文章基本信息

标题：Lombardo, Mario. La mente affettiva di Spinoza: Teoria delle idee adeguate.
作者：Pozzo, Riccardo
期刊名称：The Review of Metaphysics
印刷版ISSN：0034-6632
出版年度：2006
期号：March
语种：English
出版社：Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
摘要：LOMBARDO, Mario. La mente affettiva di Spinoza. Teoria delle idee adeguate. Padua: il Poligrafo, 2004. 189 pp. Paper, 18.00 [euro]--In this book on Spinoza and the trilemma of spiritualism, functionalism, and materialism, Lombardo takes the perspective of a philosophical psychologist. More exactly, he proposes to read the Ethics as a "psychology of self-interpretation" on the basis of the following argument in three steps: (a) mental causality reduces itself to the act of constituting interpretative positions that are bearing sense insofar as they organize perception in accordance with an end; (b) such an operation is intentional, for it has an end, and it produces actual effects on the subject that carries it out; (c) in absence of affects that are contrary to its best functioning, the mind's operations are carried out in accordance with a most general rule, which defines pragmatic competences in analogy to the competences that the determinations of natural laws can produce within the cognitive domain of physical science. For these reasons, concludes Lombardo, the mind reduces itself to the act of constituting interpretative processes; it is always implying psycho-physical causality--however, at times in accordance with its most adequate form, at times against it (p. 9). In other words, the doctrine of adequate ideas becomes the benchmark for verifying the mind's interpretative competence, the interpretation's intentionality, and its expected effectiveness. "Mental causality," says Lombardo, can be traced back to two passages of the Ethics (E5P10): "As long as we are not harassed by emotions which are contrary to our nature, we have the power of arranging and interconnecting the affections of the body in accordance with the order of the intellect"; (E5P23S): "Nevertheless we sense and experience that we are eternal." The task of a psychology that has sprung out of the intersection of a philosophy of interpretation with a connectivist view of the mind is the investigation of mental causality (in its counterfactual significance) with the goal of validating regulative ideas of the good, which are presupposed as reflexive foundations for the understanding of life (p. 37-8).

Spinoza's Ethics has traditionally been the parterre on which philosophers and physiologists have disputed each other's theories. Such has obviously been the case for Donald Davidson's Mental Events, whose first edition dates back as far as 1970 and has found a supplement in Davidson's paper, "Spinoza's Causal Theory of the Affects" (Desire and Affect: Spinoza as a Protagonist, ed. Yeremiahu Yovel [New York: Little Room, 1999], 95-111). Lombardo mentions Davidson's hypothesis of an "anomalous monism" that considers mental events identical with physical events, whereby, however, mental properties are not reducible to physical properties, because the domain of intentional phenomena cannot be described as a closed system within which one can be certain (provided one had a perfect science) that to a given mental event a physical event will necessary follow, for instance a behavioral response (p. 44-5). Lombardo agrees with Davidson that a perfect science ought to avoid causality; he disagrees with him, though, by rejecting any reference to psycho-physical parallelism. The reason he adduces is quite elegant. It simply is not correct, he suggests, to consider the Ethics as a homogeneous work. Instead, E3P58 cuts clean between two parts. The first part deals with the field of psychology that was contemporary to Spinoza and was homologous to the description of the physical world of that time. But the second part presents a psychology of a completely different kind, a psychology which is truly "dianoethic" insofar as it generates intellectual procedures toward achieving the most desirable good (p. 50). The goal of this second part, says Lombardo by way of returning to his preceding argument, is nothing else than interpreting the world.--Riccardo Pozzo, University of Verona.
关键词：Books

Lombardo, Mario. La mente affettiva di Spinoza: Teoria delle idee adeguate.

Pozzo, Riccardo

LOMBARDO, Mario. La mente affettiva di Spinoza. Teoria delle idee adeguate. Padua: il Poligrafo, 2004. 189 pp. Paper, 18.00 [euro]--In this book on Spinoza and the trilemma of spiritualism, functionalism, and materialism, Lombardo takes the perspective of a philosophical psychologist. More exactly, he proposes to read the Ethics as a "psychology of self-interpretation" on the basis of the following argument in three steps: (a) mental causality reduces itself to the act of constituting interpretative positions that are bearing sense insofar as they organize perception in accordance with an end; (b) such an operation is intentional, for it has an end, and it produces actual effects on the subject that carries it out; (c) in absence of affects that are contrary to its best functioning, the mind's operations are carried out in accordance with a most general rule, which defines pragmatic competences in analogy to the competences that the determinations of natural laws can produce within the cognitive domain of physical science. For these reasons, concludes Lombardo, the mind reduces itself to the act of constituting interpretative processes; it is always implying psycho-physical causality--however, at times in accordance with its most adequate form, at times against it (p. 9). In other words, the doctrine of adequate ideas becomes the benchmark for verifying the mind's interpretative competence, the interpretation's intentionality, and its expected effectiveness. "Mental causality," says Lombardo, can be traced back to two passages of the Ethics (E5P10): "As long as we are not harassed by emotions which are contrary to our nature, we have the power of arranging and interconnecting the affections of the body in accordance with the order of the intellect"; (E5P23S): "Nevertheless we sense and experience that we are eternal." The task of a psychology that has sprung out of the intersection of a philosophy of interpretation with a connectivist view of the mind is the investigation of mental causality (in its counterfactual significance) with the goal of validating regulative ideas of the good, which are presupposed as reflexive foundations for the understanding of life (p. 37-8).

Spinoza's Ethics has traditionally been the parterre on which philosophers and physiologists have disputed each other's theories. Such has obviously been the case for Donald Davidson's Mental Events, whose first edition dates back as far as 1970 and has found a supplement in Davidson's paper, "Spinoza's Causal Theory of the Affects" (Desire and Affect: Spinoza as a Protagonist, ed. Yeremiahu Yovel [New York: Little Room, 1999], 95-111). Lombardo mentions Davidson's hypothesis of an "anomalous monism" that considers mental events identical with physical events, whereby, however, mental properties are not reducible to physical properties, because the domain of intentional phenomena cannot be described as a closed system within which one can be certain (provided one had a perfect science) that to a given mental event a physical event will necessary follow, for instance a behavioral response (p. 44-5). Lombardo agrees with Davidson that a perfect science ought to avoid causality; he disagrees with him, though, by rejecting any reference to psycho-physical parallelism. The reason he adduces is quite elegant. It simply is not correct, he suggests, to consider the Ethics as a homogeneous work. Instead, E3P58 cuts clean between two parts. The first part deals with the field of psychology that was contemporary to Spinoza and was homologous to the description of the physical world of that time. But the second part presents a psychology of a completely different kind, a psychology which is truly "dianoethic" insofar as it generates intellectual procedures toward achieving the most desirable good (p. 50). The goal of this second part, says Lombardo by way of returning to his preceding argument, is nothing else than interpreting the world.--Riccardo Pozzo, University of Verona.