Modul 1 Metaphysics

Metaphysics

1. Introduction
2. Problems of Stability and Change
3. Idealism
4. Realism
5. Mind and Body
6. Freedom and Determinism

1. Introduction

Philosophical reﬂection takes on an abstract form most notably when dealing with
metaphysics. This is no doubt the reason why metaphysics has popularly become
identiﬁed with far-ﬂung, unrealistic speculation and obscure reasoning.

The Greek word,

Metaphysics

means, ‘that which comes after physics’. It is widely

accepted that the word entered the language of philosophy thanks to Aristotle, the
Ancient Greek philosopher. The treatises of Aristotle that followed Physics were
compiled under the title, Metaphysics (meta simply meaning ‘after’ in Greek).
Therefore metaphysical reﬂection and discussion concern problems that fall beyond
a purely physical scope which might be termed “the ﬁrst philosophy, the science of
the principles of being”.

To begin with, before even the term “Metaphysics” appeared, explorations into
‘what exists’ were strictly considered within the domain of the philosophy of na-
ture i.e. cosmology. This search was parallel to attempts at discovering the ‘primary
cause’ and the basic principle governing all things (known in Greek as arche).

In later periods, especially the Middles Ages, the basic problems of Metaphysics
were questions concerning the existence and nature of God with Metaphysics then
being known as the “servant of theology”. Later, the Renaissance saw the focus
of Metaphysics become the existence of the external universe. Contemporary
Metaphysics is occupied with Man as a subject entwined in the universe and in
history (Metaphysics of History) exploring Man’s nature, existence, limitations
(Metaphysics of Freedom), duties and relations with other people (Ethics and
Sociology).

Generally speaking, Metaphysics concerns all that lies beyond the scope of what
can be analysed using scientiﬁc methods, and concerns the basic categorisation and
structure of that which exists.

2. Problems of Stability and Change

As mentioned above, one of the ﬁrst problems to come under the scrutiny of philos-
ophers was the primary cause and the basic principle governing all things that exist
i.e.

arche

. Beginning in the 6

century, the Ancient Greeks attempted to describe the

nature and origin of the reality that surrounded them. It became evident that it was
impossible to reconcile with one another the problem of the existence of both static
and dynamic features of the universe.

Heracleitus

of Ephesus (c.540 - c.480 BC) was the ﬁrst philosopher to write about

the concepts of stability and change. In a fashion typical of his style, he paints a
metaphorical picture of reality represented by a river. He tells us how no one can
step twice into the same river as “upon those who step into the same rivers different
and ever different waters ﬂow down.” For him, the universe was a ﬂowing, dynamic
system that exists in time.

Not only does the river change but also we undergo transformations. Due to the
fact that pantha rhei “everything ﬂows”, we cannot say of ourselves that we simply
exist but that we constantly change, becoming child, youth, adult and elder in turn.
What is seen by many as permanent being or concrete existence is only a collection
of forms in different stages of transition.

The basis for all these change and, simultaneously, the basis for all things that exist
is, according to Heracleitus, an eternal and indivisible substance, namely arche. For
Heracleitus, this essential material, the principle of the orderly universe, was ﬁre,
from which all things derive and into which all things perish. Fire can cause the de-
struction of a given object; ﬁre in the form of war can destroy all forms of our social
universe: our nations or our culture. However, in this light, death is not the end but
merely a passage from one form of existence into another.

Heracleitus maintained that ﬁre (and all its manifestations) was the basis for all
things. “Changing state and becoming dense, it takes the form of air, water or ﬁ-
nally, earth. All things change into ﬁre and ﬁre changes into all things in the same
way that all goods can be exchanged for gold and gold can be exchanged for all
goods. Furthermore, ﬁre is a destructive force, the element that causes tension and
motion”.

He also maintained that “struggle is something common and conﬂict is something
just. Struggle is the father of all things, of all things king”. The world ﬁnds itself in
constant motion and is built on pairs of binary opposites which are in a constant
state of permanent conﬂict and, at the same time, form the most wondrous of har-
monies. For example, thanks only to injustice can man know justice. In the same way
sickness makes health seem both pleasurably and good.

The main opponents of Heracleitus’ philosophy of change were the philoso-
phers of Elea:

Parmenides

(c.515 - c.450) and

Zeno

(c.490 - c.430). According to

Parmenides, “Being is and cannot not be; Non-Being is not and cannot in anyway
be”. Consequently, Being does not arise and does not perish. It is impossible for
it to arise as this would mean it has to arise from either Non-Being or Being. It is
impossible for it to arise from Non-Being because Non-Being is not. It is also impos-
sible for it to arise from Being as it would then have previously existed and therefore
could not arise. We can argue, in similar fashion, that it is impossible for it to per-
ish. Consequently, Being is an eternally present state with no beginning and no end,

without past, without future. Being understood in this way is the only thing that can
be thought of and the only thing that can be expressed.

Scholars examining the work of the Eleatic School regard the above statement as the
ﬁrst ever expression of a non-contradiction principle within the tradition of Western
thought. The principle asserts that it is not possible for two contradictory elements
to simultaneously co-exist. However, Parmenides’ main concern was to show how
a concrete element could not undergo change because that which moves and trans-
forms cannot belong to Being that exists eternally. Following his line of thought,
the one and only characteristic of the universe is that it exists and the qualities that
change cannot be seen as existence in themselves.

It is not difﬁcult to see how the teachings of Parmenides caused controversy. His op-
ponents (which may include, perhaps, readers of this book) noticed that this theory,
contradicting the existence of both change and motion, could not be reconciled with
our everyday experiences. However, the defence of Parmenides’ ideas was under-
taken by one of his students, Zeno of Elea. He presented four implausible arguments
that denied the existence of motion which Aristotle discussed together with their
paradoxical nature in his Physics.

In the ﬁrst of these, known as “the Dichotomy” paradox, motion is presented as im-
possible because in order for a moving object to reach a goal, it must reach halfway
on the course before it reaches the end. But, before reaching halfway, it must reach
half of this half, and so on ad inﬁnitum. Any distance can be divided and sub-divided
into halfway points. Consequently, it is impossible to traverse an inﬁnite number of
parts in a ﬁnite period of time according to Zeno “because every distance can be
divided into an inﬁnite number of parts, it is not possible to travel any distance in
ﬁnite time.”

“The Achilles” paradox is the second. Zeno uses the story of the race between
Achilles and the tortoise. According to Zeno, even the fastest of runners can never
reach the slowest of tortoises if the tortoise has even a short start on Achilles. He will
encounter similar problems to those mentioned in the ﬁrst paradox. Achilles would
ﬁrst have to reach the point at which the tortoise was at the start of the race by which
time the tortoise will have moved. Then Achilles would have to reach the next point
the tortoise was when he reached the previous point by which time the tortoise will
have moved some more, to a third point and so on into inﬁnity.

Supposing Achilles moves ten times faster than the tortoise and the tortoise has a
ten-metre start on him then in the time Achilles has traversed the ten metres the tor-
toise will have moved a metre. When Achilles traverses the next metre the tortoise
will have moved ten centimetres further and so on ad inﬁnitum. As well as motion,
the same applies to ever decreasing distances…ad inﬁnitum.

The third argument known as “the Arrow” proves how an arrow let ﬂy from a bow
only appears to be in motion. According to Zeno, time is made up of a succession
of present moments, a succession of “now” moments and in each of these moments
the arrow is in a space equal to itself, therefore, the arrow is in the same position in
every moment and the arrow is at rest.

In the fourth and ﬁnal argument, “the Stadium”, Zeno attempts to prove how speed
is relative. Consequently, motion itself is relative and speed is but an essential char-
acteristic of it.

In the light of contemporary mathematics, we can demonstrate the absurdity of this
kind of argumentation. Aristotle also pointed out the fact that time, like a distance
that needs to be traversed by an object, is divisible. The importance of the Paradoxes
of Zeno rest in the fact that they highlighted basic problems and brought them to

the attention of other philosophers. For example, the third argument shows that if
we treat a straight line as a series of dimensionless points and if time consists of mo-
ments that do not last in time, then motion is simply a sequence of states of rest.

What is more, those set on revealing the absurdity of Zeno still encounter certain
problems. The contemporary British philosopher, Simon Blackburn gives an inter-
esting example based on the deductions of Zeno: Imagine a lamp which shines for
half a minute, switches off for a quarter of a minute and then shines for another
eighth of a minute… After the passing of a minute is the lamp shining or not? From a
mathematical point of view, no answer is acceptable due to the fact that the sentence
is unﬁnished. It therefore seems that the lamp described by us cannot exist, however,
the example can be seen as a faithful model of Achilles’ completed journey.

An approach which attempted to solve the problem of stability and change in
Antiquity was

atomism

(materialism) conceived by the philosopher,

Democritus

(c.460 - c.370). He believed that reality is made up of atoms and vacuum inhabiting
the space between these atoms. An atom was the smallest, indivisible particle of mat-
ter with deﬁned characteristics. It was generally a constant, static and unchanging
form of “Being” similar to that described by Parmenides. However, atoms constantly
change their spatial position, they collide with each other and they can perpetually
appear in new conﬁgurations and are forever in motion which is therefore similar to
Heracleitus’ idea of reality ﬂowing like a river.

Different aspects of the problem of stability and change within metaphysics ma-
terialise in later discussion. They are also present in the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle which follow.

3. Idealism

Idealism is popularly understood as either imagining a world better than the real
one or adhering to lofty, unreal and impractical ideals. The focus of following sec-
tion, however, is

metaphysical realism

for which the popular meaning of idealism is

unsatisfactory.

Generally speaking, the term idealism is used to represent approaches in philosophy
which maintain that ideas, thoughts and consciousness are primary and elementary
in relation to all existence. An example of metaphysical idealism is the

objective ideal-

ism

created by

Plato

(c.427 - 347BC) in Ancient Greece.

Plato was also concerned, like Heracleitus, Parmenides and Zeno before him, with
the relationship between that which is eternal, static and unchanging and that which
is constantly changing, dynamic and in motion.

Plato believed that everything we observe and register via our senses incessantly
“ﬂows” like Heracleitus’ concept of the river. He therefore maintained that no stable
elements exist which do not undergo change or decay. The world of facts and phe-
nomena surrounding us is, however, not the only world that exists.

In essence reality is, according to Plato, something spiritual rather than material.
What is more, this spiritual being exists outside of man and independently of his
consciousness i.e. it has independent existence. Humans in their physical form be-
long to the material world of objects, however, life goes decidedly beyond this world.
In order to clarify his ideas, Plato used his

allegory of the cave

He describes the following situation: there are people that live in a large, dark un-
derground cave who are in irons and chains. They sit with their backs to the cave
exit and their hands and feet are bound so that they can only see the wall in front of
them. Behind them, at the opening of the cave, in the light of day something is hap-
pening. These ‘prisoners’, however, are unable to leave the cavern and remain in the
dark watching only the “theatre of shadows” that takes place before them.

The cavern dwellers do not feel the pinch of their irons due to the fact that they have
been sitting in the same position, bound to the ﬂoor, since birth believing themselves
to be free and independent beings. The shadows they have grown accustomed to for
them are real, exist independently and form part of their true reality.

According to Plato, this is how life appears for most people. We have grown ac-
customed to taking what is false as real; grown accustomed to leading a hollow and
superﬁcial existence as well as leading a life without any values or goals. However,
Plato believed that it was, in fact, possible for individuals to leave his metaphorical
cavern. Man is not only a body and the world of objects around us that we regis-
ter via our senses is not the only world accessible to us. Man also possesses a soul
which belongs to the world of ideas. These ideas are marked by their eternal and
unchanging existence. The material world, however, is merely an imperfect copy of
the world of ideas.

Plato maintained that the eternal and unchanging

idea

is by no means the physical

“pre-material” that is arche. The eternal and unchanging is spiritual, a purely abstract
pattern or design from which all things were created. Observing the surrounding
world, Plato came to the conclusion that the similarity of phenomena occurring in

nature proves that there is only a limited number of “forms” which are both “above
and beyond” everything we see around us and form the basis of everything also.

These “forms” are, in fact, Plato’s “ideas.” For example, all horses correspond to the
pattern that is the idea of a “horse”, correspondingly all people are representations
of the idea of a “human.” The relationship between the darkness of the cave and the
world existing outside the cave corresponds to the relationship between forms in
nature and the world of ideas.

While illustrating the relationship between the world of ideas and the material world
of objects, Plato drew on the concept of

Demiurge

, a god existing on the border of

the two worlds who ordered the chaos that he found in the material world using the
world of ideas upon which to model it. (Plato believed, however, that he was not the
creator of matter as matter has no beginning).

We cannot reach the world of ideas, if we focus on phenomena experienced via our
ﬁve imperfect senses which so often succumb to illusions. In the world of our senses
“everything ﬂows”, however, we have to grasp what is stable and unchanging which
is only achievable thanks to our mind. As mentioned above, man possesses a mate-
rial body which succumbs to change and is mortal. However, man also possesses an
immortal, immaterial

soul

which is the seat of the mind.

Thanks to the aforesaid soul, we can relate to the world of ideas and leave the cave
that constrains us. This is possible as the souls of individuals exist in the ideal world
prior to joining with a particular body. Plato believed in the pre-existence of souls.
The moment the soul joins with the body, it forgets about the more perfect world
to which it once belonged. However, the souls of some people feel homesick for the
place from which they came.

Knowledge of stable forms or ideas cannot be gained through learning because to
learn something is to discover a truth of some sort which we previously did not
know. One cannot learn something that is already known, however, knowledge of
ideas is, in fact, inborn knowledge. Therefore, all knowledge of ideas is the fruit
of recollection of that which is already in our minds. Our sensory experiences can
merely have an inﬂuence on jolting our memory and can lead us towards becoming
aware of the knowledge that is within us but of which we are unaware at the mo-
ment. This explains why Plato was so fond of mathematics. He believed the elemen-
tary laws of mathematics are discovered through pure reﬂection therefore they give
evidence of our reminiscence.

The path towards ideal existence is well-illustrated if we draw on Plato’s theory of
love. “

Platonic Love

” appears as a force working between what is sensory and what

is extra-sensory. According to Plato, the lowest level of love is physical love. He
writes:

“For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beau-
tiful forms; and ﬁrst, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form
only - out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive
that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of
form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the
beauty in every form is and the same!

And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will
despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the
next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the
beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness,
he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth
thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and

see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all
is of one family, and that personal beauty is a triﬂe; and after laws and institutions
he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant
in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and
narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he
will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom;
until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to
him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere.[…]

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to
see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will
suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty […] a nature which in the ﬁrst place
is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair
in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one
place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair
to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of
the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other
being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven or in earth, or in any other place;
but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution
and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing
beauties of all other things.” (Plato: The Symposium)

In this way, beginning with a sensory fascination of the beauty in other people’s
bodies, we can reach (or “recollect”) the love of the beautiful idea - beauty “in it-
self” which is unchanging and eternal. For Plato, similarly to other Ancient Greeks,
‘beauty’ and ‘good’ were one and the same. Moreover, love was an uplifting force
driving us towards good.

Ideal beauty present in sensual beauty ignites man’s soul which craves to return to
the place from whence it came, it craves to return to the world of perfect and eternal
ideas. However, this is only possible once we free ourselves from the captivity of our
corporeal life.

In contemporary times, the word “idea” is understood as a concept, an idea, a rep-
resentation of something that is mental and intellectual. As we can see, in Plato’s
objective idealism, an idea cannot be reduced to a psychological perspective. For
Plato, an idea is something which, for thought, constitutes a particular focus and is
being that exists independently of our consciousness.

4. Realism

Realism is popularly understood as a rational attitude to life and reality where de-
cision-making leads to the effective accomplishment of previously set goals. The
object of the following section is to illustrate

metaphysical realism

and consequently

realism which is realised through philosophical reﬂection.

Generally speaking, we can say that realism is characterised by an outlook which
sees our sensory perceptions as reaching true reality. Metaphysical realism estab-
lishes the existence of real beings; their existence is independent of the subject that
experiences them and the subject’s consciousness. Furthermore, it is important to
not reduce realism to

materialism

which views all of reality as having a material na-

ture (an example of which is the atomism of Democritus mentioned earlier).

Approaches to materialism based on metaphysics contrast with

spiritualism

which

maintains that true reality is spiritual in nature and all that exists is a spiritual sub-
stance (the individual soul and the divine absolute) and that the corporeal world is
merely a manifestation of the spiritual element.

However, metaphysical realism is most often contrasted with the

metaphysical ideal-

ism

of Plato which sees ideas as independent, objective beings constituting the natu-

ral order of reality which is only accessible through the mind and not via the senses.
Thus, we can also speak of Plato’s objective idealism as being spiritual realism. As
mentioned in the previous section, according to Plato, we are able to give evidence
of ideas by “recollection” of them due to the fact that these primeval ideas exist in
the human mind (in our souls).

An example of metaphysical realism is the so-called

moderate realism of Aristotle

(382

- 322 BC). Aristotle studied at Plato’s Academy, however, he soon rejected the work
of his master saying, “Plato is dear to me but dearer still to me is the truth”. As men-
tioned above, Plato was most interested in the existence of stable, unchanging forms-
ideas which were only accessible by peering into our own souls. However, Aristotle
was concerned with nature. He was not only one of the great Ancient philosophers
but also Europe’s ﬁrst scholar-natural historian using a precise language as well as
reliable

empirical

studies of nature on which to base his theories.

Aristotle rejected Plato’s distinction of the world of ideas and the material world
of natural phenomena. He maintained that ideas are not based on an objective re-
ality but are merely a product of abstraction. They do not exist beyond concrete
things which are accessible via the senses. However, the views of Aristotle cannot
be reduced to materialism which states that the only substance that exists is matter.
Aristotle claimed that neither ideas or matter exist independently hence everything
is a combination of form and matter.

Matter

is a constituent part of everything that we experience. It is eternal and at the

same time indeterminate and devoid of all possible characteristics. It is pure possi-
bility and the basis for all processes that we observe in the world, although it is not
the cause. According to Aristotle, this pure potentiality can transform into reality
only when it joins with form. Consequently, it is form that is the active and shaping
principle that allows matter to become something concrete.

Form

for Aristotle is a constituent of being which is the cause of all change and mo-

tion. Additionally, it is its end to which all things that exist aim. Thus, according to

the philosopher, an acorn will always grow into an Oak tree and a child will change
into an adult. All change is purposeful and everything drives towards the attainment
of its speciﬁc form. However, not every acorn will grow to become an Oak tree in
the same way that not every child will have the fortune to develop and become an
adult.

If we allow the existence of an individual to develop without hindrance then we
cannot fail to notice that its existence drives towards a certain form, that is forms
typical of its kind or genus. In the same way, a stone thrown in the air will always
fall downwards until it reaches a state of rest on the ground. Thus, the form that is
the state of rest is typical for all stones.

It follows then that the form is a certain quality of a thing but not an individual spe-
ciﬁc thing in itself. The combination of matter and form is a human product. In all
that we create, the material foundations as well as an ideal principle can be found.
To illustrate we can use the example of a marble statue which is made up of two ele-
ments: the unformed material which existed before the sculptor began working and
the form i.e. the ideal shape the artist lent to the block of marble therefore making it
a sculpture. Furthermore, the form that existed in the mind of the sculptor was the
initial cause, the reason for the sculpture’s creation as well as it’s end towards which
the artist aimed when he worked the marble.

Everything that exists, every

substance

, is a combination of matter and form. In in-

troducing the category of substance in his philosophical thought, Aristotle attempted
to reconcile two opposing currents in Greek philosophical thought: the traditional
materialistic philosophy of nature (of, for example, Democritus) and Plato’s ideal-
ism. As Aristotle says:

“[…] the essence [of a thing] is substance, and the deﬁnition is a form of the essence
[…] We must grasp, then, the kinds of differentiae (for these will be the principles of
the being of things) […] substance is the cause of each thing’s being, we must seek in
these differentiae what is the cause of the being of each of these things.[…] the actu-
ality or the form is different when the matter is different […and] the form that gives
the differentiae seems to be an account of the form or actuality, while that which
gives the components is rather an account of the matter […] What is still weather?
Absence of motion in a large expanse of air; air is the matter, and absence of motion
is the actuality and substance. What is a calm? Smoothness of sea; the material sub-
stratum is the sea, and the actuality or shape is smoothness. It is obvious then, from
what has been said, what sensible substance is and how it exists - one kind of it as
matter, another as form or actuality, while the third kind is that which is composed
of these two.” (Aristotle: Metaphysics)

Rejecting Plato’s division of the world into the mental and sensory, Aristotle ulti-
mately recognises that the phenomena that surround us can be both seen and known.
The form deﬁnes the appearance of a thing as well as what is typical of its genus or
its category of being. Through the observation of the visible shape of things, we can
arrive at the essence of everything that surrounds us.

Likewise, man as a substance, is a combination of matter i.e. a body, as well as a
form i.e. a soul. In his famous work, Per Psyches (Of the Soul), Aristotle recounts the
three levels of the soul. The lowest form is the soul of a plant which can be found
in everything that lives on the Earth. It is responsible for growth and nourishment.
The next level is the soul of an animal which is responsible for perception, imagina-
tion, the drive for pleasure and the avoidance of distress. It is only at this level that
we can speak of what in modern terms might be called the psychological functions.
The highest of the three levels is the rational soul, the human soul which is able to
perceive both ‘being’ and ‘good’. This soul directs human will as it is perceives what
is good.

According to Aristotle, everything that exists aspires to the attainment of a speciﬁc
form, which is both the cause of its existence and the end to all motion, change and
development. The transformations that individual objects undergo are comprehen-
sible only when we notice both the causes and the ends within them. Every state in
which existence can be found is a result of a series of both speciﬁc causes and accom-
plished ends. The world that surrounds us is thus a chain of events interconnected
through causes and ends.

However, for Aristotle this chain of mutually-related actions and reactions cannot
go on into inﬁnity. A ﬁrst cause and ﬁnal end must exist in the guise of God,

the First

Mover

, although not susceptible to change himself (he is not made up of matter, nor

consequently any potentiality), he constitutes the cause of the motion of the uni-
verse. This element of Aristotle’s philosophy, as we will later discover, contributed
to its subsequent christianisation.

Mind and Body

When we ask ourselves what “to think” means or what is understood by awareness
and consciousness, we move into territory typical of the

philosophy of the mind

. The

problem discussed here is a question of relationship between what is physical/mate-
rial and what is psychical/mental.

Many of the great metaphysical philosophers have attempted to deﬁne the nature of
the mind and body as well as how each inﬂuences the other. Likewise, most people
(who are not philosophers themselves) are interested in both their mental well-being
and physical health. Most of us differentiate between experiences found in the ex-
ternal world and what we experience in our lives in our internal world, for example,
sensations, thoughts, emotional states, desires, decisions or ideas.

The approach that asserts that the mind and body are two different kinds of be-
ing is known as

dualism

. This view establishes the existence of two substances: the

non-physical, that is the mind (or soul) as well as the material, that is the body.
Accordingly, thought is not reduced to the physical or chemical processes taking
place in our brains although we cannot equate the mind solely with the brain.
Moreover, the perception of the fact that the mind possesses properties different to
the properties of physical objects and mental properties like melancholy, pain, anger
cannot be explained by physics or chemistry.

This approach often goes hand in hand with the belief in the possibility of the mind
living on after the body has died. If we maintain that the mind with all its mental
properties is not dependent on what is material, we may accept that it continues
functioning even when the body passes away. People who believe in the immortality
of the soul are therefore dualists.

Those who espouse to dualism face the problem of understanding what goes on
between the mind and the body. Our everyday experiences demonstrate to us, how-
ever, that these two drastically different worlds are somehow connected. The events
which are present in the physical world distinctly impact upon the mental world
changing, for example, our ideas or emotional states. Similarly, our desires for ex-
ample can impact upon the physical world.

The French philosopher,

René Descartes

(1594 - 1650) was interested in the relation-

ship between the mind and the body. In discussing man, Descartes began his medita-
tions with an extreme form of doubt. He maintained that it is possible to imagine
my body does not exist, that all things and everything is a part of a deceptive dream,
and that the surrounding world does not exist and is but a façade or simulation taken
from the world of the Matrix. He continued that what is beyond doubt within this
entire process is the fact that I doubt. Thus, if I doubt then I think and if I think,
I am. From this process of doubt follows the famous Cartesian cogito ergo sum (I
think therefore I am).

According to Descartes, the two substances that are the mind and body remain in a
cause-effect relationship. Sensations are caused by mechanical stimuli which give rise
to mechanical reactions. In other words, information from the sense organs is trans-
mitted via the nervous system to the brain. Descartes in his Meditations writes:

“Nature also teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I am
not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am very closely united to

it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole.
For if that were not the case, when my body is hurt, I, who am merely a thinking
thing, should not feel pain, for I should perceive this wound by the understanding
only, just as the sailor perceives by sight when something is damaged in his vessel;
and when my body has need of drink or food, I should clearly understand the fact
without being warned of it by confused feelings of hunger and thirst. For all these
sensations of huger, thirst pain, etc., are in truth none other than certain confused
modes of thought which are produced by the union and apparent intermingling of
mind and body.” [Descartes, R. (1997) Key Philosophical Writings. Wordsworth
Classics]

The Cartesian dualism does not consist of the simple opposition of mind (soul) and
body. Descartes presents two ways of viewing man. On the one hand, all knowledge
and the basis of man’s existence can be found in the mind. On the other hand, man
can be seen as a thinking subject with a perceiving body who is entwined in causality
and is subject to that which is necessary.

How is it that the two worlds, the mental and the physical, communicate with each
other? For Descartes, the point where the body and mind come together is the
pineal gland within the brain. Obviously, such an explanation temporarily shelved
the problem although it still remains. One may ask how it is possible for something
physical to be associated with our mind which itself is neither spatial nor physical.

Descartes’ “physiological” (pineal gland) hypothesis undoubtedly kick-started the
development of a entirely materialistic metaphysical approach which assumed that
mental processes can be satisfactorily explained on the basis of the laws of physics.

Followers of materialism believe that only one substance exists: matter and its physi-
cal properties. Materialism is a thus a form of metaphysical

monism

. An example of

this kind of materialistic approach is

behaviourism

Behaviourists claim that all so-called ‘mental states’ like pain or perception are noth-
ing more than physical processes of the higher nervous system as well as the brain.
Therefore, the mind and the brain are one and the same. Thus, the mind and mental
processes can be inﬂuenced by purely physical factors, for example, lack of sleep or
an inappropriate diet.

Furthermore, according to behaviourists, if one claims that someone feels pain then
one is simply describing the behaviour of a given person. He or she can shout, cry
or contort their face and this will be understood as “feeling pain.” When one claims
that someone is friendly or intelligent then one is actually claiming that this person
behaves in a friendly or intelligent manner.

This is perhaps the reason why behaviourists maintain that introspection or the
observation of oneself or the analysis of one’s own physical state cannot be con-
sidered a scientiﬁc method. One cannot be both the subject and object of study.
Consequently, it is accepted that our own beliefs and other people’s beliefs can only
be revealed through the observation of our behaviour.

Such a hypothesis is undoubtedly at odds with the feelings of most people. For ex-
ample, one does not have to observe one’s own behaviour to know the music one
enjoys listening to. This radical belief has led to the questioning and mocking of
behaviourism: “Two behaviourists have scarcely ﬁnished making love when one sits
up and says to the other: It was fantastic for you, how was it for me?”

Behaviourism undoubtedly appears here as a reductionist approach to the mind-
body relationship where something as complex and complicated as our psyche is
boiled down to merely physical phenomena.

In contemporary philosophy, the successor to behaviourism is

functionalism

the main

thesis of which states that in order to characterise mental states it is enough to char-
acterise their threefold conditioning i.e.: What is typically the cause of the state?
How does one mental state inﬂuence others? What consequences does a particular
mental state entail in the behaviour of a subject? Consequently, psychological states
should be deﬁned in terms of the functions they perform.

Generally speaking, functionalists view the human brain as a computer that controls
the body. The mind is the “operating system” which houses data and speciﬁc pro-
grammes. Therefore, perception is the process of uploading or inputting data into
the system. Memory, accordingly, is essentially the retrieval of this data for use in the
system. These functions exist merely to fulﬁl our needs and desires.

Materialists believe therefore that a biological description of the brain is similar to
the description or technical speciﬁcations of a computer. The speciﬁcations describe
the computer’s hardware or software. Thus one can claim that, on the one hand,
neurophysiology describes our hardware i.e. the structure of neurons in the brain
and, on the other, psychology focuses on our software i.e. the manner in which
information is received, processed and the manner in which the body is controlled.
A question begs to be asked: ‘Is functionalism satisfactory and comprehensive in its
discussion of the relationship between the mind and body?’

The above-mentioned computer analogy raises many objections, namely, that human
behaviour is reduced to physical terms i.e. cause and effect, stimulus and reaction.
This reduction leads to the rejection of the possibility of the existence of free will
and the ability to take decisions freely. Furthermore, the analogy appears to be far-
fetched.

In an attempt to highlight these objections, the contemporary American philosopher,
John Searle undertook an experiment which demonstrated the difference between
how both a human and computer “understand” a story.

Let us imagine that we are given a set of cards with Chinese characters on them as
well as a Chinese book containing a list of instructions. We are locked in a room and
we do not understand Chinese. Through the gap between the door and the ﬂoor
more cards containing Chinese characters are slid into the room.

Our task is to match the Chinese ideograms on the cards which have been slid in
through the gap with the ideograms in the book. The book points us to the next
Chinese character which serves as its pair and we must discover the pair within the
set of cards we were previously given and then slide it back out through the gap.

There are questions on the cards that are fed into the room. Moreover, answers can
be found on the cards that we slide out. Even if we do not understand Chinese, to
the outside observer it appears that we understand the questions and are able to give
reasonable answers to these questions. Meanwhile, we are merely matching up what,
for us, are senseless symbols.

According to Searle, a computer programme acts in a similar fashion. The pro-
gramme matches up basic symbols without understanding their meaning or to what
they actually relate.

Freedom and Determinism

The previous section concerning the relationship between the mind and body brings
us now to another problem which has also been dealt with in the bounds of contem-
porary metaphysical philosophy namely

the question of free will and determinism

Freedom is generally understood as the

lack of constraint

i.e. the possibility of de-

ciding for oneself about one’s own life, weighing up various plans of action, and
formulating one’s own conclusions, convictions and coming to one’s own decisions.
One can talk about constraints when one must do something against one’s will or if
one is limited in one’s actions by the natural environment, commands, orders, bans,
institutions, or even other people, indoctrination or manipulation.

Physical freedom

appears to be the easiest kind of freedom to deﬁne. It is obvious

that if someone has been imprisoned then they are not free. When one is ill then we
can talk of being imprisoned in our bodies as one cannot freely do what one wants.
Another limitation on freedom in the physical sense is not allowing a person free-
dom of movement or the freedom to cross national borders.

These kinds of limitations are often associated with the loss of

socio-political free-

dom

(analysed and discussed within the domain of political philosophy). In its most

basic form, this concerns a person’s material status. Thus, a starving nation cannot
be seen to be free due to the fact that it is dependent on richer nations (outside its
borders) and its poverty-stricken population may lose its sense of freedom. Political
freedom is associated with what is understood as the freedom to participate in the
political life of a country as well as the traditional individual freedoms as stated in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The above problems concern the limitation of freedom stemming from external con-
straints. However, various

internal factors

also limit our actions. A good example of

this is mental illness which causes a person to lose control of these internal forces.

Hunger and thirst can also lead to the loss of free will. Hence, small children, men-
tally handicapped, or psychologically unstable people are often seen as not respon-
sible for their own actions as are unable to anticipate the consequences of their
actions. It is of no coincidence that psychologists employed as expert witnesses in
court often maintain, when defending the accused, that he/she was not responsible
for his/her actions as these actions were the result of factors completely beyond their
control.

These problems all concern so-called

negative freedom

i.e. the lack of constraints.

However, for many philosophers, the concept of

positive freedom

is of much greater

concern.

Freedom in the positive sense is the freedom to exert full control over one’s life. It
is a state in which one is independent of social and cultural pressures and is demon-
strated by a person being the master of his/her own fate. In this way, a free person
cannot be an alcoholic who is ‘happy in the knowledge that he/she is free’ because
his/her positive freedom is hampered and limited by the fact that he/she needs and
craves alcohol, thus becoming a slave to his/her own impulses.

Moving on, we can also associate freedom with the concept of morality. In the fullest
of sense, it can be deﬁned as acting according to one’s own free will with this being

justiﬁed by the largest number of motives possible. Thus, our actions are not only
an expression of our individual decisions but can also be justiﬁed in the face of the
world and the people around us.

Even in the philosophy of Plato, freedom was associated with the internal and spir-
itual. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Plato claimed that man must abandon the
superﬁcial world, he must leave the cave, the material world of illusory phenomena.

Internal freedom

is one’s ability to transcend one’s physical self, one’s body and go

beyond one’s emotions and passions.

Immanuel Kant

(1724 - 1804) claimed that an

act can only be free when consciousness (the mind) speaks against the desires of the
senses. Hence, the relationship between freedom and morality is one of the most
important concerns of Ethics.

Undoubtedly, people become aware of the different levels of freedom that they have.
Moreover, what appears to be a decision guided by free will is often the result of the
inﬂuence of various internal and external factors. What one does and thinks depends
to a large extent on one’s upbringing, education, environment, biological traits, so-
cial class, culture and religion or ideology. Many philosophers believe that all human
actions and decisions are conditioned by various causes and consequently, there is no
free will. This position is called

determinism

Determinism asserts that all that happens is conditioned by what happens before it.
Therefore, nothings happens by accident and everything is subject to the unchang-
ing laws of nature. This

physical determinism

(associated with the material world

that surrounds us) is related to

psychological determinism

which holds that all mental

states and events are dependent on preceding mental factors, thus no form of free-
dom exists.

Determinism is nowadays built on scientiﬁc foundations, although the concept exist-
ed even before the establishment of modern science. Many religions have defended
what may be called

divine determinism

which stemmed from the conviction that God

was the only form of causality in the universe and God determines all human actions
and all events occurring in nature.

This belief is also associated with the assumption that God is omnipotent and thus
able to control all events and foresee everything that is to happen in the future.
Consequently, everything we do is pre-determined from above by God.

Arguments in favour of determinism can be found in sociology, psychology, psy-
choanalysis, physiology, and neurology amongst others. It is without a doubt that
those working in modern advertising know perfectly well the factors that determine
our choices and decisions, skilfully selecting particular stimuli in order to increase
the sales of a given product. In taking on determinism one may come to the uneasy
conclusion that people are not fully responsible for their actions or decisions.

An opposing position to determinism is

indeterminism

which assumes that exceptions

exist to strict determinism. A follower of this position was

William James

(1842 - 1910)

who observed that the fundamental features of our moral experiences are entirely
incomprehensible if we assume the existence of free will. If we reject the existence of
free will then concepts such as conscience and repentance have no meaning.

If one was to consistently accept the assumptions of determinism one would have
to concede that judges only punish people in order to change the factors that con-
dition their behaviour whilst remaining in power which in itself is determined by
these conditions. In this situation, the punishment would merely be the imposition
of certain norms on an individual on the part of the group which is in power at that
particular point in time. Consequently, if we are to speak of responsibility we must
concede that we are, in fact, free.

According to

Jean-Paul Satre

(1905 - 1980), not only are we free but we are “sen-

tenced to freedom” and thus responsible for everything we do. Man is only that
which he makes himself. His existence is not the realisation of any “idea” of a human
or “human nature”, furthermore, what we become is not determined ‘from above’.
We are not in the process of realising a ready-made plan and are able to make deci-
sions through which we become different and new people.

We must continuously make decisions to give meaning to our existence, making
decisions throughout our life in order to become a rational being. Even someone
who is imprisoned in a cell can still make decisions: one can be a submissive pris-
oner or one can try to revolt or attempt to escape. Thus, one cannot reject freedom.
The metaphysical fear that follows causes man to feel “nothingness”. Man is able to
emerge from this nothingness thanks to the decisions taken which then raise him to
the rank of “being”.

Glossary

Arche

- the principle governing all existence, that which forms the world.

Determinism

- this theory asserts that all that happens is conditioned by what hap-

pens before it. Therefore, nothings happens by accident and everything is subject to
unchanging laws of nature.

(Divine) Determinism

- the conviction that God was the only form of causality in the

universe and God determines all human actions and all events occurring in nature.
This belief is also associated with the assumption that God is omnipotent and thus
able to control all events and foresee everything that is to happen in the future.

(Psychological) Determinism

- this theory holds that all mental states and events are

dependent on preceding mental factors

Dualism

- this view asserts the existence of two independently-existing factors, for

example, the soul and body.

Idealism

- an approach that maintains that ideas, thoughts and consciousness precede

all other kinds of being.

Materialism

- a position that holds that all reality has a material/physical nature.

Approaches to materialism based on metaphysics contrast with

spiritualism

which

Metaphysics

- from the Greek work meaning ‘that which comes after physics.’ It

is accepted that the term entered the language of philosophy thanks to Aristotle,
the Ancient Greek philosopher. The treatises of Aristotle that followed Physics
were compiled under the title, Metaphysics (meta simply meaning ‘after’ in Greek).
Therefore metaphysical reﬂection and discussion concern problems that fall beyond
a purely physical scope which might be termed “the ﬁrst philosophy, the science of
the principles of being”.

Monism

- an approach that maintains the nature of all existence (reality) is homog-

enous and only one form of substance exists: either physical/material or spiritual.

Realism

- this is a view that maintains that our sensory perceptions grasp what is true

reality. Metaphysical realism establishes the existence of real beings; their existence
is independent of the subject that experiences them and the subject’s consciousness.

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