consciousness spinoza lebuffe

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Theories about Consciousness

in Spinoza’s Ethics

Michael LeBuffe

Texas A&M University

Spinoza contends that there is an idea in the human mind of anything

that happens in the human body, and he argues subsequently that every-

thing that he has shown about human beings applies generally to all indi-

viduals.1 So every individual also has a mind, and there is an idea in its

mind of anything that happens in its body. There is some textual evi-

dence in the Ethics suggesting that Spinoza follows Descartes in closely

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Paul Hoffman. A version was presented at

the New England Colloquium in Early Modern Philosophy. Thanks to Alison Simmons,

Jeff McDonough, and the conference participants for their comments. Thanks also to

Daniel Garber for sharing his opinions about the timing of Descartes’s correspondence

in 1641 and to two anonymous referees for the Philosophical Review . Han van Ruler was

very generous with his time and skill in nding the edition of Descartes’s correspon-

dence that Spinoza owned, verifying its contents, and providing from it the transcription

of Descartes’s response to Hyperaspistes that appears in note 22. I am grateful for his

help.1. For the former doctrine, see Ethics 2p12: “Whatever happens in the object of the

idea constituting the human mind must be perceived by the human mind, or [ sive ] anidea of that thing will necessarily be given in the mind; that is, if the object of the idea

constituting a human mind is a body, nothing can happen in that body that is not per-

ceived by the mind.” For the latter, see 2p13cs: “For these things that we have shown are

completely general and pertain no more to men than to other individuals.” In this essay,

I refer to passages in Spinoza’s work, when it is necessary to do so, by reference to the

volume number, page number, and line number. For example, “Spinoza 1972, 2/95 12”

abbreviates volume 2, page 95, line 12 of Spinoza 1972. More often, as here, I refer in

an abbreviated form to the formal apparatus of the Ethics . For example, “2p13cs” abbre-

viates Ethics , part 2, proposition 13, corollary, scholium. All translations in this essay are

my own.

Philosophical Review , Vol. 119, No. 4, 2010

DOI 10.1215/00318108-2010-013

© 2010 by Cornell University

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M I C H A E L L E B U F F E

associating ideas with consciousness.2 Under the supposition that all

ideas are conscious, however, Spinoza’s characterizations of human

beings and all other individuals have strong, unattractive implications:not only am I conscious of absolutely everything that happens in my body;

all stones, tennis balls, toasters, apples, and frying pans are also conscious

of absolutely everything that happens in their bodies.3 In order to avoid

these implications, Spinoza needs a theory of selective consciousness, a

theory about which minds and which ideas in minds are conscious.

Sympathetic scholars have argued that such a theory may be found

in the very few remarks about consciousness that Spinoza makes in the

Ethics . There are two different proposals, which derive from two different

groups of remarks. In parts 3 and 4 of the Ethics , Spinoza introduces afew claims about our consciousness of ourselves. The demonstrations of

these propositions all refer to a series of propositions in part 2 concerning

ideas of ideas. One proposal, then, is that Spinoza distinguishes between

ideas of ideas and other ideas, taking only the former, and therefore only

minds that have the former, to be conscious.4 A second proposal empha-

sizes a group of remarks, most of which are in part 5, about the ways

in which minds vary. On this proposal, which admits of slightly different

2. At the demonstration to 4p8, Spinoza argues for his characterization of the mind’s

consciousness of its affects by referring to 2p21 and 2p22. In those propositions, however,

he discusses ideas in minds and does not mention consciousness. This uneasy transition

is noted in Bennett 1984, 190–91. A similar point, tracing Spinoza’s argument for a claim

about consciousness in 3p9, is made in Wilson 1999, 134–35. The Cartesian precedent is

important because, although Spinoza is not himself a Cartesian, he typically makes clear

and direct arguments against central Cartesian doctrines wherever he breaks with them in

the Ethics . See, notably, Spinoza’s rejections of free will at 2p48, of the distinction between

will and intellect at 2p49c and s, and of the doctrine of the pineal gland and Descartes’s

account of the control of passions at 5 preface. Spinoza’s relative silence about conscious-

ness thus invites an interpretation on which he accepts Descartes’s denition of thought

(Principles of Philosophy 1.9, AT 8–1, 7; CSMK 1, 195) as, “all of those things that we are

conscious of arising in us, insofar as we are conscious of them.” See also Descartes’s def-

initions of ‘thought’ and ‘idea’ in his Second Replies (AT 7, 160–61; CSMK 2, 113). ‘AT

8–1, 7’ abbreviates Adam and Tannery’s Oeuvres de Descartes (Descartes 1971), volume 8–1,

page 7. ‘CSMK 1, 195’ abbreviates John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch,

and Anthony Kenny’s The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Descartes 1991), volume 1,

page 195. References to CSMK are provided as a convenience wherever possible.3. Curley (1969, 127–29) presents this problem and emphasizes 2p12 as its primary

source. Wilson (1999), who emphasizes Cartesian precedents, and Bennett (1984, 188–

91) both argue that Spinoza lacks a satisfactory response. The objects deemed least likely to have a robust mental life, with stones edging out apples as the popular favorite, are

drawn from Spinoza himself (letter 58, which I quote in section 1); Wilson 1999, 139,

n. 2; Garrett 2008; Nadler 2008; and Della Rocca 2008, 110–17.4. This view was originally defended by Curley (1969, 127–29).

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Theories about Consciousness in Spinoza’s Ethics

formulations, Spinoza holds a theory of selective consciousness on which

more powerful and complex minds, such as human minds, will be more

conscious than weaker, simpler minds.5

I do think that a sympathetic reading of the Ethics requires

attributing to Spinoza a theory of selective consciousness. However, I also

think that the severity of the problem—together with other pressing con-

cerns6—pushes readers to nd a direct account of selective conscious-

ness in Spinoza’s remarks about consciousness where there is none. I will

argue here that both groups of remarks are best understood not as the-

ories of selective consciousness but as theories about consciousness and

knowledge. The rst group of remarks has its basis in an account of the

ways in which our awareness of ourselves is inadequate. Self-knowledgeis an especially valuable good for Spinoza. These remarks both make the

point that self-knowledge is not simply available to introspection and also

show why self-knowledge is so valuable: where it is not supplemented by

self-knowledge, our imperfect awareness of ourselves can mislead us in

dangerous ways. The second group of remarks emphasizes quite a dif-

ferent point: the knowledge that characterizes the minds of the most

powerful or virtuous people is conscious.7 One might think, especially

in light of the value that Spinoza gives self-preservation, that a powerfulperson is one who knows many things and so is able to apply knowledge

usefully in a variety of circumstances. Spinoza may not reject the view

that knowledge is useful in this way, but his remarks in part 5 suggest

that such a store of knowledge is not a mark of virtue. What is distinctive

about a virtuous mind, rather, is the extent to which it is characterized by

conscious knowledge.

Because the thesis that Spinoza’s remarks about consciousness

constitute theories about the epistemological status of certain elements

5. Garrett (2008) defends a version of this interpretation emphasizing power.

Nadler (2008) defends a version emphasizing complexity.6. Spinoza is sometimes thought to anticipate views about mind that are widely held

today. This is a theme, for example, of Della Rocca (2003) and Nadler (2008), who also

argues that Spinoza anticipates important theories of consciousness. So the inherent

interest of the subject of consciousness can push readers to seek a direct account of selec-

tive consciousness in the Ethics . Another source of pressure is Spinoza’s place as a pivotal

gure between Descartes, who famously denes thought in terms of consciousness, and

Leibniz, who famously distinguishes between thought and consciousness. It is natural to

look to Spinoza for insight into this transition. Wilson (1999), Bennett (1984, 189–91),

and Della Rocca (2008, 108–18) helpfully emphasize a comparison of Spinoza’s views

about consciousness to those of Descartes and Leibniz.7. Spinoza identies power and virtue at 4d8.

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of conscious experience is something of a departure, I will start with an

analysis of the central passages, which I hope will show that my interpre-

tation is a plausible alternative to the interpretation of those passages as

theories of selective consciousness. The detailed argument of sections

2–6 will then rely upon an important precedent in Descartes—one

different from and more subtle than his association of ideas and

consciousness—and a variety of textual evidence drawn from the theory

of mind in the Ethics . After establishing this interpretation of Spinoza’s

remarks about consciousness, I will return in a concluding section to the

issue that originally brought these passages to the attention of critics. I

will introduce some implications that Spinoza’s remarks about conscious-

ness, properly understood, do have for an understanding of his viewsabout selective consciousness, and I will argue on the basis of these points

that the most promising interpretation, that of Don Garrett, should be

rened.

1. Spinoza’s Uses of ‘Conscious’

Suppose that in some mind, there is an idea, I, and that I has an object, O,

so that we will say (following, roughly, Spinoza’s characterization of truth

as the correspondence of ideas with their objects at 1a6) that I is true to

the extent that it corresponds to O. To say, “The mind is conscious of the

sun,” can mean (at least) three different things, any of which arises most

naturally in a discussion of consciousness and knowledge. First, it may be

an intensional use, referring to I, which implies that the mind is thinking

about the sun, for example, by believing something about the sun. On

this use, ‘the mind is conscious of the sun’ could be true even if O is

not the sun (for example, if the mind is inuenced by a clever painting,

and we, for independent reasons, take the painting to be O). Second, it may be an extensional use, referring to O, which implies that O is the

sun, regardless of what the mind thinks in having the idea. On such a

use ‘the mind is conscious of the sun’ will be true whenever O is the sun,

even if I includes no thoughts about the sun. I have sometimes thought,

when the sun is badly obscured by fog, that I am looking at the moon;

despite my error, it is nevertheless true that I am conscious of the sun in

these cases, in the extensional sense. Either of these rst two senses are

naturally used in cases where one wants to emphasize a failure or possiblefailure to correspond between I and O, that is, a failure of the mind to

know. Finally, it may be a knowledge use, referring to the correspondence

between I and O. On this use, which admits of degrees, the claim means

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that the mind, in virtue of I, knows something about O. Suppose that the

sun seems to me to be about two hundred feet above me in the sky. I may

be conscious of the sun, in this sense, insofar as I recognize the sun and

grasp its shape and its direction; my consciousness may also be limited,

however, insofar as the sun has other properties that I am not aware of

or that I mistake. This last sort of use may be less familiar than the rst

two in discussions of mind, but it is common enough in English today:

the American public is gradually becoming conscious of the importance

of preventative health care.

Spinoza’s uses of the Latin terms for ‘conscious’ (‘conscius ’ and

‘conscientia ’) are confusing because he employs all three senses and does

not distinguish among them. However, he does use different senses where one might expect to nd them: intensional and extensional uses

occur in passages where Spinoza emphasizes failure or possible failure

to know in a mind’s conscious states, and knowledge uses occur where

Spinoza emphasizes a mind’s veridical awareness.

Spinoza’s intensional uses are typically informal and incautious.

They are important rhetorically but do not often arise in the central argu-

ments of the Ethics . A phrase that he repeats frequently in appendices and

scholia is such a use: “Men are conscious certainly of their actions andappetites, but they are ignorant of the causes by which they are deter-

mined to want something.”8 Here, Spinoza clearly means that men are

aware of I, their actions and appetites. Knowledge of a thing, however,

depends upon and involves knowledge of its cause (1a4); so, in denying

that men know the causes of their appetites, Spinoza is denying that in I,

men know O. An odd illustration of this kind of ignorance, and another

intensional use, is from a letter to Schuller from 1674:

Suppose, please, that a stone thinks while it continues to move and it knows that it strives as much as it can to continue to move. Surely this

stone, since it is conscious only of its own striving and is not at all indif-

ferent, will believe itself to be wholly free and that it perseveres in motion

from no other reason than the fact that it wants to.9 (Spinoza 1972, 4/266

13–17)

8. For instances of this phrase, see Ethics 2p35s at Spinoza 1972, 2/117 15–16; 3p2s

at 2/143 30–33; and 4 preface 2/207 13–15. I App. at Spinoza 1972, 2/78 17–20 is very

similar. See also Spinoza 1972, letter 58 to Schuller, 4/266 19–20, which closely follows

the passage I quote in the main text.9. Notable intensional uses that I do not introduce in the main text include part 4,

App. 32: “if we are conscious that we have done our duty . . .”; and, from 3p30’s demon-

stration: “Man is conscious of himself as a cause.”

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Extensional uses are more prominent in the Ethics . A clear exam-

ple, which will be important in a different context in section 6, occurs

at 5p34s: “[Men] are conscious certainly of the eternity of their mind,

but they confuse this with duration and attribute it to the imagination,

or memory, which they believe remains after death.” Here I is a belief

about immortality, but O is something different, eternity. Like Spinoza’s

statements about appetite, this statement concerns a misperception of

self. If Spinoza consistently used ‘conscious’ with an intensional sense,

he would say that men are conscious of a belief in their own immortality

but ignorant of the object of that belief, their own eternity. But Spinoza

is inconsistent. He writes here that men are conscious of eternity but

misrepresent it in their conscious thoughts.The remarks that I consider, together, to constitute a rst theory

about consciousness in the Ethics are extensional uses. At 3p9, Spinoza

writes: “The mind, both insofar as it has clear and distinct ideas and also

insofar as it has confused ideas, strives to persevere in being; it does so for

an indenite duration; and it is conscious of this, its striving.” We have

already seen that Spinoza takes there to be a gulf between our conscious

desires and the objects of those ideas. So, even if Spinoza here uses the

designation ‘conscious’ in an obscure way, we should anticipate a view on which our conscious awareness of ourselves fails to be veridical or, in

some other way, fails to be knowledge.10 I think that the demonstration

to 3p9 shows that this use is extensional: “Because the mind (by 2p23) is

necessarily conscious of itself through ideas of affections of the body, the

mind is therefore conscious of its striving.” The proposition that Spinoza

refers to, 2p23, is a claim limiting the mind’s knowledge of itself: “The

mind does not know [cognoscit ] itself except insofar as it perceives ideas of

affections of the body.” Because some perception of ideas of affections

of the body will fail to amount to knowledge, 3p9 suggests, our aware-

ness of our own striving may likewise fail: when I consciously desire noth-

ing other than prot or glory (4p44s), for example, that desire is nev-

ertheless, extensionally, a consciousness of my striving to persevere in

10. I accept the view that Spinoza takes there to be ideas in human minds that are false

in the sense that they misrepresent their objects (LeBuffe 2010, 79–86). This, however, is a

controversial interpretation of the Ethics , and there are texts that are difcult to reconcile

with it, notably 2p33: “There is nothing positive in ideas on account of which they may

be said to be false.” The qualication in the main text is added in order to accommodate

other kinds of ways of falling short of knowledge in Spinoza, of which the most important

is the suggestion at 2p35 that inadequate ideas are false only in the sense that they are

fragmentary and partial.

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being. A mind that desires from knowledge of its own nature, by contrast,

will always desire perseverance or its means.11

Just as we are extensionally conscious of our own striving in our

desires, so we are extensionally conscious of changes to our striving in our

conscious thoughts about good and evil. Spinoza introduces this claim

at 4p8:

4p8: The cognition of good and evil is nothing other than an affect of

laetitia or tristitia insofar as we are conscious of it.

Dem.: We call “good” or “evil” that which is useful to, or harmful to, pre-

serving our being (by 4d1 and 4d2), that is, (by 3p7), what increases or

decreases, aids or restrains, our power of acting. Insofar, therefore (by the denitions of laetitia and tristitia from 3p11s) as we perceive any-

thing that affects us with laetitia or tristitia we call that same thing good

or evil. Therefore, the cognition of good and evil is nothing other than

the idea of laetitia or tristitia , which follows necessarily (by 2p22) from

the affect of laetitia or tristitia itself. And this same idea is united to the

affect in the same way that the mind is united to the body (by 2p21); that

is, (by 2p21s) this idea is not distinguished from the same affect, or (by

the General Denition of the Affects), from the idea of the affection of

the body, except merely conceptually. Therefore, this cognition of goodand evil is nothing other than the affect itself insofar as we are conscious

of it.

Good or evil in this discussion is certainly what I am aware of, but Spinoza

writes that when I am aware of good or evil what I am conscious of is an

affect of laetitia or tristitia itself.12 This distinction shows that Spinoza’s

sense is extensional: insofar as I am conscious of affects, I form beliefs

about good and evil. Just as I am extensionally conscious of my striving

to persevere insofar as I desire, so I am extensionally aware of changes inmy power of striving insofar as I nd something good or evil. The demon-

stration to 4p8, in its reference to ideas of ideas of the body’s affections

at 2p21 and 2p22, suggests that my awareness of those changes is likewise

likely to fall short of knowledge. For example, as Spinoza argues at 4p64,

11. I offer detailed accounts of conscious desire and striving in Spinoza in LeBuffe

2004 and 2010, 99–142.12. ‘Laetitia ’ and ‘tristitia ’ are Spinoza’s most general terms for those affects that are,

respectively, an increase or a decrease in a thing’s power or, what is the same thing, its

perfection. Spinoza denes them at 3p11s and again in his second and third denitions

of the affects listed at the end of part 3. The terms are highly technical as they are used

in the Ethics . I leave them untranslated because I think that any of the likely translations

(such as, for ‘laetitia ’, “happiness” or “joy”) can be misleading.

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has degrees and that a higher degree is qualitatively better, as we would

expect from a knowledge use: I corresponds more closely to O in the

mind that is more conscious of itself. Here, then, Spinoza presents a sec-

ond theory about consciousness. Human virtue and perfection do con-

sist in knowledge. The knowledge that is characteristic of more perfect

human minds, however, is conscious. So, beyond simply knowing itself,

God, and things, a more perfect mind is aware in its knowledge.

A great deal remains to be said about Spinoza’s discussions of con-

sciousness. I do hope that the discussion of this section gives us some

reason to think that Spinoza offers one theory about consciousness at

3p9, 4p8, and the propositions about ideas of ideas upon which those

claims depend and that he offers a second theory about consciousness at 5p31s, 5p42s, and related propositions. I do not expect this brief analysis

to be immediately convincing as an interpretation, however. Its principal

point is to show that there is some reason to think that neither group of

remarks is well understood as a theory of selective consciousness. In all of

these passages, Spinoza is interested in defending claims about human

awareness rather than an account of what does and does not have con-

sciousness. By way of contrast, note what clearly is a theory of selective

apperception in Leibniz:So, it is good practice to distinguish between perception, which is the

internal state of a monad that represents external things, and appercep-

tion, which is consciousness, or reexive awareness [connoissance reexive ]

of that internal state and which is not given to all souls, nor at all times to

the same soul.14 (Leibniz 1875–90, 6:600)

Leibniz here offers a thesis on which only some minds have states of

reexive awareness and only at some times. We may perhaps be able

to draw a similar theory out of Spinoza, and I agree with recent criticsthat doing so would be helpful for the understanding and evaluation of

Spinoza’s theory of mind.15 Such an endeavor should start, however, with

an understanding of Spinoza’s very different project in the Ethics .

14. This passage is from “Principles of Nature of Grace,” sec. 4.15. Curley (1969, 126–29), Wilson (1999), Bennett (1984, 184–91), and Garrett

(2008), whose article is a response to Wilson, all emphasize the need for a theory of

selective consciousness in Spinoza. Nadler (2008) is perhaps a bit different insofar as he

discusses selective consciousness in Spinoza primarily for the purpose of advertising the

respects in which Spinoza anticipates recent theories in the philosophy of mind.

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2. Descartes on Developmental Psychology

The detailed case for the claim that Spinoza’s remarks constitute two

theories about consciousness and knowledge starts with Descartes’s viewsabout developmental psychology. I think that in his account of veridical

awareness in part 5 of the Ethics , Spinoza follows Descartes, so I will intro-

duce some of Descartes’s views as a background against which we might

interpret Spinoza.16

Descartes developed his views on developmental psychology

between 1640 and 1641. Gassendi’s objections to the immaterialist

account of mind in the Second Meditation may have moved Descartes

to consider the issue. Gassendi had noted (AT 7, 261–62; CSMK 2, 182)that, whereas Descartes suggests that the self is something independent

of the body, the self at least seems to change just as the body changes:

when the body is weak, the self is weak; as the body grows, so does the

self. Descartes responds by arguing that Gassendi’s observations do not

require the conclusion that the self changes with the body.17 Although

the mind does not work as well in the body of an infant as it does in the

body of an adult (AT 7, 354, 4–10; CSMK 2, 245),

It does not follow . . . that the mind is made more or less perfect by the body. Your inference here is no better than if, from the fact that a

craftsman does not work well when he uses a bad tool, you were to infer

that he stumbles into knowledge of his craft from the quality of good

tools.

16. Many of Descartes’s views about mind are unclear and many—including those

that will be of interest here—are difcult to reconcile with views that he offers elsewhere.

So attributing a single, orthodox position on mind to Descartes is difcult. Moreover,

there is strong, direct textual evidence that many of Spinoza’s positions about mind are

efforts to refute Descartes’s positions or to improve upon Descartes’s arguments. Notable

explicit criticisms of Descartes in the Ethics include the discussion of human will at 2p49

and, especially, its scholium (and see the related discussion in Meyer’s introduction to

Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy ,” Spinoza 1972, 1/132) and the discussion of the doc-

trine of the pineal gland at the preface to part 5 of the Ethics . So, it is especially risky

to say that Spinoza follows Descartes. I do so here only in a very limited sense: as his

criticisms of Descartes show, Spinoza developed his views about mind in response to

Descartes; in trying to show that he could explain certain features of mental life better

than Descartes could, Spinoza adopted a number of Descartes’s assumptions about what

is to be explained by a theory of mind and even some of Descartes’s views about why ourexperience is the way it is.

17. Because I mean to mark development in Descartes’s views over a short, intense

period, it will be useful to keep track of dates: Descartes sent Mersenne the nal pages

of his response to Gassendi on June 23, 1641 (AT 3, 384; CSMK 3, 184).

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Descartes’s metaphor implies that his explanation for Gassendi’s obser-

vations is better. Like a master craftsman with a bad tool, the mind has

virtues that it cannot reveal in difcult circumstances, when the body is

weak. The mind does show itself to have these virtues, however, when the

body is stronger.

In an August 1641 letter to Gassendi’s anonymous champion,

Hyperaspistes, Descartes offers a somewhat more detailed account of

how the mind operates while it is attached to a weak body by consid-

ering infants’ thoughts. Hyperaspistes did not like Descartes’s dismissive

claim that Gassendi’s theses about the self do not follow from the fact that

infants’ minds perform worse than adult minds. In a letter to Descartes

in July of 1641 (AT 3, 400, lines 1–4), he paraphrases the offending pas-sage, “‘From the fact that the mind works less perfectly in an infant than

in an adult, it does not follow that it is less perfect’” and offers a sim-

ple and convincing response: “It does not follow either that it is not less

perfect.” Descartes’s reply is, appropriately, more conjectural and cau-

tious. He provides examples of the sorts of ideas he supposes infants and

other minds immersed in weak bodies to experience. What is particu-

larly important for the purpose of a comparison to Spinoza, Descartes

also introduces his views about the kinds of ideas a mind can come toexperience when it has more freedom:

I do not convince myself that the mind of an infant meditates on meta-

physical things in its mother’s womb; to the contrary, if I am permitted to

conjecture on a thing that is not well known, our experience suggests that

our minds are attached to our bodies in such a way that they are nearly

always acted upon by them; and although in an adult and healthy body,

a strong mind enjoys some liberty to think of things other than those

that are brought to it by the senses, the same liberty will not be found

in the sick, nor in the sleeping, nor in children; and generally the more

tender the age, the less liberty. It seems most tting for us to hold that a

mind recently united to the body of an infant is occupied solely with the

confused perception or feeling of pain, titillation, heat, cold and similar

ideas, which arise from this union and, as it were, mixing. Nevertheless, it

has within itself the ideas of God, of itself, and of all other truths that are

said to be known through themselves, in the same way that adults have

these same ideas when they are not attending to them. (AT 3, 423–24;

CSMK 3, 189–90)

Descartes here makes infancy an important but not unique state of cor-

poreal weakness, and he characterizes the sort of knowledge that, in his

reply to Gassendi, he had suggested a mind attached to a weak body has

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but cannot express. He argues that a mind attached to such a body always

has within it ideas of God, of itself, and of self-evident truths, but that—

because it is wholly occupied with the ideas that arise in it in virtue of its

attachment to the body—such a mind will not have the freedom to attend

to them. As our bodies become more powerful, however, we do gain some

measure of that freedom. Thus the mind of a healthy adult, although it

also will often be absorbed in sensation, can contemplate these ideas that

do not arise from its union with the body.

3. Grounds for Comparison

Spinoza clearly does not accept all of Descartes’s views about infants.Notably, he does not accept the view that Descartes formulates most

clearly in the Principles (1:71) and that may serve as a basis for the method

of doubt that Descartes applies in the Meditations : the view that our expe-

rience as infants is the rst and principal cause of all error.18 Spinoza is

much more concerned about the inuence, at any stage of a person’s

life, of present and powerful causes of passion. Nevertheless, I think it is

appropriate to use Descartes’s exchange with Hyperaspistes as a source

of clues to understanding assumptions about consciousness that are held

but not explicitly defended in the Ethics .19 What little we know about

18. Here is the relevant passage from Principles 1:71, which Descartes wrote at roughly

the same time as his exchanges with Gassendi and Hyperaspistes (AT 8–1, 35–36; CSMK

1, 218–19): “Here the rst and principal cause of all error may be recognized. In our

earliest years, our mind was so closely bound to the body that it had freedom for no

thoughts other than those through which it was aware of what was affecting the body.”

Broughton 2002, 28–32 drew my attention to the importance of this position for the

interpretation of Descartes’s method of doubt.19. Important recent discussions of the relation between theories of ideas in Spinoza

and Descartes include Cottingham 1988; Curley 1988 (especially chapter 1); Della Rocca

2003; and, in the context of a discussion of Spinoza’s theory of consciousness, Nadler

2008. It is not incorrect to say that Descartes, in some respects, does offer an account of

consciousness in tension with Spinoza’s views. Nadler (2008, 576, 584) correctly empha-

sizes the Cartesian doctrine of the transparency of the mental, for example, as a view that

may be different from Spinoza’s. Given the complexity and variety of Descartes’s views, it

is unsurprising that Descartes could be both the source of an important view about con-

sciousness in Spinoza and also a gure against which Spinoza may be usefully contrasted.

Indeed the tension between Descartes’s account of developmental psychology, which I

argue here was adapted in the Ethics , and his doctrine of the transparency of the men-

tal was brought to Descartes’s own notice. It arises explicitly in the “Conversation withBurman” (AT 5, 149–50; CSMK 3, 337–38) and may also be important to an exchange

with Hobbes. In his reply to Hobbes’s objections (AT 7, 189; CSMK 2, 132), Descartes

offers an account of innate ideas that may be generally consistent with the transparency

of the mental, on which for an idea to be innate in us is for us to have the ability to recall

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and pictorial imagination, ideas of the sort that concern Descartes in his

discussions of infants. Spinoza’s examples describing sensory ideas of the

sun are very similar to Descartes’s. This one occurs at 4p1s (Spinoza 1972,

2/211 18–2/212 1):

For example, when we look at the sun, we imagine it to be about two

hundred feet away from us. In this we are misled so long as we remain

ignorant of its true distance. But when its distance is learned, the error is

removed, not the imagination, that is, the idea of the sun that explains its

nature only insofar as the body is affected by it. And so, although we come

to know its true distance, we shall nevertheless imagine it as near to us. For

as we have said in 2p35s, we do not imagine the sun to be near just because

we are ignorant of its true distance but because the mind conceives thesun’s size insofar as the body is affected by the sun. Thus, when the rays

of the sun falling upon the surface of the water are reected toward our

eyes, we imagine it just as if it were in the water, even if we know its true

place. And so it is with the rest of the imaginations by which the mind is

misled, whether they indicate the natural constitution of the body or that

its power of acting is increased or diminished. They are not contrary to

the true, and they do not disappear in its presence.

I will have more to say about this passage in the discussion of the powerof ideas to restrain one another in section 5. In the present context, what

requires emphasis is the point that Spinoza is describing what it is like

to have a visual experience: generally, the mind conceives of external

objects insofar as the body is affected by them. When I look up at the sun,

it seems to me to be close; when I see it reected in the water, it seems

to me to be in the water. It is natural to interpret this as a description of

conscious experience, that is, of what it is like to see the sun.

Ideas of imagination also include a number of different sorts of

ideas that, like sensory ideas, arise in the manner described at 2p16

and 2p17. Such ideas include thoughts about the past and future; lan-

guage comprehension and other kinds of conventional association; and,

what is most important to the argument of the Ethics , passions. At 2p44s

(Spinoza 1972, 2/125 27–2/126 3), Spinoza describes thoughts about the

future:

Suppose, then, that there was a child who saw Peter for the rst time

yesterday at dawn, but saw Paul at noon and Simon in the evening. And

suppose that today again he saw Peter at dawn. It is clear from Proposition18 that as soon as he sees the light of dawn, he will imagine the sun in the

same route through the sky that he saw the day before. Or he will imagine

the whole day, and, together with dawn, Peter; with noon, Paul; and with

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evening, Simon. That is, he will imagine the existence of Paul and Simon

with relation to a future time.

At 2p18s (Spinoza 1972, 2/107 16–17), Spinoza describes the compre-hension of language: “From the thought of the utterance ‘ pomum ’ a

Roman immediately will fall into the thought of fruit.”23 Finally, to take

up the case of passion, at 3p47s (Spinoza 1972, 2/176 16–23), Spinoza

describes a particular kind of the joy that we feel when we imagine that

a thing we hate is destroyed:

This same thing is what causes men to rejoice when they remember some

evil that is now past, and why they enjoy telling stories about dangers from

which they have been freed. For, when they imagine some danger, they consider it as if it were in the future and are determined to fear it, a deter-

mination which is then restrained, once more, by the idea of freedom,

which they have joined to the idea of this danger because they have been

freed from it. This makes them feel safe once more, and so they rejoice

once more.24

To contemplate an object as present or in the water; to imagine the sun

in the sky or Simon at dusk; to hear ‘ pomum ’ and fall into the thought of

fruit; to rejoice at the memory of escaping danger—these are all naturally understood as kinds of conscious thinking. I suppose that a philosopher

might have a theory of unconscious conceiving, unconscious seeming,

unconscious language comprehension, or unconscious recollection and

rejoicing, but I would expect such a theory to be, like Leibniz’s theory

of petite perceptions, philosophically motivated, explicitly introduced,

and defended. Because Spinoza does not do any of these things, it is best

to understand him to be characterizing conscious experience in these

passages.

5. Distraction in the Conscious Experience of Weak Minds

The next point to be shown is that, on Spinoza’s view, the consciousness

of ideas of imagination in weak minds distracts them from the conscious

23. Spinoza includes perception from signs among ideas of imagination at 2p40s2.24. The point that passions are ideas of imagination may be inferred from the end

of 4p1s (quoted above): passions, by 3p11, are the ideas of imagination that indicate

an increase or decrease in the body’s power of acting. Alternatively, the point may be

established by Spinoza’s characterization of passions as confused and inadequate ideas

in his General Denition of the Affects (Spinoza 1972, 2/203–4) together with his iden-

tication (for example, at 2p41’s demonstration) of all inadequate and confused ideas

with ideas of imagination.

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experience of other ideas. The most important source of this view in the

Ethics is 3p1, which associates the mind’s activity as a total cause with

its adequate ideas and its passivity, or its activity as a partial cause, with

its inadequate ideas: “Our mind does some things but undergoes other

things, namely, insofar as it has adequate ideas, it necessarily does some

things, and insofar as it has inadequate ideas, it necessarily undergoes

other things.” Ideas of imagination are all inadequate ideas (2p40s2).

That does not mean that a mind does not act at all insofar as it has them;

on the contrary, Spinoza assures us at 3p9 that human minds act both

insofar as they have adequate ideas and also insofar as they have inad-

equate ideas.25 It does mean, however, that inadequate ideas have par-

tial causes outside the human mind and that, therefore, they reect insome way the activity of external causes as well as the activity of the mind.

External causes, however, can surpass the causal power of any individual

human mind (4p3), and this explains, in a general way, why weak minds

may be dominated by them. Wherever a mind has two ideas that, if unre-

strained, would produce opposed effects, the stronger will restrain the

weaker. The weaker a mind is, the more potential there is for the power

of external things in ideas of imagination to restrain its adequate ideas.

As a result, ideas of imagination typically dominate weak minds.The principal question for the present purpose is whether Spinoza

understands this domination as something manifest in the experi-

ence of weak minds. There is good textual evidence that he does.

Spinoza’s account of imagination from part 2 of the Ethics includes some

discussions—notably the example, quoted above, of his ideas of the sun—

that are naturally understood in terms of the opposed power of human

minds and external objects in the conscious experience of sensory ideas:

in the rst case, looking at the sun makes it seem two hundred feet away,

and (presumably because of the power of the external idea) I consider

it to be two hundred feet away. Supposing that my true idea of the sun’s

distance is stronger than my idea of imagination, when I come to have

that second idea, I no longer consider the sun to be two hundred feet

away. Spinoza’s characterization of the mind’s activity and passivity at the

beginning of part 3 allows him to be more explicit. At 3p37, for exam-

ple, he argues that desire that arises from tristitia or laetitia , or else from

hatred or love “is greater to the extent that the affect is greater.” A view

on which the robustness of consciousness is a function solely of a mind’sown power could make sense of the claim that desire is greater to the

25. This point is clearest in the demonstration to 3p9.

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extent that laetitia is greater (so long as the affect in question increased

the power of the whole person). Laetitia just is an increase in the power

of striving, and desire just is striving, on Spinoza’s accounts of them, so it

would follow from such a view that a person who has experienced laetitia

will desire more greatly. Spinoza also includes tristitia in his claim, how-

ever. That point suggests that desire can be greater, in some sense, even

as the power of the mind is weakened. (Tristitia , as the discussion in sec-

tion 1 has indicated, is a decrease in the mind’s power.) The greatness of

this desire cannot be explained by an increase in the mind’s power. An

explanation is available, however. Because passions have partial causes

outside of the mind, Spinoza can attribute an increase in the intensity

of a desire in a weak mind to an increase in the inuence of externalcauses.26

The most explicit characterizations of the power of external

causes on human minds in the Ethics are those that begin Spinoza’s

account of bondage to the passions in part 4; 4p5 and the demonstra-

tion to 4p9 are especially important. Spinoza offers a general account of

the power of passions, which emphasizes the point that the power of any

passion is in part a function of the power of its external causes, at 4p5:

“The power and growth [incrementum ] of any passion, and its persever-ance in existing, are not dened by the power with which we strive to

persevere but by the power of an external cause compared with ours.”27

The demonstration to 4p9 shows that Spinoza takes degrees of conscious-

ness and degrees of power to be covariant in ideas of imagination:

An imagination is more intense [intensior est ] so long as we imagine

nothing that excludes the presence of the external thing; therefore an

affect the cause of which we imagine to be present to us is more intense, or

stronger, [intensior, seu fortior est ]thanifwedidnotimagineittobewithus.

Here, Spinoza refers back to the most basic feature of consciousness in

imagination as he characterizes it at 2p17 and 2p17s, the representation

of a thing as present, and so makes it clear that “intensity” qualies our

26. See 3p11 and its scholium for Spinoza’s characterization of laetitia and tristitia

and the identication of these affects with changes in power. See 3p9s and the rst of

Spinoza’s “Denitions of the Affects” at the end of part 3 for characterizations of desire

in terms of striving.27. Garrett, who also relies upon 4p5, makes both the point that the power of an idea

is a function of the power of its causes (2008, 15) and also the point that the degree of

consciousness of an idea is the degree of its power (2008, 24).

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experience of the object. Then, he explicitly equates greater intensity

and greater power.28

Where he describes minds dominated by ideas of imagination,

Spinoza, as we would expect from his general remarks about the power

of ideas and consciousness, takes our conscious states to be dominated

by passion. The scholium to 4p44 is a good example:

But when the greedy man thinks of no other thing besides prot or money

and the ambitious man of glory and so on, they are not believed to be mad

because they are often troublesome and are estimated to deserve hatred.

But really greed, ambition, lust and so on are species of madness, even

though they are not counted among the diseases.

Just as it is most natural to take Spinoza’s accounts of ideas of imagination

to describe conscious experience, so it is most natural to take his accounts

of the domination of the mind by external causes to describe conscious

experience: the greedy man is overwhelmed by passion and that is why

he consciously thinks of no other thing besides prot.

The discussions of human minds in part 5 of the Ethics show that

for Spinoza, as for Descartes, to be more free to contemplate adequate

ideas of the self, God, and things is, just to that extent, to have adequate

ideas that are more powerful than ideas produced in us by the inu-

ence of external things. This passage is from 5p20s (Spinoza 1972, 2/293

28–35):

That mind is most acted on whose inadequate ideas constitute the great-

est part, so that it is distinguished more by that which it undergoes than by

that which it does. And on the other hand that mind acts the most whose

adequate ideas constitute the greatest part, so that, although there may be

as many inadequate ideas in it as there are in the other, it is nevertheless

more distinguished by those that are ascribed to human virtue than by those that reveal human weakness.

If Spinoza’s remarks about consciousness at 5p39s are interpreted in

light of this passage, we can see that he takes a mind associated with a

weak body, such as an infant’s mind, to be characterized by inadequate

ideas and a mind associated with a strong body to be characterized by ade-

quate ones. Like Descartes, then, Spinoza strongly associates a decrease

in the awareness of ideas that arise from the inuence of external things

28. ‘ Fortis ’, which I translate, “strength,” is associated with a more common term for

power, ‘ potentia ’ (Spinoza also frequently uses ‘vis ’) at 4a1. The terms are closely associ-

ated in the propositions that open part 4, notably at the demonstration to 4p7.

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on us with an increase in the awareness of our knowledge of God, the

self, and things. The end of 5p39s makes it clear that to strive for the one

is just to strive for the other:

In this life, therefore, we strive most of all to change the body of an infant,

as much as its nature allows and prots from it, into a different body,

which is t for more things and which is related to a mind that is more

conscious of itself and God and things; and so we strive also that every

thing that is related to its memory or imagination is, in relation to the

intellect, of hardly any importance.

Spinoza’s language at 5p20s does not explicitly characterize the con-

scious experience of inadequate ideas. However, the arguments I haveoffered for the claims that ideas of imagination are typically ideas that we

consciously experience and that more powerful ideas are more intensely

conscious suggest that this passage should be understood to do so. Those

with the weakest bodies have conscious states dominated by inadequate

ideas; those with the strongest bodies have conscious states dominated by

adequate ideas. References to conscious experience in the argument of

part 5, outside of 5p39s, conrm this interpretation. Just as a mind over-

whelmed by a single passion thinks of nothing else besides the object of

its lust, so a mind that is distinguished by adequate ideas “scarcely fears

death” (5p33s) and “is hardly troubled in spirit” (5p42s). To be more

conscious of the self, God, and things is, for Spinoza, at the same time to

possess a mind whose conscious experience is less inuenced by external

things.

Thus far, I have argued that Spinoza takes many different ideas

of imagination, including many that are ideas of bodies, to be conscious;

that these ideas often oppose our other ideas of the self, God, and things;

and that, to the extent that external things are more powerful thanus, these ideas prevent adequate ideas from occupying our attention as

completely as they might. These points can help us to understand why

Spinoza should think it especially worth emphasizing, at 3p9 and 4p8,

the point that ideas of ideas are conscious. Such ideas are an awareness

of the self that may oppose and so restrain self-knowledge, which is a

particularly important good in the account of the Ethics .29 As Spinoza

29. Spinoza emphasizes self-knowledge, as we have seen, in his remarks about con-

sciousness at 5p31s, 5p39s, and 5p42s. Other important passages include 4p52, where

Spinoza argues that the best among the active affects, acquiescentia or self-contentment,

arises from self-knowledge; 4p56, where he makes self-knowledge necessary for the pos-

session of any other virtue (“He who is ignorant of himself is ignorant of the foundation

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argues at the demonstration to 2p29, the awareness that we have of our-

selves through ideas of ideas is an awareness of ideas that are inadequate:

ideas of the body’s affections. So the ideas in which we are aware of such

ideas are also inadequate. If I fail to be aware of my own desires as what

they are, a consciousness of my striving for perseverance in being, then

I may consciously desire something other than perseverance. This is the

hazard that 3p9 exposes. If I fail to understand that things are good just

insofar as they increase my power of acting and evil just insofar as they

decrease it, then I may err in my judgments about where I can expect to

attain good or avoid evil. This is the hazard that Spinoza emphasizes at

4p8. Ideas of ideas are exceptional not because they are conscious and

other ideas are not but because they are conscious and inadequate, andtheir object, the self, is an especially important thing to know well.

6. Knowledge of the Self, God, and Things

The nal point to be established, if Spinoza follows Descartes, is that

the knowledge that characterizes the conscious experience of a mind

associated with a powerful body is always in the mind, even when the

body is weak. This, one might think, would be the most difcult point to

establish. Spinoza identies the human mind with the human body, so

he is committed to some version of Gassendi’s thesis that the self grows

stronger and weaker as the body does. This position, which is implicit at

5p39s, is clearest in the Ethics at 2p13s (Spinoza 1972, 2/97 8–13):

To the extent that a body is more able than others to do or to be acted

on in many ways at once, to that same extent its mind is more able than

others to perceive many things at once; and to the extent that a body’s

actions depend more on itself alone and other bodies coincide with it

less in acting, to that same extent its mind is more able to understanddistinctly.

If capability in a mind were, for Spinoza, solely a function of the number

of ideas in it that constitute knowledge—that is, of the number of its

adequate ideas—then 2p13s would commit Spinoza to the view that as a

body grows stronger, its mind gains new adequate ideas.

We have already seen, however, that Spinoza has the resources

for defending a view on which the capability of the mind is not solely

and consequently of all virtues . . . such a person does not act from virtue at all.”); and

part 4, appendix 4, the classic statement of his intellectualism, where Spinoza emphasizes

adequate knowledge of the self in characterizing the ends of the highest rational desire.

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a function of the number of its adequate ideas; its inadequate ideas are

expressions both of its activity and also of the activity of external things

on it. So a mind, on Spinoza’s account, may be more capable or active

to the extent that its inadequate ideas are less inadequate, that is, to the

extent that those ideas express the mind’s activity more and the activity

of external things less. Important passages in part 5 of the Ethics suggest,

moreover, that Spinoza’s understanding of the way in which the mind

grows stronger must not include any view on which it gains new ideas.

They commit Spinoza to the view that any adequate ideas in minds are

always, indeed eternally, in them. At 5p31s, Spinoza writes,

It should be noted here that, although we are now certain that the Mindis eternal, to the extent that it conceives things from the standpoint of

eternity, nevertheless so that what we want to show may be explained more

easily and better understood, we shall consider [this same part of the

mind] as if it were now beginning to be and now beginning to understand

things from the standpoint of eternity, as we have done up to this point—

which we may do without danger of error, provided that we take care to

conclude nothing except from evident premises.

Then, at 5p34s, in a sentence I have quoted above as an example of an

extensional use of ‘conscious’, Spinoza explains why claims about theeternal part of the mind might be more easily understood if they are

couched in terminology that makes them seem durational: “[We shall see

that men] are conscious certainly of the eternity of their mind, but they

confuse this with duration and attribute it to the imagination, or memory,

which they believe remains after death.” Although Spinoza may in places

write as though human minds acquire new adequate ideas as they become

more powerful, the scholia at 5p31 and 5p34 suggest that this is only a

technique that Spinoza uses in order to accommodate a common humanconfusion about the eternal. Spinoza holds that all adequate ideas are

ideas by which we understand things from the standpoint of eternity.30

30. The strongest argument for this claim that all adequate ideas are ideas under-

stood from the standpoint of eternity is indirect. At the demonstration to 5p38, Spinoza

writes that the more the mind knows things by the second and third kinds of knowledge,

the more of it remains, and he refers to 5p23 in making the argument. At 5p23, Spinoza

identies the part of the mind that remains with the eternal part of the mind; at 5p31s,

as we have seen, he characterizes the eternal part of the mind as that part that it has

to the extent that it conceives things from the standpoint of eternity. So the part of themind that remains is both the part that is composed of the second and third kinds of

knowledge and the part that the mind has to the extent that it conceives things from

the standpoint of eternity. All adequate ideas, though, are knowledge of the second or

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So 5p31s implies that adequate ideas, understood strictly, do not come

into minds.31

I take these passages, which indicate that Spinoza takes any ideas

that are adequate in a mind always to be there, to be authoritative. Other

critics might disagree, on the grounds that Spinoza suggests in numerous

places that human minds can acquire new adequate ideas but in only

one place, 5p31s, suggests that the eternal part of the mind does not

acquire new ideas.32 This reasoning is not convincing. It is not, after all,

a question of whether Spinoza holds one or another of two inconsistent

positions, both of which have some textual support. In such a case, it

would be appropriate to admit that there are conicting texts or, in some

cases, be inclined to hold that the position he defends most often or in

third kinds, by 2p40s2 or, more explicitly, the demonstration to 2p41. So all adequate

ideas are understood from the standpoint of eternity. Other important passages, from

which one might perhaps build a more direct argument, include 2p44c2, where Spinoza

claims that what is understood by reason is understood from the standpoint of eternity,

and 4p62 and 4p62s, where Spinoza at least seems to refer to adequate understanding

and understanding from the standpoint of eternity interchangeably. These, however, are

difcult passages.31. There is evidence in Spinoza’s theory of ideas for the view that all minds possess

adequate ideas of which they are not necessarily aware. It may be found at 2p38c, where

Spinoza writes that because all bodies agree in certain things, there are common notions

that are perceived adequately by all, and at 2p46, where Spinoza writes that any idea

involves adequate knowledge of God’s essence. What I am suggesting here, that minds are

not necessarily conscious of ideas that are adequate in them and that conscious knowl-

edge and not merely knowledge is a mark of power and virtue, makes these assertions

more palatable, insofar as I attribute to Spinoza a view on which many minds, although

they have these ideas, are not aware of them. Wilson (1999, 137) and Garrett (2008, 9)

discuss the puzzle that these passages raise.32. I confess, though, that I do not know which passages they might emphasize.

Spinoza might seem to make a claim that the mind can form a clear and distinct concept

of any of the body’s affections at 5p4. Spinoza qualies 5p4 immediately in the passages

that follow it, however. What is more important, there is no explicit reference to new ade-

quate ideas where one might expect to nd it in the Ethics : in the discussion of knowledge

in part 2. To my knowledge, among recent critics of Spinoza, only Della Rocca (2003, 205

and 2008, 114–15) is appropriately doubtful about whether, on Spinoza’s view, a mind can

acquire adequate ideas. Others seem suspiciously close to asserting that Spinoza holds

that we can. Notably, Nadler (2006, 268) writes, “The more adequate ideas one acquires as

a part of his mental makeup in this life—the more he ‘participates’ in eternity now—the

more of him remains after the death of the body and the end of his durational aspect.”Garrett (1996, 282) writes, “One brings within the scope of one’s own mind adequate

knowledge which has always been and will always be eternal in God.” Other works that

seem at least at risk of attributing this view to Spinoza without reason include Bennett

1984, 362; Wilson 1996, 131; Nadler 2001, 122; and Garber 2005, 108.

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the most important arguments is his considered position. This dispute is

different. Where Spinoza writes that it is not strictly accurate to write as

though a mind can begin to understand things from the point of view of

eternity, he also explains why he often makes use of this conceit. So this

interpretation is one on which all of the relevant passages are consistent.

The alternative is to insist on reading a number of passages as accounts on

which we gain new adequate ideas, even though Spinoza explicitly writes

at 5p31s that they are not to be understood in this way; then concluding

that his statements are inconsistent; and then taking one group to be more

important than the other. It is not defensible.33

7. Selective Consciousness

Scholars who have investigated Spinoza’s uses of ‘conscious’ have turned

to them for a theory of selective consciousness. We have seen here that

these passages are not well read as straightforwardly providing such a

theory. Spinoza’s references to ideas of ideas at 3p9 and 4p8 describe ways

in which our awareness of ourselves can fall short of knowledge. Spinoza’s

other uses of ‘conscious’ in part 5, at 5p31s, 5p39s, and 5p42s, concern

the way that knowledge does characterize the conscious experience of

the most powerful human minds. They suggest that Spinoza’s is not a

dry intellectualism, in which the point of building knowledge is to ll

a storehouse of information. Rather, vivid and irresistible passion drives

the weak-minded and knowledge characterizes the conscious thoughts of

the virtuous mind.

Nevertheless, the project of nding a theory of selective conscious-

ness in the Ethics is an important one. One might well think, following

Margaret Wilson (1999, 133–38), that to be a genuine theory of mind at

all any theory needs to address the questions of which minds and whichideas in minds are conscious, and Spinoza’s commitments to naturalism

and a theory of mind that attributes mind to all singular things make

these questions particularly pressing for him. I shall conclude, then, with

an account of the implications that Spinoza’s theories about conscious-

ness do have for his theory of selective consciousness. The most impor-

tant of these is that there may be no good Spinozistic sense in which one

may talk about the degree of consciousness of a mind.

33. In LeBuffe 2010, 77–98 and 209–24, I defend in detail the view that Spinoza can

account for the increase in power of a human mind in terms of changes in its inadequate

ideas.

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As a preliminary, we may set aside the interpretation, most fully

defended by Edwin Curley (1969, 126–29), on which Spinoza takes the

only conscious ideas to be ideas of ideas and the only conscious minds

to be minds that have such ideas.34 It has already received a great deal

of criticism, which tends to focus on the tension that such a view would

create with Spinoza’s naturalism and with other tenets of his philosophy

of mind. The principal objection is that Spinoza identies the idea of the

human body, the human mind, with the idea of the mind at 2p21s, and

the reason he supplies for making this identication, from his identi-

cation of ideas and their objects at 2p7s, would seem to apply generally

to all ideas. Because all ideas are at the same time ideas of themselves,

on this objection, the point that ideas of ideas are conscious does not allow us to distinguish ideas or minds that are conscious from ideas or

minds that are not. So it is not a good candidate for a theory of selective

consciousness.35 I have added here, in section 4, reason for concern that

I nd more immediately moving: Spinoza clearly considers a wide variety

of ideas of bodies—passions that we associate with external bodies and

visual ideas, for example—to be conscious. He simply does not restrict

consciousness to ideas of ideas in the way that this theory of selective

consciousness would require. A recent, different interpretation is more promising, but the dis-

cussion of 5p39s here shows how it may be rened. Don Garrett has

defended a detailed interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of imagination

that addresses a number of fundamental problems in Spinoza’s theory of

mind by emphasizing incrementalism in Spinoza’s naturalism. On Gar-

rett’s account of selective consciousness (Garrett 2008, 23–24), which is

based principally upon Spinoza’s theories of striving, power, and confu-

sion, Spinoza takes ideas and minds to be more conscious to the extent

34. Substantial discussions and criticisms of the ideas of ideas view may be found in

Wilson 1999; Bennett 1984, 184–91; Matheron 1994; Levy 2000, 224–38; and Nadler 2008.35. This objection is well put in Nadler 2008, 582. One may nd a somewhat similar

argument (which relies upon Spinoza’s insistence that his arguments about the human

mind in the rst propositions of part 2 apply to all minds) in Wilson 1999, 135. Although

I nd the objection important, I do not endorse it here because I am not altogether

sure that Spinoza’s account of inadequate ideas does not permit a response: inadequate

ideas are fragmentary and confused; although, to be sure, any given idea is also an idea

of itself in the mind of God (or considered as an adequate idea), that same idea may

be fragmentary in a nite mind (or considered as an inadequate idea) in the sense that

it is not also an idea of itself. If this sort of response is available to Spinoza, then the

objection does not show that the ideas of ideas interpretation fails as a theory of selective

consciousness.

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that they are more powerful. It is important to note that there are really

two distinct claims here: rst, an idea is more conscious to the extent

that it is more powerful, that is, to the extent that it inuences the self-

preservatory activity of the mind in which it arises; second, a mind is more

conscious to the extent that it is a more powerful self-preserver.

A puzzle arises from these two claims. The identication of levels

of consciousness in ideas with levels of inuence on a mind suggests that

different ideas in a mind can have different levels of consciousness, and

indeed Garrett (2008, 24) takes this to be one of the respects in which

Spinoza’s theory of consciousness is an attractive theory. The identica-

tion of the level of consciousness of a given mind with its power suggests

that more powerful minds are more conscious than less powerful minds,and Garrett (2008, 23) takes this also to be attractive. Perhaps both the-

ories are attractive in some way, but are they attractive together? Minds

can only be conscious in their ideas, for Spinoza, who takes everything

mental to be an idea. We may suppose, then, that, because having a cer-

tain degree of power in a mind does not require having a certain degree

of power in each of its ideas, a more powerful mind might have some

ideas that have a lower level of consciousness than some ideas in a less

powerful mind. Without further qualications on Spinoza’s theory, what is to stop us from conceiving of a more powerful mind all of whose ideas

are less conscious than those in a less powerful mind? In such a case, one

might wonder what it means to say that the more powerful mind is more

conscious.

There are at least three strategies by which one might try to avoid

this problem: one might drop the claim that more powerful ideas are

more conscious; one might drop the claim that more powerful minds are

more conscious; or perhaps the view that some minds are more conscious

than others can be qualied in ways that make the troubling possibility

seem remote or that rule it out. The rst strategy is surely the least promis-

ing. The association of the power of ideas with degrees of consciousness

has deep roots in the Ethics , including 3p1, 4p5, and other passages that

I have discussed in section 5. One might, with some ingenuity, pursue

the third strategy and try to show that, even if their ideas vary in degrees

of consciousness, there is some general sense in which more powerful

minds are always more conscious than less powerful minds. Perhaps, for

example, Spinoza requires that more powerful minds always have someideas that are more powerful than all ideas in less powerful minds. Or

perhaps we should say that the consciousness of ideas in a given mind

is additive, such that more powerful minds are always more conscious,

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as a whole, than less powerful ones. Certainly these strategies or strate-

gies like them might work as a means of discriminating between human

minds and dramatically less powerful minds, such as the minds of ten-

nis balls, and it is here especially that reference to the great complexity

of the human body and the difference in kind between human bodies

and simpler bodies that Spinoza refers to at 2p13s can help Spinoza to

show that ideas in one kind of mind may differ dramatically from ideas

in another.36 Although I will not rule the strategies out even as means

of showing that some human minds are more conscious than others, I

am less condent about their prospects for minds that are so similar in

complexity and in power.37

The interpretation of 5p39s developed here offers a means of escape, however, that is more immediately promising as an interpretation

of Spinoza, that yields an account of the consciousness of human minds

more attractive than that which Garrett proposes, and that we should

therefore pursue rst: Spinoza does not hold that minds are more con-

scious to the degree that they are more powerful. The argument of sec-

tions 2–6 has shown that 5p39s is misrepresented whenever it is used as

evidence that Spinoza does hold such a view. That passage is the best and

perhaps the only evidence that can be cited on its behalf. Garrett (2008,23) misrepresents 5p39s in just this way, citing it as evidence that Spinoza

“claims that an individual’s mind is more conscious to the extent that it

36. Spinoza’s naturalism, which emphasizes incremental differences among things,

makes it risky to discriminate between kinds of mind. I think that at least one such distinc-

tion is warranted by the denition of body (Spinoza 1972, 2/99–2/100), on which there

are two kinds of composite bodies. Some bodies are rightly called a single composite

body because they “are so restrained by others that they press on one another.” Others

are rightly so called because they, “move in such a way . . . that they communicate their

motions to one another in a certain xed ratio.”37. Both strategies face the problem that the power of ideas in a mind is in part a

function of external causes. Spinoza’s accounts of the ways in which the causes of ideas

contribute to ideas’ power are not detailed enough to show that, in virtue of the power

of external causes, a given weaker mind might not have an idea more highly conscious

than any idea in a given more powerful mind, so long as the power difference is not

dramatic. While it seems reasonable to think that, ordinarily, a more powerful mind will

be more conscious, in the additive sense, than less powerful minds, this same fact—the

contribution to the power of ideas in a mind from external causes—suggests that more

powerful minds need not always be more conscious in this sense either. Nadler (2008)

offers an account of consciousness in Spinoza on which minds are more conscious to theextent that they are more complex. Although I do not agree with the thesis—for rea-

sons that I give in footnotes below—I agree that the greater complexity of human bodies

(and so minds) is very important for distinguishing their mentality from the mentality

corresponding to simple bodies.

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has ‘a body capable of a great many things’.”38 Spinoza does not write at

5p39s that more powerful minds have a higher degree of consciousness.

He writes that such minds are more conscious of themselves and of God and of things . That qualication, which is missing from Garrett’s restatement

of the evidence, indicates, I have argued, that Spinoza is characterizing

a mind’s conscious knowledge—understood on a correspondence the-

ory of truth as in part a relation between its conscious ideas and their

objects—and not a quality of experience, like intensity, that might plau-

sibly be thought to indicate consciousness or degrees of consciousness

without further discussion.39

38. Nadler (2008, 587) makes a similar assertion. He quotes the discussion of devel-opmental psychology in 5p39s and then writes, “But what is this higher ‘excellence’ of

the mind that so depends on the greater capabilities of the body? [The extract from

5p39s] itself tells us: it is consciousness or self-awareness; or, rather, a higher degree of

consciousness.” Nadler’s view associates consciousness in minds with complexity, rather

than power, so it is similar in important respects to Garrett’s: human minds become more

powerful, for Spinoza, as they become more complex, so the material implications of the

views for a theory of degrees of consciousness in human minds are the same. I emphasize

Garrett’s view here because I nd the interpretation of Spinoza on which power explains

consciousness to be better than the view that complexity does. While complexity is surely

important as a means of accommodating the variety of experience in extremely pow-erful minds, such as human minds, the fact that power does not track complexity in

all things makes complexity merely a contributing factor to the level of consciousness

of ideas even in highly complex minds. For example, a boulder exerting its power on

my body can, in Spinoza’s terms, produce a very powerful corporeal image; the idea of

imagination of the boulder that arises in me when it lands on my foot will likewise be

one of my most powerful and highly conscious ideas, and it will have its power and high

degree of consciousness in large part because of its powerful external cause. The power

of the external cause, however, cannot be explained in terms of its complexity. In short,

one may properly attribute degrees of consciousness, in Spinoza, only to ideas, and the

degree of consciousness of an idea is wholly a function of the power of its causes not their

complexity.39. There is a strategy on which one can acknowledge the central point—that 5p39s

concerns conscious knowledge and not selective consciousness—but then resist my con-

clusion that there is no basis for a theory of selective consciousness for minds here

by arguing that degrees of conscious knowledge, for Spinoza, just are degrees of con-

sciousness. Under this strategy, one might point to systematic differences between the

phenomenal characteristics of the sorts of ideas that characterize weak minds and the

phenomenal characteristics of the sorts of ideas that characterize powerful minds: like

Descartes, Spinoza will hold that the ideas that distract weak minds are confused and

obscure, whereas the ideas of more powerful minds are more clear and distinct. On this

objection, if more confused ideas are less conscious, then less powerful minds, becausethey tend to have ideas that are more confused, will tend to be less conscious as well. As

Garrett recognizes (2008, 20–21), however, the incrementalism of confusion is not one

that Spinoza can exploit in the service of a theory of selective consciousness. Clarity and

distinctness certainly track an idea’s epistemological standing, and some propositions

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There is better textual support for an interpretation of Spinoza on

which as a mind’s power varies so does its potential . More powerful minds

and less powerful minds vary, on this view, not by being more and less

conscious simply, but by having different capacities for ideas. At 3p1c,

Spinoza refers to the susceptibility of weaker minds to passion: “From

this it follows that a mind that has more inadequate ideas is susceptible

[obnoxiam ] to more passions and, on the other hand, a mind that has

more adequate ideas acts more.” Similarly, at 2p13s—the passage that,

after 5p39s, is the most important to Garrett (2008) and also to Nadler

(2008)—Spinoza characterizes more powerful minds in terms of their

capacities: as bodies are more powerful, minds are more able (aptior )

to perceive and to understand. More powerful minds are not necessarily more conscious than weaker minds; they are rather capable of having

more powerful, more highly conscious ideas.

This revision of Garrett’s view is, in a way, slight. After all, Gar-

rett defends a view on which Spinoza takes ideas and minds to be more

conscious to the extent that they are more powerful. I have acknowl-

edged the importance of the evidence that Garrett cites in support of

his claim about ideas, and all that I have suggested is that he is wrong

about minds. If it is slight, however, the revision is nevertheless not triv-ial. It helps us to avoid the puzzle that Garrett’s interpretation raises, and

it yields an account of the difference between more and less powerful

human minds that is more attractive. Its greater capability implies that

a more powerful human mind can have more intense experiences than

other minds; for example, it stands to reason that some powerful exter-

nal forces will destroy less powerful minds where they will merely have a

powerful, robustly conscious effect on similarly situated but more power-

ful minds. The mark of more power among minds whose power is very

similar is not, however, a more intense experience of the world. Typically,

the comparison to Descartes suggests, Spinoza will expect a less powerful

of part 5 (5p5–5p9) of the Ethics give us reason to think that a clear and distinct idea

ceteris paribus is conscious in a mind with greater constancy than an obscure and con-

fused one. It is not clear that there is any further sense, however, in which one could say

that on Spinoza’s account clear and distinct ideas are more conscious than obscure and

confused ones. On the contrary, like Descartes who frequently acknowledges (AT 8a, 34;

CSMK 1, 218; AT 7, 30; CSMK 2, 20; AT 7, 75; CSMK 2, 52) that ideas of imagination are ina way more vivid than other ideas and takes our habitual reliance on confused ideas to be

the principal obstacle to knowledge, Spinoza continually emphasizes the extent to which

the conscious experience of ideas of imagination, especially passions, characterizes our

mental lives and inuences our behavior.

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human mind to have ideas that are just as intensely conscious as the ideas

that characterize a more perfect human mind. What greater power in a

mind gives one, on a view that emphasizes a correspondence between

power and capability, is not (necessarily or regularly) more intense ideas

but ideas that are more completely caused by oneself.

On the view that minds are more conscious to the extent that they

are more powerful, a baby or another relatively weak person experiences

the world in a way that lacks intensity, and, as a body becomes more pow-

erful, experience becomes more and more intense. That is an unattrac-

tive and implausible theory of selective consciousness. I cannot remem-

ber being a baby, but I can remember being relatively powerless. It did

not seem dull at the time. Fortunately, we should not attribute such a view to Spinoza. It is better to understand Spinoza’s account of the devel-

opment of human minds, as he does at 5p39s, in terms of knowledge.

A relatively weak person’s experience of the world can be very intense.

However, because such a mind’s ideas are in large part effects of external

causes, they tend to be very inadequate. A more powerful mind’s experi-

ence of the world may be no more intense than a baby’s—the intensity of

experience is in large part a function of a person’s particular situation in

the world—but because that person’s mind is a more powerful cause of itsown ideas, it will be more aware of its adequate ideas and its inadequate

ideas will be less inadequate. That is, the experience of more powerful

minds will be more fully characterized by knowledge.

References

Bennett, Jonathan. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics . Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Broughton, Janet. 2002. Descartes’s Method of Doubt . Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press.Cottingham, John. 1988. “The Intellect, the Will and the Passions: Spinoza’s

Critique of Descartes.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 26, no. 2: 239–57.

Curley, Edwin. 1969. Spinoza’s Metaphysics . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

———. 1988. Behind the Geometrical Method . Princeton: Princeton University

Press.

Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza .

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2003. “The Power of an Idea: Spinoza’s Critique of Pure Will.” No ̂ us 37,no. 2: 200–231.

———. 2008. Spinoza . New York: Routledge.

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Des Cartes, Renatus. 1661–84. Brieven, Aan veel hoggeachte lieden van verscheide

Staten geschreven; Handelende van de Overnatuurkunde, natuurkunde, zedekunst,

geneeskunst, wiskunst, zangkunst, werkdaat, enz. Die grotelijks tot verlichting

der andere Werken van deze Schrijver dienen . Trans. J. H. Glazemaker. 3 vols.

Amsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz.

———. See also Descartes, René.

Descartes, René. 1971. Oeuvres de Descartes . Ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery.

11 vols. Paris: Libraire J. Vrin.

———. 1991. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes . Ed. and trans. John Cot-

tingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. 3 vols.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. See also Des Cartes, Renatus.

Garber, Daniel. 2005. “‘A Free Man Thinks of Nothing Less Than of Death’:

Spinoza on the Eternity of the Mind.” In Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Mat-

ter, and Metaphy

consciousness spinoza lebuffe

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