Spinoza and the Mark of the Mental

<strong>Centre for Philosophy School of Social Sciences</strong> a talk on <strong>"Spinoza and the Mark of the Mental"</strong> <strong>Martin Lin</strong> Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University <strong>Date: January 13, 2016</strong> <strong>Abstract: </strong>The mind, according to Spinoza, is a mode of a thinking substance. The essence of a thinking substance is thought. But what is thought? Spinoza is all but silent on this question. To some extent, this silence is appropriate. Thought is what Spinoza calls an 'attribute'. As such it is fundamental and so there is nothing more fundamental in terms of which it could be metaphysically analyzed. This does not preclude, however, that there is a mark of the mental: necessary and sufficient conditions that, while not the essence of the mind, serve to distinguish the mental from the non-mental. In this paper, I consider several candidates, drawn from tradition or Spinoza's own text, for being the mark of the mental. I argue that none of them are successful. Indeed, no candidate could be successful on pain of the kind of metaphysical dualism that Spinoza rejects. I conclude by considering what this means for Spinoza's philosophy of mind.