Will and understanding

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Often appears with: will, choice, and freedom · the nature of affirmation · suspension of judgment · reason and the intellect · infinite perception in succession · dreams, sleep, and visions · dreams and certainty

Usually: argument (1) · skepticism (1)

Ethics — Part 2 primary

Benedictus de Spinoza · 1675-1676
Part II: ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE MIND > Part. We there drew the conclusion, that God can form the idea of his essence, and of all things which follow necessarily therefrom, solely because he is a thinking thing, and not because he is the object of his own idea. Wherefore the actual being of ideas owns for cause God, in so far as he is a thinking thing. (28/30)

Spinoza responds to objections by arguing that will and feeling are not wider than perception, that “suspension of judgment” is actually inadequate perception, and he illustrates dream certainty by imagining a boy seeing a horse.

bound to put in evidence everything that anyone may dream, I will only set myself to the task of refuting those I have mentioned, and that as briefly as possible. To the first objection I answer, that I admit that the will has a wider scope than the understanding, if by the understanding be meant only clear and distinct ideas; but I deny that the will has a wider scope than the perceptions, and the faculty of form…