Total Possibility

So I thought I would return to a little more hard core philosophy after all this talk about ducks.

I read a little philosophy every day.  I read just a little simply because I want the concepts to be able to sink in that I might be able to think about them and examine them.  I would still have to say that for the most part I remain an Aristotelian and  Thomist, although a few of those views are beginning to change.  That is simply the paradigm by which I approach most philosophical concepts.

So these days, I am doing a little self review of philosophy in the modern period.  I am doing that by simply reading 5 pages or so a day of Copelston’s History of Philosophy every day.  Again, I only read so little because I like to read every day, and I want to make sure that I don’t miss any concepts.  It is sort of like doing math or logic too quickly and leaving out a tilde or a negative sign.

These last 2 weeks or so I have been reading about Des Cartes.  To sum up Des Cartes in a nut shell, he began his philosophical inquiry by denying knowledge about anything- he did not deny knowledge per ipsum, but he denied anything that could not be proven without absolute certainty.  This is where the “cogito” statement that everyone knows comes from.  Cogito Ergo Sum to be exact.  The only thing that Des Cartes could not deny was that whether or not I know what I know to be true, whether or not I am being deceived by some greater power, like a demon or an unjust God, the fact remains that I am here to be wrong or to be deceived.  That, for Des Cartes, was an incontrovertible fact.  From there he built a metaphysics which was based on the certainty of Mathematics, of God, who must be the source of our concept of infinity (since we ourselves must be finite, the idea of the infinite must come from somewhere itself infinite, which must be God).

Some of the things that Des Cartes had to contend with was physical matter and its relationship to the metaphysical beings, such as mind, or God.  I think this has been a problem for every philosopher who admits a metaphysics, whether you be Platonic, Cartesian, Aristotelian or Thomistic.  How does the immaterial interact with the material?  That is the simple question.  I think it is a fascinating question myself that has ramifications into ethics, epistemology, as well as politics and society. 

For the Thomists and Aristotelians, they (I guess I have to make a qualified “we” there) talk about the interaction in terms of causality.  We look at the four causes, efficient, formal (metaphysical), material, and final causes.  Causality is what links the material to the metaphysical in this system.  Basically, in the substance of man, the soul and body are one thing with logical distinctions.  The soul is the formal cause of the body, and when the two are separated by death, the body ceases to be animated.  The material cause, or the mechanism which works on the material end, is the body itself.  In this system, the formal and material causes are intrinsically linked.  It is almost as if to say that there is only a logical distinction between the two.  The key word here is substance.  In the substance which is man there is a unity between formal and material causes, which is the thing in itself.  For these philosophers, the body and the soul are really only complete and functional when they are together. 

For Des Cartes, however, as for the Platonists, we seem to be souls stuck in bodies.  This process of learning something for both of them, is simply a rediscovery of innate knowledge that we already have.  There is a sort of hostile relationship between body and soul for the two of them- and for St. Paul in Romans Ch 8 by the way.  (Paul was a Platonist).  For these two philosophers, one could conclude that the soul is more at home when it is by itself and not weighed down by the body.  It is then free to remember all the things that are innate to it.

For Des Cartes, his compromise was to say that the human person (however you might define it) is really two substances.  There is the immaterial substance of the mind, and the material substance of the body.  So instantly, he changes what was traditionally thought by the Aristotelians and Thomists as substance. 

So how does a substance without extension (i.e. immaterial) interact with a body with extension (i.e. material).  For Des Cartes he says, for some odd reason, that the point of interaction was the pituitary gland. Why there and not the brain or the body? 

In reality, I believe that this is a problem for the Thomists and Aristotelians as well, although because of their definition of substance, it isn’t as much of a problem.

For the next couple hundred years, the philosophers tried to figure out this interaction between mind and body, and I think we are still working on it today.  Why is it that when I will to move my finger, my finger moves?  How are the perceptions that I am recieving though my senses getting transferred to my mind?  Are they getting transferred?  Am I really percieving anything?  What is it then, that I know?

One of my favorite follow ups to the Cartesian Compromise, and its subsequent problems is the philosopher Malebranche.  (I wrote a paper on him in College).  Malebranche basically states that our willing to move our finger is simply the occasion for God to move the material finger.  For him there is no interaction between body and mind, rather the point of interaction becomes God himself.  This is called occasionalism.  In occasionalism, if there is any interaction it is simply God allowing the movement that we will.  There are two problems with this: one- if we do something “immoral” with our bodies, it is because God made it happen.  Moral implications there!  Second is that you have the same problem- if God is immaterial, how can HE interact with the material to move it?  That must mean God himself is part material.

Hobbes takes the extreme approach and says that there is no metaphysics- everything is just motion without any real rationality.  But experience tends to tell us that there is immaterial things, like mind and spirit.

 These days I am rethinking some of my previous notions of metaphysics and substance.  While I still claim to be a Thomist and Aristotelian, I believe that what Des Cartes has done (and what philosophers have been contending with ever since) is to raise a very important question about the nature of… well… everything.

The mind is very very powerful- when it is focused, it can make the physical body do just about anything.  It can move mountains!  I think that there are a lot of ways that the interation between the material and immaterial are being explored through fields such as quantum physics, which has opened the doors to all sorts of new theories and philosophies of the interaction between mind and matter. 

I think that the material and immaterial interaction problem has been a constant one since the beginning of philosophy.  As I have said in previous posts, I believe that the solution is to return to an exploration of being itself.  Of course, the question must be asked if it is even possible to know being in itself and its “nature.”  (I guess therein lies the problem).  I am not sure how to do this at all. 

 Any ideas?