 This picture of falsehood as the result of the confusion and mutilation of ideas generated by sense experience, combined with the absence of countervailing ideas, is behind Spinoza’s claim that “falsity” is “nothing positive”, only a relative “privation of knowledge” (E2p35) about the matter at hand. (Falsity so understood must also be distinguished from an “absolute” “ignorance” of something [E2p35d].)