Baruch Spinoza is profound and insightful. He conceives the world from a geometrical standpoint, and his geometric method is demonstrative in imitation of Euclidean geometry. He believes that the same principles that govern the universe also govern the nature of things. In the universe, the conclusions of geometry necessarily follow their axioms. In the same way, the ethical and physical things follow from the nature of things. To this effect, he introduces some definitions from which he deduces a systematic structure whose parts are logically connected. Thus, he developed his theory by deductive reasoning.
His entire theory can be summed up in substance, attributes and modes. These are three parts of the universe and the fundamental structures of his entire thought. Substance is the framework of all reality. Attributes are the primary expressions of the substance, either in a bodily form or a conceptual form. The modes are the particular modifications of the substance.
This paper discusses the five interconnecting features in Spinoza's immanent ontology: substance monism, univocity of attributes, the status of modes, immanent causality and relational ethics. It argues that these interconnecting features comprehensively formulate Spinoza’s concept of substance.
Monday July 6, 2026 9:30pm - 10:25pm AEST ONLINE ONLY
Debunking arguments aim to show that our beliefs do not track the world, by identifying a certain etiology that confers negative epistemic status to our beliefs. For instance, we believe that murder is wrong. Debunker comes in by stating that we have such a belief because we evolved to belief that murder is wrong given that it is maladaptive. Since that is the case, our moral beliefs do not stand for moral facts. In this paper I aim to put forward a novel type of debunking arguments—the one that pertains to identity. Roughly, I claim that we have intuitions about what makes objects different from other objects and that such intuitions can be debunked. The first intuition—the unity intuition—states that we think that objects are singular if they have enough unity. The second intuition—the spatial boundary intuition—states that we think that objects are singular up to the point where they meet unoccupied space. The claim is that, analogously to a moral case, we evolved to have such intuitions which makes them epistemically problematic. If it weren’t for evolution, we wouldn’t think that objects are singular, nor we would have intuitions about what makes them singular. The upshot is that we have a reason to suspend or reduce credence to our beliefs about identity.
Wednesday July 8, 2026 5:00am - 5:55am AEST ONLINE ONLY
