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Some Important Issues in Philosophy |
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by Celestine N. Bittle, O.F.M.Cap. A Study
and Critique
The ancient philosophers knew nothing of an "Ego problem." For them the "body-mind problem" was mainly a "body-soul problem." However, since the modern problem of the human Ego has its roots in the age-old problem of body and soul, it will be necessary to go back as far as Grecian philosophy. Plato maintained the ultra-dualism of body and soul (mind). The body is a material substance, and the soul is a spiritual substance; the two substances form a dynamic unit, but not a substantial unit. The relationship between the human spirit and its body is that of a rider and his horse, of a helmsman and his ship. This theory won't work. Aristotle, the greatest scientist and philosopher among the ancients, rejected this ultra-dualism of Plato as contrary to all evidence. He synthesized body and mind by assuming that the soul of man is the formal, organizing, animating principle of primal matter. Matter and soul are two incomplete substances or substantial co-principles, and their union results in a single, unitary substance, namely, the human organism. While safeguarding body and mind (soul) as distinct realities, he gives a neat explanation of their synthesis into one substance. In medieval times, under the guidance of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and other great masters, Aristotelianism developed into a new and powerful system of philosophy. It received the name of scholasticism. Aristotle's doctrine on the nature of man as a composite substance of body and soul became one of the principal teachings of aristotelian-scholastic philosophy. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, a period of philosophic stagnation set in. Originality of thought gave way to vain subtleties and sterile commentaries on the books of the masters. Scholasticism fell into disrepute, especially after the advent of the Renaissance and the introduction of more precise scientific methods in the solution of the problems of physics. Eventually, the genuine doctrines of the great medieval philosophers were practically forgotten by the thinkers of the rising new era. Modern philosophy has its origin in the teachings of René Descartes (1596-1650). He broke completely with the philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and attempted to place philosophy upon an entirely new basis. He defended an ultra-dualism of body and soul in man. Regarding man's body, he advocated a mechanistic atomism; regarding man's soul, an ultra-spiritualism. Man's ideas are potentially innate, not derived from sense data through intellectual abstraction. Here were the seeds of the subsequent theories of materialism and idealism. Since man's mind can know only its own internal states, his theory of knowledge terminated in subjectivism, the theory which plagues practically all modern philosophy. Descartes placed a gap between body and mind; bodily events and mental events were closed systems without intercommunication. It has become the main endeavor of modern philosophy, outside the circle of classical philosophic realism, to find a bridge to span this gap. The gravity of the problem was obvious. Granted the assumption that body and soul (mind) were two complete substances merely in conjunction, how could the body influence the mind, and how could the mind derive any knowledge of the world through the body? Arnold Geulincx (1625-1669) went a step farther. He denied all activity to creatural beings, reserving all activity to God. It is God who produces every kind of activity in the universe. In order to explain the apparent influence existing between body and mind, he compared them to two clocks synchronized so perfectly that both indicate the same hours. The two clocks do not influence each other; both are constructed by the same Divine Workman and have His will imposed upon them to work with perfect timing. Thus, when we have the will to speak, the tongue is simultaneously set in motion, but the will has no influence over the movements of the tongue. The theory that God, on the occasion of certain conditions, produces all activity in his creatures, is called occasionalism. Geulincx thought that his theory overcame Descartes' ultra-dualistic difficulties by simply denying all activity to both body and mind. He failed to see that the theory is contradicted by the testimony of our consciousness, which is witness to the evident fact that we are the causal agents of our own acts. His theory denies free will and destroys the foundations of morality, making God solely responsible for every good and evil human act. Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715) also accepted Descartes' ultra-dualism. He was an ontologist, defending a modified occasionalism. According to his theory, man acquires his knowledge from the contemplation of the divine Ideas of God. Similar views were held by Rosmini and Gioberti. Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646-1716) proposed the curious doctrine of monadism. He recognized no interaction between the mental and the material. Every material entity, however, has also a mental side; this doctrine is called pan-psychism. God has established a perfect harmony between the material and the mental, so that, like the two clocks of Geulincx, material and mental activities follow parallel lines throughout. His theory of "pre-established harmony," therefore, is a form of psycho-physical parallelism. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) sought a different solution for the cartesian dilemma. He defined "substance" as something the concept of which needs no other thing from which it should be formed. Such a definition can apply only to God, because God alone is a substance the concept of which involves no other concept or thing. Spinoza accepted the implication of this definition: there is but one substance, and that substance is God. Hence, everything that exists is a modification of the divine substance, and that includes everything material and extended and everything spiritual and unextended. The divine nature, therefore, has as essential attributes extension and thought. As extension, the divine substance unfolds itself into the physical world; as thought, it unfolds itself into the human minds. The human mind is a mode or manifestation of the divine intellect. When, therefore, man's mind has an idea, it is really God who has this idea in the human mind, because He constitutes the essence of the human mind. And since the extended world and the unextended mind are one in the substance of God, it follows that the order and connection of ideas is identical with the order and connection of things. Viewed this way, the theory is a psycho-physical parallelism with its roots in a pantheistic monism. It is "pantheism," because everything is God, and God is everything. It is "monism," because there is only one kind of ultimate reality or substance in existence to which all things, physical and mental, are reduced; in Spinoza's system this reality is God. There are a number of reasons which compel us to reject Spinoza's theory:
The entire system of Spinoza is a deduction from his definition of substance. This definition is arbitrary in the extreme and rests solely on Spinoza's personal statements. It leads to contradictions and impossibilities which are a plain reductio ad absurdum. These contradictions and impossibilities should have warned Spinoza that his original definition must be faulty, because erroneous conclusions presuppose faulty premises. In England the trend of philosophy was toward empiricism and sensationalism. Empiricism is the doctrine that all human knowledge is derived from the data of particular states of consciousness, so that experience is the exclusive source and criterion of all knowledge. Sensationalism, which is almost synonymous with empiricism, is the doctrine which assumes that all human knowledge originates solely in sensation and that all intellectual cognitions are ultimately nothing more than complex and elaborated products of sense impressions and their reproduced images. In both theories intellectual knowledge is only a refined form of sensory knowledge and not of a kind essentially superior to sensory knowledge. A sentient nature, therefore, suffices to explain all human knowledge, and a spiritual intellect or soul is a superfluous entity. The empiricist and sensationalist theory has its origin in the teachings of Locke. John Locke (1632-1704) was an empiricist. He considered "ideas" to be the sole object of thinking, and by "ideas" he understood "phantasms" (sense images) and "notions" (concepts). By wiping out the distinction between sense images and concepts, he led the way directly to sensationalism and materialism. By asserting that our internal mental states ("ideas") are the sole objects of thought, he excluded from our knowledge all things of the physical world, as they are in themselves, except by a mediate inference from our ideas. His teaching leads to subjectivism and idealism. Locke was unjustified in identifying sensory phantasms and intellectual concepts under the common term "idea," because ideas are abstract, universal, and nonmaterial in nature, while sense impressions and images are always concrete, particular, and material. Hence, although Locke rejected Descartes' theory of innate ideas, he did not succeed in overcoming the cartesian ultra-dualism of body and mind, because he could not explain how a knowledge of the material world could get into the mind. George Berkeley (1685-1753) accepted Locke's dictum that the mind can perceive nothing but its own internal states. Locke maintained that a world of material substance actually exists, though its existence is a matter of inference only. Berkeley refused to follow Locke. Since we can know nothing but our internal states, to be is to be perceived (esse est percipi), and we have no right to conclude to the existence of an extra-mental world of inert corporeal substances. The only substances which exist are God and minds, i.e., spiritual substances; even the human body does not exist, except as a perception. Berkeley advocated spiritualistic idealism and mentalism, the theory that nothing exists but the spiritual mind. Berkeley's theory solves the cartesian body-mind problem through the expedient of denying the existence of bodies and all material reality. The solution is entirely too simple. One cannot get rid of the human body and of the world by means of a mere denial. We are as certain of the existence of our body as we are of our own self, and the body is as much a part of our being as is the mind. David Hume (1711-1776) adopted the empirical phenomenalism of Locke, maintaining that we can have knowledge only of our internal states. He agreed with Berkeley that we have no right to accept the existence of material substance. He even denied the existence of all substance. He formulated his argument in the oft-quoted passage: "I would fain ask those philosophers, who found so much of their reasonings on the distinction of substance and accident, and imagine we have clear ideas of each, whether the idea of substance be derived from the impressions of sensation or reflection. [Note: these are the sole data of our knowledge, according to Hume]. If it be conveyed to us by our senses, I ask, which of them; and after what manner? If it be perceived by the eyes, it must be a color; if by the ears, a sound; if by the palate, a taste; and so of the other senses. But I believe none will assert, that substance is either a color, sound, or taste. The idea of substance must therefore be derived from an impression of reflection, if it really exists. But the impressions of reflection resolve themselves into our passions and emotions; none of which can possibly represent a substance. We have therefore no idea of substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we talk or reason concerning it." [A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Part I, Sect. 6.] And thus all substances are argued out of existence, leaving nothing but phenomena. Hume became the protagonist of pan-phenomenalism, the theory in which everything is reduced to mental states. Since there is no substantial reality underlying the transitory mental states, Hume contended that man is "but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement." We have, then, no personal mind and Ego as the subject of mental phenomena. There are thoughts, but there is no thinker who thinks the thoughts. We should not say "I think," but "It thinks." Here we have the psychology of the impersonal mind, and the "mind," if we speak of it at all, is not distinct from the passing internal states. It is like movement without anything that is moving. Locke and Hume had many followers. Chief among them are James Mill, John Stuart Mill, A. Bain, J. Sully, Herbert Spencer, T. Ribot, H. Taine, E. Condillac, and the founder of positivism, Auguste Comte. They differ among themselves in many respects, but they all adhere to the general doctrine of empiricism and sensationalist phenomenalism. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to offset Hume's skepticism and revindicate the validity of human knowledge. He arrived at the conclusion that we can know only phenomena (appearances), not noumena (things-in-themselves, as they are in reality). Among the items of phenomenal knowledge, acquired through introspection, is the empirical Ego. The "idea" of the Ego, however, is an innate, a priori from of reason, pertaining solely to phenomena, and tells us nothing of what the "Ego" is as a thing-in-itself. Similarly, "substance" is an innate, a priori category, and all "categories" have only a subjective, regulating function in ordering our thoughts, without any objective value in the world of things. Hence, when we think of the soul or Ego as a "substance" possessing actual simplicity, unity, and spirituality, we harbor an illusion, because we then confuse the real order with the mental order. There is, of course, a pure, noumenal Ego beyond the phenomenal Ego of which we are aware in our consciousness, but we can never attain to a knowledge of its reality; we can know only the phenomenal Ego, and such knowledge is a mere mental construction. Kant's general theory has been subjected to a critical evaluation elsewhere. (See: What is Wrong With Kant's Philosophy.) Here we wish to stress the point that, if Kant's theory were correct, he could not even know of the existence of the "pure Ego," much less tell us anything about it. In psychology, we are interested in the "Ego" as given in our conscious experience and not in some hypothetical "pure Ego" conceived by Kant; otherwise psychology is an illusory science devoid of all value for life, because everything we can discover about our body, mind, soul, and Ego would tell us nothing of what these things are in themselves as objects of reality. Kant's theory is a form of rationalistic idealism, although he is a hypothetical dualist postulating the existence of an external world. He failed to overcome Descartes' antithesis between mind and matter; the mind remains imprisoned in its conscious states and can know nothing of the external world and non-Ego objects. His followers developed his ideas into a stark absolutism. Johann Fichte (1762-1814) contended that thought cannot be derived from being, but being must be derived from thought; thought, therefore, is the ultimate and only reality, and the laws of thought are the laws of being. And since all thought is contained in consciousness, there is no other reality but conscious Ego; hence, all reality is unified in the Ego. The Ego, of course, does not mean merely human consciousness, but the universal consciousness of the Absolute or God. Fichte assumes the existence of an Infinite Ego which first posits itself, then posits a limited non-Ego (the world), and finally posits a limited Ego (the human mind or Ego) in opposition to the limited non-Ego. Fichte defends pan-Egoism. Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) viewed the universe as divided into two great actualities -- nature and spirit (real and ideal, object and subject, matter and self, thing and mind). In reality, however, these opposites are originally and essentially identified in the Absolute or Infinite, so that they are but two phases in the evolution of the ultimate reality which is the Absolute. Hence, his doctrine is termed the identity theory. Georg W. Hegel (1770-1831) also identified all things in the Absolute. But with him the Absolute is pure Thought or Idea. It evolves by means of a purely rational and logical process of thought into the ideal and real, into subject and object, into spirit and nature, into mind and matter. The Absolute is incessantly in a process of dialectic evolution, so that all being is thought realized. His system is idealistic monism driven to its highest peak; it is the oneness of all things in the Absolute. Idealistic monism, which seeks to eliminate the difference between the physical and the psychical by reducing them to the identity of one ultimate reality or Absolute, exerted a great influence on modern thinkers. Among those who followed this line of thought are Arthur Schopenhouer, E. von Hartmann, T. Green, F. Bradley, J. Caird, E. Caird, B. Croce, G. Gentile, and many others. Disgusted with the brilliant obscurities of Kant and the idealists, others sought to bring the problem of man out of the clouds back to earth. Instead of following Descartes in the spiritualistic side of his ultra-dualism of human nature, they swung to the opposite extreme and chose the atomistic-mechanistic side pertaining to man's body. In opposition to the idealists who reduced the physical to the mental, they reversed the procedure and reduced the mental completely to the physical. The result was a materialistic monism which admits but a single ultimate reality, namely, matter. Materialism, being a form of monism, is a metaphysical identity theory, because everything in man is identified with matter and material energy. What we call the "psychical," such as sensation, perception, memory, intellection, etc., is regarded by materialism as a function or property of organized matter, essentially of the same nature as any other physiological function of the human body. There is nothing in mental facts but movements of material particles; they are obscure manifestations of material energies and as such do not transcend matter and its conditions. No interaction exists between body and mind, for the simple reason that "mind" is a mere abstraction; the only reality that exists is the body composed of atoms and molecules in organization. Mental life is identified with neural action. At best, some materialists admit that consciousness is an accompaniment or byproduct of neural processes, determined by them but exerting no influence upon them, so that consciousness is but an "epiphenomenon" of matter, matter being the real phenomenon. This doctrine is the theory of epiphenomenalism. By ignoring the specific character of psychical events and conditions, the materialists arrive at an easy solution of the problem of mind and body and of the human Ego. Chief among these pseudo-philosophers were P.J. Cabanis, J. La Mettrie, L. Feuerbach, C. Vogt, L. Buchner, and E. Haeckel. Theirs was a very crude sort of materialism. Cabanis, for example, maintained that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. Ever since experimental psychology has investigated mental phenomena with scientific thoroughness and precision, it has become increasingly clear to psychologists that the crude materialism of men like Moleschott, Buchner, and Haeckel is a failure. Nevertheless, many prominent experimentalists, due to the materialistic trend of the times in which they received their education and training, were loath to accept the idea of a spiritual soul informing the body as the principle of unification for body and mind. Generally speaking, they prefer some kind of psycho-physical parallelism. Gustav J. Fechner (1801-1887) maintains that body and soul (physical and psychical) are not essentially different realities; at bottom, they are a single reality with two aspects. When I look at myself, I find that I am a conscious mental being; that is the "psychical aspect" of myself as a man. When an outsider looks at me, I am a material being, because he cannot intuit my mental states; that is the "physical aspect" of myself as a man. In so far as Fechner considers the physical and psychical to be merely two aspects of one and the same ultimate reality, his view is termed the double-aspect theory; and in so far as he postulates a single ultimate reality which is both physical and psychical, depending on the the point of view one takes, his psycho-physical parallelism is an identity theory. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) was a psycho-physical parallelist. In his "ideal-realism" he takes a stand midway between idealism and realism; as a scientist he leaned toward realism, and as a follower of Kant he could not free himself from idealism. Wundt denies the existence of all substance: "The contents of psychological experience should be regarded as an interconnection of processes. This concept of process excludes the attribution of an objective and more or less permanent character to the content of psychical experience. Psychical facts are occurrences, not objects." [Outlines of Psychology.] Since the mind is conceived as a sum-total of psychical events, there is, in his view, no such thing as a permanent, substantial mind or Ego as the carrier of these mental states. The concept of "mind-substance" has no value except to satisfy "a mythological and metaphysical need." The mind is simply act, actuality. All we have is a manifold of interrelated occurrences, an inner (psychical) and an outer (physical) experience. Wundt's psycho-physical theory is, therefore, also termed the theory of actuality. Wundt considered the will to be the real Ego. Many modern psychologists have adopted the theory of psycho-physical parallelism as best suited to the temper of the scientific investigator. Man is, as Huxley puts it, a "conscious automaton." Defenders of this conscious automaton-theory are, among others, Hodgson and Spalding. Many also, especially evolutionists, defend some sort of atomistic mind-dust or mind-stuff theory, as proposed by W.K. Clifford and Herbert Spencer, according to which an atom of consciousness or mind is attached to every atom of matter in the universe, both developing together in the evolution of beings, including man. As the material atoms, in the course of eons, massed themselves together to form the bodies of plants, animals, and men, so also the mind-atoms massed themselves together to form the more developed and refined minds of conscious animals and men. According to this view, all matter has the quality and potency of life and mind, and the "mind" of man is a mere affair of psychic summation. The theory that all atoms of matter originally possess life is atomistic hylozoism; it is also a form of pan-psychism, since everything existing is conceived as fundamentally psychic or mental in nature. William James (1842-1910), the eminent American psychologist, took a peculiar stand in this problem. He admitted frankly the reasonableness of the scholastic doctrine of the soul. "To posit a soul influenced in some mysterious way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious affections of its own, seems to me the line of least logical resistance, so far as we yet have attained." [The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I.] In order, however to remain "positivistic and non-metaphysical," he considered an empirical parallelism to be the wisest course. James viewed man's conscious life as a "stream" of internal states without a substantial Ego as their subject. He followed in the footsteps of Hume and Wundt. For him, "the passing thought itself is the only verifiable thinker," and he can find no rational use for the concept of "substance" or of a "substantial soul." James was fully aware of the consciousness of the "identity of self" extending over gaps of unconsciousness, as evidenced by memory. How did he overcome the difficulty? He compared the passing mental states to a herd of cattle, branded with the brand of the owner, who is the "Ego" or "self." He writes: "How would it be if the Thought, the present judging Thought, instead of being in any way substantially or transcendentally identical with the former owner of the past self, merely inherited his title, and thus stood as his legal representative now?...We can imagine a long succession of herdsmen coming rapidly into possession of the same cattle by transmission of an original title by bequest. Many not the title of a collective self be passed from one Thought to another in some analogous way?...Each later Thought, knowing and including thus the Thoughts which went before, is the final receptacle -- and appropriating them is the final owner -- of all they contain and own. Each Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it realized as its Self to its own later proprietor." [The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I.] In this manner, James believed, he could safeguard the identity of the self or Ego without having recourse to a "substantial" Ego or soul. James' analogy is ingenious. The only trouble with it is, that it does not fit the case; he places the cart before the horse. In our mental life, the internal states are transient, while the Ego or self is consciously observed to be permanent; the herd of cattle (which is supposed to represent our passing internal states) is permanent, while the herdsmen (who are supposed to represent the permanent Ego or self) are transient. The roles are actually the reverse of what they should be. In a succession of heirs to a particular piece of property (here, the herd), certainty no heir feels himself to be identical with every other heir in the line of succession, simply because he has succeeded to the title formerly held by the other proprietors. In the case of man, however, the present Ego feels itself to be the one identical Ego throughout the years. If James' analogy were correct, the present Thought or Ego could never feel itself identical with the preceding Thoughts or Egos, because they are in reality not the same any more than the succeeding heirs and owners are the same. It is always dangerous to build an important theory on an analogy. Facts should govern a theory; and the facts point very definitely to the identity and permanence of the Ego as the possessor of the transient mental states as they succeed one another. James did not prove his case; if anything, he proved that a substantial Ego is a necessary requirement for the proper explanation of our mental life. During the past century there has been a number of distinctive movements and countermovements in the psychological field. Functionalism considers the mental processes as the functions of the organism in its adaptation to, and control of, environment; it is the psychology of William James, John Dewey, and the pragmatic school of thought. Structuralism is an "atomistic" psychology which analyzes mental states into component sensations, images, and feelings; E.B. Titchener and his followers are representative of this type of psychology. Gestaltism or configurationalism stresses the tendency of the mind to view things as formed "wholes" rather than as isolated items of experience; among its advocates are W. Kohler, K. Koffka, and many others. Behaviorism seeks to explain the mental in plain physiological terms of stimulus-response reactions, without taking consciousness and introspection into account; John Watson, A.P. Weiss, B.F. Skinner, and others defend this view. Reflexological psychology identifies mental life with neural reflexes; V.M. Bekhterev, K.N. Kornilov, A.L. Schniermann, and other Russian followers of Marxist materialism are expounders of this system. Psychoanalysis, as a psychology, explains mental life as the result of instinctive drives working in the lower levels of the mind. Then there is also the hormic psychology of William McDougall which emphasizes the goal-seeking tendencies of organisms, and the factor psychology of C. Spearman, which seeks to determine the general and special abilities by means of correlation coefficients. As a general policy, modern psychologists strive to remain within the limits of a "scientific" treatment of their subject matter, disclaiming any sort of "metaphysical" explanation of the nature of man and the relation of body and mind. The majority seem to accept a psycho-physical parallelism of physical and mental events in man as a methodological convenience. As a rule, however, they make occasional commitments about the ultimate nature of man, because their basic ideas of body and mind are rooted in metaphysical concepts and theories; psychologists, therefore, often become, in unguarded moments, metaphysicians. Some individuals subscribe to panpsychism; others to materialistic monism; others to idealistic monism; others to pantheistic monism; others to strict parallelism, without attempting to define their position in any more definite manner. It is perhaps safe to say that the general trend of modern psychologists has been toward some form of materialism. The reflexological psychology of the Russian School is avowedly a materialistic monism. Behaviorism is materialistic. Gestaltism, though it contains elements of a sound psychology, does not rise above the fundamental tenets of materialism, because the chief exponents of the theory find the ultimate explanation of the whole-making tendency of the mind in the conditions of the brain. The structuralism of Titchener is materialistic. Psychoanalysis, as conceived by Freud, is also basically materialistic. Functionalism favors dualism and interactionism. The hormic psychology of McDougall is interactionistic and animistic, based upon a metaphysical dualism. And thus we see how the ultra-dualism of Descartes, by destroying the essential unity of man's nature and placing body and mind in a position of antagonism toward each other, has brought on a deplorable confusion of psychological systems. He made a real interaction between body and mind impossible, and it has been the endeavor of subsequent thinkers to bridge the gap between these two realities in man.
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