In the tradition, there is contingency. This means things could have been otherwise; things do not have to be the way they are. According to the traditional view, it is arbitrary that God makes anything at all. God is utterly self-sufficient; He did not need to make the world. Moreover, God could have made other worlds; though, the extent to which he could make these worlds is limited. For example, God could not create a world in which evil prospers because He cares about goodness, benevolence etc., but the point remains that God could have created things differently; God could have created other worlds. Spinoza, however, strongly disagrees with this position. In 1p33s2 of the Ethics, Spinoza puts forth a couple of arguments that separate him from the tradition. Spinoza’s best argument against the traditional view in this scholium is that “All things depend on God’s power. So in order for things to be able to be different, God’s will would necessarily also have to be different. But God’s will cannot be different … So things also cannot be different” (Ethics, 1p33s2). This argument is a direct result of God’s essence. Spinoza believes in a profound dependence upon God. This comes from the “first principle theory” (Carriero), which states that the first principle connects everything together through their reliance on the first principle. This is demonstrated in propositions 26, 27, and 28. In these three propositions, Spinoza demonstrates that everything thoroughly relies on God for its existence and for its activity. Furthermore, proposition 16 demonstrates that God’s essence contains infinite things and infinite modes. By containing infinite things and infinite modes, by definition, there is nothing that could exist outside of Go... ... middle of paper ... ...rtes. By rejecting Descartes objection of the possibility of more than one substance, Spinoza’s is able to preserve his argument for substance monism, and thus, the impossibility of things being other than the way they are. In conclusion, in 1p33s2 of the Ethics, Spinoza argues against the traditional view that things could have been created by God in some other way or order when he states “All things depend on God’s power. So in order for things to be able to be different, God’s will would necessarily also have to be different. But God’s will cannot be different … So things also cannot be different” (Ethics, 1p33s2). This position directly challenges the traditional view, which states that it is arbitrary whether or not God creates anything at all. According to Spinoza, things necessarily are the way they are and it is not possible for anything to be any different.
One of Descartes’ most popular theory? is the distinction between mind and body. This is known as substance dualism. Substance dualism is a human being consists of two kinds of things that interact. Using this theory of substance dualism, we can explain why some people can experience excruciating pains and urges like the phantom limb syndrome.
In the argument in the second Scholium to Proposition 8, Spinoza makes two claims which have the following form: First, there is necessarily for each individual existent thing a definite cause that accounts for its existence. Second, the definite cause for the existence of a thing must either be contained in the very nature and definition of the existent thing - in which case, existence belongs to the nature of the thing defined - or must be postulated externally from its definition and nature. If, for example, in the universe five women were to exist, or any several individuals of a kind for this matter, then there must necessarily be a definite cause for the existence of each...
First, Descartes contends that God’s perfection implies his immutability because a modification of his action would deny the perfection of the creation. Accordingly, Descartes says: ‘Thus, God imparted various motions to the parts of matter when he first created them, and he now preserves all this matter in the same way, and by the same process by which he originally created it’ (AT IXB, 62). The conservation of the initial conditions of the universe is possible because of God’s continual action on the universe. Finally, Descartes concludes this argument explaining that it is reasonable to think that God preserves the same quantity of motion in matter. Under these considerations, we can say that Descartes founds his physics on his metaphysical conception of God’s immutability, and it makes possible to universalize the laws of
With the “Design Argument” in Meditations on First Philosophy to ignite his proclamation of the topic of free will, Descartes summons free will is given entirely through the creator, God. With his robust belief of God, Descartes concludes free will attributes to God’s creation of a person. Descartes announces, “I make mistakes because the faculty of judging the truth, which I got from God, is not, in my case infinite” (54-55, Meditations). Descartes believes errors of judgment are given to him from God, but in the end the choice is up to no one but himself. He takes full responsibility for his de...
Spinoza cites the source of the misconception of freedom as man’s inability to understand himself and the causes of his actions. Spinoza expounds on this confusion, “So, experience itself, no less clearly than reason, teaches that men believe themselves free because they are conscious of their own, and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined, that the decisions of the mind are nothing but the appetites themselves, which therefore vary as the disposition of the body.”(p.157) Spinoza conceives decisions and determination to be the same thing, but considered under different lights. When being considered through the lens of thought, the idea is considered a decision; while through the light of extension, it is considered determination, an action caused by laws of motion and rest. Though considered differently, the source of both of these ideas are caused by the striving of the human will, and thus dependent on
The purpose of the wax argument is designed to provide a clear and distinct knowledge of “I”, which is the mind, while corporeal things, “whose images are framed by thought, and which the senses themselves imagine are much more distinctly known than this mysterious ‘I’ which does not fall within the imagination” (66). Through the wax argument, Descartes’ demonstrates that corporeal things are perceived neither through our senses nor imagination, but through our intellect alone. In this argument, you will see that there is cause to doubt Descartes’ analysis of the wax and his method of philosophical reasoning.
...rney. Since the philosophies of Descartes and Leibniz were built around this idea of an immaterial, indivisible God, the philosophy that followed seemed to many to be shaky and speculative by their own definition. But considering the time period and the pressure involved in philosophizing at all, we must admire and respect the great advancement in thinking that was prompted by these great men.
The closest we get to cause and effect are two distinct phenomena arising together often and the mind thinking one produces the other. Hume regards this as a constant conjunction, not cause and effect. Although this is a leap in reasoning, and we have no reason to believe this to be true, Hume regards this as custom, which is the great guide of life (28). Life would be chaos if we believed in things completely contrary to the regularity of our experience, but the formation of habit is where we can lead ourselves to erroneous judgments. Although Hume's skepticism appears to clear up the mind, it leads him to believe that there is no such thing as causation, which Spinoza disagrees with. Rather, Spinoza argues that nature is all a long chain of causation which gives all causes effects and all effects causes. This system recognizes nature as a mechanism. All causes are a result of nature and the conditions imposed by it. Judging cause and effect individually is missing the point. To say that a billiard ball causes the other one to move only focuses two select phenomena. Rather, God, or nature, is that which connects all phenomena. Thus, the chain of causation cannot be understood of by two simple "links, it must be assessed as a whole. Spinoza argues that there are no free causes, only necessary ones. Thus, all causes are free causes and are a result of nature. This great chain of
...pose then it follows that the actions we perform in the world would have to subscribe to determinism. However, when God is taken out of the picture when it comes to defining nature/essence then free-will abounds. Contriving our purpose, or essence, from our community still allows us to exercise free will; because to be a community consists of a few conditions that must be met and beyond that can take many different forms it presents the ability of choice and adaptation based upon those choices.
. Its most famous defender is Descartes, who argues that as a subject of conscious thought and experience, he cannot consist simply of spatially extended matter. His essential nature must be non-m...
Descartes and Spinoza appear to hold different perceptions in regard to the existence of substance. However, both scholars have some comparable perceptions of the same in some aspects. They both refer to God as the primary substance. One thing that both Spinoza and Descartes seem to agree in general is the definition of substance. According to Spinoza, a substance is nothing but a thing that subsists in a manner that it does not depend on any other thing for its survival. In the introduction of his work, Ethics, Spinoza illustrates substance as 'what it is conceived through itself and in itself'. He elaborated this to mean that a substance does not require a sense of anything else to exist, which also seem to coincide with Aristotle's interpretations of how a substance exists, that it is independent of all other things. (1).
When God created the world “by faith is we understand that the world were framed by the word of God, so that the things which we see how did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared” (Athanasius...
192). In this proposition, Spinoza argues that when we solely use reason, we are not guided by the fear of death. By using reason, we can contemplate life, not death. Additionally, we should strive to extend this life, and preserve
Aquinas’ first proof says anything currently in motion was put in motion by another thing. This “mover,” as he calls it, cannot also be the “moved.” The mover transfers its own actuality of motion into the moved, which until then only has the potentiality of motion. Since nothing can have both actuality and potentiality at the same time, the mover and moved cannot be the same thing. Since the universe is motion, it could not have been something from the universe which put it into motion. Therefore, there is a God who first put the universe into motion.
...ranscendence of God, and ascription of free will to human beings and to God. According to Spinoza, this features made the world unintelligible.