Philosophy: Spinoza: The Ethics. Proposition 7 of Part 2 - Essay Example

Spinoza’s View on Mind and Body In Proposition 7 of his text The Ethics, Spinoza makes the argument that “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (149). In attempting to understand this statement, it is helpful to break it down into its more component parts. For example, it helps to point out that in the above statement, the word ideas actually refers to the modes of thought Spinoza talks about while the word things refers to the modes of extension, which are not synonymous with the concept of substances.

The basic idea seems to be that when one event causes another event, the idea of the first event can be logically followed to the idea of the second event. While the event and the idea are not the same thing, there is a connection such that if one followed the connection between a series of events, they will come to the same conclusions as if they followed the connection between a series of ideas. While it may seem that Spinoza is attempting to suggest that the idea and the extension occur simultaneously or that they are the same thing, this is not what the philosopher intended at all.

The primary idea Spinoza was attempting to convey was that the processes were the same, but that there is a distinct difference between things and ideas. “As long as things are considered as modes of thought, we must explicate the order of the whole of Nature, or the connection of causes, through the attribute of thought alone” (Spinoza 151). Basically, Spinoza is saying that there are many ways to describe the same process but none of these descriptions are necessarily the actual cause of the process nor is the process dependent on the description, thus making a clear disconnect between process and idea.

A more updated example of what Spinoza is saying is helpful for understanding of this concept. During the course of a small space of time, a person watching television becomes bored with the program, picks up the remote control and changes the channel to something else. The process involves the individual losing interest in the program, physically lifting the remote and pressing a button in response to which the television changes channels. The idea of the connection of causes could be described as it has been above, or it could be described as a complex process of inactive neurons in the brain, new neurons engaging, muscles flexing or releasing, electronic signals being sent and received.

There are a number of other ways it might be described as well, all of which describe the same process and are intimately inherent in the actual process but none of which must be present or considered in order for the process to occur. These concepts lead to Spinoza’s ideas regarding the mind and body, which he considers as separate entities that are similarly intimately linked. In keeping with his concept of the connections of thought as there being several different ways of connecting the same process, so the mind discovers several different ways of connecting ideas of things, which are external to the body, to the thing that is the body.

In other words, we don’t really have experience of the physical tree; what we have is the idea of how the tree causes us to feel about it, how our body reacts to it becomes a further idea of the tree. While we often mistakenly feel as if we know the thing, we are necessarily mistaken as all we are capable of knowing is one or perhaps two ideas of the thing as we understand from its effects on our own body. We can never truly know the thing because the thing and the idea are always separate parts of the same things.