Spinoza: The Enduring Questions (review)

Reviewed by: The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza ed. by Michael Della Rocca Michael LeBuffe Michael Della Rocca, editor. The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. pp. xvi + 687. Cloth. $150.00. Della Rocca's edited volume offers notable contributions to our understanding of Spinoza and his place in the history of philosophy. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars alike. Its twenty-seven chapters are impossible to survey in a short review. I will focus here on a few exceptional entries. Among essays that introduce students to particular topics, Yitzhak Melamed's account of the central notions of Spinoza's metaphysics and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's contribution on Spinoza's influence on literature stand out. Although there are a number of introductions to substance, attributes, and modes, Melamed has produced here a historically nuanced, philosophically sophisticated, yet still accessible essay, which should [End Page 755] be the first resource for students working to gain a better understanding of the Ethics. Goldstein's contribution is not comprehensive. A discussion of Spinoza's influence on Percy Bysshe Shelly and Mary Shelley, a source of many interesting questions, and currently a focus of an Australian Research Council project, "Spinoza and Literature for Life," would have been welcome. However, Goldstein's discussions of Melville, Eliot, and Borges are sophisticated, detailed, and admirably clear. For students interested in these authors, the essay is an excellent starting point. Two essays build upon recent books, developing strong arguments for controversial theses. Ursula Renz offers a strikingly original account of Spinoza's conception of finite minds. Frequently, the search for a principle of individuation for finite things in Spinoza focuses on body and the striving for perseverance, especially, of composite bodies like our own. Renz emphasizes, instead, the unity of finite subjects of experience, and defends consequences of this view for Spinoza's metaphysics of mind including, notably, the difference between ideas in a human mind and ideas in God's mind. Omri Boehm defends his contention that Spinoza, not Leibniz, is the target of Kant's third antinomy. His detailed critical investigation of the third antinomy in the first section of the essay (486–501) deserves careful study. Karolina Hübner, John Carriero, and Don Garrett contribute essays that significantly advance the scholarly debate about teleology in Spinoza. Hübner offers the strongest general case I have read against finding teleology in Spinoza. Spinoza's necessitarianism and his sustained attack on final causes in Ethics 1 Appendix require, Hübner argues, deflationary accounts of striving, will, desire, and value judgment, which Spinoza presents notably at Ethics 3p9s and 3p39s: effectively, we judge good just what we want or find pleasant. Such a view constrains greatly the ethics of the Ethics. This, though, is partly Hübner's point: she presents Spinoza's ethics as an account of what can be truly known about morality once we have genuine knowledge of God and nature. As an argument concerning the ordinary use of value terms (Hübner does not consider the formal definitions that open Ethics 4), the case is convincing. Carriero's clear and careful essay on perfection in Spinoza complements Hübner's more general discussion. In the tradition that Spinoza responds to, perfection invokes an end: the closer we are to the end, the more perfect we are. Carriero argues that Spinoza offers a non-teleological conception of perfection, on which activity and reality, understood in terms of efficient causation, replace traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic conceptions. Don Garrett's essay pushes readers in the other direction. Garrett points to an area outside of moral philosophy in which one might find teleology to be essential to the Ethics: it can help us to understand puzzles about Spinoza's theory of perception. For example, a long-standing puzzle, which Garrett credits to Margaret Wilson, concerns sensation. On Spinoza's theory of imagination, a given corporeal image is the product of the body and the external cause with which it interacts. So, suppose that Paul sees Peter: the image of Peter will be the product of the external cause, Peter, and the body, principally the eye and brain perhaps, of Paul. We ought...

Guest Editorial: Ecological knowledge co‐production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia

The research subject in the present article is A. Comte’s and H. Spencer’s beliefs, who are considered the representatives of early positivism. The particular emphasis is made on the ethnicity issues. A. Comte distinguished three stages of the human consciousness elevating: theological or fictitious, metaphysic or abstract, positive or real. The scientist claimed the quality of a society as a whole is directly related to the level of the individual development. Moreover, moral ideas, which have to be free from theology and metaphysics and based on the new philosophy of positive thinking, have a powerful influence on the society development. As a result, moral principles have to be guided by social solidarity and be a society’s logical controller. However, the societal progress rejected the scientist’s notion. According to H. Spencer, social morality arises from natural one whereby altruism and social equity are built on the concern of the kind preservation. The higher the society is organized, the greater the level of the equity is. The researcher provides the example illustrating an ideal society in which a well-functioning organ evolves better than others which in turn means “social equity” principle is implemented. The scientific novelty of the article is determined by the first comparative analysis of A. Comte’s and H. Spencer’s moral-ethnical concepts as well as defining the most controversial theses in their theories. There has been found out that the key difference in the philosophers’ ideas is their seeing into the real nature of morality, having its ground either in the human mind (Comte) or natural environment (Spencer). The definition of the society as an entity with its characteristics resembling a biological organism is considered to be significantly similar in their views. Secondly discovered similarity is the definition of the human history as a progressive process in which individual human mind, morality and a society as an entity are evolving simultaneously. The present paper also puts forward the conclusion that the ideas about the history as a progressive process resulted at a “positive” stage turned out to be the most debatable issues.

Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical, and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities. Although the EDC framework is applicable to different domains; our initial effort has focused on the domain of urban planning (specifically transportation planning) and community development.

How do individual human minds create languages, legal systems, scientific theories, and technologies? From a cognitive science viewpoint, such collective phenomena may be considered a type of distributed computation in which human minds together solve computational problems beyond any individual. This viewpoint may also shift our perspective on individual minds.

The Explainability of Experience: Realism and Subjectivity in Spinoza's Theory of the Human Mind by Ursula Renz first appeared in German (Renz 2010) and was awarded the Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize in 2011. It was translated by the author into English. The first, but not the only, admirable feature of the book is that it does not read as a translation. The long wait for the translation was indeed well worthwhile.One of the more striking features of Spinoza's metaphysics is that its most fundamental doctrines have been interpreted in diametrically opposing ways. A canonical example is Spinoza's being accused of being a materialist and atheist (see, e.g., Conway 1996: chap. 9) only to be interpreted later as an idealist and accused of denying any reality to finite things (as did Hegel; see, e.g., Hegel 2010: 328). A second but not independent example is the well-established debate as to the nature of the attributes of substance, as either objective or subjective. Recent scholarship has by and large favored, and with some notable exceptions, a realist, objectivist interpretation of Spinoza's metaphysics. A cornerstone of this interpretative thrust is to take the sub specie aeternitatis perspective, or, more colloquially, God's point of view as the paradigm of knowledge. That is to say, it favors what might be called a divine epistemology over a human one. An important function of the divine epistemology for this kind of interpretation is securing the coveted objectivity and realism for Spinoza's metaphysics. Commentators, thus, have been reluctant to place the human mind at the center of Spinoza's epistemology. This tendency can be traced to their linking the human view point with the merely subjective and therefore illusory. Consequently, the human point of view is seen as undermining the desired results of objectivity and metaphysical realism.Against this backdrop, one can come to appreciate the originality and courage of Renz's interpretation. Renz boldly aims to make the human mind the epistemic core of Spinoza's epistemology while arguing that he holds a realist metaphysics. The key to this approach is recognizing that Spinoza's rationalism requires that subjective experience be explainable. That there is subjective experience is undeniable, and since it has being it must therefore be explainable. It is helpful to note that on the alternative view, namely, favoring God's point of view, it seems impossible to give a satisfying account of subjective experience.1 On the kind of view Renz argues against, it is constitutive of the divine perspective that it lacks subjectivity. Therefore, even if we were somehow able to derive a limited, human perspective from the divine one, what we would not be able to do is derive a “subjective” point of view—precisely because there is no subjectivity in the divine perspective. One of Renz's major contributions to the scholarly debate is her insistence and meticulous argumentation for the centrality of the human perspective for Spinoza's overall project. Renz describes her own project as developing the thesis that subjective experience is explainable, and looks at Spinoza's Ethics “as a model for a philosophical approach that corroborates our thesis” (12). She describes Spinoza's contribution to the philosophy of mind as offering “an attempt to outline an integrative model of a theory of the human mind, thereby laying the theoretical foundation for the argument that subjective experience—including its biological, historical, epistemic, and social determinants—is explainable” (16).The book is divided into four sections. In the first section Renz explains what she takes to be Spinoza's ontological premises. She argues for three important points. The first is that Spinoza disassociates the concept of substance from that of subject; the second is that the distinction between mode and substance is a categorical one and ought not be understood as an inherence relation; and finally, by looking into the concept of the individual, Renz argues for the surprising conclusion that “a body's individuality is a sufficient condition only for being thought of as animated, not for being attributed a mens” (60). To be a mind and not only an idea requires further that “an individual must be able to relate events to itself and, in conjunction with that, it must be able to have ideas about itself and its bodily affects” (61).The second section of the book is devoted to an articulation of the ontological status of the mental. I take Renz here to offer a subtle double-pronged answer to the idealist. First, Renz correctly argues that in part 2 of the Ethics we do not get a deduction of the human mind from the essence of God. The idealist recognizes that this cannot be done—no finite thing can be deduced from the essence of God, and hence the idealist concludes that finite things can have no being. Renz concludes from this (as I do; see Shein 2020) that saving the reality of the human mind requires that one deny the legitimacy of the deduction of the finite from the infinite. She goes on to argue that “our mental life reflects rather than constitutes the basic structure of reality” (65), and thus avoids collapsing all of reality into thought—another salient consequence of idealist readings of Spinoza.The third section of the book can be seen as motivated by the following general worry: If human minds were merely ideas, that is, modes, that inhere in the divine intellect, there would be no way to explain subjective experience. Furthermore, they would be prone to dissipating into infinite thought, since there would be nothing inherent to them to differentiate them. One of Renz's central claims is that if subjective experience is to be explainable (as required by Spinoza's rationalism), then there has to be more to a mode of thought than being only an idea. More has to be true of it in order for it to be a subject or a mind. This is coupled with careful argumentation that, although we may speak of God as having ideas, God is not a knowing subject. The fundamental intuition here is that experience is always from a particular point of view, and that is precisely what God lacks. A challenging passage for Renz is 2p11c,2 where Spinoza states that the human mind is part of the infinite intellect. Her meticulous discussion of this passage is illuminating and original. She offers a way of reading passages that seem to allude to God as a knowing subject as statements of Spinoza's commitment that all is intelligible, that is, as reflections of his commitment to rationalism and a kind of mental holism. In other words, one need not be forced into attributing paradoxical subjectivity to God; one need admit only that, in principle, all is knowledge.The final section of the book is dedicated to explaining the representational content of the mind. Here we find a careful analysis of the nature of images and affections. Naturally, doing so is the culmination of the project of explaining subjectivity. With this analysis in hand, Renz explains key epistemological concepts, such as common notions, adequacy, and intuitive knowledge, and what it means to produce a successful explanation. She concludes the book by signaling the practical, ethical, and political implications of taking subjective experience to be explainable.I wholeheartedly agree with Renz's keen observation that the human mind cannot be derived from the essence of God. The case can be made more broadly that no finite mode can thusly be deduced.3 Furthermore, I concur that this does not commit Spinoza to idealism. It does, however, require taking subjective experience as fundamental. It is clear that part of what Renz wishes to secure via the focus on subjective experience is the particularity of the subject, all the while acknowledging both that it is enmeshed in an infinite causal network and that the mind takes its body as object. In other words, for Renz, subjective experience points to the finite nature of the mind. Although I agree that this is the case, I take that to be only part of the story. The clearest way to appreciate this is by thinking about bodily sensations. To sense my body as affected in many ways (2a4) is to, at once, both sense how other bodies impinge on my own—that is, determine my body—and sense that my body counterdetermines those bodies. In other words, it is to sense how I actively determine the surrounding bodies. This dual aspect of subjective experience explains not only the sense in which I am determined or finite but also the sense in which I actively determine all the other bodies. This activity, I have argued, can be understood only as a kind of infinity. This dual aspect, rather than focusing only on its finite aspect, helps make better sense of part 5 and the sense in which the mind is eternal.In the preface to the English edition, the author notes that, although the original had come out almost ten years earlier, her position has not deviated, and hence, for the most part, she has not added references to more recent literature. Although this choice is understandable in the face of the daunting translation project, it is somewhat lamentable since recently there has been interesting work done on central issues which Renz discusses. I would have been interested, for example, in seeing Renz's engagement with Alison Peterman's view on Spinoza's extension (Peterman 2015), Sanem Soyarslan's position regarding essences (Soyarslan 2016), Julie Klein's position on Intuitive Knowledge (e.g., Klein 2014), and the work of Karolina Hübner (e.g., Hübner 2015), who has published on many of the same questions the book addresses. This however, does not detract from the fact that the book is an outstanding contribution to the study of Spinoza's epistemology.

On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza's Metaphysics JOHN CARRIERO A CENTRALIF DIFFICULTPOSITIONtaken in Spinoza's Ethics is that things in the universe other than God--including rocks, trees, ideas, and minds--are modes of God; according to Spinoza, produced things are modally dependent on God. How are we to understand this relation of modal dependence? Spinoza inherits the term mode from Descartes, who was using the term as a replacement of sorts for the Aristotelian accident. In the Aristotelian tradition, accidents are supposed to inhere in their subjects. Is modal dependence for Spinoza basically the same thing as the traditional relation of inherence?' Some commentators have argued not. Explicating the traditional idea of inherence in terms of predication (so that the relation of inherence is supposed to amount to the relation between a property or quality and the subject of which the property or quality is predicated),~these commentators suggest that to interpret Spinoza's modal dependence in traditional terms would be to commit him to the view that a produced thing, e.g., Mt. Rushmore, is a quality or property predicable of God. In the view of these commentators, this position is so odd as to suggest that Spinoza's understanding of modal dependence cannot be the traditional idea of inherence but must be fundamentally novel. This line of reasoning is flawed in that it relies on a misleading caricature of the traditional relation of inherence. In particular, it is a mistake to explicate the traditional relation of inherence in terms of predication. In Section l, For ease of exposition, I am using modal dependenceas a label for the dependence of modes on their subjects in Spinoza (whatever that dependence may amount to) and inherence for the traditional idea of an accident's existing in a subject (whatever that may amount to). "Curley writes in Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), hereafter cited as "SM," p. 18: "When qualities are said to inhere in substance, this may be viewed as a way of saying that they are predicated of it." [~45] ~,46 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:9 APRIL 1995 I sketch a traditional medieval Aristotelian conception of the dichotomy between substance and accident which distinguishes inherence from predication . I also show how Spinoza's thinking about the substance/mode dichotomy draws, often in surprising and subtle ways, on that tradition. In the remaining two sections I respond to arguments that have been offered against relating Spinoza's conception of modal dependence to a traditional conception of inherence . In Section ~, I take up Edwin Curley's claim that things like tables and chairs are of the "wrong logical type" to count as modes, which leads him to suggest that all that modal dependence comes to in Spinoza is causal dependence . In Section 3, I consider three of Bayle's objections to Spinoza's claim that produced things are modes of God, objections which Curley has suggested are so compelling as to give us further reason for doubting whether Spinoza understood modal dependence as inherence. 1. SPINOZA AND A TRADITIONAL ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPTION OF ACCIDENT Let's begin by recalling a standard Aristotelian treatment of the distinction between substance and accident.3 In the Categories (la 16ft.), Aristotle develops the notion of substance by presenting a pair of orthogonal distinctions. First, he distinguishes between things that can be said of a subject and things that cannot be said of a subject. Horse, for example, can be said of a subject, but Bucephalus cannot. Roughly, this first distinction is between universal and particular.4 Aristotle goes on to draw a second distinction, between things that exist in a subject and things that do not exist in a subject. According to Aristotle, white and being eight feet tall exist in subjects, say Socrates or Bucephalus, but humanity or horsehood does not exist in a subject. If whiteness exists in Socrates, why isn't it equally true that humanity exists in him? Aristotle 's point here is that Socrates is too closely bound up with his humanity for s As we shall see, questions have been raised in the middle part...

The fundamental challenge for social computing is to contribute to fostering communities in which humans can transcend the limitation of the unaided,individual human mind by helping each other.Going beyond antidotal examples requires an analytical framework in which to interpret data in order to understand the context- and application-specific nature of these collaborations. We have studied peer-support communities (PSCs) in the context of the SAP Community Network (SCN), which relies on forums and conferences to support their collaboration.This research attempts to create a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of social support provided by peers in software development communities from the following perspectives: Responsiveness--how responsive are communities to the needs of its members?Engagement Intensity--how timely is the peer support?Role Distribution--how wide is the participation of users and in what kind of roles do they participate?Reward System--what is the impact of explicit reward (point) systems on community behavior?The data gained from analyzing these perspectives (and their comparison with open source software peer-support communities) has provided insights and led to an increased understanding of what works in PSCs. Here we articulate some initial design guidelines to further improve the potential benefits gained from these communities.

The reductionist approach to the brain shows promise of revolutionizing our ideas about what single neurons can do. A spine on a cortical pyramidal cell is about the size of a single Escherichia coli, and if the internal machinery of a spine is anything like as well organized as that of E. coli, the whole pyramidal cell with its 5000 spines must be capable of computations an order of magnitude more complex than those demanded of the neurons used for current models of the brain. These computations might enable single neurons to detect spatiotemporal patterns, i.e. Hebb's 'phase sequences'. Reductionism is apparently limited because its drive is to look for explanations at lower levels in the organizational tree. For this purpose it often uses isolated preparations in which such lower levels can be studied but higher levels cannot, because they have been thrown down the sink. Reductionism will never lead us to understand organization and interaction in parts discarded or ignored, and this must include the interactions between individual human minds that are crucial for understanding human society. Our brains possess a 'commentary system', a mechanism that can make reports on the internal status of some parts of the brain. This makes possible networks of minds, and the present meeting is such a network whose interactions are being recorded for posterity. On a grander scale such networking creates a cultural forum where communal goals and purposes are formulated, disseminated, modified, and often perpetuated in lasting form. The resulting group behaviour has obvious survival value, and is perhaps the feature that distinguishes humans most clearly from other species.

Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway are monists – they believe that there is one type of substance in the created world, such that individual creatures are all made up out of the same essential stuff; there is no ontological marker that makes a human different from any other created being. According to Cavendish, all created substance is essentially rational, and so rocks, horses and humans alike are composed of matter that includes rationality. And according to Conway, all created substance is essentially thinking and wise, and so rocks, horses, and humans alike are composed of a substance that thinks. Cavendish claims that all parts of the natural world are perceptive, having both sense and reason. Conway presents a number of arguments against Cartesian and Hobbesian theories of matter and replaces them with what some might call a vitalist ontology.

The relevance of research of ataraxia as achieved harmony with the world and ourselves is to improve understanding of the implementation of individual subjective form of human experiences about the surrounding objective reality in the aesthetic sphere of social life. At the beginning of XX century, after World War I, when people came to despair of the absurdities and horrors of the outside world, seemingly strong order collapsed and all the values that are usually considered inviolable got questionable, and the integrity of world order was destroyed, and people had around them nothing solid on which they could rely, and harmony with the world disappeared, there was only returning to their own internal, so that here find the unconditional support that was not belonging to the objective world order, and therefore was out of influence by the elements of total collapse. According to existentialists, a man first exists and then becomes its own merits. In other words, existence precedes essence of life and people do not always realize or want to realize own essence. Therefore, in the existentialphilosophical understanding of man there are two opposite and sharply separated from each other states: the reliability and unreliability of individual human existence. These two modes represent two real ways in which a man exists. In terms of existential philosophy ingenuine life is not harmonious. In the theory of existentialism there are several ways that a person can use to overcome the unreliability of human existence, that is to find harmony in the life. But they did not create a complex method of exit beyond the existence, did not produce universal method of obtaining individual subjective harmony and finding harmony with the world. Existentiality as a philosophical setting does not specify ways and means to achieve happiness and harmony. Therefore, the focus of existence gets the nature of transcendence, which is faith, hope, love, which play an important role in the formation of subjective harmony and the harmony of man and the world. In existential philosophy the harmony is interpreted as a measure of life. Because of the polarity of spirit and matter appears their opposition. This is due to the fact that there no third component of the triangle that gives stability. In this case, the third component is a measure, that it gives stability to the unity of spirit, matter and measure. Therefore, if a person is harmonious, it has an internal ordering. You also need to take into account the timeliness. So ataraxia as a state of harmony, proportion and eurhythmy of subject and object relations becomes the highest value. In the nineteenth century the loss of a single ideological concept together with social, environmental, moral and ethical crisis led to the desire to find new spiritual guide, rethinking of the central philosophical problems. From this perspective, aesthetic, artistic and practical activities by philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who founded spiritual science of was a response to the challenge of time, an attempt to solve the problems of the era. The greatest attention of researchers attracted characteristic for Steiner’s philosophy integrity, associated primarily with understanding of human fossil inclusion in the overall global process, the role of each individual in shaping the future of human culture. The most important Steiner's contribution to the field of artistic activity was the creation of a new art form – eurhythmy – the art of special harmonic motion. Important in eurhythmic movement is that the dance is not born spontaneously, not arbitrarily from the fantasy or experiences of the artist, but appears as the embodiment of the laws that rule the world movement. In eurhythmy an attempt to find a connection with the universal human content is implemented. Steiner’s anthroposophy is not a dogmatic religious doctrine, but nor an abstract theory. It focused on the lively knowledge that enables the human soul with direct experience of truth. The main conclusion of Steiner's epistemology is the claim that thinking is the essence of the world and the individual human mind is another form of this essence. So the leading idea of Steiner’s pedagogy is the idea of a free self-governing schools, that is not serving to the state, and even not to society as a whole, but focused solely on the individual's needs and requests. In the focus of this way stated problem there must be questioned about freedom and moral rights. Based on Steiner's philosophy, which is characterized by integrity, associated with understanding of human fossil inclusion in the overall global process, the role of each individual in shaping the future of human culture, we conclude that a man is like a piece of macroworld should maintain harmony with the environment, the harmony of truth, virtue and beauty. As the highest purpose of human activity Steiner considers transformation of reality into a work of art. So Steiner's anthroposophy, as the analysis of the literature shows, is not an isolated phenomenon in the history of philosophy, but a link of the European idealist tradition, based on the philosophy of Stoicism and maintains its aesthetic values, such as ataraxia state of harmony, proportion and eurhythmy with the world. Sources 9.

The understanding, framing, and support of learning, working, communicating, and collaborating is media-dependent: tools, materials, and social arrangements have always been involved in defining and conceptualizing these activities. Historically the emphasis has been to educate and support individual “Renaissance scholars”. In today's world, most of the significant problems are systemic problems that transcend not only the individual human mind but cannot be addressed by any one specialty discipline. To cope with these problems requires not only “Renaissance Scholars” but “Renaissance Communities” in which stakeholders coming from different disciplines can collaborate. Our research at the Center for Lifelong Learning & Design (L3D) over the past two decades has been focused on creating a new understanding of learning, new media, and new learning organizations. Our co-evolutionary perspective explores the dialectical relationship between: (1) how a deep understanding of learning creates innovative demands and design criteria for future generations of social-technical environments; (2) how the unique potential of computational media impacts and transforms learning by transcending giftwrapping and “technology-centered” approaches; and (3) how new learning organizations contribute to reconceptualizing and reinventing learning and education in the 21st century. The conceptual framework is illustrated by specific developments of social-technical environments that we have designed and evaluated including: collaborative, domain-oriented design environments, environments created by mass collaboration, and courses-as-seeds.

Utopia and Progress: The Case of Thomas Paine's Apocalypse

The Inviolate Person

THERE appears to be some ambiguity about this matter as discussed in the correspondence which has recently taken place in your columns. In the first instance Mr. Galton understood Prof. Max Muller to have argued that in no individual human mind can any process of thought be ever conducted without the mental rehearsal of words, or the verbum mentale of the Schoolmen. Now, although this is the view which certainly appears to pervade the Professor's work on “The Science of Thought,” there is one passage in that work, and several passages in his subsequent correspondence with Mr. Galton, which express quite a different view—namely, that when a definite structure of conceptual ideation has been built up by the aid of words, it may afterwards persist independently of such aid; the scaffolding was required for the original construction of the edifice, but not for its subsequent stability. That these two views are widely different may be shown by taking any one of the illustrations from the NATURE correspondence. In answer to Mr. Galton, Prof. Max Muller says, “It is quite possible that you may teach deaf-and-dumb people dominoes; but deaf-and-dumb people, left to themselves, do not invent dominoes, and that makes a great difference. Even so simple a game as dominoes would be impossible without names and their underlying concepts.” Now, assuredly it does “make a great difference” whether we are supporting the view that dominoes could not be played without names underlying concepts, or the view that without such means dominoes could not have been invented. That there cannot be concepts without names is a well-recognized doctrine of psychology, and that dominoes could not have been invented in the absence of certain simple concepts relating to number no one could well dispute. But when the game has been invented, there is no need to fall back upon names and concepts as a preliminary to each move, or for the player to predicate to himself before each move that the number he lays down corresponds with the number to which he joins it. The late Dr. Carpenter assured me that he had personally investigated the case of a performing dog which was exhibited many years ago as a domino-player, and had fully satisfied himself that the animal's skill in this respect was genuine—i.e. not dependent on any code of signals from the showman. This, therefore, is a better case than that of the deaf-mute, in order to show that dominoes can be played by means of sensuous association alone. But my point now is that two distinct questions have been raised in your columns, and that the ambiguity to which I have referred appears to have arisen from a failure to distinguish between them. Every living psychologist will doubtless agree with Prof. Max Muller where he appears to say nothing more than that if there had never been any names there could never have been any concepts; but this is a widely different thing from saying what he elsewhere appears to say, i.e. that without the mental rehearsal of words there cannot be performed in any case a process of distinctively human thought. The first of these two widely different questions may be dismissed, as one concerning which no difference of opinion is likely to arise. Touching the second, if the Professor does not mean what I have said he appears in some places to say, it is a pity that he should attempt to defend such a position as that chess, for instance, cannot be played unless the player “deals all the time with thought-words and word-thoughts.” For the original learning of the game it was necessary that the powers of the various pieces should have been explained to him by means of words; but when this knowledge was thus gained, it was no longer needful that before making any particular move he should mentally state the powers of all the pieces concerned, or predicate to himself the various possibilities which the move might involve. All these things he does by his specially-formed associations alone, just as does a draught-player, who is concerned with a much simpler order of relations: in neither case is any demand made upon the verbum mentale.