Through out this course Barış hoca di erentiated two things in regards to mechanisms underlying

our being. One of them concerns our life processes. These were de ned as things that rst
attempts to reach an equilibrium in our state: our hunger and its satisfaction, our overall mental
and physical health. And then towards our continuation which is growth, development and
reproduction. Apart from sustainment and development, there is another paradigm of which
perhaps we are more involved with. It is our quality of life: our social and psychological aspects,
whether we satisfy our more intellectual and nuanced needs, if we nd happiness and through
what terms. For the most part these two are considered in an hierarchical order: we rst need to
be well developed and healthy to strive towards more complex and cognitive goals. This also
bears a determinism, mainly that we are determined by our surroundings, which means in the
simplest terms that if I’m hungry for example, I cannot focus. So my physical state determines my
mental state. This brings about couple of problems. First we cannot explain why we need mental
states in the rst place. Why can’t we just explain everything in physical terms but need to invoke
an inner state. Second, it is reductionist, it supposes that my mental states are solely the
representations of my physical states. This lacks the richness and complexity we usually
experience. As you know, my subject is on Spinoza’s philosophy and mainly on conatus. Spinoza
will also tackle similar issues. He will mainly ask if mind and body are really distinct, and if not,
what is their relation like? But he will tackle many more: what is the role of emotions, how do they
appear in us and whether we are free in our actions or not. What interested me while researching
his philosophy was that from investing on the nature of our a ectivity, he develops a philosophy of
ethics. But before going on more, we need to rst look at his ontology which is his rst question:
Why is there anything?

So in religious ontology there is the doctrine of creation. There is a God which is the su cient
cause of everything, which means that through God other beings emerge and are created. God is
the primary essence. Essence means who we are, without referring to anything else, what is
unique to us. So in creational view, there was nothing except God, God created us, and there
were many. But for Spinoza this is not the case. It is not that God created matter, plants, animals
and us. Rather God is all of them, God is the nature itself: Deus sive Natura, God or Nature. This
is important because if everything is nature, there is nothing transcending it. There is nothing that
we cannot explain by natural laws. In creation doctrine, God is not something that is held
responsible by natural laws simply because it created them. But if there is no distinct God but
rather it is immanent to nature, then whatever we see is subject to that order, logos. And that also
involves our mind. Our mind as well as our body is in the order of Nature, similar to Ovid’s
depiction in metamorphoses.

Before moving on, let’s look at who is Spinoza. He was born a Jew, and was subject to a religious
education up to a certain point, until his ideas contradicted with his community. Then he was
excommunicated and moved to Holland (which was more accepting than his hometown). He was
not an atheist though, he still had a notion of God, but what that involved was tremendously
di erent from the notion we have in Abrahamic religions.

As you can see, Ethics consists of 5 parts. Since I couldn’t exhaust the whole book, I will just
focus on main arguments from part I, II and III to a ord a simple understanding. But before going
on the details of Spinoza more, I rst want to return to my main subject, conatus

What does Conatus mean? In Latin it means to endeavour, to strive. For Spinoza, it is striving
towards our continuation. For him, our existence is not separate from our essence. What is in our
essence is to keep continuing to exist. His view is not a creational view as I mentioned. So there is
no time in which there was nothing and from nothing there is something. That would involve
someone making nothing turn into something. So it is logical that for Spinoza what is existing
wants to keep existing. Varlık varlar ve hiçlik hiçler in Heidegger’s words. But I think the word
choice here is important. Spinoza is not using a neutral term, he is not saying that what exists
keep on existing, but rather it is something positive. It is our aim, the existing things have a
motivation to keep on existing. Our essence is not towards happiness, satisfaction, well being etc.
Sure, they indicate that what brings about these emotions serve us in a positive way so they may
serve conatus too. But this is not always the case. There are con icting emotions, sometimes we
don’t know what we want, sometimes we get some kind of pleasure out of pain. But nevertheless,
underlying all this, we want to keep on being. I am emphasizing this distinction because I think it
is what separates the classical understanding of emotions from Spinoza’s. As you can see there
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 are other points here but I want to pause it for a second to zoom out and turn to bigger picture. I
will discuss them further when I am done with the rst two book.

The rst part explains and de nes God, substance, attribute and mode. I already talked about
God. Substance is that which is conceived through itself, its conception is self su cient, I don’t
have to refer anything else. And mode is the modi cation of the substance, while attribute is the
constitutive parts of the substance, what the intellect perceives the substance has. So if we come
to the argument, he says that no two substance can have the same attribute. Why? Because if A
and B would have commonalities between them, I could partially explain A while explaining B too.
But then that would contradict with the de nition of substance which says that substance can
only be conceived through itself, I shouldn’t be able to conceive A while thinking of B. And we
know that substance exists, because there is stu out there basically. And God also exists, why?
Because existence is also an attribute and God is said to be a substance consisting of in nite
attributes. Thus God or nature has to exist. And there is no other substance but God because
substances cannot share attributes. So you and I are not substances (we are only modes of God).
Because we share two attributes: mind and body. We both have mind and body, and I can
conceive you while conceiving myself: we are also human, at certain age, student etc. Thus there
is only one substance of which we are constituted. Or rather we can say that we express the
attributes of God (which I actually prefer to say).

OK, this is all I’m going to talk about in this part. I’m now moving to the second part where we
discuss the nature of mind and body. But bare with me because this part is complicated and I
don’t think I have full understanding of it.So,Adequate causes are fully expressed in their e ects,
and so the cause and e ect can be used to truly understand one another.  Inadequate causes are
only partially expressed in their e ects, and so our understanding of both the cause and the e ect
will be partial or confused (III, Def 1).  With regard to humans, there are two kinds of e ects.  We
can either be the adequate cause of an e ect, or an inadequate cause.  The speci c kind of
e ects he is concerned with here are emotions, which are modi cations of the body and the idea
of those modi cations which can either increase or diminish our ability to act.  In other words,
some emotions help our bodies do more things and help our minds think more things, and some
emotions block our ability to act and think.  If we are the adequate cause of an emotion (if we
have an adequate idea), then the emotion is an activity.  If we are the inadequate cause of an
emotion (if our idea is inadequate), then it is a passion (III, Def 2-3).  Emotions are nothing but a
passage to a greater or lesser ability to act. o put it another way, when we have an adequate idea,
then it is our mind which is the cause of something; when we have an inadequate idea, other
things cause the e ects.

rst is that mind and body which we may also call though and extension are two attributes of God
which we have. And these two attributes also don’t share things in common, because then it
would be redundant to separate them. We have modes of thinking and modes of body. When we
have modes of thinking such as love, desire or hate, these awaken a certain idea in our mind. And
mind is the idea of the body. What does that mean? That means that whatever goes on in our
body has a correspondence in our mind as well. And it also means that we can understand a
certain situation both in a physical manner and in a mental manner. For example when I lift my
hand, I can attribute to certain muscles and my nervous system. I can also say that I wanted to lift
my hand because I’ve seen my water glass and that evoked in me an aim to lift it, I wanted to lift
it. What I can’t say however is that I wanted to lift my glass so certain muscles in me started to
contract. This would mean that I am constituting a causal chain in which two attributes are
considered the reasons for one another. We have to stay in the contours of one attribute and not
jump to another. Another thing that we shouldn’t do is to simply disregard the mental aspect. Just
because I cannot explain the mental events by a physicalist view doesn’t allow me to disregard
them completely and reduce my existence to one of them. I think this is the tricky part of which
neuroscience kind of neglect. Anyway, what is important is since these two exist within my
essence, they are in sequence, and they are united in God or nature. This brings us to the dual
aspect monism: Spinoza is monist (and he is not a dual aspect monist essentially, it is just dual for
humans) which means that we don’t think of body and mind as substances. But rather they are
properties (attributes) of substances. They are on the same plane and one cannot command the
other. It also indicates that our mind can never completely perceive body because mind solely
doesn’t know anything of body. But it can have the idea of body through imagination.

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 And just to mention Descartes here, because he is known with the dualistic separation of mind
and body. He argues that I can think of an idea of something without thinking of its extension. In
his famous wax experiment, he thinks of a wax melting, losing everything we identify it with. But
still I can conceive of wax, so wax-ness its essence should be di erent from its extension, its
material part. But for Spinoza, since he thinks in terms of particulars; you, me, the tree, etc. and
since our essence encompasses both, it is rather like a coin. In my essence one cannot exist
apart from another.

Now, we are coming to Part 3. Here, Spinoza explains an important thing: How are we acted upon
and how do we act? Basically how is the world able to a ect us and how are we able to a ect it?

At the beginning, he gives the argument which I showed earlier: that our emotions are also subject
to nature’s laws. That means that emotions are due to the e ects of nature has on us. Having
established that, Spinoza goes on to di erentiate when we are active and passive. What does that
mean? It means that are we an adequate cause of something? Can I explain a situation based on
the ideas I have, through me? If my idea is not an adequate cause of a situation that happened to
me, then I am passive, it is considered a passion. If I have an adequate cause however, meaning
that if I know the cause of X for example, then I am active. He mostly talks about emotions in this
part, and emotions are considered to be modi cations that may happen mind and body. Some
emotions increase the power of our mind and the activity of our body. And some diminish both.
Similarly, adequate ideas increase our activity in general. Hence an emotion, if it is explained
through us more than it is explained through other things, is an emotion that increases our activity
(which we want). This is in line with conatus as well, we want to preserve ourselves and continue;
and we have to be able to oppose the destructive forces. Because for Spinoza our destruction
can only come about from the outside. Since we all have essences, we are self consistent but
other essences may contradict us. This is why it is important to increase our activity. He identi es
reality, perfection and power; a thing which can sustain or express more properties is more real,
which makes it more perfect, and power is required to sustain properties. 

Yet it is important to remember that even if I know the adequate cause of something, my activity
doesn’t mean that I have free willed that situation. Because ideas which increase our activity are
still in God or Nature.

Spinoza identi es 3 major emotions: desire, joy and sorrow. Desire is the essence of man insofar
as it is conceived as determined to any action by any one of its modi cations.  [I.e., when there is
change, we become motivated, and that is called desire.] Joy is man’s passage from a less to a
greater perfection.  [We feel joy when we improve our abilities to deal with what life hands us.]

Sorrow is man’s passage from a greater to a less perfection.  [We feel sorrow when we nd
we are not able to deal with life.]Con dence is a joy arising from the idea of a past or future
object from which cause for doubting is removed.  [Con dence happens when hope
conquers fear.] Despair is sorrow arising from the idea of a past or future object from which
cause for doubting is removed.  [Despair happens when fear overwhelms hope.]Gladness is
joy with the accompanying idea of something past which, unhoped for, has happened. 
[Gladness is the recognition that things have gone well.]Remorse is sorrow with the
accompanying idea of something past which, unhoped for, has happened.  [Remorse is the
recognition that things have gone wrong.  It might include regret and even guilt, if we had
some responsibility in the matter.]

We said that not all desires derive from my essence, some are coming from my environment. Then
I need to be able to understand which ones are aligned with me and which are not. Because
essentially conatus is my drive, my perseverance is what I ultimately desire. Sure, the desires I
usually feel strive for some direct grati cation but the desire I am is not directed at any particular
grati cation, only on enhancing my existence and power of my being. And since I have two
attributes, I can enhance my being in more than one way. Then we can also separate conatus as
conatus utilitarian and conatus intelligendi. First one is concerned more with my well being in an
embodied sense. As you can see from the slide, it is not only about my body but rather my
integral sense. It is maintaining my equilibrium state, whether it be my physical or mental state.
But my organism will perish, I have only a limited time that I will live. Basically I will die. Then
conatus utilitarian deals with what I do in my limited duration but it is obvious that it is a nite
concern.

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 This niteness though, is a quantitative one. Meaning, that it is about how many years I have. But
we can also achieve another type of eternality within this constrained time frame. We can achieve
qualitative in nity. How come? If you remember we said that the mind is constitutive of ideas. And
the more I have adequate ideas, the more I’m informed with the actual causes of events, and my
emotions. These ideas however, because of their nature are not nite. An idea is to live forever.
And if I have more of these, I can also achieve a sort of eternity through them. Spinoza then
invites us to know more about the particulars. Particulars are the individual things that express
God, Nature. I express Nature so if I should know more about myself. I should also strive to learn
more about Nature, other things and get on an intellectual journey. This is also how I will attain
freedom, how I will be free.Even in this form, however, the striving is doomed to failure. Particular

things must pass away and die. The most they (or rather, a tri ing number of them) can do is,
through self-knowledge of the “third kind," become identi ed with God in the essential part of
their minds; this realizes eternity within duration, that is, within the span of this life and as an event
in the immanent world. The true object of conatus (as it becomes conatus intelligent, the striving
for knowledge) thus turns out to be nothing less than salvation, the overcoming of nitude by
realizing eternity-within-duration; and this gives the concept of self preservation its deep,
underlying meaning. The true nal object of the natural striving which constitutes our being in
Spinoza is in nity or salvation. Conatus in this sense is not very remote from the principle

of eros in Plato.

So, in order to be free I should understand myself. And I don’t live in a void, I am constantly
a ected by other bodies, by things external to my being. If I understand why I have a certain
emotion I can be held responsible by my reaction as well. Think about it: who do we think are
responsible for their action? We don’t consider children who are not well developed as
responsible, those who are mentally not capable are also not responsible by their actions. And
similarly if someone manipulates us, and we act on something because of them, we are also not
responsible. But if I know why I do a certain thing, even if that certain thing was determined by
natural laws I am held responsible for my action. This also connects to moderate vs violent
emotions. I need to increase the power of my mind such that emotions don’t take hold on me. It is
an elegant way to connect the theory of action (which is individualistic) to a communal living, to
ethics. It also explains why some pleasures though they give us satisfaction and happiness at that
immediate moment can arise a source of regret in the long term. I may give in to a certain
hedonistic urge of mine, say it be procrastination, indulgence anything and that can give me
grati cation. But since it was an impulsive act, it makes me feel weak, that I have no control over
my desires. And for Spinoza it was because I let emotions take a toll on me, and I couldn’t
moderate them because my understanding was limited, I didn’t empower my mind, I hadn’t had
the adequate causes of my action.

Now let’s look at other theories that attempt to explain human drives and emotions. First I want to
consider is that of Freud’s. I think Freud and Spinoza share a similar standpoint both in the
contemporary history they lived in and in their theories. Yet there are also many places in which
they diverge. First of all they are both Jewish. And this already gives them a marginal position.
And if we consider that Freud lived just before WW2, we can understand how this position
a ected him. He even calls Leonardo da Vinci his brother in nonfaith (who was also a Jew) which
he could easily say about Spinoza as well. They are also both materialists to a certain point and
non believer in the conventional way. Yet Spinoza is not an atheist while Freud is certainly so.
Spinoza believes in salvation, his ideal way of living is out of norm, even though he creates a
philosophy for layperson as well, he wants to develop a non normal human, a person that attains
the third kind of knowledge which is the knowledge of God. Freud on the other hand, addresses
the ordinary people, everyday people and his way is not of salvation but of liberation, from
neuroses. He doesn’t expect his patients to attain the knowledge of God, but rather to face their
unconscious.

But I said that they were both materialists, because both of them placed human in nature itself.
For them, we were natural beings and even the most complex forms of human structures were the
derivative of these natural forces. For Spinoza as we tackled before, it was conatus: we wanted to
persevere, continue our existence. For Freud, it was more about instincts, sexual desires; libido
that controlled most of our actions. But Freud was not as consistent as Spinoza in his theory. He
was also not a monist, he didn’t have just one primary desire but conceived of two contradicting
forces. He rst named them as libido and ego instincts and attributed the later the notion of self
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preservation. While libido is consitutive of our sexual desires, ego instincts were responsible for
our consistency of our being.

Later however, perhaps because Freud saw that people even con icted in themselves and that
self preservation was not that obvious all the time, he placed in us the desire to destroy as well.
So then these forces were conceptualized under new names: Eros accounted for both self
preservation and sexual instincts, organization and unity; while Thanatos was about chaos,
destruction and ultimately death. So contrasting Spinoza, he made the death drive intrinsic to the
organism.

Now from psychoanalysis let’s take a look at the classical views of psychology on emotion. This
will not excite you, but there are small di erences between these “small” theories. They all
however see emotions as functional, they are either because of some physical stimuli, our
reaction to it or because of evolution.

First one as you can see holds that there are emotions because they increase our action taking,
detect dangers and thus bene cial in evolutionary terms and this is why it is carried across
generations. This view I think, sees emotions as something that could potentially be dispensable;
if evolution would favor, there could be a species who lacked emotions. I think Spinoza would
argue against that, or hold that evolution is also intrinsic to nature, so there is a reason why
species who have emotions do better in this world.

The other one is infamous in psychology James Lange theory holds that we could as well explain
emotions in physicalist view too, it doesn’t matter whether we choose to understand it in cognitive
terms or physical terms, it’s just a matter of preference. Because according to James and Lange,
emotions are the last step in a situation. First, there is an external stimuli, and our body, nervous
system, whatever you want to call it responds, but this response is a physiological one (this is
what I wanted to stress). Then after all this happens there are emotions. For example, suppose
you are walking in the woods and see a grizzly bear. You begin to tremble, and your heart begins
to race. The James-Lange theory proposes that you will conclude that you are frightened ("I am
trembling. Therefore, I am afraid"). According to this theory of emotion, you are not trembling
because you are frightened. Instead, you feel frightened because you are trembling.

Next comes Schachter Singer theory. I think this is a representationalist view. It agrees with the
James Lange about the stimuli response part and thinks that emotions are derived from an
external response. However it is not as direct as they thought. For Schahter and Singer, it is after
we cognize and label a certain response as a certain emotion do we come to experience that
emotion. For example, I may have an increase in heartbeat but if I’m in an exam I will say I’m
stressed but if I’m on a date I will say that I’m excited. We interpret the response according to
situation, and then label it according to the context. I want to highlight that none of these theories
we have seen so far in this slide explain why do we react to a stimuli in the rst place. This is my
general critique to psychological theories. They take it as given, they assume a certain stimuli
whose sense is universal across individuals and only concern themselves with the response and
the afterwards, as if we are not involved in which stimuli we choose to respond, as if we are not
our body; our bodies just act autonomously.

Anyway, the last one I want to tackle is the cognitive appraisal theory which kinda tries to solve
my criticism. It says that sure, there is stimuli out there but I don’t react to tables emotionally most
of the time, and I surely don’t react to everything and anything I see. So then I interact even before
giving a physiological response. I evaluate the stimuli according to myself, this is the appraisal
process. And it doesn’t have to be conscious. Then it leads to changes in my action readiness, so
I position myself according to a certain response. And that change is considered as emotions

Most writers think that the cognitive appraisal theory is similar to Spinoza’s theory. Because now,
emotions are not just private states. Rather emotions are about something, we are not just sad,
we are sad about something. It means that what we observe, and what forms the object of
interest in the study of emotions is that the impact of events is registered and modi es action
readiness. That entire process constitutes emotion. Cause and e ect belong together, just as
when Spinoza said that knowing the e ect requires knowing the causes and vice versa. And like
Spinoza, we are not conscious all the time during this process. We may experience frustration
without knowing what it is for example. And as Spinoza, changes lead to overt action, whether we
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 are aware of it or not. Emotions exist that the individual is not aware of but that still modify his or
her action readiness and conduct of life.

I will talk about my general impressions on theories of emotions in the last slides, but before that I
want to mention Damasio and his interpretation of Spinoza. Damasio also situates emotions to
physiological responses to external world. His di erence from other theories however lies in the
fact that he makes a distinction between emotion and feelings. For him emotions proper are what
is public, available to others and objective while feelings are our inner states and they are private.
He also separates emotions into three: background, primary and social. Background emotions are
not explicit but is the one we sense from a person’s covert behaviors or their posture etc. Primary
emotions are more directly related to our physiological situations while social ones include
emotions such as jealousy, envy, empathy etc. What is important is that Damasio stresses our
body states as the biggest determinant of our emotional state. Our body is mapped in our brain
and according to Damasio, this representation (one that would correspond to Spinoza’s ideas)
invoke in us certain emotions and then feelings.

Though this is all good, there are of course some criticisms oriented to Damasio as well.
Especially one review paper argues that he makes all kinds of distinctions too neatly leading to an
over generalization. When one models a certain theory whether it be with axioms, or graphics, this
is a common mistake most fall in to. Though basic idea I think doesn’t necessarily need to be
refuted, the fact that scientists think that a theory should be completed lead them to hide the
weak part of their theories under big sentences.

So of course, in our daily experience our emotions and feelings are not that separate. The thought
that I feel bad is not so separate from some kind of weakness we feel in our body. And sometimes
that thought is not that manifest and sometimes our other cognitions may lead to a certain type of
a ective state and that in turn can in uence our body structure. There may also be other species
whose feelings are not considered as feelings because of Damask’s strict taxonomy. Despite all
criticisms, I liked the fact that Damasio took into account body mapping but I would just want to
see a little bit more emphasis on movement and the dynamism of that body as well.

We need to make better use of Spinoza in psychology however. It is not all clear how emotions
have a role in our actions in psychology yet. Emotions are thought to be manifested via physical
reactions, sensations and they are not given a driving force role. This is probably why former
theories thought that emotions could be dispense with. We cannot separate emotion and will and
certainly cannot separate emotion from reason. And it is because both take place in us. And if we
think that reason is governed by our mind, and its object is the body through which emotions
emerge, then reason is also occupied with our a ective states. Or that reason itself is induced
with a ectivity.

What cognitive appraisal theory doesn’t take into account however is the fact that what we nd
positive in emotions don’t have to correspond with pleasure in the conventional sense. Mainly,
pleasure is not physiological satisfaction or happiness all the time. It is what gives power to
conatus, it is what gives us more activity, so anything that increases our power in acting grati es
our conatus, and we consider positively. This is a way to move away from hedonistic perspective.

Second important point is that current emotional theories

Although most would grant this likelihood,

which surely take bacteria and many other “lowly
bugs” out of contention for affective consciousness,
this parsing of feeling from emotion seems to leave the
door closed for perhaps too many other “higher” animals
that don’t have enough idiotypic somatosensory
representation areas to construct as sophisticated a
body image as humans

Indeed,
since the aim of science is to carve nature at the joints,
we must seriously consider whether there is a very
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 exible joint (or joints) between neural systems that
elaborate our core emotional behaviors and affective
feelings and those that govern our perceptions and
thoughts, rather than it all being one continuous bone.
From our perspective, Damasio’s thesis might have
been better phrased had it more explicitly addressed
subcortical–limbic–affective and cortical–cognitive–
thoughtful distinctions (Panksepp, 2001, in press a).
When one experiences intense emotions, there are
remarkable reductions in blood ow in certain areas of
the cortex, as is evident in Damasio et al.’s (2000) own
data (for a graphic depiction of the 189 signi cant
brain changes, see Panksepp, in press a). Indeed, many
cortico–cognitive activities tend to suppress (or at
least heavily modulate) subcortical emotional processes
(Liotti & Panksepp, in press). It is only at
modest levels of emotional arousal that the two work
synergistically and in harmony — this is interesting as this is what Spinoza suggests
(1) all strong emotions appear to
involve phenomenal alterations (feelings) by their very
nature; (2) Damasio never really explains which of the
truly vast panorama of body mappings become emotional
feelings, and which might just remain “under
the waterline of consciousness,” or how this selection
process might happen
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