Notes for 9/15/2026

  

9/15/2026

Do you believe in ghosts?

 

 

[Philosophy Club every Wednesday, 5-6 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")

Bioethics Club Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30 in CAS 436.]

[Ethics Zips: tonight, Tuesday, August 15th in CAS 436.]

 

 

Primary – secondary quality distinction

(primary qualities are those that can be defined in terms of geometry. Shape/motion/position)

(secondary qualities are imposed on our sensations by a confused mind. I don’t perceive micro-geometry AS micro-geometry)

 

Sensation is confused intellection

 

My body-awareness is also confused intellection: The reality is that I perceive the modification of my sense organs by sense objects in respect of primary qualities, but I don’t perceive things AS this relation.

 

 

 

Ideas OF things are putatively representative

 

Representation consists of a likeness between the properties found in an idea and the properties found the world

 

When I feel hunger there is an idea of a property that belongs to the body

 

But there are no properties in the body that really correspond to the feeling of hunger

 

ALL material bodies, including organic bodies (therefore MY body) are defined properly in terms of geometrical properties (extension)

 

Therefore, to be hungry is for my body to be extended in particular ways (for the micro-parts of my body to be spatially related in certain ways). That is, everything that happens in ANY material body ultimately reduces to body mechanics (either at the macro level or the micro level).

 

BUT: I don’t clearly perceive the micro-level of my body.

 

 

Both Descartes and Spinoza agree on the following:

The entire essence of matter is extension.

Therefore, there can be no such thing as EMPTY SPACE.

 

In order for SPACE to exist, it must be extended. But extension IS matter. Therefore, space = matter. Material reality is a PLENUM (matter matter everywhere).

 

How many material substances are there?

Descartes says, “Strictly speaking, only one (the entire material universe).”

He also suggests that “Strictly speaking, only God is a true substance.”

 

 

The “complication of machinery” that is Spinoza’s Ethics

The “substance metaphysic”

 

Reality is made up of things (substances) and their properties (qualities, attributes).

 

Substances are the most basic realities.

Properties are always properties of substances. (properties “inhere in” substances).

 

 

Substances are metaphysically “more real” (more basic) than properties, because properties depend on substances. (Substances are the foundation of reality.)

 

 

Attribute = a most basic way of conceiving of a substance as being real (what kind of substance is it?)

 

 

Mode = a particular way of expressing/having an attribute (in what way does the thing express the attribute?)(every mode is a mode of some attribute)