“A Thing Like Us”

Spinoza's panpsychism, the view that all things have minds, is reconciled with his occasional descriptions of some people as 'lacking a mind' by arguing that 'mindlessness' refers to forms of mentality that are too alien for us to recognize as mental. The capacity to recognize similar mentality in others arises from the 'imitation of the affects,' a mechanism that links familiar mental states to observable behaviors that resemble our own. This mechanism, which enables empathy with 'things like us,' explains Spinoza's harsh stance against deceit, because deceptive behavior disrupts the behavioral similarity needed for recognition.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper investigates how Spinoza provides a theory, consistent with his panpsychism, to account for our ability to recognize human mentality in others. It first focuses on cases that imply a failure of recognition—such as when Spinoza claims that sceptics must be regarded as “lacking a mind” (TIE.48), or when he mentions suicide victims, children, fools, and madmen as individuals whose minds are impenetrable (E2p49s)—and contends that Spinoza uses “mindlessness” to capture kinds of mentality with which we cannot identify. Then, it demonstrates that our capacity to recognize similar mentality in others originates in the mechanism named “imitation of the affects” (E3p27s1), by which we relate mental states familiar to us to behaviours that look sufficiently similar to ours. Finally, it argues that the dependence of this mechanism—by which we empathize with “things like us” (E3p27)—on observable behavioural expressions can explain Spinoza’s uncompromising position against deceitful behaviour. Keywords: Spinoza, Panpsychism, Human Nature, Empathy, Deceitfulness