Monism and movement
I tried reading the Ethics at first but it was obvious to me that I was not comprehending it well at all, so I decided to read the Cambridge Companion to Spinoza in the hopes that reading about Spinoza’s Ethics will allow me to understand the Ethics better when I read it proper.
As far as I understand about Spinoza’s substance monism, thought and physical extension are simply attributes in a single substance, which he called God, and what we think of as distinct objects are modes of substance. The mode is of the substance, so it exists in both thought and extension. In this way the body is the “object of” the mind in extension, and the mind is the “idea of” the body in thought.
For example, if I fill a region of space, it would be said that region would be me-like in mode, rather than that I exist there. If I were to move, the previous region would cease to be me-like and another region would become me-like. Essentially this is like the pixels on a monitor. The pixels do not move, but the colour each pixel holds changes and creates the illusion that that particular colour pixel is moving.
This illusion of motion echoes that of Zeno’s paradox of the arrow in flight. It essentially asserts that at every instant of time any object is motionless and since time is comprised of instants, motion is impossible.
These challenges may sound ludicrous, but they challenge assumptions that we make about the world that are so easy to take for granted. I suppose that is why I am so interested in them.
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