Monday, 12 November 2007

• Currently Listening Debussy: La Mer; Pr�lude � l'apr�s-midi d'un faune; Danse sacr�e et profane see related

  A Rave Concerning Quiddities and Haecceities, pt. 6

  Alright, so lets approach things from a different angle. What this whole series of raves has assumed is that one is talking about one's self the “thing” referred to is “the whole ball of wax.” That is to say, that when I am referring to to some real or actual person, I am talking as if the whole is what makes that person who she is. Or perhaps it is simply that I have not really been clear what it is that makes you and me what we are and have been hoping that some sort of modal noodling about with essences and such would clear things up. Well, noodling about has done no such thing.

  Let us say that Sue has just lost a leg. We would say that she is different but not a different individual. The Sue sans leg is still Sue. On the other hand, if Sue suddenly dies of a heart attack, even though all the same body parts are there and even most of the organs are just the same condition as before her demise, something radical has happen. Many of us would be inclined to say that while Sue's body is still with us, Sue is somehow gone. Put another way, whatever the connection is between us and our bodies, we generally don't see ourselves as identical to our bodies. This something that we are is variously called “soul” “mind” or “spirit.” Perhaps in looking at various notions of the mind and particularly its relation to the body, we can find something that will set aside the problem of a lack of haecceity in the most primitive of objects. Before I start casting about with the various mind/body theories, I should make it clear that I am looking at mind in a functional manner. That is to say I am taking mind to equivalent to the human capacity for various functions and activities such as memory, emotion, intellect, deliberation, perception, and sensation. By the way, some of list goes back to my undergrad days, so if any of this look familiar to Taylor University Philosophers, you'll know why. If it doesn't, then perhaps my memory is faultier than I would have imagined, Dr. C. has redrawn this mind/body list so that it doesn't look much like I remember, Dr. C. has tossed out the list, or I've added to, deleted from and rearranged the list a fair bit in the last 25 plus years.

  
  
  

  1. Cartesian Dualism: The theory that there are two sorts of substances, material substance (characterized by mass and extension) and mental substance (characterized by thought). Even those of us who claim to know better tend to talk as if this is how we see things, so powerful is this notion. Obviously if we are minds in this sense, then it is little wonder while it makes sense to talk about transworld identity, there would be no natural (material) analog. Unfortunately, Cartesian dualism provides no explanation for how the mind and body interact, and the fact that the mind seems so dependent on the body (specifically brain function).

  2. Monism: The theory that there is one substance and that mind and matter are simply aspect of it. This view comes in two variants: Single Substance (where not only there only one substance, there is only one thing with at least two aspects, a view presumably held by Spinoza) and Pluralistic Dual-aspect theory (where there is a plurality of individual substances and that mental and physical events are dual-aspects of the same thing). The problem that faces both these views is answering the question “dual-aspect of what?”

  3. Pluralistic Idealism: One way to push dual-aspect theory is to say that there is one substance and that it is ideal in nature but each entity is unique. This is the theory favored by Leibniz. He termed these unique entities “monads” and held that they had two basic properties, perception and appetition. So-called “matter” was a case of our perceiving a large number of monads as a single thing. The body was seen as a cooperative composite of monads directed a single “queen” monad. Leibniz is also credited with the notion of a pre-established harmony between monads, that is that they don't interact but “spin-out” their various histories and a harmonious fashion. Some question whether Leibniz held this view of a pre-established harmony in his later life. Some may also see certain parallels between Pluralistic Idealism and Process Philosophy in this regard, particularly with regards to Whitehead's notion of a nexus and more interestingly the distinction between a democratic nexuses and a monarchical nexuses. Apart from a natural skepticism one might have toward any philosophy that states that there is no such thing as matter, Leibniz's view suffers because monads are (if you will pardon me) the quintessential haecceity. On this point at least, Whitehead has the advantage, though there a lot to process metaphysics that do not seem to jibe with modern physics as much as Whitehead would have hoped when he started his project (the most fundamental particles we know of don't behave quite like Whiteheadian events or Leibnizian monads).

  4. British Idealism: For my purposes, I am going to treat this as a variant of Pluralistic Idealism. Although this is not correct, since Bishop Berkeley stipulated that “to be is to perceive or be perceived,” and so takes non-perceiving matter to be dependent on perceiving minds, the similarity for our purposes is that minds are persistent, without parts, and individual. Again minds have “thisness.” If minds are the basic stuff of existence then the objection that fundamental particles don't display thisness evaporates because fundamental particles, well, aren't fundamental. On the other hand, Berkely's Idealism is not exactly intuitively obvious and his argument for it was convincingly overturned by Hume.

  5. Thomistic Dual Aspect Theory: In answer to the question of “dual-aspect of what?” the Thomist can answer everything we encounter is a composite of matter and form. So, unlike Spinoza, where there is one underlying substance that has multiple aspects or properties, Thomas would claim that there are no simple substances (well, apart from God), but that existent things are a combination of a passive agent (whose property is to receive a form) and the form which impresses itself on matter. Either exist alone. In Thomas' view human have a special sort of substantial form which instantiates our mental functions. A particular curiosity in Thomas' view is while the substantial form of plants and animals is emergent, the substantial form for humans is a special creation.

  6. Multiple Substantial Forms: John Duns Scotus largely agreed with Thomas is this regard save on two major points (there are others, but I understand those even less than what I am about to state and insofar as I do understand them, they do not appear to be germane). First, as we've already gone over, Scotus held that matter could not be what individuates one human being from another. The other was that he held that it was possible for a being to have two substantial forms. Why two? Going back to the unfortunate demise of Sue, we would say that while Sue is no longer with us, that the body she has left is still the same body. That sort of talk is not open to Thomas because it has lost its substantial form. It is now a sort of body-like collection, something entirely different from what it was when Sue was alive. Scotus posited two substantial forms, one for the mind (or soul) and one for the body. While the mind is still dependent on the body, but now it is with the body being a form/matter combination of its own. So while this may initially look a lot like Cartesian Dualism, it is not since both body and mind are substantial forms (i.e, the same sort of thing). Of course, Thomas' notion of a substantial form (which is normally seen as a combination form and being—no passive element) connected with a body was difficult enough, the idea of two substantial forms for living things seems a bit much. One the other hand, Scotus' view allows mind to have a separate sense of “thisness” from the body. Notice also that while both Thomas and Scotus deny the possibility, each could have “thisness” as an emergent property and so avoid the difficulty we detailed earlier

  7. Materialism: This is the theory the mind is “just” matter. In this case matter is either of the Cartesian variety (mass and extension) or Atomic in nature. One cannot use matter in an Aristotelian sense here because any sort of matter in that sense that we encounter has a form and so no particular bit of matter is purely materialistic. One can see this grabbing the other horn of the the Cartesian Dilemma from the one Leibniz took. Oddly enough, Leibniz seems to have had a easier time explaining physical. Then again, since our entire contact with the world is mental in nature, Leibniz is at an advantage. One of Leibniz's more famous critiques of materialism was that of the mill. Leibniz asks us to image a grand machine that can deliver very human-like response. But what would we see if we go into this machine—well gears and levers—nothing remotely resembling ideas, perceptions, or emotions. Some variant of that critique continues with Turning Machines and firing neurons. If materialism were true, however, one would have to employ some counter-part theory to explain contingent human action since materialism also entails mereological essentialism.

  8. Epiphenomenalism: A response to criticism of materialism lead to a view (advocated by Thomas Huxley) that metal events are by-products of physical events. The relationship between mental and physical events is decidedly one-sided. Like materialism, one would have to employ counter-part theory because the mind is a mere artifact. The problem with epiphenomenalism is that the mind ought to have some effect on the body, after all the body must expend energy to create these events. Also, epiphenomena are like [ineffectual] Cartesian mental substances. But this can't be. The same argument against substance dualism tells against epiphenomena being purely mental. If so, by this reasoning, epiphenomena must be substantial enough to interact with the body (albeit as some sort of material composition) or at least it ought to be detectable in addition to the physical events that generate them.

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