Building Blocks
Building blocks of God or Nature or Universe
It's important to understand what he was trying to do first.
He was trying to model the world in a way that it makes sense with logic. To do that you have to define everything from the ground up and make abstract model of things. Only then you can start to play with the model and make propositions and corollaries from them.
The way to do it is to start from the most general forms of things, and then set propositions to the most specific forms of things.
Attributes, Substance, and Modes
Each of them are related to each other, to understand one of them you need to understand the others, so you need to be patience. They do not have the same meaning as in English, they are defined by him in his book as abstracts to make sense of the universe.
Substance
1P3 By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
- Substance is what stands on its own and is understood through itself alone.
- It's not a material and not an ingredient, nothing is built out of it.
- You can't call anything that exists in the nature a substance, there is only one substance.
- The nature itself is that one substance.
All the nature, is the same substance as one. The only example of substance:
- Nature or God itself
A chair, your physical body, and your mind are not substances, they are modes of that one substance, ways the nature is (we will get to the mind later in the life section).
1P6 By God(Nature), I mean a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.
- Nature is a substance consisting of infinite attributes (we will get to this later)
- Each attribute expresses eternal and infinite essentiality
What is Essentiality?
Essentiality refers to the core nature of something, its fundamental properties that define its existence. In the context of Spinoza’s philosophy:
Essentiality and Causality: Essentiality is intrinsically linked to cause and effect. Spinoza believed that the essence of a thing includes the necessity of its existence and the actions that follow from it. The nature of something dictates how it interacts with and effects other things. It's related to the concept of causality, where the essence of a thing determines its effects on other things. For example 2 things which react differently to the same cause, because of their essence. Both of them are modes of the one substance, what differs is their essence as modes:
- Iron: When exposed to fire, iron heats up and eventually melts but maintains its structure longer due to its high melting point.
- Wood: When exposed to fire, wood combusts and burns quickly due to its lower ignition temperature and organic composition.
1P13 A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible.
In here, if we replace the word of substance with nature, it makes more sense. Nature is absolutely infinite, and it's indivisible, it's one unified field, and everything is part of it.
Attributes
1D4 By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.
- Intellect: what you understand as a human being.
- Perceives: what you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
We know 2 attributes:
- Extension (physical world)
- Thought (mind)
1P3 Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another.
Spinoza was looking at physical world and mind environment as 2 different things, and they have nothing in common with each other, an idea in your mind can't be shared with the physical world, and vice versa. He explain everything about both environments and how they contribute to the causality of the universe, you can read about mind under life section.
For more info of this P take a look at God
Mode
Think of mode as the state of substance, in which exposes the attribute of the substance.
Bear with me, I will explain it in a better way.
1D5 By mode, I mean the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived.
- What the hell is affection of a substance?
- We know that substance is what is in itself and is understood through itself, and there is only one of it.
- We know substance has a core/underlying nature called essence.
- This essence is the reason for the existence of the substance, and also the cause of the effects of the substance.
- Essence for a substance is the reason of it's existence, and the cause of the effects on it.
Mode of extension:
Chair for example: Chair is a state of the one substance, shaped in a way that we can sit on it. Chair is a mode/state of substance, which is exposing the attribute of extension.
Mode of mind:
The mode/state of your mind, is an idea, it's possible because your mind is a mode of the nature under the attribute called thought, and the mode/state of your mind is an idea.
1P14 Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.
There is one substance (aka nature), which is God itself, and everything else is a mode of it, it has no parts.
It's not possible to think of a substance other than the nature itself, so everything else is in God as a mode of it.
There is no difference in kind between the chair and your physical body, they are both modes of the one nature, they are both in God, they change shape/form/state, but yet still the same nature.
The Map of Reality
So far we know Spinoza defined these building block elements:
- Attributes
- Substance
- Mode
Now we will use these building blocks to create a map of reality so we see how it looks like and fit together.
This map is a simplified version of the reality map, but it gives you a good idea of how the building blocks fit together.
Let's not get into what are the rest of the infinite attributes of God/Nature, some criticize Spinoza for not defining them and say that he failed to prove his theory because of that, but later on I will talk about something that didn't exist in his time and it's man made, the Computer! It's not a new attribute, the attributes are infinite and nobody can make one, it's a mode where the parallel between extension and thought is unusually easy to see.
Conclusion
We have 3 redefined words that are the building blocks of the universe:
- Substance: what is in itself and is understood through itself.
- There is exactly one of it, the nature, or God.
- It's indivisible, and it's not a material of any kind.
- Everything else that exists in the universe is a mode of it.
- Attributes: what makes up the essence of the one substance.
- The nature of mind is thought, which is one of the attributes of that one substance.
- Attributes are infinite because God/Nature is infinite.
- Modes: the state of the substance, in which exposes the attribute of the substance.
- The chair is a mode of the one substance, which exposes the attribute of extension.
- The state of your mind is an idea, which is a mode of the one substance, which exposes the attribute of thought.