The purity of Spinoza’s commitment to explanation can best be articulated in terms of his commitments to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafte… - Michael Della Rocca

I love this idea of human-machine partnerships because in my mind it’s always been very clear. It’s not about humans or machines, it’s about humans and machines.

Unsurprisingly, then, Spinoza has not solved the mind-body problem. But he has advanced our understanding of it. He has shown how, if one skillfully and consistently wields the PSR and the conceptual barrier between thought and extension, one can construct an argument for the view that there is one substance and one can undermine the Cartesian intuitions that material things and physical things cannot be identical.

For Spinoza, my mind is simply an idea in God’s intellect; in particular it is God’s idea of my body.