Oberto Marrama

What does it mean, for Spinoza, to treat someone or something as an “automata, completely lacking a mind”, in a universe where all things are “animate” and endowed with a mind? By answering this question, I shed light on a complicated issue tied to Spinoza’s conception of human nature: namely, how to distinguish specifically human mentality and behaviour, given Spinoza's panpsychism and the absence of any definition of “humans” in his works. In my paper, I demonstrate that Spinoza’s solution is to deploy what can be regarded as an original kind of simulation theory of mindreading: an account of human empathy, according to which we ascribe our own thoughts and feelings to others, based on our capacity to imitate their observable behaviour. I show that this theory of empathic behaviour explains, in Spinoza, not only how humans recognize one another, but also what counts as a human being. For Spinoza, the attribution of humanity is identical with successful mindreading, and humans themselves are identified as individuals who successfully engage in mutual empathic behaviour.

This is an introduction to the volume "Cartesianism and Philosophy of Mind", edited by Vili Lähteenmäki, Oberto Marrama, and Jani Sinokki. This collective work focuses, from the viewpoint of the philosophy of mind, on interesting but insufficiently studied views and arguments among seventeenth-century Cartesians. It seeks to offer careful philosophical engagement with the topics and the sources – clarifying what Cartesian philosophy of mind amounts to, and, in doing so, helping us also better discern what is Cartesian in our contemporary philosophy of mind. What emerges from the various contributions in this book is not a single narrative about Cartesianism. In fact, the tradition commonly known as “Cartesianism” developed through distinct reactions to the ideas and arguments found in Descartes’ works. As the chapters in this volume illustrate, despite their shared intellectual heritage, Cartesian thinkers diverge in their views on the core principles of Cartesian philosophy. They disagree in their assessment of the significance, acceptability, and proper defense of specific doctrines about the mind. Hence, by looking at how Descartes’ conception of the mind was received through these reactions – including both constructive engagements and critical responses – we can gain a nuanced picture of the foundations of modern philosophy of mind. The first part of the volume focuses on the general features of the Cartesian mind, with particular emphasis on intentionality, representationality, and self-reflectivity. The chapters of the second part focus on the mind–world relationship, examining how minds are linked to and interact with external objects. The third and final part of the volume shifts focus from individual minds to trans-individual aspects of mentality.

This book explores themes in the philosophy of mind as they emerge within the early modern Cartesian tradition. It brings together thirteen contributions from international scholars, to provide a fine-grained account of how seventeenth-century thinkers scrutinized and re-interpreted Descartes’ doctrines about the nature and functions of the mind. Although it is well known that many of the challenges that philosophers confront today were discussed by the Cartesians, historical Cartesianism remains underexplored and warrants deeper, careful study. There is much to be learned about how the Cartesian tradition understood phenomena such as consciousness, intentionality, embodiment, and moral agency—and the puzzles they raise. The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. Part 1 focuses on fundamental features of cognition, such as the nature of ideas and intentionality, as they were debated by early interlocutors of Descartes. Part 2 analyzes how Cartesian philosophers conceived the relation between sensation and material objects, including the human body. Part 3 investigates the moral and social dimensions of the Cartesian mind, such as love and virtues. Cartesianism and Philosophy of Mind will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on early modern philosophy and philosophy of mind.

An introduction to the Hobbes Studies special issue “Hobbes and the Cavendish Circle: Intellectual Networks in the Seventeenth Century” (38:1 [2025]), edited by Oberto Marrama and Pietro Daniel Omodeo. The issue gathers selected contributions that investigate ways in which philosophical and scientific ideas were discussed and circulated within and through the so-called “Cavendish Circle” – the cosmopolitan network of European thinkers that revolved around William Cavendish, 1st Earl, Marquess, and eventually Duke of Newcastle (1593–1676) and his family, via direct relationships of patronage and indirect learned exchanges. This collection aims to shed light on the role of Thomas Hobbes within this intellectual network and how aspects of his philosophy influenced, and were in turn influenced by, the system of knowledge circulation and knowledge production fostered by William and his brother, Sir Charles Cavendish (1591–1653). Invited contributors are (as listed in the table of contents) Timothy Raylor, Stephen Clucas, Mary Jo MacDonald, Marcus Adams, and Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon.

In this paper I explain how, for Spinoza, humans can acquire the “habit of virtue” from “fatal necessity” (Ep.58). Spinoza claims that no decision can be made without memory of the thing that one wants to do. However, his rejection of free will also implies that nobody can freely select what to remember. It seems that, as it is not in the power of an individual to freely choose what to remember and do, it is not possible to establish a disposition towards virtuous behavior. To solve this puzzle, I focus on the way in which memory interacts with reason, in Spinoza’s system. I argue that this interaction allows the unfolding in time of reasoning processes. Reasoning can, in turn, be conceived as a kind of habit, which generates and sustains virtuous behavior. First, I clarify what the notion “habit of virtue” signifies for Spinoza. Then, I briefly review his account of memory. Next, I elucidate his conception of reason and its building blocks, “common notions.” On these grounds, I show how reason can be understood as an activity by which mnemonic associations are reconfigured. Finally, I point out how reason relies on memory to preserve itself in time, determining virtuous habits.

In this paper I investigate where the boundaries of conscious mental life lie in Cavendish’s theory, and why. Cavendish argues for a wholly material yet wholly thinking universe. She claims that all matter is capable of “self-knowledge” and “perception” (OEP, p. 138), so that every part of nature “must have its own knowledge and perception, according to its own particular nature” (OEP, p. 141). It is unclear, however, whether the universal capacity of matter to know and perceive also implies the presence of consciousness. I show that Cavendish’s use of the notions of “self-knowledge” and “perception” implies the attribution of consciousness to all bodies. I identify one condition under which the ubiquitous presence of consciousness is intuitively required in Cavendish’s system: namely the presence of intentional agency in every part of nature, which Cavendish conceives as necessary, alongside the capacity of self-motion, to account for the orderly behavior of any body.

Spinoza attributes mentality to all things existing in nature. He claims that each thing has a mind that perceives everything that happens in the body. Against this panpsychist background, it is unclear how consciousness relates to the nature of the mind. This study focuses on Spinoza’s account of the conscious mind and its operations. It builds on the hypothesis that Spinoza’s panpsychism can be interpreted as a self-consistent philosophical position. It aims at providing answers to the following questions: what is consciousness, for Spinoza, and what are the causes that determine its presence in nature? How can human and non-human individuals be distinguished on account of their mentality? How can Spinoza conceive of the human mind as consisting entirely of conscious perceptions? And how, according to Spinoza’s mind-body parallelism, is the content of consciousness determined so that it reflects in thought the order and connection of the actions and passions of the body? To address these questions, I first determine what Spinoza’s notion of “consciousness” is and how he uses it. Then, I investigate whether he has a theory of recognition capable of accounting for specifically human behaviour and mentality. Further, I examine his description of memory and the way in which memory shapes the framework of human conscious thought. Finally, I look for an account of discursive reasoning, capable of explaining the existence of activities of the mind that, by operating on the content provided by memory, preserve themselves through time and change.

Spinoza's philosophy radically changed the framework of Western thought in the seventeenth century and deeply influenced its further development. Drawing on different traditions of thought, he created a system of philosophy which challenged the views of his contemporary readers in almost every domain. From his metaphysics to his epistemology, from his account of morals to his political theory, from his method of interpreting Scripture to the method of exposition that he employed in his main work - namely, the 'Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order' (1677) - there is not a single aspect of Spinoza's philosophy which has not been thoroughly examined and discussed. Yet, Spinoza's theses and arguments continue to influence philosophical debates. Spinoza's substance monism, his identification of God with nature, his strict necessitarianism, his unique account of the mind-body relationship and of human affects, and his passionate defense of religious freedom and freedom of thought are still a source of inspiration for many thinkers and the focus of several studies, not necessarily related to the limited domain of the history of philosophy.

In the following article, I aim to elucidate the meaning and scope of Spinoza’s vocabulary related to ‘consciousness’. I argue that Spinoza, at least in his Ethics, uses this notion consistently, although rarely. He introduces it to account for the knowledge we may have of the mind considered alone, as conceptually distinct from the body. This serves two purposes in Spinoza’s Ethics: to explain our illusion of a free will, on the one hand, and to refer to the knowledge we have of our mind as something eternal, on the other. I contend, therefore, that we should not confuse Spinoza’s technical use of the notion of ‘consciousness’ with the ‘degrees of animation’ that he also evokes in the Ethics. Consciousness, for Spinoza, is neither a faculty, nor a property specific to certain minds or ideas. Furthermore, consciousness does not come in degrees. Indeed, Spinoza’s account of consciousness is not intended to differentiate kinds of minds in terms of awareness of their respective ideas.

The aim of this article is twofold: to provide a valid account of Spinoza’s theory of fictitious ideas, and to demonstrate its coherency with the overall modal metaphysics underpinning his philosophical system. According to Leibniz, the existence of romances and novels would be sufficient to demonstrate, against Spinoza’s necessitarianism, that possible entities exist and are intelligible, and that many other worlds different from ours could have existed in its place. I argue that Spinoza does not actually need to resort to the notion of possible entities in order to explain the incontrovertible existence of fictions and fictitious ideas. In order to demonstrate this, I first show how, according to Spinoza, true ideas of nonexistent things need not be regarded as fictitious ideas. Then, I will show by which means Spinoza can justify the real existence of fictions and fictitious ideas in the human mind through our present knowledge of actually existing things, to conclude that fictitious ideas neither add anything to what we already know of things, nor do they increase the extent of the existing conceivable reality by demanding the existence of possible non-actualised entities.

The article includes the French to English translation of a seminal article by Alexandre Koyré (“Le chien, constellation céleste, et le chien animal aboyant”, in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 55e Année, N° 1, Jan-Mar 1950, pp. 50-59), accompanied by an explanatory introduction. Koyré's French text provides an illuminating commentary of E1p17s, where Spinoza exposes at length his account of the relationship existing between God's intellect and the human intellect. The lack of an English translation of this article has led to some misunderstanding within the English-speaking Spinoza scholarship. This publication aims to correct this lack and improve worldwide understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy.