To avoid error and confusion, we must sharply distinguish ideas (conceptions of thought) from images and from words; many controversies arise from failure to explain or interpret meanings rightly.
By Baruch Spinoza, from Ethics
Key Arguments
- He warns readers to distinguish between an idea, the images of things we imagine, and the words by which we signify things.
- He emphasizes that ideas are not retinal or brain images but conceptions of thought.
- He notes that many controversies stem from misapplication of names and misunderstanding of others’ meanings.
Source Quotes
I say "some," for they will be better appreciated from what we shall set forth in the fifth part. I begin, then, with the first point, and warn my readers to make an accurate distinction between an idea, or conception of the mind, and the images of things which we imagine. It is further necessary that they should distinguish between idea and words, whereby we signify things. These three—namely, images, words, and ideas—are by many persons either entirely confused
Def. iii., lest the idea of pictures should suggest itself. For by ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought. PROP.
If this were not so, we should not believe them to be in error, any more than I thought that a man was in error, whom I lately heard exclaiming that his entrance hall had flown into a neighbour's hen, for his meaning seemed to me sufficiently clear. Very many controversies have arisen from the fact, that men do not rightly explain their meaning, or do not rightly interpret the meaning of others. For, as a matter of fact, as they flatly contradict themselves, they assume now one side, now another, of the argument, so as to oppose the opinions, which they consider mistaken and absurd in their opponents.
Key Concepts
- I begin, then, with the first point, and warn my readers to make an accurate distinction between an idea, or conception of the mind, and the images of things which we imagine. It is further necessary that they should distinguish between idea and words, whereby we signify things.
- For by ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought.
- Very many controversies have arisen from the fact, that men do not rightly explain their meaning, or do not rightly interpret the meaning of others.
Context
Ethics II, Note after Prop. XLIX (lines 1465–1596); methodological caution about ideas, images, and words