Part Three, Definitions through Prop 40

[David]

Lily wrote: "Do you have those already. . ."

DEFINITIONS
1. Self-caused: Something whose essence inherently includes existence; it can only be conceived as existing.
2. Finite in its kind: Something is finite if it can be limited by another of the same nature, like a body by another body or a thought by another thought.
3. Substance: That which exists in itself and is conceived through itself, not requiring the conception of anything else.
4. Attribute: What the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.
5. Mode: The modifications or states of substance, existing in and conceived through something else.
6. God: An absolutely infinite being, or substance with infinite attributes, each expressing eternal and infinite essence.
7. Free: Something that exists and acts solely from the necessity of its own nature, not determined by anything else.
8. Eternity: Existence as conceived to necessarily follow solely from the definition of an eternal thing.

AXIOMS
1. Existence: Everything exists either in itself or in something else.
2. Conception: What cannot be conceived through something else must be conceived through itself.
3. Causality: A specific cause necessarily produces an effect; without a cause, no effect can occur.
4. Knowledge: Understanding an effect requires understanding its cause.
5. Distinctness: Things with nothing in common cannot be understood through each other.
6. Truth: A true idea corresponds with its object.
7. Essence and Existence: If something can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not include existence.

[Lily]

David wrote: "Lily wrote: "Do you have those already. . ."

DEFINITIONS
1. Self-caused: Something whose essence inherently includes existence; it can only be conceived as existing.
2. Finite in its kind: Somethi..."

Wow! Thx! Now what the .... do those "mean"?

[David]

Lily wrote: "Now what the .... do those "mean"? "

I'll do my best.

DEFINITIONS
1. Self-caused: Something whose essence inherently includes existence; it can only be conceived as existing.
Self-caused means that something exists on its own and doesn't need anything else to exist. It is a part of the nature of self-caused things to be real and cannot be thought of as not existing.

2. Finite in its kind: Something is finite if it can be limited by another of the same nature, like a body by another body or a thought by another thought.
"finite in its kind" means something can be compared and limited by others that are similar to it. imagine you have a toy car. It’s considered finite because you can always think of another toy car that might be bigger or smaller.

3. Substance: That which exists in itself and is conceived through itself, not requiring the conception of anything else.
"Substance" means something that exists on its own and doesn’t need anything else to exist or be understood, like a toy that doesn’t need batteries or any other parts to work. It’s complete and whole by itself. Similarly, substance is something that stands alone and doesn’t rely on anything else.

4. Attribute: What the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.
"Attribute" means a quality or characteristic that helps us understand what something truly is. Think of a cat. If we say a cat is furry, likes to purr, and has whiskers, those are its attributes. These qualities help us know what makes a cat a cat. Similarly, an attribute is a feature that helps us understand the true nature of something.

[David]

DEFINITIONS CONTINUED

5. Mode: The modifications or states of substance, existing in and conceived through something else.
Mode" means the different ways something can exist or be. It's like the different shapes or states that a substance can take. Imagine you have a piece of clay. You can shape the clay into a ball, a cube, or a sculpture. These shapes are modes of the clay. The clay itself is the substance, and the different shapes it can take are its modes. So, modes are the various forms or conditions that something can have.

6. God: An absolutely infinite being, or substance with infinite attributes, each expressing eternal and infinite essence.
Imagine a library that has and will always exist. It is filled with and infinite number of books, no matter how many you check out there are always more. Each book covers one more subjects from an infinite list of subjects. God is like that library, but on the scale of the universe and all things.


7. Free: Something that exists and acts solely from the necessity of its own nature, not determined by anything else.
A free being, according to Spinoza, is autonomous in the sense that its actions are not compelled by external forces but follow from its own nature. Example, a wind-up toy requires an external force to wind it up, vs. a tree growing because that is its nature. This autonomy is not contrary to determinism; it just means that the being's nature is determined, and its actions necessarily follow from that nature.

8. Eternity: Existence as conceived to necessarily follow solely from the definition of an eternal thing.
This is an abstraction, like math or a circle. No mater when in time you pick, after or before the big bang, a circle is always round. Eternity means something exists forever just because that's what it is, without needing anything else to make it last forever.

[David]

AXIOMS
1. Existence: Everything exists either in itself or in something else.
For Spinoza, substance exists in itself, modes are expressions or states of of that substance that cannot exist without the one source substance. Image a tree existing in itslef (it doesn't it needs a supportive environment, but just go with it), leaves cannot exist without that tree.

2. Conception: What cannot be conceived through something else must be conceived through itself.
Conception, or understanding. Examples of self-conceived understanding are number, like 4 which be understood on its own. An example of dependent understanding, conceived thorugh something else, are mathmatical operations, like addition, you can't understand addtion without first understanding what numbers are.

3. Causality: A specific cause necessarily produces an effect; without a cause, no effect can occur.
Think Newton's first law of motion. A body at rest will stay at rest, and a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. In this case the external force is the specific cause that produces the effect putting something in motion or stopping something already in motion.

4. Knowledge: Understanding an effect requires understanding its cause.
Good luck with that, correlation does not equal causation and all that.

5. Distinctness: Things with nothing in common cannot be understood through each other.
Example: You cannot understand about fish by looking at a bycicle because they have nothing in common.

6. Truth: A true idea corresponds with its object.
Example: One cannot have a true idea about a square when one is imagining a shape with three straight sides and 3 angles that add up to 180 degrees.

7. Essence and Existence: If something can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not include existence.
This one is tough but Spinoza seems to differentiate between Necessary and Contingent existence. Necessary existence for Spinoza is God, and the basic laws of nature, time, space, etc. Contingent Existence is something that exists but doesn't have to exist and its non-existence is possible, like trees. Trees do not exist on Mars, and there were times in Earth's history where trees did not exist.

[Lily]

David wrote: "Lily wrote: "Now what the .... do those "mean"? "

I'll do my best.

Thank you, David! I'm certainly not going to be able to process and integrate all this with the text and the following sections within the scope of the time we are allowing for this discussion. (I have been re-reading and re-listening to Independent People , that's more than enough to bend the mind vis-a-vis current politics. One could think that these many years after Freud one could at least expect less ignorance, but of course one would be naive. But, then many of Spinoza's day still thought the Pentateuch was written by Moses, rather than being a redaction of several major sources.)

Its clear I'm unlikely to escape from Baruch any time soon -- he seems destined to haunt alongside so many other of the ancient and not so ancient writers we encounter here.

[Lily]

David wrote: "AXIOMS

5. Distinctness: Things with nothing in common cannot be understood through each other.
Example: You cannot understand about fish by looking at a bicycle because they have nothing in common...."

Except, of course, "existence"? Oh, I've got other tasks to get to before even starting to play with these right now. But I do hope others here will come forward with their observations. (No wonder the YouTubes on Spinoza can be such "fun" -- it has been months since I've watched any of those -- when reading The Weight of Ink and the correspondence with Spinoza of Shakespeare's fictional daughter.)

[Lily]

Thomas wrote: "I have read some John Dominic Crossan. Not a lot, but I'm interested in the historical Jesus, so his work has come up a bit

I have been ignoring coming back to this diversionary conversation. I will do so now in the context of this article apparently penned by Steven Nadler and including the writ of herem placed on Spinoza: https://www.neh.gov/article/why-spino....

Consider "If it is at all a 'pious' and 'divine' document, it is not because of its origin or the words on the page, but only because its narrative is especially morally edifying and effective in inspiring readers to acts of justice and charity—to practicing the 'true religion.'"

This discussion of the divine/secular origins of the sacred text of the Torah seems analogous to me to the controversies that swirl about the implications of Crossan's (and Borg's) work relative to the New Testament.

I find myself wanting to know more about the personal life of Spinoza -- maybe I spend too much time in the company of writing groups and writers. Was he married? (I presume so.) ....et al. How did the visit of Leibniz impact the writings of each? ( The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza & the Fate of God in the Modern World )