Although the question of whether Spinoza was a necessitarian is the predominant topic of discussion in the recent secondary literature on Spinoza's modal views, Spinoza also sketches interesting accounts of the nature of modality (3) and the ground of modality (4) that shed fresh light on his modal commitments.
The first set of issues concerns the divine ground of modality and the second concerns the grounding relation that modality bears to its ground (for some recent discussions, see Chignell 2012 and Newlands 2013).
A final underexplored topic in Spinoza's modal metaphysics concerns what we might call the ground of modality.
This view is to be contrasted with asymmetric essentialism, which holds that while essence is the ground of modality, it is not the epistemic pathway.
In other words, concrete concepts (e.g., car, shoe) evoke a rapid representation grounded in modality-specific features (visual, tactile, etc).
Spinoza's account of the grounds of modality also presents an interesting challenge to anyone attracted to the idea that God grounds possibilities and possibilia, but who wants to deny that God directly exemplifies every possibility.
Although their views differ at crucial points in the epistemic landscape, the program they share maintains the following: Metaphysical Grounding: The essential properties or essences of entities are the metaphysical ground of metaphysical modality.
Embodied or grounded cognition posits that cognition is "grounded" within the sensory modalities, bodily states, and actions and so engages perceptual and action simulations (Barsalou, 2008, 2010).
The eye and especially the retina have become the 'testing ground' for novel therapeutic modalities for neurodegenerative diseases by virtue of their accessibility, small size, and the ability to apply multiple techniques to assess structural and functional integrity.
It is, after all, the existence of such correlations between different sense modalities which grounds an objective conception of the world (phenomena accessible only by one sense are more likely to be thought of as subjective in origin).
