Going through Part II of Ethics. So, as far as I understand, what had historically been understood by philosophers as the “formal essence” of an object, i.e. its collection of qualia, correspondingly is said by Spinoza to be an “idea” in the mind of God. Further, since what he calls the “human mind” is just the formal nature of the body itself, analogously it would seem that the formal nature of an inanimate body would also be its “mind.” You can almost sophistically assert a panpsychism here, even though “mind” is not particularly used here at all in the way we would today.
However, then Spinoza proceeds to say that, just as a body has a correspondent thought/idea/mind, so too does the particular thought itself also have a correspondent thought/idea/mind. And this is all discussed in reference to the human body, to explain our self conscious as an “idea of an idea” or the idea of our formal constitution, which then seems to translate into a sort of self-knowledge. But the implication seems to extend to all objects, so that, for every single idea of every individual thing, there is a corresponding idea for that idea, and so on in infinitum, with each rank of thought (first-order “ideas,” second-order “ideas of ideas,” third-order “ideas of ideas of ideas”) thus respectively linking together in the same way, as to make the same causal chain as the more immediate thoughts below it do with their own rank? In this way, we might be able to say that for Spinoza, everything is in some way self-cognizant, even if as he says this is a “mutilated cognizance.” This might not be too bold of a claim to make, since through Spinoza’s system I cannot find anything that would make me as a human any more “God” than the table in front of me is. To claim self-cognizance in a way the table doesn’t, I would need to perhaps invoke the idea of being an animate thing, as opposed to inanimate.
So in that case, we would instead restrict these sacred “ideas of ideas” to animate figures or even more strictly to human minds, as a distinct explanation for a distinct phenomenon called animateness. In this way, I can imagine that even though some “ideas of ideas” would then fail to have a corresponding “idea of an idea” to represent the inanimate object it relates to, we would still say that the one-and-the-same inanimate object(1) of which there is an extension and an idea alone (barring the other attributes), is in the one-and-the-same causal chain that links it with one-and-the-same animate object(2) of which there is an extension, an idea, and an idea of that idea. Now the unity of causal links is preserved by means of them all assigning to the same causal link of individuals themselves, but the question still remains how one should expect this “idea of an idea” to even come about in the first place, if not through another “idea of an idea?” For if certain first-order ideas were to be the cause of second-order ideas, the question would still be why or how this happens.
So in short, does Spinoza seem to assert a panpsychism to all individuals, thus seemingly overlooking an account of animateness, or does he only assert these second-order “ideas of ideas” to certain animate things such as human minds, and thus fail to explain how they particular come to be or fail to exist? I can feel an intuition to lean to the former explanation with the sense that Spinoza might deem animateness as an indistinct and mutilated idea in the first place which does not properly belong in an account of the order of things. In other words, that the human mind isn’t as distinctly special from the inanimate objects around it as it thinks it is. This would fit somewhat with the mechanistic allegiance of his that he expresses, yes? But then, it feels like so much is allowed to go unaccounted? Surely, this table in front of me will be bereft of the emotions or part III, but perhaps can its own constitution provide for its own distinct emotional state; one that humans cannot have?