Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Will, Intuitive Inference, Instantiation

For Spinoza, both Reason and Intuition entail Inference, but, apparently, two different kinds of Inference. For, Reason concerns, in his system, the knowledge of 'common notions', and, hence, not of individuals, so, rational inference is Aristotelian, i. e. is fundamentally a transition from 'all' to 'some'. In contrast, his Intuition is knowledge of individuals qua instances of God, and, hence, a transition from 'all' to 'one', so intuitive inference is Instantiation. In Set Theoretical terms, rational inference is a set-subset relation, while intuitive inference is a set-element one. Now, as has been previously discussed, adequate knowledge of Inference entails the capacity to execute an inference. Hence, intuitive inference entails Will, the personal principle of Diversification, because Instantiation entails Diversification. More generally, quantification in contemporary Logic, i. e. with its 'existential quantifier', is, in Spinozistic terms, intuitive, rather than rational, so perhaps his theory of Intuition constitutes a turning point in the history of Logical Theory.

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