How does Spinoza attempt to solve the problems inherent in Descartes system? What are some of the difficult?

Answer 1

Descartes was a mind/matter dualist, and the central difficulty was explaining how mind and matter interact. If mind is not material, then how can it affect matter? Spinoza was a mind/matter monist. For him, mind and matter were different attributes of the same thing which is essentially neither mental nor physical, but is the source of both. This is one way of avoiding Descartes' problem of mind/matter interaction. By the way, this neutral stuff that is the source of both mind and matter is what Spinoza called "God" although it was not the traditional Christian type of God – something more like "the totality of Being" or "the universe as a whole."