Life After Death Course Material Relevant to Modern Philosophy Course

SERIES INTRODUCTION, xi-xiv

The general perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; the collection of beliefs, ideas, images, attitudes, values that an individual or a group holds about things such as the universe, humankind, God and the future; a comprehensive outlook about life and the universe from which one explains and/or structures relationships and activities. Adapted from Angeles Dictionary of Philosophy. The lens through which one observes everything. Can be used as synonymous with metaphysics in the sense of the brand of metaphysics that one accepts. It is similar to some uses of paradigm.

Modernity is simply the state or condition of being modern, being part of the way of life growing out of the outlook dominant in the West for the past several centuries. As with any ism, a theory or system, modernism is the theory that underlies the modern world. See question 4.

Modernism once was considered The Final Truth, in contrast with which all divergent worldviews were considered "superstitions." Now it is one worldview among many.

(1) the worldview that has developed out of the seventeenth-century Galilean-Cartesian-Baconian-Newtonian science.

(2) the world order that both conditioned and was conditioned by this worldview. NOTE that this second sense might better be replaced by modernity; see question 2.

(1) An artistic-literary-architectural movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.

(2) New age metaphysics, much of which really is premodern.

(3) Destructive or eliminative postmodernism, inspired by pragmatism, physicalism, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida and other recent French thinkers. It tries to overcome the modern worldview through an anti-worldview: it deconstructs or eliminates the ingredients necessary for a worldview, such as god, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth as correspondence. It results in relativism, even nihilism. It could be called ultramodernism, in that its eliminations result from carrying modern premises to their logical conclusions.

(4) (the view supported by Griffin) Constructive or revisionary postmodernism. It revises modern premises and traditional concepts. It involves a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such but only that scientism in which . . . (continued in next answer)

The view that "the data of the modern natural sciences are alone allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview."

Modern: human self, historical meaning, and truth as correspondence.

Premodern: a divine reality, cosmic meaning [including organicism], and an enchanted [living] nature [including nonsensory perception].

(1) They were primarily calls to return to a premodern form of life and thought rather than calls to advance.

(2) They either rejected modern science, reduced it to a description of mere appearances, or assumed its adequacy in principle; therefore they could base their calls only on the negative social and spiritual effects of modernity.

Constructive postmodernism draws on natural science itself as a witness against the adequacy of the modern worldview.

(3) Constructive postmodernism has even more evidence than did previous movements of the ways in which modernity and its worldview are socially and spiritually destructive.

(4) (the most decisive difference) Constructive postmodernism is based on the awareness that the continuation of modernity [interdependent with militarism, nuclearism, and ecological devastation] threatens the very survival of life on our planet.

"One of the many reasons for this hostility is a suspicion that parapsychology gives pseudo-scientific support for religion. . . .

"The main reason . . . is that it conflicts with the two worldviews that have been dominant in the modern period . . . [1] supernaturalistic dualism . . . gradually transmuted into [2] an atheistic materialism . . ."

It conflicts with the two worldviews that have been dominant in the modern period:

(1) The supernaturalistic dualism that was held by most of the founders of modern science, such as Mersenne (1588-1648), Descartes, Boyle, and Newton, and has been presupposed by most conservative-to-fundamentalist Christians and Jews to this day.

(2) The atheistic materialism that arose out of the difficulties of (1), and has been dominant in academic circles since the latter part of the nineteenth century (and hence during the entire period of parapsychology's existence).

(1) Lack of room for the three kinds of phenomena studied by parapsychologists:

(a) extrasensory perception

(b) psychokinesis

(c) phenomena suggestive of life after bodily death.

Supernaturalistic dualism allowed them only as miracles, and materialism totally excluded them.

(1) Social forces recognizing modernism's destructive power on the world.

(2) Intellectual inadequacy of modernism.

To criticize the prevailing worldview(s) and to suggest a better one.

The "scientific revolution" itself becomes comprehensible if we see it as a campaign for the reform of ideas about science. . . . Scientific revolution was primarily and essentially about metaphysics; and the various technical studies were largely conceived and received as corroborating statements of a challenging world-view. This consisted essentially of two Great Denials: the restriction of ordinary faculties such as sympathy and intelligence to humans and to a remote Deity; and the relegation of extraordinary faculties to the realms of the nonexistent or insignificant.]

"The essence of science is mechanism. The essence of magic is animism." The new metaphysics for science introduced in the seventeenth century was called, of course, the "mechanical philosophy." . . . the chief point at issue in speaking of "mechanism" was an exclusive focus on eficient causes, in distinction from "final causation." The real bite of mechanism . . . is that, by excluding all self-determination, it entails complete determinism.]

[An additional question: What was an "equally crucial meaning of "the mechanical philosophy"? 18

that action [causality] at a distance was proscribed. . . . particles [in the mechanical philosophy] were purely material, having no inner, hidden ("occult") qualitiew that could possibly exert or receive influence at [from] a distance. This philosophy implied that all causation must be by contact. [Westfall says] all [mechanical philosophers] agree on some form of dualism which excluded from nature the possibility of what they called pejoratively "occult agents." . . . All agreed that the program of natural philosophy lay in demonstrating that the phenomena of nature are produced by the mutual interplay of material particles which act on each other by direct contact alone.

P. 16: Psychokinesis (PK) involves the exertion of causal influence at a distance by a mind. In what we consider "normal" human action on things beyond the body, by contrast, the mind or psyche directly influences only its own body, usually its motor-muscular system. . . . The body then brings about an extrasomatic effect, such as picking up a matchstick. The mind or psyche thereby brings about extrasomatic effects by means of a contiguous chain of cause-effect relations. In psychokinesis, however, this chain is circumvented, as the psyche brings about extrasomatic effects, such as moving a matchstick, directly, without using the body. That it is causal influence at a distance that makes such an event paranormal was reflected better in the older term telekinesis.]

(1) By excluding all self-determination, it entails complete determinism. (2) Action at a distance is proscribed.

One body can act on another only by direct contact. Newton's doctrine of universal gravitation is contrary to it. Newton's dynamic mechanical philosophy portrayed the ultimate agent in nature as a force acting between particles rather than a moving particle itself, contra to Descartes' kinetic mechanical philosophy.

It put Biblical miracles (hence the authority of the Church) into a special place by eliminating the naturalness of action at a distance.

Early modern was a dualism allowing supernatural power, while late modern materialism excludes God, so there can be nothing supernatural. it is completely reductionistic, explaining everything by ever smaller parts and ultimately to the four forces of gravitation, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong forces in the nucleus of the atom.

To provide a viewpoint that is adequate both [1] to science and [2] to our moral, aesthetic, and religious intuitions.

[It has] been completely undermined by developments in science itself, including evolutionary theory, relativity theory, and quantum theory.

[Formally: 1a] In its general attitude, including an appreciation of the complexity of the universe that forbids the dogmatic assumption that we know all the answers. The dogmatism of scientists and skeptics "is the death of philosophic adventure." Philosophy needs to be open to every type of evidence [including the paranormal].

[1b] Whereas the ancients asked what have we experienced, the moderns have asked what can we experience, beginning with an a priori notion that we have only five sense-organs, rather than with a genuine empiricism.

[Substantively, 1:] For Whitehead, nonsensory perception (usually referring to our prehension of our own past) is primary, sense-perception belonging to "the superficialities of experience."

[2] Allowance for action at a distance (which allows PK): each event is a product of its whole past world and in some limited respect incorporates this entire past. Influence is not limited to contiguous events.

[3] Whitehead does not limit the causal power in the universe to the energy recognized by contemporary physics. He says that all actualities, which he calls "actual occasions [or "occasions of experience"], embody creativity. This creativity involves a twofold power: [1] the power to determine oneself, then [2] the power to influence others. Energy as it is described by mathematical physics . . . is merely an abstraction from this "full-blooded creativity." There exists, accordingly, causal power beyond that recognized by current physics, so that all events need not be explained in terms of its four forces.

[4] His more general rejection of the reductionism of modern thought.

He turned the epistemology of modernity upside down.

He made sensory perception derivative from nonsensory, instead of basic.

In place of its reductionism, according to which all power is located at the lowest level, Whitehead suggests a multileveled view, in which the higher-level actualities have more power than the lower ones. Atomic actual occasions, far from being simply the product of their electronic, protonic, and neutronic occasions, not only have their own creativity, but have more than any of their constituents. [So on upward to and beyond human psyches having more creative power than their constituents.]

God could recreate (resurrect) our bodies after death.

The acceptance of a naturalistic worldview . . . means that life after death will seem possible only if it seems possible apart from supernatural intervention. Naturalism need not entail that all divine influence is excluded. It entails only that any divine influence must be part of the normal causal processes, not an interruption of them.

To the mind-body relation: Survival of the personality will be deemed possible only if we hold that what is normally called the "mind", the "soul," or the "self" is related to the physical body in such a way that it could conceivably exist apart from it.

No. It rules out a supernaturalistic interpretation of divine influence as interruption of the normal causal processes.

The dominant version of naturalism [in addition to insisting on (1) "the exclusion of appeals to occasional supernatural interruptions of the world's fundamental causal nexus" and (2) "domain uniformitarianism, the doctrine that all phenomena should be explained in terms of one and the same set of causal categories, so that all domains of the academy, from physics, biology, and psychology to history, philosophy, and religious studies, should employ the same explanatory framework"] . . . insists on another point. The reason this version of naturalism is called "reductionistic" is that it does not limit its conception of naturalism to the rejection of supernatural incursions into the world. Rather . . . it equates naturalism with what can be called "naturalism_sam," with the "s" of "sam" standing for sensationism, the "a" standing for atheism, and the "m" for materialism. . . . [F]or advocates of naturalism_sam, a truly naturalistic approach presupposes [1] the truth of the sensationist doctrine of perception, according to which we can perceive things beyond our own minds only by means of our physical sensory organs. This doctrine implies that there can be no genuine religious experience, in the sense of a nonsensory perception of a Holy Reality, which those who have had mystical experiences usually take them to be. This sensations doctrine also implies that there can be no genuine moral, aesthetic, or logical norms. For advocates of naturalism_sam, furthermore [2] to be fully naturalistic it is not sufficient to reject the belief in a supernatural agent who, being outside the world's causal nexus, can occasionally interrupt it. They insist that one must also deny that the universe has any experience beyond the totality of finite experiences, any causal agent beyond the totality of finite causal agents. Finally [3] the materialistic dimension of this naturalism adds the twofold point that the ultimate units of nature are bits of mater (or mater-energy) that are wholly devoid of experience and spontaneity, and that the experiences and behaviors of human beings and other animals are to [be] explained on the assumption that they are merely very complex organizations of these bits of matter.

Hard-core common sense. Whitehead directly rejecting the Humean bifurcation of theory and practice, (p. 102) says, "Whatever is found in 'practice' must lie within the scope of metaphysical description' When the description fails to include the 'practice,' the metaphysics is inadequate and requires revision." See the seven hard-core commonsense presuppositions at pp. 102-103, and given in answer to question 47, below.

Soft-core is subject to change, whereas hard-core refers to various assumptions that we all inevitably presuppose in practice, even if we deny them verbally

Panexperientialistic interaction (all within the realm of experience [mind]).

If mind and brain are numerically distinct from each other, rather than simply identical, then they must also be ontologically different kinds of things. . . . We should henceforth not use the term "dualism" as a synonym for interactionism. We should use it only to refer to Cartesian dualism, or some variant thereof, according to which mind and matter are said to be ontologically different in kind. In other words, "dualism" should be used only as shorthand for "ontological dualism." Then, rather than taking "dualism" and "interactionism" to be synonymous, we would distinguish between two types of interactionism: [1] dualistic interactionism and [2] nondualistic interactionism.

Panexperientialism: the view that actual things [not necessarily collections of them] at all levels enjoy experiences. He prefers the term to "panpsychism" because "psyche" implies a rather high level of experience.

Because it is "the best solution to the mind-body problem on purely philosophical grounds." (P. 138) Three arguments in support of panexperientialism:

1. (132) a scientific-philosophical argument. Inability to draw a line between sentient and nonsentient entities, evolutionary continuities,and growing awareness of complexities of nature, including indeterminacy at the quantum level, suggest "that experience and spontaneity may go all the way down."

(133) A multiplicity of individuals at one level can be subordinated to a "dominant" individual with a higher level of experience and greater power . . . the thing as a whole has experience by virtue of its dominant member [from human beings to atoms]. These things are "compound individuals," to use Charles Hartshorne's word, because a higher-level individual has been compounded out of lower-level individuals. [Others are] aggregational societies of individuals, not true individuals themselves. These nonindividuated societies have no experience as such. . . . In short, the "pan" in panexperientialism refers not literally to all things, but only to all individuals. This is a metaphysical point.

2. The empirical question, as to which things are to be considered true individuals, should be settled in terms of evidence of spontaneity or self-determinism. To have a unified experience is also to be capable of a self-determining response to one's environment.

3. (134) Our own conscious experience . . . is not only the reality in the universe that we know most immediately. It is also the only thing whose nature we know from inside. As such, we know what it is in itself in a way that we do not of anything else. What we know about what it is in itself , furthermore, is that it is something for itself. [In short, each of us knows that there is at least one individual who has experience, and it's more reasonable to suppose that all individuals have experience than to suppose that they do not.]

4. (135) (A pragmatic reason.) The panexperientialist starting point works. It allows us to affirm nondualistic interactionism. In addition to working in metaphysics, it works in epistemology. If all individuals, even those without sense organs, have awareness (experience) of other things, there must be nonsensory prehension; this upholds causation as real influence, and intuition of values.

"According to this panexperientialist ontology, in fact, the causal interconnectedness of the world is constituted by an infinitely complex web of nonsensory perceptions. Sensory perception is a rather rare form of perception, being exemplified only by the minds of animals with central nervous systems. Our nonsensory perception, accordingly, is not a higher, more evolved mode of perception, but a more fundamental mode, which we share with al other organisms."

"Having argued that sensory perception is not our only or even our basic mode of perception, I now suggest that in nonsensory perception we are always directly perceiving not only contiguous events, meaning our brain cells and our immediately past moments of experience, but also remote events. That is, perception at a distance is going on all the time. For the most part, however, this direct nonsensory perception of remote events remains in what we call the 'unconscious' portion of our minds."

"I suggest that the function of the brain, with regard to perception, is to give us rather clear and distinct perceptions with sufficient intensity to rise to consciousness, so that we can be conscious of certain dominant aspects of the physical world around us. A side-effect of this function is that most nonsensory perceptions of remote events, are blocked out. The brain's activity does not keep these nonsensory perceptions from reaching the psyche. It does, however, by providing more intense sensory data, prevent most of the nonsensory perceptions from rising o the conscious portion of the psyche's experience. So, although blocking most nonsensory perceptions from reaching consciousness is not directly the 'purpose' of the brain, it is an effect."

"although the mind is distinct from the brain, it is intimately related to it. The general principle involved is that any occasion of experience is internally related to its environment, in the sense of being largely constituted by its reception of influences from the events in its immediate vicinity. Although an experience is directly influenced to some degree by the entire past, being directly as well as indirectly influenced by noncontiguous events, its most intensely by contiguous events. It is to be expected, then, that the mind would be heavily conditioned by the state of the brain, so long as the brain constitutes its immediate environment."

panentheism

"God is the soul of the universe. God relates to the world in somewhat the same way we are related to our bodies. God is thereby the dominant member of the universal society, providing the overall order, and the supreme recipient of value, feeling both the delights and the pains of the creatures." See the Hartshorne quotation after question 74.

No.

"the mechanistic view of nature"

How could a Cosmic Mind exert causal influence on insentient matter, matter that can conceivably be moved only by the impact of other bits of matter?"

It does this by giving additional support to a panexperientialist view of the universe. Mind-mind and mind-matter relations are essentially the same. "What we know from within as "mind" and what we know from without as "matter" are not . . . different in kind." ESP and PK effects on "inanimate matter" suggest this.

The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. "Only if God created our world from absolutely nothing would God have absolute control over this world," in contrast to the panentheistic view that "divine creative agency [is] persuasive, not coercive." [There was no creation; God always had a body, the universe, of some type.]

It supported belief in "the overwhelming coercive power attributed to God by supernaturalism." "Loving persuasion could not in six days have turned chaos into an atom or an apple, let alone an Adam and an Eve." (undercut by evolutionary theory)

"the occurrence of 'the miraculous.'" In medieval times God was considered the primary cause of every happening, and miracles were happenings in which there were no secondary, natural causes.

"belief in infallible revelation and inspiration" (undermined by the historical-critical study of the scriptures).

Taking an all-or-nothing approach, with regard to (1) the human soul, attempting to show its immortal nature a priori by defining it as absolutely different in kind from the rest of nature; to (2) God, by insisting on God's absolute omnipotence over the universe; to (3) paranormal phenomena in Biblical and current times as impossible except by divine intervention.

Among these are (1) the reality of conscious experience (which eliminative materialism denies), (2) reality of a world beyond ourselves (not necessarily a material one), (3) the reality of (efficient) causation as real influence (as distinguished from Hume's understanding of causality as merely regularity of sequence, constant conjunction), (4) the causal efficacy (power) of our bodies for conscious experience, (5) freedom in the sense of partial self-determination in the moment, (6) the efficacy of conscious experience for (on) bodily behavior (mind over matter), (7) the reality and efficacy of values (final causation, as distinguished from the efficient causation that is the power of the past).

[As put in more detail by Griffin:

1 (4). The reality of conscious experience, with its emotions, memories, beliefs, and purposes: Descartes was right about at least one thing: One cannot deny the existence of one's conscious experience without self-contradiction. As Searle says, "If your theory results in the view that consciousness does not exist, you have simply produced a reductio ad absurdum of the theory." We should, accordingly, eliminate eliminative materialism from the positions to be taken seriously.

2 (1). The reality of the "external world": I have already pointed out that this presupposition rules out solipsism. I will now extend the implications of this presupposition to rule out all phenomenalisms and idealisms that deny, or at least fail to assert, that "nature" or "the physical world" is as actual as we are. This acceptance of realism need not mean a "naive Realism," according to which the world exists in itself just as it appears to our sensory perception or just as it is conceived in sensory-based conceptions. What is denied is only the idea that the very reality of what is normally called "the physical world" depends on its being perceived or conceived.

3 (2). The reality of efficient causation as real influence: What is ruled out by this presupposition is the idea that efficient causation does not exist, or that it is, as Hume suggested, to be understood as nothing but the regularity of sequence (the "constant conjunction" of certain types of events).

4 (5). The causal efficacy of our bodies for our conscious experience: This supposition, in fact, is one of the strongest bases for our knowledge of efficient causation as real influence, because we directly experience our bodies as causing pains, pleasures, and sensory perceptions.

5 (8). Freedom in the sense of partial self-determination in the moment: This presupposition limits the scope of the previous one, saying that no matter how much our conscious experience is influenced by our bodies, it is not totally determined by them. Our bodies, for example, can cause us to feel extreme hunger pangs, but they cannot dictate what we will eat or, indeed, whether we will eat at all. This presupposition of freedom rules out all deterministic philosophies. That we really do in practice presuppose that we ourselves are free is shown by various reactions that we have to our own actions, such as feelings of obligation, shame, guilt, and remorse. That we presuppose that other people are not totally determined is shown by reactions such as gratitude, anger, and condemnation. Freedom in the sense of partial self-determination is the hard-core commonsense idea that is most widely rejected by philosophers. But, as Whitehead says: "This element in experience is too large to be put aside merely as misconstruction. It governs the whole tone of human life."

6 (7). The efficacy of conscious experience for bodily behavior: Besides presupposing that our experience is causally influenced but not totally determined by our bodies, we also presuppose that our partially free decisions influence our bodily behavior in return.

7 (9; see below). The reality and efficacy of values: This presupposition is closely related to our presupposition about freedom. That is, in presupposing partial freedom, we are presupposing that our purposes and decisions are not totally determined by the power of the past (efficient causation), but are partly drawn by the attraction of realizing some possible value (final causation). That such values are inevitably presupposed in practice can be shown by the philosopher who says: "Although determinism may be an unpleasant philosophy, we have to accept it because it's true." This philosopher is presupposing that there is such a thing as truth and that it (rightly) exerts a pull on our experience.

In Unsnarling the World-Knot, Griffin in his number 9 initially emphasizes the value that is truth:

Our awareness of norms. . . . In practice we all presuppose awareness of logical norms, and, more generally, we presuppose that there is such a thing as truth and that knowing or telling the truth is inherently good (which is not inconsistent with believing that its inherent value may be overridden by other considerations, such as kindness or, less happily, self-interest). We also have presuppositions involving the other two members of the traditional axiological trinity: goodness and beauty. That is, we all presuppose in practice that some modes of behavior and intended outcomes are inherently better than others and that some states of affairs, whether internal or external, are more beautiful, pleasing, fitting, tasteful, or what have you, than others. We may differ in our judgments and even our criteria; but that a distinction between better and worse exists, we all presuppose. . . .

Griffin's other two Unsnarling the World-Knot "hard-core commonsense notions" are:

3. The reality of the past and the future (footnote: By "the reality of the future," I do not mean that future events already exist, which would imply determinism and the unreality of time. I mean only that subsequent events, causally influenced by present events, will follow on them and that the anticipation of the future in this sense is a fact about the present.) And therefore of time. Full-fledged solipsism would be, in George Santayana's phrase, "solipsism of the present moment." But we all presuppose in practice that there has been a past and that there will be a future. Santayana spoke of these presuppositions as "faith," but that is too weak: We seem to know these things as strongly as we know anything.

6. The unity of our experience. Including this notion will likely evoke objections. . . . However, after all . . . qualifications are made, it remains true that, insofar as we "retain our minds" so that we are not merely "human vegetables," there is a significant unity to our experience. We are not simply aggregates of experiential data; that what call the mind is a unification of vast amounts of data into an experiential unity. . . . This unity is also presupposed in points 7 and 8, . . . which involve the active side of our experience. In summary, as Whitehead has observed, "what needs to be explained is not dissociation of personality but unifying control, by reason of which we have not only have unified behavior, which can be observed by others, but also consciousness of unified experience." (PR, 108).

61. What are the two most common positions taken on the mind-body relation in our time? 103

Dualism and materialism.

(104) "[1] Of the various problems with metaphysical dualism, the most commonly mentioned is the problem of interaction. How can two things that are totally unlike be thought to interact causally with each other? (110) [2] "A second objection often raised against dualism is that it violates the law of the conservation of energy."

Materialism "is simply a decapitated version of [dualism], having retained [dualism's] 'nature' while lopping off its 'mind.'"

Functionalism (an alternative to extreme identism, which says that mind--a collection of matter--is identical with brain) maintains that the matter of the brain is irrelevant; "Only organization is important. Functionalism thinks of the relation between mind and brain as analogous to that between the software (program) and the hardware in a computer. . . . [Yet] the mind is in some sense identical with the brain."

1. "Inadequacy to the Unity of Conscious Experience." "Our experience is not simply an aggregation of bits of data but a unification of a vast amount of data into an experiential unity. . . . Given the fact that the brain is composed of at least 100 billion neurons [nerve cells], this unity of experience is hard to square with the idea that mind and brain are one and the same thing." If there are merely billions of brain cells working, "the very appearance of unity is utterly mysterious."

2. "Inadequacy to the Unity of Our Bodily Behavior." "If there is 'no single Boss,' but merely a vast aggregation of microagents, how is this coordination [such as driving while talking, smiling, etc.] achieved?

3. "Difficulty Acknowledging the Efficacy of Consciousness for Bodily Behavior." "The issue here is epiphenomenalism, the doctrine that consciousness is merely a nonefficacious by-product of the brain. . . . But the denial that our conscious experience affects our bodily behavior seems to conflict with out hard-core common sense."

4. "Inadequacy to Freedom. The hard-core commonsense presupposition most consistently denied by materialists is the partial freedom of conscious experience, along with the consequent partial freedom of our bodily behavior (which follows from the efficacy of consciousness for our bodily behavior."

5. "Inadequacy to Values." The doctrine "that nothing but material things exist . . . rules out not only a (nonmaterial) mind but also those things often called 'values,' such as truth , beauty, and goodness. . . . Materialism's reductionistic account of values inevitably creates an opposition between theory and practice."

6. "Epistemological Inadequacy." Materialism "entails a sensationist doctrine of perception, according to which we can perceive only by means of our physical sense organs. . . . As Hume saw, sense-perception as such gives us nothing but sense-data, and these are universals, or abstractions, such as colors and shapes. Sense perception as such, in other words, gives us no knowledge of the existence of other actual things. This means that the sensationist doctrine leads, in theory, to solipsism, the doctrine that I do not really know that anything actually exists except myself.

7. "The meaning of Mind-Brain Identity." Materialists assume "that the 'gray matter' of the brain is also 'matter' in the philosophical sense--namely, that it is devoid of all experience." How can our experience be identical with a large collection of nonexperiencing things. Even materialists are coming to admit that this makes no sense.

[Related summary, p. 127: "The main argument for materialism has always been that, whatever its problems, it is not as bad as dualism, with its insuperable problems. The main argument for dualism has always been that, whatever its problems, they are at least not as severe as those of materialism. . . . John Searle puts the point [about materialism] even more strongly, seeing the 'deepest motivation of materialism' to be 'simply a terror of consciousness.'"]

Monism (of the qualitative kind) is the position "that there is only one kind of reality." Materialistic monism, holding that there is only matter, "is really dualism in disguise," since materialist believe that there are also observing experiencers.

1. "The Problem of Discontinuity." The empirical dimension of this problem: The principle of continuity that maintains that there should be no absolute jumps in the evolutionary process, and we increasingly find by empirical enquiry such continuity, but the dualistic view, more than the materialistic, "posits an absolute difference in kind between entities that experience and those that do not. The former have an 'inside' and exercise final causation, whereas purely material entities are all 'outside' and operate entirely by efficient causation."

2. "The Problem of Where to Draw the Line . . . between mental and physical things." "Are we to say that bacteria are alive, and therefore sentient, while viruses, which have some but not all the properties usually said to characterize living things, or not? Or, if we include viruses, are we going to exclude macromolecules, such as DNA, RNA, and protein molecules, in spite of their remarkable abilities? . . . Wherever dualism draws its line between experiencing and nonexperiencing entities will be arbitrary. This problem, however, cannot comfort materialists. Because of their cryptodualism, it equally applies to them."

3. "How Could There Have Been Time for Experience to Emerge?" "[T]ime presupposes experience, because without experience there would be no 'now,' therefore no distinction between past and future. Dualists, accordingly, must hold that time itself arose sometime in the course of the evolutionary process. . . . [Yet] evolution itself presupposes the existence of time."

4. "The Problem of the Great Exception." "if minds with their experiences are real things with their own power, not simply functions of physical things, then they cannot be subsumed under the explanatory laws that account for most things (given the dualist's account of 'most things' as devoid of experience). They are the great exception. . . . [E]xperience cannot be described in purely objective or 'third person' terms, such as chemical transactions, neuron-firings, and the like; subjective or 'first-person' categories, such as feelings, emotions, and purposes, are necessary. On this basis, we can turn the Great Exception argument around, saying: Given the fact that human beings (and at least many animals) are not fully explicable physicalistically, would it not be strange if the rest of the universe were?

5. "The Problem of Emergence. . . . how conscious experience emerged out of insentient matter in the first place. This was not a problem for the supernaturalistic dualists of the seventeenth century , such as Descartes, because they could simply assume that God created both minds and matter at the origin of the world. It is not even an insuperable problem for contemporary dualists who are supernaturalists, even if they think in evolutionary terms. . . . But it presents an enormous problem for dualists who are naturalists (whether theistic or nontheistic). . . . How could bits of matter (or matter-energy) that that are wholly devoid of any experience of any sort give rise to conscious experience?"

It is a view (of Griffin and other Whiteheadian philosophers) that accepts the numerical difference of mind and brain, while denying the ontological difference, so interaction is possible. Griffin says that henceforth we should use the term "dualism" only to refer to Cartesian dualism, "or some variant thereof, according to which mind and matter are said to be ontologically different in kind. In other words, 'dualism' should be used only as shorthand for 'ontological dualism.'" We should "distinguish between two types of interactionism: dualistic interactionism and non-dualistic interactionism." In other words, nondualistic interactionism is what is referred to in Anderson, p. 6, as "relative dualism," while Cartesian dualism there is called "absolute dualism."

"[A]s citizens of the modern world, they have been taught to assume it. . . . To question this mechanistic view of nature would be to question part of the essence of modernity. Perhaps, however, it is time to question it."

"[W]hen the body dies, so does the soul." Based on some Renaissance philosophies "according to which all matter has the power of self-motion . . . the fact that the soul is a self-moving thing, as Plato said, does not prove that the soul is incorruptible, because matter is self-moving and yet the body clearly decays."

1. There is no line between the sentient and insentient. "[N]ature as portrayed by modern science not only does not suggest a clear place to draw a line between sentient and insentient things, but also suggests, with its evolutionary continuities, the probability that no such place exists. This suggestion, that experience and spontaneity may go all the way down, has been increasingly supported as the scientific study of nature has become increasingly subtle."

2. "The 'pan' in panexperientialism" refers only to individuals. See question 73.

3. "Our own conscious experience . . . [is] the only thing whose nature we know from inside. As such, we know what it is in itself in a way that we do not of anything else.

The materialist requires belief (a) that there are individuals not analogous to us and (b) that there are nonexperiencing individuals; whereas panexperientialism requires only belief that all individuals are like what we experience ourselves to be, experiencing.

4. "[T]he panexperientialist starting point is pragmatic: It works. That is, by beginning with the working hypothesis that at least some iota of spontaneous experience characterizes individuals at every level of nature, we can affirm nondualistic interactionism, in which all the ontological problems of dualistic interactionism are avoided: Interaction between mind and brain is no longer counterintuitive, because the mind and the brain cells are said to be qualitatively similar, only greatly different in degree. There is no absolute line in the evolutionary process between sentience and insentience. There is no problem of emergence, because conscious experience is said to emerge not out of insentient matter but out of things with less sophisticated experience. . . .

5. "[T]his type of panexperientialism overcomes the various epistemological

problems that have plagued dualism and materialism." Our prehension is "perception in the mode of causal efficacy." "The 'intuition' of values, such as truth, beauty, and goodness, also occurs through this nonsensory mode of perception. Likewise, our knowledge of the past arises from the fact that our present moment of experience directly prehends our own past moments of experience, this being the form of nonsensory prehension that we call 'memory' [involving] more or less creative reconstructions as well as prehensions of the past events as they really happened."

"The view that actual things at every level enjoy experience, analogous to our own, has usually been called panpsychism. The word 'psyche,' however, suggests a rather high level of experience. The term 'panexperientialism' is better."

"The 'pan' could be taken to mean literally everything, which would mean that sticks, stones, telephones, and typewriters would all have a unified experience, analogous to that of a human being." "In short, the 'pan' in panexperientialism refers not literally to all things, but only to all individuals. This is a metaphysical point. The empirical question , as to which things are to be considered to be true individuals, should be settled in terms of evidence of spontaneity or self-determination. To have a unified experience is also to be capable of a self-determining response to one's environment. We should posit a soul, a unity of experience, only where we see signs of this capacity. Until the rock begins climbing the hill on its own, we should not suppose it to be analogous to Sisyphus." Two "basic ways in which a multiciplicity of experiencing individuals [and there are no others] can be ordered": [1] "a multiciplicity of individuals at one level can be subordinated to a 'dominant' individual with a higher level of experience and greater power"; "then the thing as a whole has experience by virtue of is dominant member. Examples would be humans, other animals, cells, bacteria, molecules, and atoms. These things are 'compound individuals,' to use Charles Hartshorne's word, because a higher-level individual has been compounded out of lower-level individuals. [2] On the other hand, there may be no dominant individual, but merely a multiplicity of individuals, much as molecules, with equal power, with equal power and experience. Examples would be rocks, shingles, typewriters, oceans, and stars. Such things are aggregated societies of individuals, not true individuals themselves. These nonindividuated societies have no experience as such."

Realism: the belief "that 'nature' or 'the physical world' is as actual as we are,' that it does not depend "on its being perceived or conceived."

Idealism: Apparently he takes most (as he is careful to point out) forms of idealism to claim that the world is dependent on "being perceived or conceived."

Panpsychism: "The view that actual things at every level enjoy experience, analogous to our own." However, "'psyche' . . . suggests a rather high level of experience," so he prefers "panexperientialism." Runes Dictionary of Philosophy (L.W.): A form of metaphysical idealism . . . according to which the whole of nature consists of psychic centers similar to the human mind." Hartshorne (in "The Synthesis of Idealism and Realism," republished in The Zero Fallacy and quoted in 4:1 JSSMR, 57) defines realism as having beliefs (1) an object is in no degree dependent on the subject that is aware of it (Principle of Objective Independence) and (2) a subject always depends on objects. His "realistic idealism" contains these (Principle of Subjective Dependence) and (3) any entity must be or become object for some subject (Principle of Universal Objectivity), and (4) any concrete entity is (I'd say WAS) a subject or set of subjects (Principle of Universal Subjectivity), "Psychicalism" (preferred to panpsychism) (I'd add panexperientialism).

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CHARLES HARTSHORNE ON MIND-BODY INTERACTION

Remember that Griffin (p. 99) considers the philosophical conceivability of life after death to be found in the mind-body relationship; the problem is whether there is a nonmaterial reality interacting with the body in such a way that it might be able to survive without the body. Hartshorne here gives a simple statement of the panexperientialistic (panpsychistic, pluralistic-realistic idealistic, panentheistic) position on mind-body interaction.

[O]ur cells respond to our feelings (and thoughts) because we respond to their feelings (and would respond to their thoughts if they had any). Hurt my cells and you hurt me. Give my cells a healthy life, and they give me a feeling of vitality and at least minimal happiness. My sense of welfare tends to sum up theirs, and their misfortunes tend to become negative feelings of mine. I feel what many cells feel, integrating these feelings into a higher unity. I am somewhat as their deity, their fond heavenly companion. They gain their direction and sense of the goodness of life partly from intuiting my sense of that goodness, which takes theirs intuitively into account.

Philosophcal and Other Resources

URL of this site: http://websyte.com/alan/ladremod.htm

Created Mar. 11, 2000, by Alan Anderson, aanderso@curry.edu

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