 The belief that the metaphysically basic instance of thinking is the thinking done by an infallible and omniscient thinker goes some way toward explaining why Spinoza seems unconcerned about the threat of skepticism, so salient for Descartes (see also 3.1). For Spinoza thought in its fundamental instance is necessarily true; it “agrees” (E1ax6) with how things really are. So global skepticism is simply a metaphysical impossibility; all that remains of the skeptical threat is to be on guard against local instances of confusion and error that become possible in the derivative case of finite thought. Moreover, all such confusion and error need some further cause beyond the intrinsic nature of thought. (Indeed, one might worry that Spinoza lets the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction: global skepticism might no longer be possible, but it might now be hard to see how error could be possible, if, in Spinoza’s substance-monistic framework, all ideas are ultimately God’s own [see 3.2.2].)