Spinoza on Teleology, Action, and Explanatory Overdetermination

I argue that Spinoza rejects teleological explanations wholesale. This is because of three of his distinctive theses: his naturalism, according to which all things are governed by the same laws; his account of action, according to which we are active to the extent that we have adequate ideas; and his account of adequate causation, according to which a thing can have only one adequate cause.