Dualism, Materialism, and Religion as a Language

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the language used by the average western religious person to describe material reality. Typically, if you're around (say) a Christian, and you tell them you are a naturalist, they respond with something like "Wait, so you believe nature is all there is?", or "That sounds pretty depressing, that we're just matter in motion", or, most poignantly, "So we're just atoms in the void?". As I thought about such responses, I began to realize just how important the sort of language we use is in describing a world-view. What follows is a series of unorganized, sometimes disconnected thoughts on this subject, but I hope it will provide a general sketch of an a idea that will serve as an impetus for further thought and research on this topic.

Dualism

As many have pointed out, the West in its thinking, whether consciously or unconsciously, has inherited a generally dualistic picture of the world. The influences on this are most likely multifarious, but one has always been singled out: Plato. The West in a way is built upon two great traditions: Christianity and Greek Thought. Plato, generally thought to be the most important Greek thinker in history, as well as having influenced Christian thought from the very beginning, stands as a vital source for both of these traditions. Plato posited a world of eternal Forms, a world of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in contrast to the fleeting shadowlands of the sensible world (though the thrust of this idea was not wholly unique to Plato, it had its roots in such 5th century schools as the Eleatics and Pythagoreans). It was only the Forms, Plato said, that could be known. The truly virtuous life was thus constituted by contemplation of these eternal Ideas, and Plato's Socrates gloried at the prospect of returning to this Ideal Realm as he spoke to his students before his execution.

How does all this relate to the sort of language used to describe a world-view? It relates because, I believe, the West has inherited along with Plato's conceptual scheme a specific way of talking about the world. A way of talking that degrades "crude matter", and glorifies the "spiritual world". Of course, this is not meant to be an across-the-board description of contemporary western thought. It is meant to specifically describe the language still used in the more religious elements of our society.

Now, the first thing I want to touch on is the use of certain words meant to draw out particular emotions and senses in the hearer (what speech-act theorists call the "perlocutionary force" of a statement). Consider the statement "So we're just matter in motion?". The term "just" here functions, albeit subtly, to load the statement with a value-judgement. Why is it used? Upon examination, it can be seen that the word "just" is used to convey a sense of meaninglessness, lowliness, and unimportance. The fact that statements such as these are used with such force, however, is seldom questioned or examined. I put the question to you: Instead of "just matter", why not "glorious, wondrous, mysterious matter"? The point here is that the language used to describe material reality, from the traditional western-religious perspective, is intensely value-laden from the outset. Such language needs to be justified before discussions over materialism versus immaterialism can begin to make sense or be fruitful.

So how might what I'll now just refer to as the "immaterialist" justify such language? Presumably, the reason it's used is to convey the fact that matter is just the sort of things that is meaningless, lowly, and unimportant (at least unto itself). Spirit, by contrast, just is the sort of thing that can be meaningful, glorious, and important unto itself. But why is this assumed? I think it's because throughout most of western history, for various reasons, it was assumed that brute matter just wasn't the sort of thing capable of functioning to produce the "higher" elements of human experience (love, beauty, glory, moral sense, etc.). It seemed that those things, if they were to have any reality at all, must be grounded in some other realm (in the soul, the realm of the forms, or "heaven"). And this leads to my first conclusion: There is nothing intrinsic to either matter, or spirit, qua substance that makes it more or less meaningful. Rather, it is what each substance is thought to be capable of producing that makes the difference. Thus, we see the question is not so much about matter versus spirit per se, but rather it is a question about function, and which substance can function in such a way as to produce such things as meaning, morality, or love.

Materialism

Because of the aforementioned assumptions concerning the apparent meaninglessness and etc. of matter, materialism is typically thought to be a sort of depressing world-view, full of despair and pointlessness. This is only partially true, however. Another reason for the apparent despair associated with a materialistic world-view has less to do with matter itself, and has more to do with the loss of God. When you cease to believe that an all-good God is looking out for you and has eternity waiting for you on the other side, it is understandably a despair-inducing situation. So I'm not claiming that the association of materialism with a certain level of despair is completely unwarranted, but I am claiming that any despair resulting from the world-view is only relative to the loss of a benevolent care-taker, rather than having to do with matter itself. The emphasis, however, does tend to be on the unimportance of the material world itself, hence why a Christian will typically assign the property of "being more hopeful" to other spirit-adhering religions even if they lack the idea of an all-good God (such as certain forms of Buddhism).

Let's turn again, then, to the question of function. If the issue really, in part, pertains to what sort of substance could function to produce "higher things", then I think the assumption that only spirit can has been taking on water for several centuries. Ever since the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, both philosophy and science have made great strides in explaining just how such things as morality, beauty, love, and meaning can be firmly grounded in the physical world. Put another way, we have for the most part discovered that material reality is capable of functioning to produce what we call "meaning", "morality", and all the rest. The vast majority of ethicists now see how morality can exist without God (including many Christians, such as Oxford's Richard Swinburne). Similarly, we have seen how such things as consciousness, love, complex ideas like "glory" and etc., can all be grounded in, if not made to be identical with, physical reality. If this is true, and I think it is (not that the issue's settled, but that we've made great strides), then the assumption that only the spirit-world could "matter" (no pun intended) appears bankrupt at worst, and in need of serious questioning at best. Language such as "just matter" and "just atoms" needs to be rigorously analyzed and turned against the users of such phrases. We can use our own value-laden language to say "What, do you mean the glorious matter that produces all the exuberant and beautiful species of Earth? That 'crude' matter out of which the Roman Colosseum was constructed? The 'atoms in the void' that got us to the moon in the spirit of exploration?".

The question of meaning, however, appears more complex. When people use the term "meaningless" to describe the universe, it's hard to see exactly what they mean (again, no pun intended). In what sense is a universe without a God less meaningful than a universe with one? Simple answers to the question don't seem as obvious when looked at closely. For example, one quick response might be "Because if God exists, then he has a plan for the universe". That may be true, but in a way it begs the question. Why should God's plan for the universe constitute it's "meaning"? Is meaning really just identical to a meta-narrative? Is it not possible that there be a meaningless meta-narrative? As a brief thought-experiment, assume that my consciousness has now become disembodied. Further, let's assume that I have attained a perfect knowledge of the universe, that I have attained perfect-power, and that I have nothing but good intentions for the world. Now consider: Does whatever I conceive in my mind as the universe's "goal", it's "purpose", become it's objective meaning? The question is important because in this thought-experiment I have become nearly identical with God. So then, why is it that God's purpose constitutes the universe's meaning and not mine? Someone may say, reasonably, that it's because God created the universe that he has the sole right to determine it's true meaning. That may be true as far as it goes, but it only leaves us with deeper questions: What is it about an act of creation that makes my intention for that entity it's objective meaning? After-all, human artifacts are constantly used for purposes other than those for which they were created, are those not legitimate "meanings", or uses, for the objects? These are not easy questions, and they take us to the most profound question in all of philosophy: What is meaning?

Religion as a Language

What follows, I think, from the preceding discussion is that part of religion's importance and vitality is as a language for talking about the world. Immaterialists can refer, in "high language", to the spiritual realm (or the spirit-imbued universe) as "glorious, wondrous, mysterious". I, with equal right and validity, can refer to a Godless universe as "glorious, wondrous, mysterious". Part of what gives our world meaning is the way in which we choose to talk about it, and hence the way in which we choose to think about it. Using words like love, wonder, and majesty more fully capture, in a beautiful way, some of the very complex aspects of human experience. Religion is vital because it has it's own narrative with it's own language to tell the shared story of the reality of homo homo sapiens, somewhere on a rock lost in the universe. It has its own rituals and rites, which themselves are a kind of language, in order to more fully tell that story. I myself am not religious, but to lose religion would not be to lose some "archaic mythology", but to lose part of what it means to be human: Telling stories in a language all our own, conceiving of things in a space that transcends our historical context, and giving our lives a direction that it may lack without such narratives. All of these issues require further thought, further analysis and exploration, and I hope what I have said serves to stimulate some of that.

Some Thoughts on Prayer and Falsifiability

Lately, for various reasons, I've been thinking about the idea of prayer. As a Christian-turned-agnostic, prayer is of particular interest to me because part of what I'd usually consider the "evidence" for my former beliefs are instances of apparent prayer-answering. The more I've thought about this issue, however, the more I've come to seriously doubt whether prayer could ever serve to confirm/disconfirm religious belief.

My primary reason for thinking this is that prayer is unfalsifiable in a very strong sense. Religious believers all the time talk of this or that prayer being answered, but they seldom mention all the countless prayers made that have gone unanswered. The problem is an epistemic one: How could one know, in practice, the difference between an answered prayer and a happy coincidence? There are as many "unanswered" prayers as there are "answered" prayers. Religious believers will commonly try and explain away all the unanswered prayers by saying "well, God chose not to act in this instance, but he is still listening". That may be true as far as it goes, but the point is (again) an epistemic one: How could know when a prayer is answered and when some event in the world just happened to coincidie with what you prayed for?

Now, my claim is not that prayer is somehow an inherently irrational idea. It makes perfect sense within a Judeo-Christian theistic framework. My claim is strictly evidential: That instances of prayer-answering could never serve as confirmation or disconfirmation for specific or general religious claims. As an agnostic looking at various world-views from a largely neutral (if there is such a thing) perspective, no one could ever say to me "you should consider answered prayer in considering religious claims" as if it could confirm theism. The fact is that the distribution of observations meant to show "answered" and "unanswered" prayer would look exactly the same if God didn't exist. It is in this sense that the hypothesis "prayer is genuine interaction with God" or "Prayer works" appears to be, at least prima facie, unfalsifiable. And it is, all else being equal, ad hoc.

But, nonetheless, I again want to emphasize that ad hoc explanations are only explanatorily "unvirtuous" given certain epistemic backgrounds. So, to take a famous example from Kuhn, the discovery of Neptune in 1781 represented an had hoc explanation (the postulation of an extra planet in order to account for Uranus's irregularities). Yet, it was not explanatorily unvirtuous, because Newtonian theories of gravity had such great explanatory power across the board, and that was the paradigm Herschel was working within. Similarly, if there is evidence that generally supports Judeo-Christian theism, then the hypothesis of prayer finds itself ad hoc, but not in any irrational sense.

More Camus

Here's another great one: "Therefore the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe." -Albert Camus, The Rebel, pg. 22

Camus on the Absurd

"The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe." -Albert Camus, The Rebel, pg. 6

Voltaire

Here's a great little passage from Voltaire's Candide:

"Master Pangloss taught the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology. He could prove to admiration that there is no effect without a cause; and, that in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was the most magnificent of all castles, and My Lady the best of all possible baronesses.

'It is demonstrable,' said he, 'that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best.' "

Probabilistic Arguments in Philosophy

So here's a sort of trivial, but I think interesting, observation about probabilistic arguments in philosophy:

There are two criterion for the soundness of a deductive argument: That its conclusion follow from its premises, and that its premises be true. The former is self-explanatory, but the latter is interesting. Typically, what a philosopher means by the truth of the premises of an argument is really just that the premise(s) be more likely than their negation. In essence, then, the soundness of a deductive argument is partially judged by a sort of loose probability, e.g. the probability of the given premises being true relative to their negations. But then, is there really a significant difference between, say, the following two arguments:

A1.

(1) If the sun has risen every day until now, it will rise tomorrow.
(2) The sun has risen every day until now.
(3) Therefore, the sun will rise tomorrow.

A2.

(1) If the sun has risen ever day until now, it will probably rise tomorrow.
(2) The sun has risen every day until now.
(3) Therefore, the sun will probably rise tomorrow.

The only difference between (A1) and (A2), it seems to me, is the following: In (A1) the question of the probability of the given premises being true is a meta-argumentative issue (you judge whether or not the premises are true apart from the argument itself). In (A2), the question of the probability of the premises is built into the argument itself. When you ask of premise 1 of (A1), "does the consequent in the conditional follow from its antecedent?" you're asking for a judgment that can only be assessed a posteriori, probabilistically. Premise 1 of (A2) just assumes the a posteriori work has already been done. So really, the difference between the two is more in form than in kind.

Of course, this isn't true of all deductive/inductive arguments. In some arguments with conditionals and/or biconditionals, the consequent of the conditional necessarily follows from its antecedent in an analytic way, as in "If one is a bachelor, then one is unmarried". But the point is this: Philosophers tend to use arguments they would think of as deductive just because of their structure, but which would need a posteriori evidence to confirm or disconfirm the truth of their premises. But the fact is that many of these arguments are easily transformed into inductive arguments.

Away

The years have faded since then,
like clouds engulfing the moon.
Over beach-side neighborhoods
adorned with luminous youth,
we held each other in a simple way;
In a way lacking the complexities of age,
reason, and familiarity.

Since then, we've been apart.
I've been here, you've been there,
and we're now distanced by light-years.
Though an electronic signal
would suffice to reconnect,
neither of us make a move.
Like the opening play in a game of chess,
this needs to be well-calculated,
well thought-out,
and worthy of the opponent.
But, nothing short of the infinite
would be worthy of such a reunion.

I still carry you with me.
Like a bag full of bones,
I've tried to distribute you,
hide you away, hide us away,
but the incision remains there,
bleeding out slowly at every turn.

But maybe it's not you,
maybe it's what you embodied,
what you idealized.
How could it be you?
How could what I see now
be at all continuous with who you were?
How could "who you were" have ever been real?
But it was you.
It was you in all your glory, beauty,
contempt, change, betrayal,
loyalty, joy, and silence.
It's you that I lost.
The you of my dreams, the you
lodged deep within by subconscious.
And it's time to realize a simple fact
always known, but painfully ignored.

It was me.
I killed us.
I made you who you became,
I made you leave me,
I made you cut yourself off
like I've cut myself off.
I took out your eyes,
the eyes that saw what we once did,
looking together out of your window,
seeing stars as symbols of something.
Something bigger, something eternal.
Something more than what passes.
Something more than what fades.
That will never again be reflected in your eyes,
and it will never again be reflected in mine.

But it was me.
And it's over.
And this thought,
these words,
are a message in a bottle
lost at sea.

Free Form #2

Definitions are indefinite.
We are what we are when we cease paying attention
To who we could become.
Being is a process,
Ever dynamic, never static;
The moment you look within
You defeat the purpose of it all.
The purpose of finding yourself,
Of coming into your own,
Of being the picture in your head.
I'll never be that portrait.
I'll never have such finely demarcated borders.
I'll be as we all are;
An infinite abyss;
Only actualized in self-forgetfullness.
We are not made.
We are discovered.

An Issue with Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument

William Lane Craig's kalam version of the cosmological argument runs as follows:

(1) Everything which begins to exist has a cause.
(2) The universe began to exist.
(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Using Big Bang cosmology, Craig proceeds to unpack why the cause referred to in (3) must be a Being similar to the God of classical theism. Also, because of the paradox of the cosmological singularity representing the beginning of time itself, Craig defends the following idea: That although time begins to exist at t-1, it nonetheless remains true that the universe is past-finite, and so requires a cause to begin. To retain the idea that God is timeless, Craig claims that the moment God chooses to create is simultaneous with the moment of time's creation. This is an ingenius explanation, and it sufficiently deals with the cause-and-effect issues surrounding such an argument. But I can't help but feel there's a deeper problem with the argument, and it's this: How could a timeless Being become temporal? The notion seems extremely counterintuitive, if not down-right contradictory.

If a Being is timeless, it seems to me it would have to be essentially so. Yet Craig's argument implies that God is only contingently timeless. How can this be? It seems obvious that timelessness entails changelessness, because change always entails change at a time. It won't do to merely appeal to the fact that t-1 also represents the moment of God's choice to create, because the issue still remains: How can a timeless Being become temporal without entering time at a time, regardless of whether he created that time. The process of becoming, what the scholastics called being in fieri, logically depends on time already existing. Yet God's process of becoming is somewhere between time and not-time, which seems absurd. I'm not sure how to reconcile this.

Free Form #1

The morning's relentless shine
creates a nuanced, rough and ready picture of the world
Of a planet truly at peace, where peace wanes
And war, my inner war, reigns.
Trying to find recollection in all this revision
is a permeating, but disheartening theme.
Like it was all a dream.
Like it's all a dream.

"But anyway,"
Yeah, that's what we say
When push comes to shove
And we have to open up our painful places.
Those places no one wants to hear about
But wants everybody to hear.
Trading sight for sound, touch for taste
The coldest of stares, for that warm embrace.
A ubiquitous distribution of pain
Built into Nature itself.

Sound.
The most piercing sound is when no one's around
And that high pitched dog-whistle tells
Of your aloneness.
Of our aloneness.
Of the world's aloneness.
But it's the morning
And I have enough distraction to make it through the day.

Some Thoughts on Free-Will

In my opinion, the problem of free-will is the single most difficult problem in philosophy. No matter what "theory" of human volition you turn to, whether determinism, compatibalism, or libertarianism, there seem to be insurmountable issues. Determinism seems to directly contradict our day to day experience of freely acting, and our language about moral culpability. Compatibalism seems to lead straight back to determinism, because acting based on reasons is to be determined by those reasons, and if not, those reasons themselves are at least determined by our experiences and etc. Libertarianism doesn't seem any better for, as several philosophers (most notably van Inwagen) have pointed out, it appears to make human action entirely random, like a game of luck.

So how is progress ever going to be made? Why are there no viable theories of free-will? I think part of the issue, if not the primary issue, is one that has to do with language. It seems to me that before the metaphysical debate has even gotten of the ground, we have failed to understand the nature of volition-talk. What do humans mean when they use terms like "choice", "free-will", "personal decision" and the like? I think that, while we take ourselves to be using such terms in a normative, coextensive way, we in fact use them in contexts that differ significantly (although they do bear a sort of Wittgensteinian family resemblance to one another, hence our feeling at liberty to use the same terms across the board).

So, for example, one of the situations in which we use volition-talk are situations that pertain to moral responsibility, or culpability. We say "It was his choice to fire the gun, no one made him do it!". In these sorts of contexts, our main point seems to be that a given person acted based on his or her own reasons, as opposed to being coerced or forced by another person. In other contexts, however, we use the same talk in a similar, but significantly different way. Say, for instance, you're driving through a fast food restaurant. You have several options on the menu before you. In the act of choosing what you want, you assume you have various, equally viable possible choices before you. Hence, you deliberate, knowing you could choose any one of the items on the menu. In this context, we find it natural to ascribe to the orderer a process of free-will. Why? Because the orderer really could've chosen among several alternate possibilities. Note, however, that upon philosophical analyses these two uses are inconsistent. For, if you act based on reasons, then you are determined by those reasons, and hence have no alternate possibilities to choose from. And if you did have alternate possibilities, then it would seem a choice between them would have to be random, since reason-determination is determination nonetheless (whether directly or, as I said, because you forming the reasons you have is out of your control).

The situation, then, seems to be the following: We use talk of free-will in situations that are similar, but upon philosophical analyses, the usages give rise to inconsistent ideas about what we mean by freedom of the will. But if free-will cannot be given a coherent, holistic definition, how can we ever make philosophical progress? I think the lesson here is that we have one of two options: (1) We could view the inconsistencies as paradoxes, not contradictions, and be content to say that free-will is ultimately a mystery; that is, that it can somehow be true both that our actions are determined by reasons, and that our actions could have been different after a given choice is made. Or, (2) we could take the inconsistencies to be a decisive blow against the idea of free-will so-construed. And we could then choose to move forward by providing a satisfactory account of what we mean by free-will, reducing the debate to one of metalinguistics. How this all would play out, I'm not sure. But I, for one, find the latter option the most attractive.

How then will we explain the fact that we use such talk in contexts and ways that are implicitly inconsistent? I think that we use the same terms because such contexts all resemble one another in the following way: They all have to do with personal, human action. And because such terms and ways of thinking have played the same functional role, and have served us equally well, throughout the evolution of human society, we have assumed we mean one holistic thing by them. But, as we have seen, there is no way to make consistent all the uses and concepts grouped under the one heading of "free-will".

The Virtues of Functionalism

As I see it, functionalism about the mind (the view that all mental states can be defined purely in terms of a relation between sensory inputs and behavioral outputs), has three primary benefits. That is, there are three primary reasons a contemporary philosopher, with a physicalist bent and a strong respect of science, may want to accept it. They are the following:

(1) Functionalism, unlike the identity-theory of mind, preserves multiple realizability. What this means is that different neural structures could, in principle, realize one and the same type of mental state. This is important because it seems, for example, implausible that lower animals which seem to be conscious, but lack our particular neural structure, could not realize a mental state like pain. But if functionalism is true, all that's needed to preserve the same type of mental state is to have the same type of sensory inputs and behavioral outputs.

(2) Functionalism is compatible with a strong supervenience physicalism. The reason for this is that, if mental states are defined purely in terms of a relation between sensory inputs and behavioral outputs, then mental states will always and only supervene on those types of facts, which are (obviously) purely physical. So, functionalism is well-grounded in the physical world, and indeed dependent upon it.

(3) Functionalism makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Unlike dualism, forms of epiphenomenalism, and even simple property-dualism, functionalism has a plausible evolutionary story. If mental states really do function as a means of sensory inputs eventually having specific behavioral outputs, then its obvious why and how they could have evolved: Evolution selects for behavior, and if some type of mental state provided for the necessary means to achieve that survival-beneficient behavior, it would be selected for and, well, here we are today.

Perception, Illusion, and Naive Realism

Consider the image to the right. First, picture it as a duck. Now, as a rabbit. This image, made famous by the 19th century psychologist Joseph Jastrow, was invented to make a point about perception: That what we percieve is not only due to sensuous experience, but it is also due, in part, to our own mental activity. This point about psychology is however not as interesting as the philosophical implications that follow from it. E.g., that naive realism is false, and indirect realism (construed essentially as Kant stated it) is true. Let's take a look at how this line of thinking works.

Naive realism is the view that we percieve objects directly, where direct perception is taken to mean that there is no mediating representation, cognitive interpretation, or what-have-you that cuts us off from the thing-in-itself. What we percieve, for the naive realist, is essentially what would be there even if no one were there to percieve it (e.g., the thing-in-itself). In contrast, the claim of the indirect realist is that we always and only percieve a representation of a thing ("representation" being construed in various ways). That is, the object of our perception only is what it is, at least in part, because of our cognitive contribution to it, whether by way of a conceptual scheme, the fact that we only percieve Lockean secondary properties, or whatever.

So how does our beloved duck-rabbit bear on this debate? It's quite simple really: Consider carefully the nature of the optical illusion you just experienced. The raw sense data involved in the perception are identical both in the case of seeing the rabbit in the image (call this an "A-type" experience), and seeing the duck in the image (call this a "B-type" experience). Yet, the experiences (differentiating experiences by their differing qualia) are emphatically not identical. What follows is that, at least in this case, part of what constitutes a given experience as either A-type or B-type is your mode of cognition at that particular moment, not merely the object affecting the senses. If we percieved things directly, then the object itself would be sufficient to determine the type of experience we were having, yet it seems obvious that this isn't the case. Thus, we cognitively contribute to the world in such a way that we can have identical sensory-inputs, yet totally different mental-state outputs. It follows that direct, or naive, realism is false. Put in terms of an argument, this thought is as follows:

(1)An experience is individuated by either (a) the raw sense data involved, or (b) the conjunction of the raw sense data and the cognition involved.
(2) The experience of the duck-rabbit as either a rabbit, or a duck, cannot be individuated merely by the sense data involved.
(3) Therefore, the experience of the duck-rabbit as either a rabbit, or a duck, is individuated by the conjunction of raw sense data and our cognition.

Now here's a further question: What exactly is the nature of the cognition involved in this particular instance? I think the answer is that it is intentionality that is our cognitive contribution. What I mean to say is that, whenever we have an experience, the experience is never a bare experience, but it is always of something. The "of something" is key because it shows that all experience has intentionality embedded in it. We always take ourselves to be having an experience of a particular sort of object, but the idea that it is a particular sort of object shows that we take our experiences to have content. Take the following example: In the 1st century A.D., the wrist was considered to be a part of the hand. Nowadays, we view it as distinct (for us, the hand ends at the wrist). Now take a person from the 1st century, and the 21st century, and show them a picture of a hand and a wrist. The former will have the experience of seeing a hand, the latter will have a different experience, e.g. that of seeing a hand and a wrist. Two experience-types, one raw sense data. And what differentiates the two types? What they take their experience of the picture to be of, that is, the content of the experience provided by (you guessed it) our own cognition.

(As a sort of side-note, another interesting thing about the duck-rabbit experiment is this: A group of psychologists showed the picture to people on Easter Sunday, the vast majority of which percieved the picture as being of a rabbit, not a duck. Conversely, when participants were shown the picture during other parts of the year, such as October, most of them saw it as a duck. This shows that the type of experience we end up having is not only a function of our own cognition, but the context in which we find ourself doing the percieving.)

There's an interesting analogue here, I think, with Kuhn's idea of the so-called "theory-ladenness of observation" in science. Here we have what you might call the concept-ladenness of perception. As Kant said, we can only percieve that which we're able to cognize, and not vice versa. Of course, there are a number of sticky issues that make this whole debate not so simple, but I think this example is a good starting point for grasping the general idea of cognitive representation.

The Laws of Logic: Contingent or Necessary?

One of the debates in philosophical logic is whether the laws of logic hold contingently or necessarily. One of the possible motivations for thinking that they hold contingently is that they bear some sort of analogue to physical laws. Whereas physical laws express regularities in nature, logical laws might express regularities in human language, or our cognitive structure. So, just as the regularities we see in nature are generalized into universal laws by induction, so regularities in human reasoning are generalized into universal laws.

To me, though, this is a false picture. There are several irremediable issues, as I see it, with the contingent view of logical laws. I think that the necessity view of logical laws, properly expressed, more fully captures their nature. But, before addressing what my own view is, I want to take a look at what the specific issues are in regard to the contingent view (hereafter simply CV).

The first issue is that CV seems to be self-refuting in a way. The reason is that, whenever you try to establish a proposition, you assume that various logical laws hold necessarily. Consider the following argument:

(1) If Reason X, then CV.
(2) Reason X.
(3) Therefore, CV.

Most arguments seeking to establish the truth of CV would take that form or something like it (where "Reason X" might be the contingency of our conceptual scheme, quantum weirdness, or whatever). But, if CV is true, then any such argument (which will assume such laws as implication, non-contradiction, transitivity, and the like) will hold contingently. That is, it will be a contingent truth that the laws of logic hold contingently, which seems counter-intuitive if not outright self-refuting. Further, if the laws of logic are contingent contingently, then they could have been necessary de dicto, but aren't. Which leads to the further, extremely counter-intuitive conclusion that the S5 axiom of modal logic is false (that is, If possibly necessarily P, then necessarily P). So we're already in a muck of circularity, contradiction, and outright confusion.

The next issue with CV is with the inability to concieve of, or describe, a world in which our logical laws did not hold. Try and concieve of a world in which something both can be an A, and not an A, in the same way at the same time. It seems literally impossible. But I don't think the impossibility arises from our lack of ability to picture it (due to our limited experience or whatever), but it rather arises from the fact that such a statement is literally meaningless. The statement "Something is both an A and not an A" doesn't describe any state of affairs, and thus is about nothing. But if we can't even speak meaningfully about such a possible world, why should we take the thesis of CV seriously?

This leads us to my view. I think the correct view of the laws of logic is that (a) they are necessary, and (b) analytically necessary. What exactly I mean by analytically necessary I'll address in a moment, but I first want to look at the aforementioned apparent analogue between physical and logical laws.

I think the analogue is false for the following reason: When we observe regularities in nature, and proceed to generalize them into laws, we do so because of inductive evidence along with the assumption of the uniformity of nature. But, there's nothing inherent in the evidence itself that suggests the regularity just is or implies the physical law (as Hume pointed out, correctly, in his discussion of constant conjunction). This differs from logical laws in that it doesn't seem they are generalizations of observation, but rather generalizations of meaning. To see this, consider the following comparison between the law of gravity and the law of transitivity:

When we continually observe that things fall, objects are attracted to eachother, and the like, we take the inductive leap and say "This is a physical law, the law of gravity". But (again, as Hume pointed out) there's nothing inherent in the meaning of X number of objects falling and/or being attracted to one another that necessarily implies such a law. The law is just a deductively unwarranted assumption, which functions more pragmatically than evidentially. So, again, there's nothing inherent in the meaning of our observations that just means "the law of gravitation".

But what about in the case of a logical law like that of transitivity (A->B, B->C, :. A->C)? In this case, it can be seen that part of what we mean by the conjunction of "A->B" and "B->C" just is "A->C". And this is what I meant by all logical laws being analytically true. For any given logical law, upon reflection we can see that it holds in virtue of its meaning, not in virtue of its use or anything else. Another way to put this would be to say that all logical laws are merely tautologies. To take another example, consider the law of non-contradiction. When we assert "A", part of what we mean by "A" is just "~~A". And thus we express such a tautology as the "law" "A cannot be both A and not A".

It can be seen that my view differs from a more Platonic view where the laws of logic are necessary de re (in virtue of abstractly existing objects and the relations they bear to one another). But rather, all logical laws are true de dicto. And hence, if my view is true, there are no possible worlds in which, say, modus ponens could be invalid without the meaning of modus ponens also changing. Suffice it to say, the contingent view is false, and the necessity view far more plausible.

Meaning and Truth-Conditionality

One common theory of meaning is this: To know a statement's meaning is to know the conditions under which the statement would be true. So, for example, to know the meaning of the statement "Jones will throw the ball" is to know that such a statement would be true if and only if the event "Jones throwing the ball" obtained. Seems plausible enough.

But there's an obvious difficulty with such a theory. If to know some statement S's meaning one need only know S's necessary and sufficient conditions, how do you explain the fact that the antecedents and consequents of many biconditionals obviously differ in meaning? For example, in the biconditional "I will go to sleep if and only if I take the pills", the statement "I will go to sleep" has "Going to sleep" as its necessary and sufficient conditions, but so does "Taking the pills". So, they both have the same truth-conditions, yet differ in meaning. It's true that they are logically equivalent, but they can't be (by reductio) meaning-equivalent. It follows that truth-conditionality doesn't fully explain the curious explanandum of meaning.

Note: It may be objected that the biconditional "P<->Q" is reducible merely to "(P->Q)&(Q->P)". But this is false. Having the same truth conditions, logically, "P<->Q" is also equivalent to "Q<->P", and (of course) the tautology always holds "P<->P".

An Additional Consideration: Kripke's Argument

I think this is a faithful rendering of Kripke’s argument against mind-brain identity:

P1. For any two rigid designators A and B, if A and B are coextensive, then the statement “A is B” will be a necessary truth. (Kripkean Assumption)

P2. If identity-physicalism is true, the names “C-Fiber Firing” and “Pain” are both rigid designators and coextensive.

C1. Therefore, If identity-physicalism is true, “C-Fiber Firing is Pain” is a necessary truth. (By P1 & P2)

P3. “C-Fiber Firing is Pain” is not a necessary truth.

C2. Therefore, identity-physicalism is false. (By P1, P2, C1 & P3)

The key premise here is (P3). It rests on the idea that conceivability is a guide to metaphysical possibility. I can perfectly conceive of a world in which there is pain, but not a single C-Fiber firing. If that’s true, and pain is possible without C-fiber firing, then it’s not a necessary truth. But the identity theory implies that it would be, and thus is false.

The Explanatory Inadequacy of the Identity-Theory of Mind

As I see it, there are two key features of consciousness that the identity theory of mind fails to explain adequately (the identity theory being the thesis that mental events, properties, and the like just are brain events, properties, and etc.). Those two features are (1) Intentionality, and (2) Qualia. Let's first address intentionality.

The word intentionality is a bit misleading in that it doesn't, strictly speaking, refer to intentions (although intentions are a form of intentional state). The word "intentionality" just means directedness or aboutness. So, for example, my thinking about a train chugging down the railroad is an intentional state, because it is about something; namely, a train chugging down the railroad. I used the word "directedness" as well because of what philosophers like to call "propositional attitudes". Propositional attitudes are mental attitudes we take towards particular propositions. So, for example, given the proposition "The Patriots will win the super bowl", I can either believe that proposition, hope for the truth of that proposition, despise that proposition, and so forth. All of these states, or attitudes (namely, believing, hoping, and despising) are all intentional in that they are world-directed, or have a certain "aboutness" to them.

So, how does this relate to the adequacy, or lackthereof, of the identity theory of mind? Well, it doesn't seem that any given brain state could be about anything. Brain states are just physical objects and/or events, but physical objects and events aren't about anything, they just are. How is it that a synapse firing in my brain ends up being about the super bowl, my aunt, how much stock I have in a company, or anything else? It just doesn't seem to be that sort of thing. So, as a simple syllogism, this could be expressed as follows (by Celarent):

(1) No physical events are about something.
(2) Brain events are physical events.
(3) :. No brain events are about something.

So, if intentionality is a feature of consciosness at all, it would seem to be an irreducible feature of it, and thus cannot be identified with brain states themselves.

Next there is qualia. "Qualia" refers to the raw feel or what it is like feature of consciousness. For example, when I look at and feel a rose, apart from all the physical properties of that rose, there is in addition a what it is like to see and feel a rose quality to it (which would be constituted by more specific qualia, such as the qualitative experience of redness, or the qualitative feel of softness). So, to cut to the quick, the argument would be something like this (by Modus Tollens):

(1) If something is entirely physical, then it is (in principle) describable in purely physical terms.
(2) Consciousness is not describable in purely physical terms.
(3) :. Consciousness is not entirely physical.

Premise 2 refers to qualia, which most people would take to be an essential part of what we mean by consciousness (that is, our first-person qualitative experience of the world). Support for qualia being irreducibly mental entities can be given by way of various thought experiments, the most famous of which is the so-called "Mary" argument (sometimes also called the knowledge argument). The argument goes something like this: Say there is a scientist (call her "Mary") that knows everything there is to know about color-vision. She knows everything about the brain states associated with it, what goes on in the eye to make it happen, the wavelengths of various colors, and etc. There's just one issue: She's been living in a black and white room her entire life. One day, she finally leaves her colorless room and sees red for the first time. At this point, it would appear that Mary has learned something new about the color red, e.g. the qualitative feel of what it is like to see red. But then, it would appear that Mary didn't know everything about color-vision before she actually saw the color. But how can this be? The answer is, quite simply, that she only knew every scientific or physical fact about color-vision, but she lacked knowledge of a further fact, one which must be some further fact about color-vision that wasn't captured in all of the scientific descriptions she knew of. Thus, the qualitative feature of consciousness cannot be identical to physical facts about the brain, light hitting the retina, and/or so on.

Many philosophers have contested this point in very creative ways. One line of response goes something like this: Although it's true that Mary had some new experience when she finally saw red, she didn't acquire knowledge of a new fact about the neurophysiology of seeing red. Rather, she just knew the same facts (all physical) that she already did under a new description. But, all the while, such and such neurological event had always been identical to experience of red. And, so, the identity theory survives another day.

Or does it? The issue with this response is that a qualitative first-person experience isn't just a description, it's a phenomenon. The only reason one could give the new description of, say, pain as a qualitative experience instead of a C-fiber firing is if one has a first-person experience that isn't captured in descriptions of C-fiber firings. And so, I think, the objection doesn't work. Consciousness isn't just another way to describe a neural event, it's a unique, and distinct, phenomena.

So, as I said, I don't think the identity theory of mind can account for these two features of consciousness: Intentionality, and qualia. There are a number of interesting arguments that have gone back and forth on this issue, particularly in regard to aforementioned thought experiment. One argument in particular, Saul Kripke's argument utilizing rigid and nonrigid designators, is extremely subtle and interesting. Suffice it to say for now, however, that physicalism just won't do about the mind (at least in any eliminative sense....supervenience physicalism may still be in the running).

A Principle of Transworld Volition

Lately I've been working on a theory of mereology (the metaphysics of parts and wholes). The gist of the thesis is this: Some aggregate of matter M constitutes a genuine mereological sum iff M is an artifact. I won't get into the nuances here (although I will be in upcoming entries), but I wanted to propose a principle which a part (no pun intended) of my theory hinges on. The principle is what I call the "Principle of Transworld Volition". What it amounts to is the following claim:

PTV=def The thesis that some choice C made in some world W1 is a transworld volition iff C would also have been made in some near-identical world W2.

Here a "near-identical" world is one which is identical in all important, or relevant, ways to another, but different in some trivial way (or set of trivial ways). So, for example, take W to be the actual world, and take W* to be a near-identical world which differs from our own only in the following trivial way: There exists in W* a tiger who was born (by some genetic mishap) with three heads. This fact, as you can see, would seem to have no significant bearing on any other facts about W and W* being significantly different. Thus it is, as we say, trivial. I think several interesting things may follow from an application of such a principle, but I'll limit myself here to how I apply it in my theory.

Let's say some person (call him 'Smith') finds himself wanting to build a chair. Further, let's assume that Smith doesn't know what the basic constituents of the universe he finds himself in are (e.g., if he finds himself in our universe, he doesn't know that the universe is essentially composed of quarks). Now let's assume that Smith's counterpart, call him Smith2, finds himself in another world near-identical to Smith's, with only the following difference: In Smith's world, the universe is composed of quarks, in Smith2's world, the universe is composed of duarks. Exactly how quarks and duarks differ can be left up to the imagination (perhaps in Smith2's world, duarks compose quarks, or whatever). Now, being near-identical to Smith's world, Smith2 also finds himself wanting to build a chair. Futher, they both end up making the decision to build the chair. In addition, Smith2 also doesn't know what his universe is composed of. So, for all practical purposes, Smith doesn't know whether he's in quark-world or duark-world (and hence whether he's Smith or Smith2!). Now, if they both decide to build the chair at t1, and both have the same epistemic status at t1, then it seems that the fact that the universe is composed of quarks or duarks is irrelevant to the chair's actualization in either world. Hence, the more fundamental fact about the chair in both worlds is that it is a chair, not an aggregate of quarks arranged chairwise, or an aggregate of duarks arranged chairwise. It follows (with several other assumptions I'll get into later), that we have a genuine mereological sum (assuming it's the fact that part-facts supervene on whole-facts that make some aggregate a true whole).

And so it seems that, if we have a case of transworld volition on our hands, then we have a plausible instance of a mereological sum having been produced by that volition (assuming, of course, that the volition was artifact-directed). The reason is that, as expressed before, if the fact that the whole is made of such and such parts is trivial to the whole's being brought into existence, then it would seem that the fact that it is a whole is more fundamental than the fact that it's made of this or that group of parts.

Pursued

I am pursued, watched.
Eyes from every direction, corner, and shadow.
Their form becomes less and less apparent,
As the night crawls on.
Their claws drag across my brain.
They surpress my waking hours,
And keep me in their sleep.
I am weak, and they smell
My spirit bleeding; my heart pleading.
They now know they have me
And I fold in on myself.
I fold in; my arms, my legs, my hands;
Fold in.
The anguish of the pressure;
Turned inside out.
And I am where they are.

Fear

In wastelands of war, when times of triumph
Have fallen far past horizonal view.
Treading upon the mangled ruin
Of a city once mine, now raised to the ground.
Who could've seen where this road would lead?
Who could've sensed the end drawing near?
Who could've known when to be silent, to speak?
Under the purview of all, comes thundering fear.

Aristotle's 'Metaphysics', Book I, Chp. VI

The selection from the Metaphysics I'm working through skips to chapter 6 after chapter 3, so that's where I'll pick up.

At the beginning of chapter 6 Aristotle makes some contextual/historical points about Plato's philosophy. He first notes that Plato was heavily influenced by the Pythagoreans (the Italian school of philosophy founded by Pythagoras), and by Heraclitus. The Pythagorean influence, Aristotle says, can be seen in Plato's talk of sensible objects "participating" in Forms, just as the Pythagorean school talked of sensible objects "imitating" numbers. He also notes that, just as the Pythagoreans, Plato neglected to ever explain what exactly this relation of "participation" is or entails. The influence of Heraclitus on Plato can be seen in Plato's adoption of Heraclitus' doctrine that "the world (of the senses) is in flux" (think of the classic "you can't step in the same river twice" mantra). Because of this, Heraclitus, and Plato after him, reasoned that you could never have reliable knowledge concerning it.

Next Aristotle begins to actually dig in to Plato's philosophy itself. The first claim is that Plato's ontology essentially boils down to two categories: The "one", and the "great and the small". Here's where, I confess, it started to get tricky for me. I tried to consult Aquinas' commentary on this section, but it didn't end up helping too much (a failing on my part, not Tom's, assuredly). Regardless, the best interpretation I could come up with was something like the following: The "one" in Plato's ontology is the essence of the forms. That is, part of what makes forms (or universals) what they are is that there is only one of each form (although there are multiple instances, or tokens, of those forms). "The great and the small", then, is a term that expresses the essence of particulars. Particulars are, by nature, many. So, for instance, there can be multiple dogs (particular substances), but only one form of Dogness (the eternal form that individuates them).

A third category in Plato's ontology that is briefly discussed is the category of numbers. For Plato, it seems numbers constitute a sort of pseudo-ontological category. They represent (or are generated by) the relation between the "one" and the "great and the small". The individuality (or "oneness") of numbers is found in the forms, whereas their heirarchal structure (construed as a "greater-than" relation) is found in the "great and small" category. ...All that probably seems very convoluted, and for that I apologize. It was, once again, the best interpretation I could grasp with my own lights.

Now Aristotle begins his critique of the Theory of Forms which he will continue on into chapter 9. His first critique is this. Plato says that forms are essentially one, and that particulars are what they are in virtue of their participating in forms. But how can there be only one form per attribute if multiple particulars instantiate them? If Form individuates material substance, then there must be two forms everytime an object acquires its quiddity (this is because form is a constituent of substance for Aristotle).

His next critique is that Plato's theory only addresses the material and formal causes of things. But he neglects, say, their efficient (moving) causes. The Forms only make things what they are in an individuating sense, but they have no power to be the source of the movement that makes some object x an F and then a G. For this, a thing's efficient cause must be invoked.

Aristotle's 'Metaphysics', Book I, Chp. III

Aristotle begins this chapter with a brief explanation of what he takes to be the four first principles, or causes, of all that exists. The first is a thing's "being or essence" (formal cause), the second a thing's "matter and substratum" (material cause), the third a thing's "source of movement" (efficient cause), and the fourth is a thing's "purpose...and it's good" (final cause). After this brief explanation, Aristotle goes on to explore what philosophers of the past have thought about the first causes of things.

These philosophers seemed only to be concerned with the material cause of things (what they were made of). Most viewed reality simply in these terms: There is one underlying substance of reality, and that substance merely takes on different "affections". Or, even if there were multiple basic substances postulated, all that exists consisted merely in those substances and the various accidential properties they took on. Thus, there was no true coming into and out of being, but merely formal changes in one, or several, essential substances.

The first example of this thinking given is Thales. Thales believed that the underlying substratum of reality consisted in water. The reasons he gave for this were (1) Everything is nourished by water, and (2) the "seeds" of all things are moist. Aristotle notes that this is something the ancients seemed to believe. The ancients said that the parents of "all that has come into being" were Oceanus and Tethys (sea gods and goddesses). In addition, they swore by the river Styx.

Following Thales, there was Anaximenes and Diogenes, who believed air to be the first principle; Hippasus and Heraclitus, who believed it to be fire; Empedocles, who thought there were the four first principles of water, air, fire, and earth; and, finally, Anaxagoras who believed that there were an infinite number of first causes.

Finally, Aristotle critiques what he takes to be the mistakes made by these metaphysicians of bygone days. He essentially says that just because you have explained the material cause (that out of which it is made) of something, doesn't mean you've explained it's efficient cause (the cause of the thing's movement). As he says, "Certainly the substratum does not cause itself to change". Some, to avoid this issue, said that the whole of nature is itself immovable, and that all change is really an illusion (Parmenides would be an example of this). Aristotle, believing that change is real, says that those who believed in several first principles (such as Empedocles), could make more sense of movement. This is because they could claim that it be the nature of one substance (say, fire) to move things, and another (say, air) to be that out of which things are made.

His last comment is that those, such as Anaxagoras, who believed that nature contained Mind (or Nous), were far more rational than those who did not. The reason he gives for this is that Mind could function as the efficient cause of the world's movement and change, and could also be the cause of things attaining to their purpose or good (achieving their "final cause"). This, then, concludes Aristotle's survey of the strengths and weaknesses of his predecessors.

Aristotle's 'Metaphysics', Book I, Chp. II

In chapter 2 of Book I of the Metaphysics, Aristotle proceeds to explain that the science we're about to inquire into is this "knowledge for it's own sake" that he talked about in chapter 1. To get at just what this science is, he thinks it best to take a look at our "notions of the wise man" (since the "wise man" is the person who desires and acquires knowledge for its own sake, as described in the first chapter).

The first point Aristotle makes in this regard is that the wise man is someone who we take to "know everything". The wise man knows everything in the sense that he knows about ultimate causes and first principles; e.g. those universals which contain all the particulars which they describe. An example of this might be, say, knowing the set of all and only round objects. To know this set (the set in this case functioning as the "universal"), is to know it's individual members (each member functioning as the "particular"). And thus it is that knowledge of universals necessarily entails a knowledge of those particulars which instantiate them. As Aristotle says, "...knowledge of everything necessarily belongs to the man who more than any other has knowledge of universals, since such a man knows in a way all the individuals that are included in them".

His next point about the wise man is that we take him to know the things which are the most difficult to fully know. Aristotle says that these first principles and causes are the most difficult to know because they are furthest removed from the senses (which in themselves only give us knowledge of particulars). The assumption here is, of course, that all our knowledge first arises from the senses (Aristotle being a sort of proto-empiricist).

The third point to be made about the wise man is that we generally take him to be wise, in part, because he is the "most accurate". What he means by this is, I think, that an accurate description of any object or set of objects will only be so if it discusses their ultimate causes. He also makes the point that a science is more accurate the fewer principles it has (to illustrate this he gives the example of arithmetic being more accurate than geometry). I assume his point is something along these lines: That the more first principles, or axioms, a science takes for granted, the more likely it is to be inaccurate (I assume he's making some sort of epistemic point here, but I'm not sure). An interesting thought, I think, is that this could be a prescursor to a principle like Ockham's Razor.

Next, he makes the point that the person who desires knowledge for its own sake will have knowledge of what is "most knowable". What Aristotle means by this is that the most knowable things are those which we must assume for all other knowledge. It follows that knowledge of the most general causes and principles of the world, because they allow us to understand the less general and more specific, are "most knowable" in the sense Aristotle is using the term.

The wise man, also, will be the one who is best at giving instructions (since, as Aristotle says, the wise man should give instruction and should be instructed by no one). He says that the wise man will be best at giving instruction, even in practical matters, because of his knowledge of causes and first principles. His argument is something like this: To know the ultimate cause of something is to know its nature, to know its nature is to know its end or purpose, and to know somethings end or purpose (or its "good") is to render one capable of instructing others as to how to achieve that things end or purpose.

Aristotle ends the chapter with a discussion of the essence of philosophy. That essence, he says, is essentially unproductive. He identifies the science of "first causes and principles" with philosophy itself, or at least its summit (that being, I assume, the project of metaphysics). This fact, though, he does not take to be a defect of the project. He portrays the science as wondrous and divine. He says, "...even a man who is fond of myths is in a way a philosopher, since a myth is made up of wonders", and "...just as a free man is one who exists for his own sake and not for anyone else's, so we study this science as the only one that is free, since it is the only one that is studied for its own sake". Because it is man's nature to be in a sense enslaved, and God's nature to be essentially free, Aristotle portrays doing philosophy as "more than human", and indeed divine. He says that this science is divine on two accounts: First, the science of first causes and principles would be most fully possessed by God himself, since he is the ultimate source of cause and principle. Also, being the source of cause and principle, God himself would be the ultimate end of such a study.

Aristotle's 'Metaphysics', Book I, Chp. I

I've begun to work through several key sections of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Not so much for the sake of getting any unique thoughts out, or for the sake of readers, but more for the sake of retaining the information myself, I've decided to record some of the key points as blog entries. So, here goes.

Book I, Chp. I of the Metaphysics seems to be constructed to argue for the following conclusion: That all men, by nature, desire to know (as he says in the first sentence of the work). In favor of this conclusion, as I see it, he offers (roughly) the following three justifications: (1) The pleasure we take in our senses, (2) the end for which our cognitive faculties seem to be constructed, and (3) the fact that the human race exalts knowledge for it's own sake as being the truest sort of wisdom.

In defense of (1) Aristotle notes that we enjoy our senses, and especially sight, for their own sake. That is, even when we're not planning on using any of our senses for a particular practical end, we would still prefer to have them "up and running", so to say. Aristotle implies that this delight in our senses is because in the act of sensing, we are coming to a knowledge of the things around us. He also says that, in addition to this, sensing allows us to make real distinctions between things, and that this act of making distinctions (construed as an act of coming to know them) is part of what we enjoy.

Aristotle's defense of (2) seems to be offered in a sort of round-about way. He talks about how, unlike various other animals (he uses bees as an example), our cognitive faculties are endowed with memory. The end for which memory seems to exist is to produce what Aristotle calls "experience" (that is, experiential knowledge). This experiential knowledge, then, leads to the generalized areas of knowledge he calls "art" (what we'd probably just call a "discipline" or "science"). So, then, it seems that our cognitive and perceptual faculties aim at knowledge, showing that the "desire to know" is innate and natural to the human species.

Aristotle, anticipating (I think) the objection that this knowledge is nonetheless aimed only at practical ends, argues the following: Although it is true that art, and experience, are equally valuable and essential to "getting things done" (e.g., a doctor needs experience and technical medical knowledge to operate on someone), nonetheless we as a species appear to value art over experience. Art, Aristotle says, entails a knowledge of universals (or general principles), whereas experience entails a knowledge of particulars (how this or that specific object behaves). Another way he expresses this is by saying that knowledge of universals is knowledge which is aimed at causes (the "why"s of things), whereas knowledge of particulars is aimed at instances (the fact that something is such and such, as opposed to why it is). Aristotle argues that art, this knowledge of universals, is not only valued over experience, but it is most highly valued when utterly divorced from experience. This, he says, is why we say those people are most wise and to be honored who strive to acquire knowledge for it's own sake, and no other end. As he puts it, it is theoretical knowledge which is valued most by humanity. And this (the proposition expressed by (3) above), he takes to be further evidence that humanity desires, and loves, knowledge simpliciter; knowledge for no other end but itself.

Phenomenological Reflection

Some things are appearing bright to me. Whatever bright it is; I guess I know it directly. I have an intuition that this thing is different from that thing. But the difference doesn't seem to come from any analysis of the thing itself, but rather a direct knowledge that the qualia are different. I see a cross. I wonder if this person is Catholic. There's a sense of kinship that seems to naturally grow when you become part of a new group, regardless of whether the members of that group are members de facto or de jure. I probably have more in common with the average Buddhist than the average Catholic. Then again, I'm not that much of a de facto member of the Church as well. There's no life in me. There are certain inpenetrable anxieties that afflict me over things I already know. I guess I should be in class right now, but I don't think I could be missing anything significant; or maybe I am; I'm not quite sure; I'm sick unto death. I feel this violent madness directed at the world. This is probably a most frequent intensional state. It's the anxiety, the Angst, of the world imposing itself on me in ways I can't understand; in ways I can't control. The violent urge seems to be justified. How do we expect ourselves to live in a world that so violently imposes itself on us. It's like existential rape. We try and try to impose ourselves back on all this sound and fury, but our voices don't and can't rise above it. Everyone whom I've loved seems to be a feature of this violent imposition. It's a quale I recognize as distinctly unique, but one which the world impresses, then yanks away at the first sign that I am seeking to impose myself on it. How can I begin to account for all this? We're so machine-dependent. It's technological gluttony. That's all too abstract. I want to be here, now, with her. Without her. With the thought of her in herself. But there is no one in themself. Being is not itself if not being-in-the-world. I just wish I could leave it. I wish there were a noumena, but there's not. Just an endless series of impressions, features, dreads, stillness, and abrupt silence.

Is Causation a Purely Philosophical Question?

Here's an argument in favor of such a view (using largely Humean premises):

1. All beliefs are justified either a priori or a posteriori.
2. We have a justified belief in causation.
3. No beliefs about causation are justified a posteriori.
4. Therefore, all beliefs about causation are justified a priori.
5. Whatever is justified only a priori can never be confirmed by experimental evidence.
6. Therefore, beliefs about causation can never be confirmed by experimental evidence.
7. Whatever cannot be confirmed by experimental evidence is not an empirical hypothesis.
8. Therefore, hypotheses about causation are not empirical hypotheses.
9. All justified hypotheses are either empirical, logical, or metaphysical.
10. Causation is a justified hypothesis.
11. Causation is not justified empirically or logically.
12. Therefore, causation is justified metaphysically.

Platonism and the Early Church

It is often claimed by various historians of philosophy that early Christianity was influenced by Platonism in the following way: That it turned it's focus away from earthly things, devalued the place of the senses for attaining knowledge, and all-around looked down upon the natural world as something at least pseudo-evil (I'm careful not to say pure evil, for that would be blatant Gnosticism). I've recently run across claims similar to this in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

This seems to me, though, false. Although it's true that Christians have a hope for a future world, the relationship between that hope and the present world is a subtle one. On my reading, the early Church, though incorperating much of Plato (e.g. St. John, Origen, and St. Augustine), still retained it's essential belief in the importance, dignity, and central place of the created order, and in particular the human body. Augustine, one of the most paradigmatic examples of a Platonist we have in the early Church, says the following in Book I, chapter 13 of The City of God:

"Nevertheless the bodies of the dead are not on this account to be despised and left unburied; least of all the bodies of the righteous and faithful, which have been used by the Holy Spirit as His organs and instruments for all good works...For the body is not an extraneous ornament or aid, but a part of man's very nature."

This seems far from the sort of natural-world-escapism implied by many philosophers and historians examing the early Church period. The true relationship between the present natural world, and the future world, in Christian theology was, and is, this: God created the present world, and it was good. Through the fall, the goodness which the creation initially possessed became marred with sin and corruption. Much of it's goodness, if not most, was however retained, and God promised that He would redeem and restore it at the culmination of history. This picture, ironically, is the exact opposite of the escapist accusation brought against Christian theology. The world we are awaiting is a physical world, just a new and transformed one. This has been pointed out well in recent years by such New Testament scholars as N.T. Wright, who point out that the early Christian's conception of the future world was always grounded in Christ's resurrection body. It was a glorious body, a body exuding the Spirit, yet it was physical. Jesus ate fish and bread with his disciples on the shores of Galilee. This key point about the transformation and renewal of the created order, as opposed to it's destruction, is made poignantly by St. Paul in his epistle to the romans:

"For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." -Romans 8:19-25 (NSV)

The anticipation for new creation can be clearly seen in this passage; and why wouldn't it? St. paul was an orthodox Jew, familiar with prophecies in the Old Testament that implied such renewel, a day when the trees would "clap their hands" and the whole earth would be full of the glory of God as the "water fills the seas". Platonism was definitely an influential philosophy in shaping the Church's theology from it's inception, but it by no means ever overthrew or skewed this essential Judeo-Christian assumption.

Some thoughts on my coming conversion

So, I have been a fairly staunch Calvinist over the last couple years (and a Protestant from birth), but I have recently decided to embrace the Roman Catholic Faith. I have come to the conclusion that Roman Catholicism is what many have called the '"fullness of the Christian faith". Thus, I thought I'd give a brief explanation of my decision to convert for any of my friends and family who are interested. There are, I think, four main reasons. They are as follows:

1. Philosophical:

My philosophical reasons for considering Roman Catholicism were manifold, but there was one that was more decisive than any other: The issue of authority. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn't believe that God would not take every possible precaution to protect the truths of His Gospel. Sure, it's possible that God could have vested His authority purely in Scripture, and then have left it up to us to interpret properly. But the real question is, is it likely. Or, more concisely, is the Protestant view of authority more likely, or the Catholic view? I think it's obvious that God would have provided the sort of institutional, apostolic, interpretive, and living authority that we see in the magesterial structure of the Roman Catholic Church. Chesterton called it the "guardian of truth". I think this is a very true picture. If God cares to the upmost about our salvation, and about truth itself, then I can believe in nothing less than Catholicism.

2. Theological:

As Peter Kreeft and others have pointed out, there really isn't a significant difference between the substance of salvation in Protestantism and in Catholicism. It's true that justification is concieved of as progressive in Catholicism, and revelatory (of salvific stance) in Protestantism, but in both the term 'salvation' refers to an entire process leading to glorification. I found it rang more true that God really makes us just, and doesn't just declare us as just. Afterall, even Protestants believe He will be able to say, truly, that we are 'just' at glorification. Catholics just believe that what Protestants refer to as glorification (in the instantaneous sense) begins during this lifetime through charity and the sacramental life of the Church (and completely by grace, mind you). Of course, all of this also depends on varying interpretations of the atonement, but that's another discussion altogether.

3. Mystic Intuition:

What I mean by 'mystic intuition' is something along the lines of what C.S. Lewis called "Joy". It's a deep, near inexplicable, sense of the story-like nature of life, and the heart of reality. The sort of thing you feel while watching The Lord of the Rings, reading Paradise Lost, or viewing the sunrise over the ocean. It's a sense of longing for a world full of magic, wonder, and mystery (a world very much like an ancient myth). This mystical intuition I have found is most fully captured in the mystery and wonder of the Catholic Church. There is something immense, something so transcendent, something so mythic about it. The experience of Joy compels me to accept it as a true representation of the way things are. Thus, I must follow this 'scent from another land' (again, as Lewis put it) and follow it right into the gates of God's True Church.

4. History:

This was the most vital component in my decision to convert to Roman Catholicism. Just a skim through the Early Church Fathers provides, I think, reason enough for any Christian to accept Catholic Christianity. It became clear to me, in the most unambiguous and obvious way, that the early Church resembled the modern Catholic Church vastly more than any Protestant Church. Things like Baptismal Regeneration, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, an oral tradition passed on from the Apostles, and essential oneness of the visible Church are almost taken for granted in these writings. Because they are the closest to the historical events themselves, Jesus, and the Apostles, I must accept their view of such doctrines as being more pure and reliable than any modern interpretation (as I am no historical revisionist). It is more likely that they recieved these doctrines in the form in which they understood them from the Apostles than that such doctrines were so immediately, and drastically, corrupted.

The reasons I have come to accept Catholicism go far beyond this brief explanation. But it, in essence, captures the core and key reasons. There were also several authors who influenced me in the decision (including the likes of G.K. Chesterton and Peter Kreeft). The life of John Paul II was also a great inspiration to me when I began my study. Suffice it to say, I am converting to Roman Catholicism, and am as excited as ever to enter into the fullness of the Church of my Lord.

-Ben C.