If you have read my last blog, you may have noticed that I defend there a view about the relationship between mind and body that is called the double-aspect theory, or also dual-aspect monism. I came to this view long ago when I was working on my PhD thesis and didn’t know yet its name, or that it was, for example, Spinoza’s view on reality. My question then was methodological: What is the difference between the methods of explanation and understanding, especially when we study human behaviour and actions? My answer was that the method of explanation asks for the causes why someone does what he or she does, so for the causes of behaviour, while the method of understanding asks for the reasons why someone does what he or she does, so for the reasons of actions. In other words, the method to be used depends on the kind of questions we want to ask about a human. I’ll not repeat or summarize here my PhD thesis, but in view of my present ideas, we can say that with the method of explanation we study the human body and with the method of understanding we study the human mind. So, if we want to know why someone does what he or she does, we try to explain it if we want to investigate the causes that made someone’s body move in a certain way, and we try to understand it if we want to investigate the mental reasons that made someone perform an action. We can also say that there is one substance “human being” but we can approach it as a physical entity or as a mental entity; as a body or as a mind. Body and mind (or the mental) are the two basic aspects of a human being.
Seen this way, my version of the double-aspect theory is epistemic, and actually it says nothing about the ontic side of humans, but without substantiating this view, I also think that ontologically there is only one substance, and not two substances like a body substance and a mind substance that are mixed in such a complicated way, for instance, that we could investigate them only by seeing them as aspects. As I indicated in my last blog, I see body and mind rather as structures of the one existing substance that basically makes up the world; a bit like that the ink in a book can be structured that way that it is the text of a story at the same time. The text is a manifestation of the substance.
I don’t know whether there are older versions of the double-aspect theory, but this view on reality was central in Spinoza’s philosophy. By developing his version of substance monism, Spinoza criticized Descartes’ mind-body dualism, which says that body and mind are different substances that make up humans and that interact in the brain. According to Spinoza there is only one substance that makes up the world. How should we conceive such a substance? That’s why Spinoza introduced the concept of attribute. As defined by Spinoza it’s a difficult concept, but following Beth Lord in his Spinoza’s Ethics – which is a guide to Spinoza’s Ethics – we can say that “attributes are the different ways in which a substance can be perceived. ... An attribute is the substance itself, as perceived in a certain way” (p. 21; italics Lord). According to Spinoza, two attributes are relevant for humans: extension and thinking. Also for Descartes extension and thinking are relevant for humans, but for him they are separate substances, while for Spinoza extension and thinking are two different attributes of the one substance that exists in this world.
Once we know this the analogy between Spinoza’s world view and the double-aspect theory is clear, especially when we use its alternative name “dual-aspect monism”: Spinoza’s attributes are nothing but what I have called aspects and his attributes extension and thinking are what in dual-aspect monism are called matter and mind. The latter are called body and mind when we talk about humans.
At the end of my last blog I remarked that there may be more aspects than the two aspects matter and mind. This is what Spinoza actually says, too, for according to him the one existing substance has an infinite number of attributes. In my terms this means that the one existing substance has an infinite number of aspects. In fact, Spinoza’s theory is a multi-aspect theory, but because only two attributes are relevant to humans, we can ignore it.
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