it is self-caused, and would never come into being due to another cause. When existence necessarily follows from the definition, i.e. essence, of a thing, it is eternal.
After dealing with the nature of substance, Spinoza lays his first existential claim: God must exist. He proposes three proofs, one of which will suffice for the purposes of this argument: God’s essence, as an infinite substance, contains existence. To suppose that God does not contain existence, therefore contradicting a necessary conclusion of the definition of God, would be absurd. Therefore, God must exist. But if God exists, because it consists of infinite attributes, God must be the only substance (no two substances can have the same attributes, and if God contains all attributes, no other substances can exist). This leads to the conclusion that all reality, i.e. all attributes and modes, must be conceived through God; God is the efficient cause of all.
With an understanding of God as the only substance, we can end this argument by examining the nature of attributes. The essence of a substance refers to that without which a substance cannot be nor be conceived. For example, suppose a chair were a substance; any chair could not be conceived without some surface for sitting on (otherwise it would not be a chair), therefore, having a place to sit would be an attribute of the substance of “chair”. Because attributes express different aspects of the essence of substance (meaning knowledge of one does not depend on knowledge of the other), they must both have no causal relation to each other and must express eternity (for if they were not caused by each other they must have always been in a substance, therefore sharing its infinite nature). Therefore God is the only substance, within which all attributes and their respective modes are contained; these attributes cannot interact with each other, but rather are distinct and only related through their common substance, God. This conclusion is used by Spinoza to explain the rest of his metaphysics, including the remote interaction of Thought and Extension.

Critique:
I argue that it is impossible for God to have infinitely many attributes that do not directly interact with each other. Spinoza’s application of his definitions involves a contradiction, which would prove that God, as the only substance, would have only one attribute.
I concede, using the given definitions, that God is the only substance. If substance cannot be caused by anything else, then it must exist, and therefore, be infinite. This is especially true in the case of God, because nothing else can exist besides the substance of God. Infinity, meaning continuous existence (which implies limitlessness) therefore is an aspect of God’s essence. Spinoza also claims in Prop.10.I that attributes of a substance, which are constituents of the essence of a substance, can only be conceived through themselves. This entails that they cannot cause each other because they do not contain knowledge of each other. In the very same proposition, however, he acknowledges that because attributes cannot cause each other, they must have always existed in their substance simultaneously, meaning that they are infinite. In fact, he states explicitly that each attribute “expresses a definite essence, eternal and infinite.” To claim that attributes cannot be conceived of through each other, but they can all be conceived of as being infinite, while also acknowledging that infinity is a necessary attribute of any substance, is absurd. If what Spinoza claims are “attributes” participate in the infinite, then they can only be understood through the conception of infinity. They therefore cannot be conceptualized without the quality of infinity; this necessarily proves that these “attributes” are not attributes according to Spinoza’s definition, but rather, are simply modes. Since substance is necessarily self-caused and infinite, then infinity, being the primary concept contained in its essence, can be the only attribute of substance; all else must be conceived of as a mode of infinity.
The same conclusion can also be expressed through different wording. God, as an infinite being, necessarily requires infinity to be part of his essence. In this whole, it would be a logical absurdity to have separate parts that could not interact, for the one cannot be many. We may be able to conceive of this essence by separating it into aspects (in the same way we can separate modes from attributes or other modes) but all of these aspects must necessarily relate to the only essence of God: infinite existence, encompassing all time and possibilities.

Spinoza’s Possible Response:

The preceding argument commits a logical fallacy by assuming that substances and attributes can be understood through the same type of infinity. A careful observance of my definitions and propositions will reveal that the infinity in substance and attributes is not the same concept. Therefore, it cannot be viewed as an attribute of substance that causes the related modes of Thought and Extension.
In the explication of my definition of God, I draw a clear distinction between “absolutely infinite” and “infinite in its own kind”. A thing that is absolutely infinite cannot be made finite, bound, or limited by anything. Something that is only infinite in its own kind, however, involves a limited category. Such things can be said to be infinite because they can never be limited by another thing in its own kind (as compared to finite things, which I explain in my second definition) but in another sense, they are not absolutely infinite because they do not include all existence. For example, the attribute of Extension does not appear to be finite. Can you conceive of Extension being smaller than Extension? This would make it limited by a like thing, but such a statement seems ridiculous. Saying it is possible to conceive of one body being smaller than another, however, is quite sensible. At the same time, it is apparent that Extension does not include Thought, and therefore is not absolutely infinite. Therefore, it can be argued that things that are only infinite in their own kind do not really have infinite attributes. They therefore can only be called “infinite” in a common use of the language.
Because “infinite in its own kind” and “absolutely infinite” are two completely different concepts, the premise that Thought and Extension (which were assumed to share the same type of infinity) share qualities with the absolutely infinite nature of God is false. Moreover, it is improper to conceive of limit (relating to infinity) and time (relating to eternity) as constituting the essence of a substance. These two characteristics are only qualities that can be ascribed to substances and attributes in different fashions.

Second Critique:
In such a response, Spinoza makes clear distinctions between the natures of infinity. Even in his Proposition 21 he is careful to specify that all things that come from an attribute of God must be infinite only when conceived through that attribute. It is true, these two types of infinity are not the same. Absolute infinity cannot be conceived through any other concept; it is an infinite amount of things, infinite in themselves. The concept of “infinity in its own kind”, however, cannot be understood without the concept of absolute infinity. When a thing is unlimited in its own kind, although it may not be said correctly to be infinite, it can only be understood through the perfect concept of limitlessness. Absolute infinity, therefore, must be its cause (all of this reasoning can be explained with the definitions set forth in Spinoza’s original argument). The infinity possessed by Thought and Extension then, is a mode of the only substance’s infinity. This understanding clearly allows for Thought and Extension to be modes of God’s one attribute, absolute infinity.
Spinoza’s possible claim that it is improper to conceive of limit and time as constituting the essence of a substance can also be proven to be false according to his own definitions. Take infinity as an example. Infinity exists necessarily in the nature of God, given Spinoza’s Definition 2.II. It is impossible to remove infinity from our conception of God. It must therefore be a constituent of his essence, which means that it can be conceived of as an attribute.