The Spiritual Automaton Spinozas Science Of The Mind

Marshall provides a systematic account of Spinoza's philosophy of mind. He presents Spinoza's concept of the mind as affective mechanism, one that, when rational, behaves as a spiritual automaton. The central feature of this account is a novel concept of consciousness, one that identifies consciousness with affectivity, a property of an idea paradigmatically but not exhaustively instantiated by those modes of thought Spinoza calls affects.