Ariel Melamedoff

Drawing on Descartes, Spinoza uses the concept of 'attributes' to draw a distinction between the mind and physical world. His definition of attributes as “what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence” (Ethics 1D4) has led many scholars to endorse an attribute-neutral reading of his metaphysics. According to this reading, attributes like thought and extension pertain to the way substance is perceived, rather than how it is in itself. Yet Spinoza defines God as “a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes” (Ethics 1D6). No attribute-neutral interpreter has yet explained how an attribute-neutral substance could be defined by its quantity of attributes. To resolve this problem, I propose a new reading of Spinoza’s definition of attribute, arguing that we should understand Spinoza’s attributes as model-dependent, on analogy with the model-dependent dimensions of Cartesian geometry. I use the idea of model-dependence to explain how Spinoza can maintain that having infinitely many attributes is a feature of an attribute-neutral substance.

The notion of causation that Mary Shepherd develops in her 1824 An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (ERCE) has a number of surprising features that have only recently begun to be studied by scholars. This relation is synchronic, rather than diachronic (ERCE pp. 49–50); it always involves a ‘mixture’ of pre-existing objects (ERCE pp. 46–7); and the effect must be ‘a new nature, capable of exhibiting qualities varying from those of either of the objects unconjoined’ (ERCE p. 63). In this essay, I argue for an emergentist interpretation of Shepherd’s causal theory. On the reading I defend, all effects have qualities that metaphysically emerge from the complex interactions of their constituents. This reading explains the structure of Shepherd’s causal relation and clarifies the central aims of her philosophical project. In response to the problems raised by the science of her time, Shepherd developed a theory of emergence and published it during the period when the concept was first being shaped and adopted by prominent philosophers. Her work thus merits a place in the history of emergentist ideas.

At the start of his discussion of causation, Hume claims to demonstrate that simultaneous causation is absolutely impossible; all causes must precede their effects in time. I argue that considering Hume’s modal theory can reveal two important and previously unaddressed features of this argument. First, his modal metaphysics resolves one of the most pressing extant interpretive issues: how Hume is able to infer from the claim that it is possible for some object to be simultaneously caused to the claim that it is possible for all objects to be simultaneously caused. This step, I argue, is justified by Hume’s theory of relations. Based on an analysis of the representational capacities of the imagination in the Treatise, I develop a modal theory for relations that supports inferences of this kind. Second, his distinction between absolute and natural modality raises a problem that has not yet been identified in the literature. Hume is trying to conclude that something is metaphysically impossible, but one of his premises relies on a mere natural impossibility (that no object can begin to exist uncaused). I argue that this is an intractable problem: Hume cannot get the conclusion he wants because it depends on an equivocation between two strengths of modality.