Will and Immaterial Automaton

While for many doctrines, rational principles are normative, for Spinoza, they are descriptive, i. e. for him, any transgression of logical laws is caused not by whim, but by the overpowering of a mind by external influences, experienced as an inadequate idea. Occasionally, Spinoza characterizes a perfectly rational being as an "immaterial automaton". However, the heuristic value of that phrase, with its emphasis on 'automaton', obscures the seemingly unresolved problems that the qualifier 'immaterial' poses for Spinoza's system. For, on the premise that mental sequences have a corporeal correlate, those immaterial processes must have a physiological correlate, yet Spinoza never seems to explain what the body is doing while the mind is performing so rationally. A more contemporary thesis--that the correlate processes are functions of the brain--seems unacceptable to Spinoza, since in his system the correlate of Mind is Body, whereas the brain is only a part of the body. Regardless, that thesis exposes a further entailed difficulty for Spinoza, namely that he conceives Mind both as representing corporeal modifications, and as initiating them. Here, that distinction is an expression of principle, i. e. that Mind functions as both Comprehension, and as Will, which are complementary components of personal experience, but neither is reducible to the other.