Speak, Atoms

As human beings who have the capacity to direct the mind towards true ideas, we are, according to Spinoza, ‘spiritual automatons’:

This is the same as what the ancients said, i.e, that true knowledge proceeds from cause to effect––except so far as I know they never conceived the soul (as we do here) as acting according to certain laws, like a spiritual automaton’. - Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect

The term ‘spiritual automaton’ does not refer to ‘robot’, or something purely mechanical. Spinoza did believe that the human mind, like all of nature, can be explained through mathematical laws. However, by ‘spiritual automaton’, he refers to the idea that the mind is a self-directed mechanism. We are self-moving machines and we fulfil the ‘spiritual’ criteria only when we follow true ideas in our search for the underlying nature of reality. So ‘spiritual’ refers to the idea that the mind can truly grasp true ideas, and in doing so, it ought to direct itself to the pursuit of what is true. Two interesting questions we can ask are, how does the mind direct itself? And which attributes or properties give the mind the ability to self-direct given that we are atomic beings arranged in complicated ways?

We’ve discovered systems that make up the architecture of the mind and the body. One example, for instance, is the white sclera of our eyes. Evolution has selected this feature as part of our ‘gaze detection system’, which include ‘head direction cells’ in the brain that respond to where people are looking. We are more easily able to see where people are looking by the whites of the eyes. Similarly, evolution has selected our attention system, a phenomenon which is like a “spotlight” that can move over representations which make up the mind: thoughts, memories, sounds, visual images, tastes, touches, or how our body is positioned in space. These aspects all contribute to the architecture of the mind, and they are capable of being selected by the mind. In being able to select, and choose, as ‘spiritual automatons’, we can direct our attention to the pursuit of truth and things like the well-being of the body and the intellect. So, in sum, we are a collection of systems made out of matter, which can cause effects upon themselves, and which fulfil the criteria of being ‘self-directed’. This contemporary view, I think, does justice to Spinoza’s idea of the ‘spiritual automaton’.

However, let me urge some caution about what exactly the contemporary view entails. The title of this post is “Speak, Atoms”; and I have so far covered the “Atoms” part; that we are self-moving machines. But the purpose of this contemporary view is not to create a narrative which simply mechanises the person; we are more than the sum of our parts. We are not passive; something does emerge out of the atomic systems that make us up. The person emerges. Atoms can speak!