RE: Defending Pantheism
May 4, 2019 at 2:49 am
(This post was last modified: May 4, 2019 at 3:25 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Spinoza believed that the mind was of the same substance as the body, that it existed solely for the body, and was not some divisible other from body. In that, spinozas monism, particularly with regards to mind, is remarkably unremarkable today, but for his time it was a stroke of intuitive brilliance. He had no way of establishing the veracity of this assertion, and so could not have made a proper demonstrative argument to that effect.
One of your problems is only a problem if some variant of cartesian dualism were true, which we now know is not the case. The second is as baseless an assertion as any other, and the third a fundamental misunderstanding of physics. Spinozas monism isn't a solution for any issue in nuerological science (or physics, for that matter) but it was never going to have that power to begin with. The contention that mind stuff is body stuff, both of which the same kind of stuff as the rest of stuff is a superficially accurate statement, but offers no particular insight into mind or the mechanics of stuff.
The only conundrums that spinoza could legitimately be said to have directly addressed, were those ethical and factual issues arising from the various superstitions prevalent in his own time, effectively abandoned today. I suppose he could be credited with the organization of particular mereological assertions, but this wasn't original to him, nor was he any more capable of demonstrating the truth of those assertions than we are today. As far as the best argument against his brand of monism, it's the same argument against any composite assertion (whether dualist or monist, material or immaterial). Mereological nihilism. There can be no "all" if composite objects don't truly exist.
One of your problems is only a problem if some variant of cartesian dualism were true, which we now know is not the case. The second is as baseless an assertion as any other, and the third a fundamental misunderstanding of physics. Spinozas monism isn't a solution for any issue in nuerological science (or physics, for that matter) but it was never going to have that power to begin with. The contention that mind stuff is body stuff, both of which the same kind of stuff as the rest of stuff is a superficially accurate statement, but offers no particular insight into mind or the mechanics of stuff.
The only conundrums that spinoza could legitimately be said to have directly addressed, were those ethical and factual issues arising from the various superstitions prevalent in his own time, effectively abandoned today. I suppose he could be credited with the organization of particular mereological assertions, but this wasn't original to him, nor was he any more capable of demonstrating the truth of those assertions than we are today. As far as the best argument against his brand of monism, it's the same argument against any composite assertion (whether dualist or monist, material or immaterial). Mereological nihilism. There can be no "all" if composite objects don't truly exist.
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