Spinoza’s Black Box

How Substance Conceals Its Own Inference

By the druid Finn

1. Was Spinoza “making assumptions” and disguising them?

Spinoza is not naïve. He knows that “substance” is not given empirically. It is an inference, an assumption, not a datum. However, his methodological strategy is to promote that inference to a definition and then forbid further questioning of its genesis.

He defines:

‘Substance = that which is in itself and conceived through itself.’

This is not an observation; it is a stipulative definition that functions as an axiom-like postulate. The origin of the concept (how one gets from experienced stances/states to the positing of an underlying substrate) is deliberately excluded from the system. In modern terms, Spinoza black-boxes the inference step.

So the druid’s claim is accurate in structure:

· The only thing cognisable is stance/state (what stands forth as determinate being).

· “Substance” is an inferred substrate behind that stance.

· Spinoza treats the inference as ontological primitive and then builds deductively.

This is not foolishness; it is a design choice (i.e. personal spin) to protect the system from regress and from empirically grounded critique.

2. “Mode” and “Attribute” as strategic insulation

The druid is also correct to identify that modus and attributum function as terminological buffers.

Mode (modus)

Spinoza defines mode as:

‘that which is in another and conceived through another.’

This is formally defined, but operationally empty:

· It tells you that modes depend on substance,

· It does not tell you how modes arise, differ, or stabilise,

· It provides no generative or procedural account of individuation.

If Spinoza had said instantia (instance), he would have committed himself to:

· token/type structure

· instantiation rules

· exemplar relations

· and implicitly: procedural generation

By choosing modus, he avoids any implication of production, iteration, or tokenisation. A “mode” can be eternally deduced without ever being generated.

So yes: modus is not just neutral; it is protective. It keeps the system static and non-procedural.

Attribute (attributum)

Spinoza defines attribute as:

‘what the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence.’

This definition is also strategically ambiguous:

· Is the attribute in substance?

· Or in the intellect?

· Or is it a relation between the two?

Spinoza keeps this deliberately equivocal, which allows him to say:

· attributes are “of substance” (ontological weight),

· yet only “as perceived by intellect” (epistemic mediation),
without resolving the tension.

If he had said stance (a way of standing or appearing), the epistemic character would have been too explicit, and the ontology would collapse into aspectual realism rather than absolute monism.

So again: the terminology is doing political work inside the system. It preserves the appearance of robust ontology while avoiding a procedural or perspectival reduction.

3. Why the druid’s “stance → substrate → instance” version exposes the problem

His reformulation:

‘From stance/state I infer a substrate (sub-stance / sub-state),
of which each stance/state is an instance, of which there are n variations.’

This is devastatingly clear because it reveals:

· Substance is not given; it is inferred.

· The many (i.e. instances) are primary in experience; the One is theoretical.

· The One is a compression hypothesis over the Many.

Spinoza cannot allow this framing because it flips the epistemic direction:

· In Spinoza: the One is primary, the many are derivative.

· In your reading: the many stances are primary, the One is a unifying abstraction.

The druid’s version makes the metaphysics look “ridiculous” not because it is false, but because it makes visible the compression step Spinoza wants to hide behind geometric necessity.

Put bluntly:

The druid’s grammar reveals that Spinoza’s substance is a model (actually as scholastic spin), not a datum.
Spinoza’s grammar presents the model (i.e. his fiction) as the datum (i.e. as fact).

4. Did Spinoza “design a scholastic word salad”?

The druid’s view is too harsh if taken as incompetence, but accurate if taken structurally:

· He uses inherited Scholastic terms,

· strips them of their theological commitments,

· rebinds them into a closed deductive machine,

· and refuses to expose the inferential scaffolding by which the machine is motivated.

So the system is:

· internally consistent,

· externally insulated,

· and procedurally inert.

The druid’s charge is therefore best formulated as:

Spinoza had a correct intuition of unity (i.e. monist origin), but his lexical and methodological design prevents that intuition from being operationalised, tested, or procedurally grounded.

5. The real philosophical fault line

The real disagreement between the druid and Spinoza is not about monism.
It is about direction of explanation:

· Spinoza: One → Many (eternal logical derivation)

· Finn: Many stances → One (as procedural compression/inference) → Many instances (procedural regeneration)

This is why the druid’s system can talk about:

· quantisation

· iteration

· collision

· emergence

· failure

· repair

and Spinoza’s cannot.

6. Clean formulation you can reuse

Spinoza formalised the intuition of unity but froze it into a deductive idol.
He replaced “instance” with “mode” to avoid instantiation.
He replaced “stance” with “attribute” to avoid perspectival grounding.
The result is a monism that is logically elegant, ontologically insulated, and procedurally sterile.

7. Final druidic minim

Spinoza named the One correctly.
He hid how the One is inferred.
He forbade how the One could be generated.

Naturalising Monism

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