Spinoza, Modification, Sense Experience

According to Spinoza, sense experience consists of representations of bodily modifications, e. g. a visual perception is a representation of the effect of the object of perception on one's visual apparatus. The primary significance for him of such an analysis of sense experience is that a sensory representation is, thus, an inadequate idea, both of the affected body and of the affecting object. So, he does not pursue some of its other implications. For example, since a modification is a variation on a previous condition, the previous condition is entailed in the representation of the modification. Spinoza thereby challenges the long traditions, commonsensical, as well as Platonist and Empiricist, that treats the experience of a secondary quality as a synchronous event, as if each such experience occurred to a tabula rasa. Furthermore, since a modification is a transition from a prior to a subsequent condition, this account entails the fundamental temporality of sense experience, without needing to resort, as Kant does, to a transcendental demonstration of that temporality. Finally, since sense experience is a contrast with a prior condition, the more accurate type of language to describe it would seem to be comparative, rather than positive, modifiers, e. g. 'I am feeling colder' as opposed to 'I am cold', despite the long tradition otherwise.