Notes for 9/17/2026
9/17/2026
True or false:
If x is made up of parts, then x can’t be a substance.
[Philosophy Club every Wednesday, 5-6 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")
Bioethics Club Tuesdays from 4:30-5:50 in CAS 436.]
Here’s another (brief) way of explaining Descartes’ and Spinoza’s opposition to empty space:
- Space has the property of being extended.
- All properties (ultimately) belong to substances.
- Therefore, space is either a substance or a property of a substance.
- But in either case, space can’t be empty.
Alternatively:
- Nothingness has no properties.
- Empty space would be nothingness.
- Empty space has no properties.
- Empty space can’t have extension.
Remember that:
An attribute is the most basic way of conceiving of a substance as being real.
(Attributes are always attributes of substances.)
A mode is a particular way of having/exhibiting an attribute. (Modes are always modes of attributes.)
Synopsis of argument for substance monism:
1. If attributes are the most basic ways of conceiving something as being real and if God is by definition maximally real, then God has all attributes.
2. Also, all modes presuppose attributes. (A mode is always a mode of some attribute.)
3. So, there can be nothing real that isn't God, an attribute of God, or a mode of God.
The hardest part of Spinoza’s argument (I think) is in 1p5.
- Suppose S1 and S2 are different substances.
- This means something must make them different.
- This has to be a property.
- The only properties there can be are modes and attributes.
- If S1 differs from S2 only in modes, then since modes are always modes of attributes, S1 and S2 must also differ in attributes.
- But if S1 and S2 differ in attributes, then the attribute they share (A) is also the attribute in which they differ.
- The only way this can be is if S1’s A and S2’s A are numerically different, but qualitatively the same (at the level of attributes: i.e., they are fundamentally real in the same way while being fundamentally real in different ways). (That is, we are saying S1 differs from S2 because S1 is A while S2 is A, which doesn’t distinguish S1 from S2 at all.)
- Nor can S1 and S2 differ at the level of substance because we then have an assertion that S1 and S2 are different but have no account of HOW they are different (which S thinks makes no sense).
Consider space (extension).
On S’s view, it is incoherent to suggest that two spatially infinite universes could both exist simultaneously, because he thinks they would both have to occupy the same infinite space while being different. (The concept of “parallel universes” would make no sense to Spinoza.)
And here’s a shortened argument for God:
If God exists, God is a substance.
If any substance exists, it exists necessarily.
A necessary substance can’t fail to exist.
God can’t fail to exist.
So, God exists.
Now we can argue for substance monism:
1. God exists.
2. If any other substance exists, it must differ from God.
3. If it differs from God, it must have at least one attribute that God doesn’t have.
4. God has all attributes.
5. So, no other substances can exist (i.e., God is the only possible substance.)
A common criticism:
- S says God has “infinite attributes” (and let’s understand this to mean “an infinite number of attributes”).
- But then some other substance, S can have all the odd-numbered attributes while God has all the even-numbered attributes.
- This would allow two substances, God and S, both of which exist and both of which have infinite attributes. (In fact, this would actually allow an infinite number of substances.)
This criticism fails, though, because by “infinite” Spinoza clearly means “all” (God is the “ens realisimum” = the most real being = a being that is real in every way it is possible to be real = all attributes).
An interesting possibility:
Since Spinoza only ever mentions two attributes (extension and thought), perhaps those are the only ones there are?
“Infinite attributes” could mean either “an infinite number of attributes” or “a finite number of attributes, each of which is infinite.”
It turns out not to matter much, but I lean toward the latter for the following reason:
S defines an attribute as what “the intellect perceives” as the essence of a substance.
Well, whose intellect? Ours? Or God’s?
The reason I think it is ours is that this is the move that will let him say God can have both the attribute of extension and the attribute of thought.
Remember that in M6 Descartes argues for the “real distinction” of the mind and the body.
He does this by invoking the essentialist principle from M5 that essential properties are those that the intellect perceives as unremovable from the idea of something.
In M6 he uses this to argue that if X and Y have different essences, then X and Y are “really distinct” and “really distinct” means “different in respect of substance.”
Spinoza’s definition of attribute, though, allows a substance to have more than one essence, which would be impossible for Descartes.
So, for S, God can be understood either in respect extension or of thought, but (as we’ll see in Part 2) not at the same time.
Spinoza distinguishes between two kinds of modes:
- Finite modes (what we would call particulars (whether material things or particular thoughts))
- Infinite modes (the laws that govern the finite modes)
Determinism: everything that happens is a necessary consequence of exceptionless laws of nature
Explanatory Rationalism: Acceptance of what Leibniz will call the Principle of Sufficient Reason (there must be a reason/explanation for why anything is the way it is – there are and can be no “brute facts”).
For Spinoza, possibility and actuality collapse into one another.
For S, “Possible” means “really possible” = “possible withing the laws of nature”
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