QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

etween them becomes a problem. How can matter and mind appear to be connected to each
other in many ways if they do not have a common source, why would a hand rise when its owner
wanted it to rise? Some supporters of Descartes attempted to resolve the problem through a
doctrine called Occasionalism, in which the human soul and the finite events of the world
reverted to the infinite founder of the universe, i.e. God. The mainstream of western philosophy
travelled from Descartes to Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant. They all considered mind and matter to
be separate things, with God in some way as the source of both. 304 The great system builders of
philosophy did not, however, achieve a common view of the nature of reality.
Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) like Descartes was impressed by the achievements of science and
mathematics and he tried to strengthen Descartes’ teachings by the doctrine of Pantheism, which
was both more systematic and more coherent that Giordiano Bruno’s way of thinking. In his
Ethics, Spinoza applied geometry and the axiomatic method systematically to metaphysics and
mental entities employing one of the most beautiful philosophical systems ever created. In his
vision, the universe is seen as an ordered unified whole – not as a lifeless world of innumerable
separate things. 305 Spinoza founded his naturalism on God, not the personal God of Christianity
but the pantheistic totality of nature. This eternal substance, which had an infinite number of
properties or attributes, existed by itself. It was a being of both infinite dimensions and infinite
rationality, both nature and God. In this wholeness, mind and matter were two different attributes
which humans could perceive. As they were nothing more than two different ways of viewing
the same substance, material particles and mental thoughts inevitably acted in harmony. The
organisation of beings and ideas was the same, and the nature of both was preordained. Spinoza
was not, however, able to say why something that had extension should also think, or vice
versa. 306
Spinoza’s view of God as the only substance, with everything being different forms of
manifestation or aspects of him, was well suited to the idea that the universe worked in the
manner of a perfect clockwork mechanism. Since it was logically impossible for God to be
otherwise than he actually was, the laws of the cosmos could not be changed, nor could the
world be other than it was. While Descartes saw the human soul as free, in Spinoza’s doctrine
the body was a specific mode of dimensional attribute and the soul was a specific mode of
304 Aspelin 1995, 194. Collingwood 1960, 104-105. As Descartes appealed to God who guaranteed the psychophysical
parallelism, it can be thought that he also actually only had one substance, God.
305 Spinoza 1997.
116