Body and Mind

Abstract

This chapter discusses the way in which Spinoza’s so-called identity theory addresses the mind–body problem and critically assesses several interpretations of his approach in contemporary philosophy of mind. The chapter takes Charles Jarrett’s and Michael Della Rocca’s interpretation of the attributes as opaque contexts as its point of departure. It argues that, rather than relating mental and bodily items to each other, Spinoza’s identity theory establishes an abstract model that allows for interpreting mental events as irreducible, yet completely intelligible, entities. This, it is further argued, distinguishes Spinoza’s position from the contemporary approach that comes closest to it: Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism. In contrast to Davidson—who, by rejecting the possibility of nomological reduction, relinquishes the expectation of granting third-person explainability to the mental—Spinoza assumes that, on the basis of his rationalism, mental events are not only no less real but also no less explainable than physical events.