Spinoza’s ontological monism has a lot going for it. (The 20th-century philosophers Gilbert Ryle, Peter Strawson and Donald Davidson certainly believed so.) However, despite the coherence of Spinoza’s monism when taken exclusively as an ontological position, some of his arguments on free will specifically (which include psychological comments) don’t seem to work very well. In other words, Spinoza’s metaphysical monism can be upheld, without accepting those conclusions which ignored the complexities of human psychology.
Ontological Monism: Conceptual Pluralism
Baruch Spinoza expressed his overall monist position in the following way:
“Mind and body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under that of extension.”
This is an expression of ontological monism in that the mind and body are deemed to be one and the same thing. (Spinoza implicitly used the “is of identity” here, rather than the “is of predication”.)
Spinoza’s term “attribute” may need explaining.
Rather than the duality of mind and body, here we have the duality of thought and extension. According to Spinoza, the mind’s essential attribute is thought. (Clearly, Spinoza was reacting to Descartes here.) The body’s essential attribute is extension. Of course, thought and extension seem to be very different things. Yet Spinoza believed that this is only how we conceive of one and the same thing. Thus, if we conceive of x under the attribute of thought, we deem x to be the mind. However, if we conceive of (the same) x under the attribute of extension, we deem x to be the body.
This raises the question: So what is the value of the variable x?
The “nature” of x can be “conceived under the former or latter attribute”. In more concrete terms, Spinoza went on to say that
“consequently the order of the actions and passions of our body is the same as the order of the actions and passions of the mind”.
Again, the mind and body are one and the same thing. To Spinoza, this also meant that the actions and passions of our body are one and the same thing as the actions and passions of the mind. In both cases, we’re conceiving the same x in two different ways.
One other way in which Spinoza got his point across was by arguing that
“a decision of the mind on the one hand, and an appetite and determination of the body on the other, are by nature simultaneous”.
Note that this isn’t about correlations (as with Nicolas Malebranche): it’s about simultaneity. In other words, decisions of the mind aren’t correlated with appetites and determinations of the body: “they are one and the same thing”. In 20th-century-speak, mental states/events aren’t correlated with brain states/events, they are all one and the same thing… if under two modes of presentation. As already stated, Spinoza’s phrase for this is “under the attribute of”. Thus, under the attribute of thought we use the word “decision”. And under the attribute of extension x is deemed to be a “determination [which can be] deduced from the laws of motion and rest”.
Just a moment ago, I stated that “in 20th-century-speak, mental states/events aren’t correlated with brain states/events, they are all one and the same thing”. In the work consulted here (i.e., Ethics), however, Spinoza never mentions the brain. Yet he hinted at it in various places.
For example, in terms of “what the body is capable of doing”, Spinoza went on to say that
“[f]or no one has yet achieved such an accurate knowledge of the structure of the body as to be able to explain all its functions”.
Spinoza even provided an example when he referred to “the things sleepwalkers do which they would not dare to perform while awake”.
Why did Spinoza bring all this up? It was primarily to explain why “the mind moves the body”, and how it does so.
The Phenomenology of Free Will
Spinoza focused on our (not his own words) phenomenological experience of — what we take to be — our own free will. He argued that this can’t be decisive. He wrote:
“[E]xperience, no less clearly than reason, amply shows that the only reason people believe themselves free is that they are conscious of their actions.”
Yet the same people are “unaware of the causes that determine them”.
Not only is Spinoza’s argument against free will radical, so are his explanations as to why he took his position. In terms of the causes that people are unaware of, they’re “nothing but its appetites [which themselves] vary depending on the various states of the body”. In other words, people can’t will their appetites, and neither can they will the changes in the their bodies.
So was Spinoza assuming a necessary relation between a given appetite and a given action? Does the same appetite always cause the same action in the same person over time? What about a similar appetite when it comes to another person? Would that result in the same action?…
Hah!
None of this may matter because all these other scenarios can be explained deterministically too.
If a specific appetite brings about a specific action at one time, but another action at another time, then it is still an appetite that has a deterministic effect on both actions. Indeed, even if the appetite changes over time, then it’s still the changed appetite which will have a deterministic effect on the following action.
Decisions and Appetites
Spinoza used the word “decision” rather than the broader term “action”. But whichever word he used, he concluded that “[t]he decisions of the mind are nothing but its appetites”. This is stronger than my earlier line of reasoning because I used the words “has a deterministic affect on”. Spinoza, on the other hand, again implicitly used the is of identity when he argued that the decisions of the mind are its appetites. Thus, the decisions of the mind aren’t expressions of appetites: they are appetites.
This could be seen as being a proto-behaviourist account of the appetites in that they must aways be tied to human actions or decisions. In Rylian (as in Gilbert Ryle) or Wittgensteinian terms, perhaps an unexpressed or un-acted upon appetite is not an appetite at all.
This still seems odd.
An appetite is usually regarded as a “natural desire to satisfy a bodily need, especially for food”, whereas a decision is deemed to be a mental action or volition. Spinoza, on the other hand, fuses appetite and decision together.
There’s a further problem here.
Spinoza immediately jumps from talking about “appetites” to talking about “emotions”. Indeed, he almost says the same thing about emotions as he had just said about appetites. Spinoza argued that “[o]ur own emotions are the basis for all the decisions we take”. The words “almost says the same thing” were used because in the case of emotions, Spinoza argued that they are “the basis” for all our decisions. When it came to appetites, on the other hand, Spinoza argued that the “decisions of the mind are nothing but its appetites”. So appetites, unlike emotions, aren’t the basis for all our decisions: they are our decisions.
Example 1: Spinoza on the Drunkard
Spinoza put the case against free will by citing the case of a drunkard. He wrote:
“[T]he drunkard may believe it is by a free decision of the mind that he says the things that later, once he has sobered up, he wishes he had not said.”
The argument here is that the drunkard didn’t will what he said when drunk. However, he did will what he said when sober. Yet perhaps he did indeed will what he said when drunk.
The difference here being that in one emotional and psychological state the drunkard said p, and in another emotional and psychological state he said not-p. Indeed, even though/if alcohol interfered with the drunkard’s brain, he might still have willed to say p. The fact that he later rejected saying p doesn’t seem that relevant to the notion of free will.
For example, someone can easily say that the drunkard “let his guard down” when drunk, yet his guard was up when sober. Indeed, perhaps he was more free when drunk, not less so. (This could be because his moral sense or psychology wasn’t determining his actions/words.)
The other option here is that either the drunkard had free will in both cases, or he didn’t have free will in both cases. Being drunk or sober doesn’t seem to be decisive in this debate.
Spinoza broadened out his argument by saying that “we do many things we are afterwards sorry for”. This means that we don’t even need to be drunk to do many things we’re sorry for afterwards.
When one thing was done at one time, the person doing it was in a particular emotional and psychological state. And when he regretted doing that thing at a later time, he was in a different emotional and psychological state. In both cases, he either had free will or he didn’t have free will.
In fact Spinoza is right when he said that “we are agitated by conflicting passions”… But what has that to do with free will? After all, both the state of mind this person was in when the regretted act was done, and the regret which occurred later, might have both been at least partially determined by his passions.
Underneath all this another argument against free will is hidden. Spinoza argued that “those of us who are afflicted by contrary emotions do not know what we want”. Yet, as before, contrary emotions don’t seem to advance the case either for or against free will.
Again, a specific emotion may cause a specific action, and its (if there is such a thing) opposite may cause a different action. Yet perhaps in both cases, perhaps we did know what we wanted, if only for a short time. So the existence of free will applies to both cases. Unless, that is, an emotion and its opposite occur at literally one and the same time. It’s hard to make sense of that. So, instead, say that contrary emotions rapidly fluctuate. In that case, then, it’s still hard to say that this works either for or against free will.
Example 2: Spinoza on Wagging Tongues
One other example is given by Spinoza. This doesn’t seem to work either. However, that may be because it’s (at least partially) an attempt at a joke. This is Spinoza’s take:
“[H]uman affairs would certainly be in a far happier state if people had as much ability to keep silent as they have to speak out.”
This showed Spinoza that “experience provides more than ample evidence that the tongue is the organ people have least control over”. This has a similar shape to Spinoza’s other arguments against free will. Having no control over the tongue presumably means that people sometimes say things they later regret, or that they say things they didn’t really(?) mean. Like the example of drunkard, this may simply mean that a person was in one state of mind at one point, and in another state of mind at another point. Indeed, perhaps at a yet later time that same person may come to regret his previous regret!
As before, none of this seems to work either for or against free will. It simply displays the complex psychology and emotions of most human persons.
Note on Donald Davidson’s Anomalous Monism
The philosopher Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism is anomalous because it states that “thought and purpose [are] free[] from law”. Spinoza, on the other hand, didn’t believe that thought, purpose, etc. are free from natural law. Even though Spinoza believed that the mind can be seen “under the attribute of thought”, he still didn’t believe it was free from natural law. That’s because mind and body are “one and the same thing”. Then again, Davidson also believed that mental events are the same as physical events, but… Yes, this is too complicated to tackle in detail here. Davidson’s position is complicated in itself, but tying it to Spinoza is even more complicated.
Anyway, the guaranteeing of free will can be said to be one of Davidson’s primary aims in his paper ‘Mental Events’. Yet despite the fact that earlier on in that paper Davidson had referred to “the efficacy of thought and purpose in the material world, and their freedom from law”, he was only explicit on this subject at the very end of his paper. This is what Davidson wrote:
“The anomalism of the mental is thus a necessary condition for viewing action as autonomous.”
To put that another way:
The mind’s freedom from physical causation is necessary in order to secure us freedom (that is, secure us free will).
Immanuel Kant undertook a similar enterprise.
In the last paragraph, Davidson paid homage to Kant by quoting — in full — a passage from Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. This is the passage which Davidson quoted:
“[W]e think of man in a different sense and relation when we call him free, and when we regard him as subject to the laws of nature. [ ] It must therefore show that not only can both of these very well coexist, but that both must be thought as necessarily united in the same.”
In ‘Spinoza’s Causal Theory of the Affects’ (in the book Essays on Actions and Events), Davidson mentions Spinoza’s views on the mind and body. Davidson also references Spinoza in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (2001). There are other examples too…
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