Research work · 2024
Introduction: Why Spinoza?
Henri Atlan, Inja Stracenski
Spinoza and Contemporary Biology
Abstract
This introduction outlines the main stakes of using Spinoza’s philosophy as a tool for intervening in the interpretation of the contemporary cognitive sciences and neurosciences. Above all, Spinoza’s unique ontological monism—which is neither idealist nor materialist, but which affirms the causal autonomy of the mental and the physical while grounding both in the one infinite substance—can help correct the reductionist tendencies of these sciences, while simultaneously motivating their pragmatic methodological reductionism. Likewise, the counter-intuitive nature of Spinoza’s philosophy is better placed to deal with the counter-intuitive nature of the results of these sciences than other philosophies, whether they be of an idealist or a materialist bent.