#Spinoza's kennisleer

Iemand stelde mij de vraag of ik iets weet van de oorsprong/bronnen van Spinoza's kenleer? In dit blog verzamel ik enige teksten over Spinoza's epistemologie.

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Ik breng vervolgens een review van een van de eerste boeken over dit onderwerp. Parkinson schreef er veel over. Cf 't blog van 07-08-2015: "G. H. R. Parkinson (1923-2015) Was een gerenommeerd Spinoza scholar."

Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge. By G. H. R. PARKINSON. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1954. Pp. x + 197. Price 21s). [Review door A. G. WERNHAM in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 7 -July 1957]

Spinoza's theory of knowledge is a dark subject, and attempts to throw light on it deserve sympathetic consideration. Mr. Parkinson's essay has special claims to our respect: it is based on a wide and scholarly knowledge of Spinoza's text, and it attempts to discover what he meant by an unprejudiced examination of what he said. This is no small merit, for interpreters of difficult texts are notoriously prone to read their own preconceived notions into the author's words, and earlier commentators on Spinoza have not been immune from this temptation. That Mr. Parkinson’s interpretations are sometimes hesitant and tentative is only to be expected, for there are passages in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione and Part I I of the Ethics where it is hardly possible to be dogmatic about Spinoza's meaning.

Perhaps the main theme of the book is that for Spinoza " knowledge constitutes a deductive system ". Now this, I think, is true : but I also think that Spinoza sometimes uses the word deducere in a rather peculiar way. In DIE par. 68 he says that ideae rerum, quae dare et distincte concipiuntur, sunt vel simplicissimae vel compositae ex ideis simplicissimis, id est, a simplicissimis ideis deductae. Again, in E iii, 52 Sch. he remarks : et ad hunc modum concipere etiam possumus odium, spem, securitatem et alios affectus admirationi junctos ; atque adeo plures affectus deducere poterimus quam qui receptis vocabulis indicari solent. These passages show that Spinoza conceives an idea to be "deduced " from others when it is formed by their combination, and " deductions " in this sense are common in the Ethics. For example, Spinoza combines the idea of sorrow with the idea of the idea of an external cause and gets the idea of hatred (E iii, App. 7); he then combines the idea of hatred with the idea of those who have injured others and gets the idea of indignation (E iii, App. 20). Similarly in Leviathan Hobbes combines the ideas of person, multitude, covenant, author and peace to get the idea of commonwealth. A deductive system as these thinkers conceived it involves an element of construction or " composition " which Mr. Parkinson fails to notice. This failure may help to account for his difficulty in understanding why Spinoza rejects the view that the mind is passive in knowledge (p. 93).

It seems to me that in interpreting Spinoza we must distinguish between the peculiar sense in which ideas are " deduced " from ideas and the ordinary sense in which propositions are deduced from propositions. To say that idea o is " deduced " from ideas a and 6 is to say that c is defined in terms of a and 6 : to say that proposition z is deduced from propositions x and y is to say that z follows from x and y as conclusion from premises. The " deduction " of ideas provides a basis for the deduction of propositions; it is because indignation is defined in terms of hatred, it is because indignation " involves " hatred, that, knowing hatred to be evil, Spinoza can deduce in the ordinary sense that indignation is evil (E iv, 45, Cor. 1). But it is in his peculiar sense, and not in the ordinary sense, that he " deduces " that indignation is hatred towards those who have injured others. I suspect that this definition is reached by scientia intuitiva, so Mr. Parkinson may be right in saying that scientia intuitiva is deductive knowledge. But not in the ordinary sense.

I conclude, then, that it is correct but misleading to call Spinoza's system of knowledge deductive. It is misleading because it is apt to encourage the view that from his premises, and particularly from his definition of God, Spinoza thought that he could deduce (in the ordinary sense) both the essences and the existences of finite things. Mr. Parkinson is inclined to accept this view. Spinoza, he tells us on p. 73, said that "all things follow from God ", but (p. 89) " he failed to note that their dependence on God was not a logical dependence in the sense that they could be deduced from the definition of God ". I suggest that Spinoza did not fail to note this. When he says that all things follow from God he is simply saying that all things are modes of God and are ultimately defined in terms of God (E ii, 45): he is not claiming that the essence or the existence of any finite thing can be deduced (in the ordinary sense) from his definition of God. For in E ii, 37 he explicitly says that " what is common to everything, and is equally in the part and in the whole, forms the essence of no individual thing ", and in Ep. x he implies that we need experience to discover the existence of modes. On p. 158 Mr. Parkinson tries to evade this implication, but on the following page he appears to acknowledge that in Spinoza's view spatio-temporal existents cannot be deduced from the definition of God.

This is not the only point on which Mr. Parkinson's views may be reasonably challenged. He complains on pp. 21 and ff. that the method sketched in the DIE will not enable scientists to make discoveries: but surely the primary object of that method is to clarify the nature of understanding. It is with self-knowledge that Spinoza is mainly concerned. On pp. 112-3 he says that " when Spinoza calls the body the ' object ' of the human mind, he not only means that the mind knows the body, but also that the mind is correlated with, or united to, the body ". This is a common view, but it is difficult to reconcile with Spinoza's denial that the human mind knows the human body itself and his assertion that it knows only the affections of that body (E ii, 19). I suggest that we must distinguish between the idea which the human mind is and the ideas which the human mind has. To be the idea of x is not to know x : to know x is to have the idea of x. The mind which has the idea of (i.e. knows) the human body is a mind superior to the human mind.

I shall conclude with some minor points. In most cases Mr. Parkinson has made his own translations of the passages he cites from Spinoza's works, and in most cases his renderings are clear and accurate. But I am not sure that ne mens inutilibus defatigetur [DIE par. 37) means " that the mind shall not be fatigued by laws which are useless " (p. 11 ; cf. pp. 15 and 20), or that data in the expression idea data (DIE par. 38 and elsewhere) means " given " (p. 18), or that vaga in the expression experientia vaga (E ii, 40, Sch. 2) means " vague " (pp. 138 and 147). Again, Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae (passim) is not the correct title of Spinoza's work, but a retranslation into Latin of a mistranslation of the correct title. Finally, the book has been produced with the care and accuracy characteristic of the Clarendon Press, and I have noticed only one misprint: on p. 158 " the definition of Modes " should read " the existence of Modes ".

A.G. Wernham

 

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Vermeldenswaard is vervolgens het nogal kritische hoofdstuk van
Margaret D. Wilson, ‘Spinoza's theory of knowledge’, Chapter 3 in: Don Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp 89-141 [Cf.]
Summary
The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God.” (E 2pII)c
Spinoza's theory of knowledge is a strange and hybrid creature. An organic, inseparable part of his total philosophical system, it blends highly distinctive, original (even bizarre) formulations with both “modern” - especially Cartesian - influences, and ideas and aspirations rooted in much older thought.
Many recent commentators on Spinoza's epistemology have particularly stressed the Cartesian background of Spinoza's position, presenting him as evolving his own views in response to what he perceived as deficiencies in Descartes's. Up to a point this approach is a sensible one. Fundamental features of Spinoza's framework and terminology do clearly derive from the Cartesian philosophy,- and much that Spinoza says about such topics as skepticism, certainty, judgment, and “ideas” is unquestionably directed against Descartes. Further, focusing on those features of Spinoza's epistemology that can plausibly be represented as deliberate alternatives to well-known tenets of the Meditations (and related works of Descartes’s) helps domesticate the epistemological elements of the Ethics, releasing them from their exotic theological/moral/eschatological context, and qualifying Spinoza as a comprehensible disputant in recognizably modern debates about knowledge.



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Hoe anders is dan het lemma van Nels Dockstader in de Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Benedict de Spinoza: Epistemology. [N.B. Stanford heeft bij Spinoza niet zo'n entry] Ik breng hier de eerste alinea's:

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Manon Schotman schreef in 2012 een aardige masterscriptie: "Spinoza’s fundering van kennis." (waarover ik dit blog had, via welke ik die scriptie met haar instemming publiceerde, maar op een website die al geruime tijd niet meer bestaat, zodat ik het PDF voor dit blog nu hier heb geplaatst).

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Ursula Renz, Spinozas Erkenntnistheorie: Eine naturalisierte Epistemologie? In: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Vol. 57 (2009) #3, 419–432 [cf. DeGruyter - PDF op academia.edu- cf. ook dit blog]

Abstract: This article addresses the question whether or not, in his Ethics, Spinoza is committed to a naturalized epistemology. In the first step, the cognitive psychological principles involved in the concept of imagination are discussed. It is shown that Spinoza does indeed suggest a causal account for the contents of human thought, yet, in contrast to many psychologist views he does not privilege physicalist explanations, but allows for historical as well as for linguistic accounts. In the second section, a similar differentiation is made in regard to the theory of common notions. Whereas in claiming that human minds necessarily have adequate knowledge of certain properties of things, Spinoza does rely on certain psychological facts, his concept of common notions can better be explicated independently of psychological assumptions. A conclusive argument against a naturalist interpretation of Spinoza′s epistemology, however, is given in the third section via the analysis of the concepts of 'truth′ and 'true idea′. It shows that Spinoza not only embraces the idea of an epistemic normativity, but moreover admits the irrecucibilityof this normativity to natural properties. Since, in respect to moral normativity, Spinoza exhibits quite a different attitude, it can be assumed that he never wanted to provide naturalized epistemology [Cf. Philpapers]