I was reading about Spinoza this afternoon. And then I sat down to watch a World Cup match, and realised how the skills of a world class footballer illustrate one of Spinoza’s points very well. So much better than the mundane examples provided by academic philosophers.

One of the points made by Spinoza is that thinking entities do not react to an external stimulus the same way as a non-thinking body. It is not the main point of his philosophy, but is is nevertheless interesting. The article I was reading about Spinoza was not the original writings of the philosopher. It was Chapter 2 of Evald Ilyenkov’s Dialectical Logic.

Ilyenkov, Ivald Dialectical Logic Chapter 2

The Chapter is titled ‘Spinoza – Thought as an Attribute of Substance’. In it, Ilyenkov praises Spinoza for dealing with the mind-body problem by re-framing the question. Why accept the assumptions that underlie the thinking of philosophers who assume there is such a problem? Ilyenkov reframes the issue. If thinking is an attribute of a physical entity, organised in a particular way (an organic body) the issue does not even arise. Thought is not a disembodied realm which has to be reconciled with the material world. Thought is the activity of the organic entity.

Of course the issue needs more than a paragraph to explain. But that is the gist of it.

In Chapter 2, Ilyenkov also sets out an associated issue. In a discussion abougt what constitutes ‘thought’ he suggests the question requires you to examine in detail the activity of thinking entities, and to compare it with inorganic entities. Spinoza argues that thinking entities react to external circumstances actively, as opposed to the mechanical and passive reaction of an inorganic body.

It is not my intention to look at Spinoza’s philosophy in detail here; or to look at Ilyenkov’s summary of Spinoza’s ideas. All I want to do is contrast the mundane examples used by philosophers with the richness and variety of thought that go into the activity of a world-class footballer.

Descartes, we are told, thought animals were qualitatively lesser beings than human beings, and it was thinking which made the difference. For Descartes an animal’s internal processes, including their neural and mental processes, are analagous to a machine. Spinoza recognised that animals were not just organic versions of machines. They also exhibited thinking, although in a less complex and less developed way than humans.

What I realised, watching the football, was how amazingly complex the mental processes of the football players were. When you are talking about philosophy you might use a simple example. If a stone is thrown towards a bottle, and makes contact, the bottle breaks into many pieces. When a stone is thrown towards a human being who does not see it, their skull is cracked if it makes sufficient impact. In that set of circumstances the effect of the stone is analagous with the effect on another stone.

But when a stone is thrown towards a human being who is aware of its approach, it is natural for the human to take action to avoid the impact. And that, for Spinoza/Ilyenkov, is an important difference.

That example illustrates the point well enough. But is is so banal.

When you observe an elite footballer kicking a ball, they are taking so many things into account when they interact with the ball. The movement of the ball, the proprioception of their own body, the type of grass they are playing on and the wind strength and direction are only a very few. They may also be taking account of the spin on the ball as well as its speed and trajectory. At the same time they will have a mental image of where other players are positioned, as well as the potential movements they may make in the next few seconds, in response to whatever the footballer does to the ball. The pundits refer to this as ‘vision’. It is made up of countless sensory inputs, knowledge from previous games and so on.

So when philosophers write about the interaction between a thinking subject and their environment, they reduce an almost infinitely complex interaction of knowledge, experience, perception as well as intention, emotion and continuously changing environment to a few simple words. Which is fine if you only want to an example to illustrate your point. But it misses out so much of the wealth and intricacy of reality.

It is also where many people get it wrong when they think about Artificial Intelligence. They equate intelligence with reasoning – the logical management of information. Human intelligence is more complex than that. It involves, is initiated by, and responds to intention and activity. But the relationship between knowledge and practice opens up a whole other issue, which is for another article.