Knowledge and Reality in Nine Questions

A First Book in Philosophy

Matthew Davidson

• Editore: Bloomsbury Academic
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350161450
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Philosophy
• Categoria: Epistemology in Philosophy

Have you ever wondered what makes the questions a philosopher asks different from those asked by a non-philosopher? Is it a desire to seek the truth? Is it their reliance on scientific methods? Or is a philosophical question one that deals with the world we live in? For the Ancient Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle, questions about philosophy concerned the fundamental nature of reality and how we know about it. This introduction is based on their views, boiling philosophy down to nine essential questions and using them to reveal how we think about the major topics of metaphysics (the nature of reality) and epistemology (knowledge). From 'What Am I?' to 'What is Time?', this is a fast-paced tour of the Western philosophical tradition. It walks you through age-old questions about God, free will, skepticism, truth and perception and along the way introduces you to distinctive features and methods including: · How to differentiate between a good and bad arguments
· How to draw distinctions
· How to clarify the terms and concepts used in common philosophical debates
· How to tackle a thought experiment By unpacking and exploring each of the nine questions in turn, you find out what it really means to do philosophy. Not only do you emerge with a better understanding of the conceptual landscape around essential philosophical questions, you come to realize why it is that philosophers agree on very little. Here is a golden opportunity to think about some of the most important questions asked by philosophers over across the history of Western philosophical thought and discover why they still matter.

Question 1

WHAT AM I?

For as long as philosophy has been around, philosophers have asked the question, “what am I?” The answer to this might seem straightforward to you; in my own case, I’m a philosopher, a Californian, an American, a human, a fan of Liverpool Football Club, and so on. But this isn’t what philosophers typically mean when they ask this question. What we want to know is, “Fundamentally, what kind of thing am I?” That is, at a most basic level of description, what sort of entity am I?

The answers to this question matter. For instance, if I am my body or my brain, then it would seem as though I don’t survive into any sort of afterlife. For, my body and brain remain on earth and decompose. If I survive into the afterlife, then I must be the sort of thing that can survive the death of material parts of my body.

In this chapter, I want to consider a variety of answers to the question “what am I?” Some of them will be familiar to you; indeed, some of them may be answers you yourself accept. I should say that this is not an exhaustive list of possible answers. I want to focus on those that have had substantial philosophical support or impact.

Answer One: I am nothing that lasts over time. That is, I don’t exist, or exist only for a moment.

The first answer to the question “what am I?” is that I am nothing that persists through time. There are two sorts of views that might lead one to adopt Answer One. First, one might think that there is no self at all. This might seem a strange view to you: “Of course I exist!”, you might insist. But many Buddhists think that the self is illusory. It just appears to us that there is a self. Indeed, many Buddhists think the belief in the self is one of the things that keeps us from enlightenment and (thus) salvation.

Philosopher Peter Unger, in an article strikingly titled “I Do Not Exist”, argues for Answer One. Unger states that if I did exist, I would be a physical object that has things like cells as parts. But there are no entities with parts. Thus, I don’t exist, either. Why think that there aren’t any entities that have parts? Because if there were such entities there would be a definite number of parts (like cells) I could remove from any such entity and have it continue in existence; but there is no such definite number. So there aren’t any entities with parts.

Second, one may also defend Answer One if one thinks that what “I” refers to when I use it is a momentarily-lasting person stage. What is a momentarily-lasting person stage? It is a person that lasts only for a moment, and in the next moment a new person comes into existence. This is also a view held by many Buddhists.

There is one last view on which one might think that Answer One is correct. David Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature said this about the self:

I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement … The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity.

Book I, Part IV, Section VI

According to Hume, what is the self? It is a bundle of “perceptions”—mental states of various kinds. So, when I use “I” to refer to myself, I refer to a bundle of perceptions. Hume seems to think that each bundle of perceptions has its members essentially. This implies that a bundle ceases to exist when it gains or loses a mental state. So I don’t persist through time, as the mental states that I might in ordinary contexts call mine are constantly changing.

It is worth noting that it’s not clear what sort of thing a “bundle” is when we talk about bundles of perceptions. In ordinary contexts when we talk about bundles, we mention things like bundles of matches or bundles of flowers. And we may ask of those sorts of cases, (pointing at the matches), “Are there two kinds of things there, in my hand, the bundle and the individual matches? Or are there just the matches?” If we try to list accurately all the different kinds of things in the world, would we include bundles? Or would we include just things like matches, roses, and firewood? However, even if we think that in addition to those matches in my hand there is a bundle of matches, it’s not clear what a bundle of mental states would be.

Perhaps you’re thinking that Hume just could say, “I am those mental states” while referring plurally to number of mental states. This won’t work, though; for each of us is one thing, and thus can’t be identical with many things. (We will give an argument for this in the next chapter.)

Let’s set these concerns aside for now. Suppose we can make sense of the idea of bundles of mental states. Is this the sort of thing I am? I don’t think so. As the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid pointed out in a reply to David Hume’s bundle theory; I am a thing that thinks and has opinions and remembers doing things, and no bundle of mental states does that.

Furthermore, it seems pretty clear to me that I exist, and I have existed for multiple decades. If these claims are true, then any version of Answer One has to be wrong. So I’m inclined to think that we should look to other answers to the question of what kind of thing I am. Whatever I am; I am something, something that thinks, and something that persists through change over time.

Answer Two: I am a persisting physical object of some kind.

According to Answer Two, I am something physical or material and I last for more than a moment of time. What kind of physical thing might I be that is like that? Some candidates are: a brain, or a body, or the combination of a brain and a body. Some philosophers think I am a physical object that stands to my body in a way analogous to the way a statue stands to a piece of rock out of which it is carved.

I think that we can show that I am none of these kinds of things. The following may not be a description of how things will be, but it is at least a description of how things could be. I die, and after I die my body and brain remain on earth and gradually decompose. Thus my body and brain cease to exist. However, I live on in an afterlife. This afterlife never ends, and in the afterlife I am reacquainted with deceased loved ones and pets.

Perhaps this is not how things are. Perhaps when I die, I cease to exist. But it could be that things go this way. (Indeed, many people believe this is what will happen to me after I die.) That this could occur shows that I am neither my brain nor my body. For I may exist even if neither my brain nor my body exists, which implies that I am possibly distinct from brain or my body. And this implies that I am actually distinct from my brain or body. (The reasoning here is somewhat technical, though I supply it in the appendix at the end of the chapter.)

I think that this example also shows that I’m nothing that emerges from my body (or brain) the way a statue emerges from a piece of stone that is carved. For if the stone out of which the statue is made doesn’t exist, neither does the statue. Thus, I am not my brain, nor my body, nor something that emerges from my body (or brain).

Answer Three: I am a nonphysical mind.

According to Answer Three, I am a mind—a thinking thing—that isn’t made of matter. Philosophers sometimes call such an entity a soul (though there are interesting questions to what extent a philosopher’s concept of a soul overlaps with the ordinary concept of a soul). The classic statement of this view is from the seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher René Descartes. In 1641 in his Meditations on First Philosophy (a very commonly-used work in English-speaking introduction to philosophy courses), he says

I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, as far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that I [that is, my mind, by which I am what I am], is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it.

DESCARTES 1913, Med. VI

This view has come to be known as mind-body or Cartesian dualism. The term “dualism” comes from the fact that on this view there are two kinds of things, mental things that aren’t made of matter or located in space, and physical things that are made of matter and located in space. But it’s worth pointing out that there are versions of Answer Three on which there isn’t any matter—only minds. The Irish philosopher George Berkeley, who was born thirty-five years after Descartes died, had a view like this. (We will examine his view in chapter 9.)

It is worth noting that this view of what I am may fit well with the intuition that I could survive the death of my body and exist in some sort of afterlife. If I am a nonphysical mind, it is not implausible to think that I am the sort of thing that isn’t dependent on a body or brain for its existence. My body and brain may decay and cease to exist, and I live on. Currently my mind may interact with my body, but this does not need to be the case. If the afterlife story we stated above is correct, it won’t always be the case.

Answer Four: I am a combination of an immaterial mind and a body.

On Answer Four, I have two parts—an immaterial mind and physical body. My physical body is located in space (currently in a chair at a table). My immaterial mind interacts with my body; events in my body cause events in my mind and conversely. This might be an attractive answer if one is concerned with the fact that we often speak as though we are material objects. If Maria asks José to describe himself, he might say that he is 2 meters tall and weighs 85 kilograms. This would not be an unusual-sounding answer. But if José is an immaterial mind that isn’t located in space, what he has said is false. Now, the body that his mind interacts with is 2 meters tall and weighs 85 kilograms. But that’s not him; he’s the mind. And the body isn’t even a part of him. Thus, on Answer Three one might be concerned that these sorts of claims about properties I have turn out to be false. But on Answer Four, we could reply that there are two parts of José, and one part of him is 2 meters tall and weighs 85 kilograms. So on Answer Four we’re closer to saying something true with these sorts of claims.

But Answer Four encounters the same sorts of difficulties that Answer Two does. What is the difference between a view on which I am an immaterial mind that causally (that is, in the sense of “cause and effect”) interacts with a body; and the view on which I am something with two parts, an immaterial mind and a body? Presumably it must be that in the latter case I have both the body and immaterial mind essentially. Otherwise, the two views seem to collapse into eac...