Will equals understanding

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Often appears with: will, choice, and freedom · volitions are ideas · reason and the intellect · no absolute faculties · idea entails content · affirmation and negation

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. (25/30)

Spinoza argues that the mind has no absolute faculties of understanding or willing beyond particular ideas and volitions, that will equals understanding, and that will and affirmation/negation reduce to what ideas entail.

positive or negative volition; but (by I. xxviii.) it must be determined by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another, &c. Q.E.D. *****Note--In the same way it is proved, that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, &c. Whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract and general …