CH-15-17 Eastern Influences – Philosophy: The Power of Ideas : Chapter Notes

This Document Contains Chapters 15 to 17 CHAPTER 15: EASTERN INFLUENCES Main Points 1. Eastern philosophy and Eastern religions are closely intertwined. Hinduism 2. The Vedas (ancient Hindu religious texts) divide society into four classes or castes. Because the gods determined one’s caste, one was meant to stay there. The four classes: (1) Brahmins (the priests and teachers); (2) Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors); (3) Vaishyas (merchants); (4) Shudras (farmers and laborers). Below all the castes are the Parjanyas or Antyajas, or Untouchables. 3. Hinduism is the Western term for religious beliefs and practices (with an associated philosophy) of the Indian people, going back into the unknown past. Both Hinduism (and Buddhism) contain within them a great variety of philosophical positions. 4. The basis of Hindu philosophy is the belief that reality is absolutely one, that there is only one ultimate reality-being-consciousness. The belief-system ranges from belief in primitive deities to sophisticated metaphysical theories. 5. Common to all forms of Hinduism is acceptance of the Vedic scriptures. Philosophically, the most important Vedic scripture is the last book, the Upanishads, best known for the theories of brahman (ultimate cosmic principle of reality) and atman (the inner self) and the identification of brahman and atman. 6. Three popular contemporary Hindu movements: (1) Saivism worships Siva as the supreme being and source of the universe; (2) Saktism worships Sakti, the female part of the universe and the wife of Siva; (3) Vaisnavism worships the personal god Vishnu. Buddha, according to orthodox Hindus, was an incarnation (avatar) of Vishnu. 7. There are four great sayings of the Upanishads; all are ways of saying that brahman and atman are one: (1) Consciousness is brahman; (2) that art thou; (3) the self is brahman; (4) I am brahman. The identification of brahman and atman has been subject to various interpretations (several of which are explained in the text). 8. Humans are caught in a cycle of desire and suffering which is the direct result of ignorance and ego. The end result is samsara, the cycle of being born, dying, and being reborn. 9. That which keeps an individual imprisoned by the transmigratory cycle is karma, which means “action” or “deed.” Every action, good or bad, inevitably has its effects, and the consequences of those actions build up over a lifetime and through multiple reincarnations. 10. The goal is to achieve nirvana (permanent liberation from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth) with the merging of the individual, transitory existence into the ultimate reality, brahman, a condition of bliss. 11. Much of the wisdom of Hinduism lies in its sages, including, in the twentieth century, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo Ghose, and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Buddhism 12. Buddhism, which arose in India in the person of a prince, Siddhartha Gautama, later known as Buddha, was originally a response to the problem of suffering. Suffering is in part the result of the transience and uncertainty of the world, in part the result of karma, and in part the result of ignorance and enslavement by desires and passions. 13. Buddha. Buddha’s answer to this problem is contained in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Through meditation and self-abnegation, promotion to better lives and finally to nirvana is obtained. 14. Four Noble Truths: (1) There is suffering; (2) suffering has specific and identifiable causes; (3) suffering can be ended; (4) the way to end suffering is through enlightened living as expressed in the Eightfold Path. The most immediate causes of human suffering are ignorance and selfish craving. 15. Eightfold Path: (1) Right view; (2) right aim; (3) right speech; (4) right action; (5) right living; (6) right effort; (7) right mindfulness; (8) right contemplation. 16. Karma means action or deed; the intent of an action determines whether it is morally good or bad. The effect of an action leaves a trace which extends over several lifetimes. 17. Cessation of suffering is found in nirvana, a permanent state of supreme enlightenment and serenity that ends the cycle of reincarnation. It is total disattachment from Self. 18. Additional concepts attributed to Buddha: clinging to existence must be overcome; and silence of body, mind, and speech must be achieved. Islamic Philosophy (see box in text) 19. Neoplatonism and Aristotle played an important role in shaping Islamic philosophy, which arose in the eighth century during Western Europe’s Middle Ages. 20. Avicenna envisioned God as a Necessary Being who emanated the contingent, temporal world out of himself. 21. Averroës taught the idea of eternal creation; some interpreted Averroës as teaching the doctrine of double truth: a separate truth of philosophy and a separate truth of religion. 22. Sufism represents a mystical and ascetic strain of Muslim belief that seeks union with God (Allah). 23. Sufism was influenced by the mystical tendencies of Neoplatonism and gnosticism. Through ascetic practices and concentrated inwardness, a human being might experience a sudden illumination and a sense of ecstatic union with God (Allah). Taoism 24. Three great systems of thought dominate Chinese civilization: Taoism and Confucianism (two indigenous philosophical systems), and Buddhism. 25. China’s history is dominated by a series of dynasties. By the fifth century BCE China had fallen into many single warring states; during this time Confucianism and Taoism (the word Tao is usually translated “the Way” in the West) were born. During the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 AD) China became a centrally controlled state run by bureaucrats; Buddhism was introduced from India. 26. Taoism derives from Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. 27. Lao Tzu. Regarded Confucian attempts to improve society by direct action as hopeless. Lao Tzu thought (as later did Socrates) that the wisest are still very ignorant. What is needed is not interference with the world but humble understanding of the way it functions, the Tao. Forcing change is self-injurious. Follow the Tao instead, the natural order of things. The Tao gives rise to yang (expansive forces) and yin (contractive forces) and is the means by which things come to be, take shape, and reach fulfillment. The Tao cannot be improved. 28. The sage cultivates tranquility and equilibrium so as to recognize the Tao. He is selfless, cares for all things, and seeks to benefit them rather than to use them for his own ends. He is modest, slow, and cautious and, in some respects, like water in behavior and results. He is soft and supple. 29. Enduring change is brought about by weakness, not by strength; by submission, not by intervention. In the political sphere, the use of force brings hostility and retaliation. The wise ruler sidesteps problems by anticipating them. He is no acquisitive. 30. Sun Tzu. The Art of War, perhaps the oldest treatise on military strategy and methods, was presumably written by Sun Tzu, a Chinese mercenary, around 512 BCE. 31. Sun Tzu’s philosophy has reportedly been adopted by CEOs and coaches as well as by military leaders. Some say that the philosophy driving China, an economic juggernaut to whom the United States is a billion dollars in debt, comes more from Sun Tzu than Karl Marx. 32. Principles of The Art of War: (1) Warfare should not be taken lightly–all elements of a conflict must be carefully studied; (2) winning requires not merely knowing one’s opponent but also being realistic about oneself; (3) using force is a last resort. 33. Sun Tzu: The enemy must not be crushed utterly but must taste bitterness. One must change the opponent’s mind-set from one of confidence and security to one of doubt, indecision, and fear. Decisive victories are almost always achieved through surprise, and that requires deception and “mind games.” Right timing is essential; patience in war is a key virtue. The strategy of war must be all-encompassing, because it encompasses politics, economics, and societal relations as well. The end of battle of not the end of war. Deep thinkers are as important as military advisers. 34. Chuang Tzu. The most important Taoist next to Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu held that nature (the world) has its own wisdom and cannot be forced or hurried in its unfolding in the Tao. Because the Tao and not the person determines what will happen, the wise person accepts the course of events as it unfolds, with neither hope nor regret. 35. The sage ruler remains free from selfish desires, anticipates crises before they arise, and is always tranquil. Opposites are in fact equal as a single entity within the Tao. The sage does not distinguish himself from the Tao. 36. Chuang Tzu emphasized the danger of usefulness. The sage avoids becoming too useful. Confucianism 37. Confucian political philosophy has dominated Chinese life in a way unequalled by the thought of any similar philosopher in the West. 38. Confucius. Made humanity (jen) a cornerstone of Chinese philosophy. 39. Set forth ideals of behavior based on his understanding of the Way, the path taken by natural events (not a fixed and eternal transcendental principle). Humans are perfectible. The Way works through the principle of the Mean, and human behavior should avoid extremes and seek moderation. 40. Confucius’s principle of reciprocity: “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.” 41. His philosophy was this-worldly, not other-wordly, though he did recognize the importance of religious ritual for the state. 42. The sage represents, in effect, an ethical ideal. Sage ship requires knowledge of change and the order of things, including correct understanding of human relationships and the workings of nature. It also includes correct use or rectification of names. The sage’s conduct is superior because he patterns his behavior on the great of the past and because he learns from personal experience. His fairness makes the sage trusted by rulers and all. 43. The roots of ignoble governance are greed, aggressiveness, pride, and resentment. The viciousness of the ruler infects the governed. The ruler governed by the Mean rules justly and impartially, seeks equal distribution of wealth, promotes security and peace, and rules virtuously by example and not by force of arms. 44. The family too should be patriarchal and authoritarian, and its proper functioning depends on the obedience of the subordinate members and on its responsible governance in accordance with the Mean. 45. The five primary human relationships: between ruler and subject, parent and child, elder and younger brother, husband and wife, and one friend and another. 46. Mencius. Like Confucius, Mencius (the second greatest Confucian philosopher) believed that people are potentially good and was optimistic as to human betterment through conscientious conduct. He believed the way to the upright life, and true happiness, must include difficulty, suffering, and toil; helping one’s family and society; and leadership. 47. Disorder in a state is often caused by the indifferent and selfish ruler. The state governed without vision falls into ruin and death. Killing the monarch of the disordered state is not murder. The good ruler exhibits benevolence, righteousness, and propriety and is knowledgeable. 48. Hsün Tzu. Did not agree with Mencius that human beings are originally good and therefore naturally inclined to goodness. Instead, he believed human beings were basically bad but that they are impelled to compensate for and overcome this defectiveness through education and moral training. The human being is perfectible. Zen Buddhism in China and Japan 49. Zen is Japanese, Ch’an is Chinese, and both words derive from the Sanskrit dhyana, meditation. 50. Buddhism came to China and mixed with Taoism, Confucianism, and other influences to become Chinese Zen Buddhism. 51. Hui Neng. The story of Hui Neng’s investiture as the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen. 52. The ultimate Dharma: Hui Neng gave it several titles: the Self-Nature; the Buddha Dharma; the Real Nature; the eternal and unchanging Tao. 53. There are no “things”—all things are one. Human thought imposes thirty-six basic pairs of opposites (such as light and darkness; yin and yang; birth and death; good and bad; and so on) in order to make sense of a totality that cannot be grasped at once. This ultimate reality is an absolute state of suchness or reality or truth that neither goes nor comes, neither increases nor decreases, is neither born nor dies. 54. Freedom from selfish, one-sided visions of reality is accomplished through a state of no-thought or mindlessness. 55. Buddhism in Japan. By the late ninth century, Japanese culture reflected an unequal mixture of Shinto, Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism (and its Mahayana branch, with the two further branches of Tendai and Shigon). 56. Shinto, an ancient native religion of Japan, related humans to the kami, or gods of nature, that created the universe. This view regarded people as “thinking reeds” completely a part of the natural and divine universe. Such a view is called animism. 57. People’s duties were derived through their blood relationships. Connection to the gods of nature came through the ancestor’s clan and through the divine clan of the Mikado, who was both national high priest and head of state. 58. Mahayana Buddhism incorporated the Confucian virtues of filial piety, veneration of ancestors, duties based on rank and position, honesty, and the like. Mahayana saw humanity unified through spiritual enlightenment in the worship of one god—the Mikado, the greatest earthly kami. This was the form of Buddhism adopted by Japanese aristocracy. 59. Murasaki Shikibu. Shinto Buddhist feminist philosopher who rejected mainstream Buddhism’s view of women, which believed them to be of lesser moral worth than men. Women could achieve salvation, or reach the psychological state of nirvana that would prepare them to enter the Western Paradise, but only after reincarnation as a male. 60. Murasaki represents a minority Buddhist view that women are moral agents who, instead of blaming fate, can assume moral responsibility for their actions. She held that women should challenge their karma (destiny) and take control of their own lives. The long process of philosophical enlightenment can begin, not after reincarnation as a male, but rather in the present life, living according to the teachings of Shinto Buddhism. 61. More recently there have been positive developments regarding women’s status in Japanese Buddhism. 62. Dogen Kigen. Dissatisfied with the decadent state of Tendai Buddhism, founded the Soto branch of Japanese Zen Buddhism. 63. Dogen: Life is impermanent; therefore do not waste it. Time must be utilized in a worthy pursuit, in an all-out effort for a single objective. Yet the rapidity of life makes it difficult to decide how best to manage oneself. The mind overwhelmed by a world not understood seeks safety in selfish and self-protective acts. The perception of the world as good and bad, right and wrong, black and white, is the “Lesser Vehicle” and arises out of ignorance and fear. 64. Dogen: The solution is to practice the Great Way, to see things from the perspective of the universe or Buddha Dharma or universal Self: The wisdom of emptiness. This requires seeking to help others without reward or praise. (Thus Dogen endeavored to set forth a way to achieve permanent joy in this life.) The Philosophy of the Samurai (c. 1100–1900) 65. The wisdom of the samurai was transmitted through the centuries in the form of martial precepts that were used to teach the art of bushido (the art of being a samurai warrior); the literature of the samurai has influenced all areas of Japanese thought and behavior. 66. The brevity and uncertainty of life requires preparedness and anticipation: “Win beforehand.” Because other people are flawed in character self-reliance is required. 67. The complete man is both scholar and warrior. He understands the importance of the Confucian principle of the Mean. He is humane, wise, courageous, polite, dignified, proper in dress and speech, and absolutely truthful. 68. One of the most famous samurai was Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) whose The Book of Five Rings is said to be required reading in some American business colleges. The ultimate goal of strategy is to achieve “unclouded vision” of events and people without distortions introduced by fear, prejudice, or desire. Knowledge is turned into action only through training and practice. 69. Musashi said that, to attain extraordinary ability or miraculous power, the trainee must become free of all preoccupations with the self; he called this state of perfect acting the “Spirit of the Void.” He emphasized ferocity: You “must strike with all your heart and all your soul.” One defeats an enemy by using knowledge of the opponent to keep him or her off balance, which will ruin his time, shake his confidence, and make him vulnerable. 70. Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659–1719): His thoughts on the samurai life are preserved in the Hagakure. Since human life is a short affair, one must not squander time. A samurai must train himself to be ready at all times for anything that may happen: “Win beforehand.” The samurai must be self-reliant, learning the arts of war and peace, knowing where his duty lies and carrying it out “unflinchingly.” 71. The samurai studies past traditions, especially Confucian and other classical Chinese philosophies, and Zen Buddhism. These determine and shape bushi and are in turn unified and synthesized by bushi into a single, effective way of life. 72. The influence of Confucius. The model of the perfect samurai closely follows the Confucian idea of the complete man. 73. The influence of Zen Buddhism. The Zen and samurai traditions both emphasized attainment of an unobstructed state of instant, untainted response: Mushin, the state of no-mind and no thought. 74. Zen Buddhism and other forms of Buddhism are especially popular in the United States and in the West generally. Philosophy East and West 75. Eastern philosophies are primarily derived from religious authorities who are not challenged, rather than from principles of logic, conceptual analysis, or a priori assumptions. 76. Eastern value is found within oneself. To improve one’s inner life, one rids oneself of such negatives as anger or the desire for material goods, revenge, victory, or fame through self-control. 77. By contrast, Western philosophy tries to prove truth and is argument-based. Insights into human nature or the human condition in and of themselves es are generally not accorded the highest status unless backed by argument. Conceptual analysis is also central to Western philosophy. Boxes Ommmmm (What “ommmmm” is) Profile: Siddhartha Gautama Buddha (Taught a “middle way” between sensual indulgence and ascetic self-denial) Islamic Philosophy (A short survey) Buddhism and the West (The parallel concerns of the Buddhists and Stoics; the influence of Buddhist thought on Schopenhauer; contemporary influences) Profile: Lao Tzu (Quotations) The Tao, Logos, and God (A brief comparison of these three concepts) Lao Tzu on Virtuous Activity (Quotations) Lao Tzu on Government (Quotations) Profile: Chuang Tzu (Quotations) Cook Ting (Chuang Tzu’s famous story) Chuang Tzu on Virtuous Activity (Quotations) Profile: Confucius (His Analects collect his sayings) Confucius: Insight on Life (Quotations) Confucius on Government (Quotations) Profile: Mencius (Quotations) Mencius and Thomas Hobbes on Human Nature (The two compared and contrasted) Mencius on Virtuous Activity (Quotations) Mencius on Government (Quotations) Hui Neng on Life and Truth (Quotations) Profile: Murasaki Shikibu (Author of the classic Tale of the Genji) Dogen’s Prescriptions for Virtuous Activity (Quotations) Zen Buddhism in Japan (About the two major traditions) Samurai Insights (from Yamomoto Tsunetomo, The Hagakure) (Quotations) Courage and Poetry (The importance of poetry to the warrior) Readings 15.1 Confucius, from Analects Book I of the sayings of Confucius. 15.2 The Buddha, from The Eightfold Noble Path A traditional elaboration of the Eightfold Noble Path. Lecture and Discussion Ideas Do you believe in reincarnation? Why, or why not? Gallup and other polls indicate that a sizable percentage of Americans believe in reincarnation, and our own informal surveys of our classes support this. If you care to lecture on the subject from a Western, analytical, skeptical point of view, here are a few of our thoughts on the subject. The theory of reincarnation is one of four main theories of life after the death of the existing body. The other theories are those of resurrection, disembodied survival, and astral-body survival. Hume, we seem to recall, thought that reincarnation was the only theory of life after death that made any sense. It’s not a bad idea to mention that these all are theories of personal survival, survival of oneself. Some students want to talk about living on as part of a cosmic consciousness or as a series of vibrations or energy waves or the like (though these notions seem less popular now than they did some years ago), but if you point out that such theories don’t promise survival of the self, they (the theories) lose their attractiveness. A popular theoretical objection to reincarnation assumes memory as essential to personal identity: I am John Locke only if I remember having had some of John Locke’s experiences. When we speak of this as a popular objection, we mean only that it is popular among philosophers. It will not even have occurred to your students, rest assured. Getting a class to appreciate this objection can take much of a class period. One approach we have used is to make up very short biographies of two individuals whose lives do not overlap temporally. We then ask why what we have read counts as two biographies and not as one; that is, why it doesn’t count as a case of reincarnation. “Why, nothing ties the two people together,” the class will point out. We then tie the two biographies together by adding one additional sentence to the biography of the later person, a sentence to the effect that he or she remembers having had some of the former person’s experiences. Voilà!—a case of reincarnation, thanks to addition. Of course, all you have shown is that remembering an earlier person’s experiences is a sufficient condition of being that person, not that it is a necessary condition. You therefore must ask the class if they can think of any way other than through memory to tie the two biographies together. Someone may try to make the connection by having the two individuals share the selfsame soul. If someone tries this, you are in for a full day if you don’t remember that all you want to do is to show that the memory objection is plausible. You don’t want to try to show more than that, either. That’s because the memory objection to reincarnation does not really prove that you are not, or were not, some past person, John Locke or whoever. After all, even though you don’t now remember any of Locke’s experiences, you might in the future, or in a future life, or under hypnosis. However, you can still say that, as long as you lack memories of Locke’s experiences, it is a matter of no consequence whether or not you are Locke. Other objections to reincarnation are (1) it doesn’t account for expansions and contractions of the human population; (2) the explanation of a person’s properties, both psychological and physiological, as due to heredity and environment, is much more plausible than any alternative that postulates reincarnation; and (3) empirical evidence of reincarnation is wanting. Objections (2) and (3) are the best objections and are really quite powerful. Of course they are not the kind of iron-clad, knock-out disproof’s that philosophers like. Further, (3) will be questioned by believers, if any you have, who have their own supply of anecdotes suggestive of reincarnation, “Bridey Murphy” type stories. Such anecdotes are almost always subject to simpler explanations that don’t involve assumption of prior lives. Introducing Eastern philosophy through poetry. Literature, especially poetry, offers a wonderful approach to Oriental philosophy. Chinese poetry, for example, movingly presents experiences that correspond to those of even young, career-directed college students: the longing for love, the joy of friendship, the uncertainty and unfairness of fate, the melancholy of lost happiness, and the constraints of duty. Chinese poems help make even the more abstract maxims of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism seem concrete and meaningful. The most appealing poetry to Western ears, perhaps, is that of Po Chü-i (772–846), who was a government official during the Tang period. Po Chü-i wrote several thousand poems noted for their simple and graceful elegance. To read them is to experience his gratitude and appreciation for life and the beauty of nature. Arthur Waley is noted for his exquisite rendering of the subtlety and refinement of Po Chü-i and other Chinese poets. This poetry will help your students understand the modest recommendations of Chinese philosophers. Japanese literature also provides an excellent introduction to Japanese philosophy. You might wish to consider, for example, some of the collections of popular proverbs and sayings from Zen masters, such as are contained in A Zen Forest, translated by Soiku Shigematsu and published by Weatherhill. Also available are collections of stories and lessons that disclose some of the insights of Zen and Japanese thought generally: You might consult Paul Reps’s Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle). Other backup works worth looking at are Joe Hyams’s Zen in the Martial Arts (Bantam Books in New York) and Michael Minick’s The Wisdom of Kung Fu (originally from William Morrow and Co., Inc., New York). One of the best books for the samurai tradition is Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, published by Ohara Publications, Inc., of Burbank, California. Finally, R. H. Blyth wrote a series of small books in which he attempted to reveal the wisdom of Zen by illustrating it through relevant Oriental and Western poems. A version of these writings was published by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., in 1960, and entitled Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics. Philosophers’ Principal Works Al-Kindi (d. after A.D. 870) On First Philosophy Al-Farabi (A.D. 875–950) On the Perfect State Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione Avicenna (A.D. 980–1037) The Book of Healing Canon of Medicine Al-Ghazali (A.D. 1058–1111) Incoherence of the Philosophers Averroës (A.D. 1126–1198) The Incoherence of the Incoherence Decisive Treatise on the Agreement between Religious Law and Philosophy Lao Tzu (seventh or sixth century B.C.) Tao Te Ching Chuang Tzu (fourth century B.C.) The Complete Works Sun Tzu (sixth century B.C.) The Art of War Confucius (551–479 B.C.) The Analects Mencius (371–289 B.C.) The Book of Mencius Hsün Tzu (298–238 B.C.) Hsün Tzu Hui Neng (A.D. 638–713) The Sutra of Hui Neng Murasaki Shikibu (A.D. 970–1031) Tale of Genji Dogen Kigen (A.D. 1200–1253) A Primer of Soto Zen Records of Things Heard Miyamoto Musashi (A.D. 1584–1645) A Book of Five Rings Yamamoto Tsunetomo (A.D. 1659–1719) The Hagakure The Book of the Samurai Basho (A.D. 1644–1694) A Haiku Journey The Way of Silence CHAPTER 16: POSTCOLONIAL THOUGHT Main Points 1. Postcolonial thinkers Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, and Desmond Tutu, do their work in recollection of deep cultural traumas that have occurred in the histories of their respective peoples. 2. Postcolonial thought takes up problems of cultural dissolution and questioning previously unquestioned worldviews. It challenges an uncritical acceptance of the notion of progress. The writing of history itself has become an issue for philosophical investigation (historiography). 3. Direct appeals for justice are not sufficiently compelling to bring about change; thus, raising consciousness through philosophy has become an important undertaking. 4. Perspectivism has become an accepted part of postcolonial writing; in the twentieth century, some form of Marxism has been the overwhelming theoretical choice among Third World writers. 5. Among the topics most intensively developed in postcolonial studies of history and justice has been the matter of domination. Historical Background 6. Models of colonization: in the fifteenth century, the Iberian powers (Spain and Portugal) extracted valuable metals and other commodities from the areas under their control for shipment back to the mother country; British colonies in the eighteenth century were developed to be markets for manufactured goods; in Southeast Asia the French instituted a colonial model midway between the Spanish and British systems. 7. Whatever the model, colonization entailed (a) violent physical subjugation of indigenous peoples and (b) the introduction of the colonizers’ values and beliefs into traditional societies. 8. Postcolonial thought tries in various ways to come to terms with a history of subjugation and revolutionary impulses; in the colonial and former colonial powers postcolonial thought has been marginalized or dismissed altogether, though among subjugated and formerly subjugated populations post colonialist thinkers have become social and political leaders (Mahatma Gandhi in India, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Léopold Senghor in Senegal, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic). 9. The shared experience of domination has helped to structure a general revolutionary consciousness among subjugated peoples of the Third World. 10. Though postcolonial thinkers frequently disagree with others from within their own traditions about interpretations of events and situations, postcolonial thought is distinctive in self-consciously dealing with the dislocations brought on by encounters with conquerors whose imperialism aimed at near-total domination. 11. Thus, the commonalities of postcolonial thought are not so much derived from the conceptual similarities among local traditions as from similarities among experiences of invasion and foreign domination. Africa 12. Pan-African philosophy is a cultural categorization of philosophical activity that includes the work of African thinkers and thinkers of African descent wherever they are located. 13. After centuries of contact between African and non-African cultures, it is difficult to isolate a set of purely traditional African philosophical positions. 14. The most promising question to guide an inquiry into Pan-African philosophy is not what a purely African philosophy is but how philosophy has been done in Africa and in the places outside Africa where Africans have resettled, whether voluntarily or by force. 15. Oral and traditional philosophy. Although continuing indigenous written traditions in philosophy exist only in the lineages of the Asian and Indo-European civilizations, all cultures possess continuous oral and folk traditions in which complex value systems and their rationales are expressed. 16. Person: What a person is a metaphysical question; that is, it is more an invention of human beings than an inherent fact of nature, and thus the idea of person varies from culture to culture. 17. Historiography: Léopold Sédar Senghor outlined a distinctive African epistemology to explain the claim that there was an African way of knowing that was different from the European. His doctrine of negritude, widely misunderstood, arose from his phenomenological method and claimed that African cultures evaluate metaphors differently from European ones. 18. The nature of philosophy: Paulin Hountondji focuses on the task of deconstructing texts that, in his analysis, perpetuate a colonial mentality. He has been most concerned with two problem influences: Ethnophilosophy and the advocacy of the concept of negritude. 19. He argues that practitioners of ethnophilosophy (which seeks to describe traditional beliefs) impose external categorizations on those they study but justify their work in terms of its usefulness to those who would control African consciousness by manipulation of symbols and concepts. 20. The same problem, says Hountondji, afflicts the adherents of the negritude position, which in effect valorizes the African soul at the expense of the African intellect and ironically perpetuates colonialist thought. 21. The good life: Over time, the consciousness of people brutalized by colonial regulations, which tend to benefit only a few, may become distorted, and traditional values may fall into obscurity. Countering the tendency requires vigilance and discipline; some recommend socialism, some democracy, some religion. All recommend justice. 22. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of the architects of South Africa’s revolutionary transition from apartheid to representative democracy; his opposition to economic exploitation and official brutality has been heard around the world. The Americas 23. Native Americans from the Toltecs to the Onondagas engaged in vigorous campaigns of empire-building, but with the coming of the Europeans, imperial ambitions in the Americas were pursued from a position of technological superiority that the colonized native peoples could not match and with a sustained, single-minded acquisitiveness outside the experience of most tribes. 24. With first-person accounts of genocidal aggression still part of the experience of many Native Americans, the postcolonial philosophical response has only begun to enter the literature. 25. African American postcolonial thinking occurs not only in self-identified philosophical texts but also in story and song, wherever propositions are presented and explicitly considered or justified. 26. The introduction of Marxism to Latin America, which occurred mostly outside the traditional academic circles, provided the first serious challenge to the hegemony of Roman Catholic metaphysics. By the middle of the twentieth century, a major part of Latin American philosophical discourse had taken on a heavily religious cast. 27. Except where Marxist materialism has been consciously adopted, religiously metaphysical claims regularly serve as points of departure or elements of the presuppositional structures of postcolonial texts. African American Thought 28. Social justice: Martin Luther King Jr., was strongly influenced by the example and the writings of Mahatma Gandhi in seeking a world where his children “one day soon... will no longer be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” 29. Feminism: In the African American community, awareness of the successes of the civil rights movement and the rise of feminism in the white middle class combined with firsthand knowledge of a mostly unwritten history of the particular difficulties of black women, including a high incidence of domestic violence, to produce a variant of feminism that is especially sensitive to the social–ethical questions of marginalization. Middle-class feminism, bell hooks argues, was liable to be co-opted by the existing power structure to perpetuate a culture of competition and individualism. 30. Afrocentrism: Chaikh Anta Diop, an Africanist, argued that among other things black Africa was the origin of Egyptian civilization and that Europeans who were not purely Nordic traced their ancestry back to Africa. The matter is still very controversial. 31. Molefi Kete Asante: Afrocentrism’s chief architect. 32. Social activism: Addressed by Cornel West, now at Princeton University. Latin American Thought 33. One feature that distinguishes Latin American thought from most European philosophy is the sustained effort to explore the relevance of philosophy to problems of social justice. 34. Ontology: The branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the question of being. 35. Recent writings of Latin American philosophers demonstrate the possibility of interpreting the work of Heidegger and Sartre in ontology in new ways. For example, Argentinian philosopher Carlos Astrada takes Heidegger’s thinking as evidence of the collapse of the bourgeois mentality that determined much of the course of colonial activity, especially in the perpetuation of unequal distributions of wealth inherited from colonial times. 36. Recent history and the pace of technological change plant doubt about the stability of existence, so it is no surprise that a school of philosophy, existentialism, should arise that sees the fundamental fact of existence as one of becoming. 37. For post colonialist thinkers, it is not surprising that the wealthy would project the instability of their own power structures onto the existence of humanity itself; Astrada shows that works of existentialist ontology can be read as political–economic texts. 38. Metaphysics of the human. No claims of philosophic foundationalism have stood the tests of time; but the moral and metaphysical claims of the ruling elites (past and present) demand constant vigilance and persistent critique. Marx called these foundational claims ideology (a kind of self-interested delusion that infected the bourgeoisie and was half-consciously passed on to the proletariat). 39. Though Marx believed the proletariat would eventually realize that the ideological claims of the bourgeoisie were without merit and that such ideology could be contradicted, Peruvian philosopher Francisco Miró Quesada, however, suggests that contradicting the claims of one group with the claims of an alternative theory of reality creates conflict and thus suffering. Instead, humanity itself must be reimagined. 40. Quesada: (a) Theories cannot reliably deliver the truth and (b) much suffering is caused when people take theories too seriously. He proposes to divide the human race into those who are willing to exploit people and those who are willing to defend them from exploitation. 41. Gender issues. Mainstream feminism, as a movement of middle-class European and American women, appears not to speak well to the conditions of marginalized peoples. Two major expansions of feminism have been suggested by voices outside the mainstream: (a) Feminism ought to pay more attention to issues of class and (b) abandon a black–white racial dichotomy (which excludes the majority of women in the world who are neither). South Asia 42. According to a majority of contemporary analysts, colonialism has been economically and socially destructive in the former South Asian colonies, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Some analysts claim the colonialist introduction of modern political infrastructure and value systems have helped former colonies succeed in a technologically sophisticated world. 43. Unlike the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, the nations of Asia have traditions of written philosophy stretching back longer than in the West by at least a thousand years. 44. The shock of colonialism to Asia was deep but not so comprehensive for these cultures that their philosophers have felt impelled to the kind of sustained reflection and cultural reconstruction that has been prominent in Africa. Instead, outside ideas and techniques, from British aesthetics to Marxist political–historiographical philosophy, were appropriated and reworked to conform to indigenous values. 45. India endured two centuries of economic despoilment at the hands of the mercantilist–capitalist forces of Britain. Ironically, the introduction of British values into India created the conceptual resources that Indians would use to remake their society (after expelling the British). 46. Asian writers often couch their discussions in terms of the abstract principles and linear inferences typical of Western philosophy, though this stylistic similarity is not a borrowing from Western thought but a continuation of local traditions of discourse. 47. Satyagraha. The concept, closely identified by the social and political thinking of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, means “clinging to truth” or the force of what is inadequately translated as “passive resistance.” 48. For traditional Indian philosophy, the discipline needed in the search for truth was not simply a matter of acquiring the tools of scientific investigation; one also had to practice such virtues as giving, nonattachment, and noninjury in order to develop mental purity. Gandhi is a part of this tradition in his adoption of its rigorous demands for personal integrity. 49. But Gandhi was also a student of Thoreau and Tolstoy; he repudiated the claims of human inequality by circumstances of birth that underlay the caste system. 50. Metaphysics. Once Western cultures entered the Indian sphere of consciousness, they were evaluated to see not only how they met the standards of indigenous tradition but also how they might be recast to fit into the Hindu framework. 51. For Rabindranath Tagore, who developed his sense of a possible modern Indian consciousness in poetry and essays, such a consciousness can come only if the true nature of human beings is acknowledged and actions carried out accordingly. Indian tradition provides a guide to the complexities of human nature and the behaviors needed for a harmonious and enlightening life. This understanding is developed throughout one’s life, so human beings must devote themselves to living the examined life. Boxes Profile: Desmond Tutu (Stressed “humaneness”) Colonialism and the Church (An ambiguous legacy) Liberation Theology (Christian social activism in Latin America, with philosophical roots in Continental philosophy) Profile: Martin Luther King Jr. (Assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968) Profile: bell hooks (Gloria Watkins) (Writes under the name of her unlettered great-grandmother to symbolize the suppression of the voices of black women) Profile: Cornel West (What it takes for a more compassionate society) Profile: Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (“Clinging to the truth”) Profile: Rabindranath Tagore (Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913) Readings 16.1 Léopold Sédar Senghor, from On African Socialism An African “way of knowing” that is different from the European. 16.2 Martin Luther King Jr., from “The Sword That Heals” The courage and discipline of nonviolent resistance. 16.3 Carlos Astrada, from Existentialism and the Crisis of Philosophy Explains the death of the concept of modern man that has dominated since the Renaissance. 16.4 Francisco Miró Quesada, from “Man Without Theory” Quesada reviews many of the pitfalls in trying to frame a theory as to what constitutes a human being. 16.5 Sonia Saldívar-Hull, from “Feminism on the Border: From Gender Politics to Geo-politics” The separation between First and Third World feminists. 16.6 Mohandas K. Gandhi, from “Satyagraha” The meaning and sociopolitical implications of “clinging to truth.” 16.7 Rabindranath Tagore, from Towards Universal Man Tagore seeks an alternative view of the human being to the Western notion of the survival of the fittest. In its place he would put the notion that human life is a spiritual journey toward self-emancipation and a rebirth into the infinite. Lecture and Discussion Ideas Related to Selected Questions General note about questions for Chapter 16. The issues raised here are intended to transcend provincial boundaries. The answer that any particular individual might give to these questions, however, will be tied to a concrete cultural/ historical situation and thus will vary from one instance to another. This is not to say that all possible answers are equal but that one should allow conceptual space for a variety of well-motivated answers. In evaluating student essays, the instructor will want to keep in mind the diverse styles of philosophy modeled in the chapter. If the instructor plans to prefer some styles of discourse over others in student writing, the preferences should be made clear to students. Is a person only a body? Can you think of two alternative understandings of what is essential to a person? Richard C. Onwuanibe argued in “The Human Person and Immortality in Ibo (African) Meta-physics” that the materialist conception of the person is not the only plausible understanding. Specifically, he took issue with the notion that the person should be totally identified with the body. In doing so, he accepts a burden of proof that requires him to go against the view that the only meaningful evidence for a factual claim is that which comes to us through the sort of investigation conducted in the experiments of the natural sciences. Onwuanibe knew that he cannot restrict himself to materialistic assumptions and criteria in his attempt to refute the materialist position, for that would amount to capitulation before he had even begun to state his case. In contrast to the materialist view that “I am totally this body,” Onwuanibe proposed the traditional Ibo conception of the person as a complex of body and soul. He vigorously denied the reasonableness of reducing human beings to pure physicality. He observed phenomenologically that people in virtually every culture speak in ways that indicate a sense of self that transcends the physical body. Instead of saying, “I am totally this body,” they will say, “I have this body” or “I have a body.” At stake in this issue is not just the factual matter of whether or not the materialist conception of the human being is adequate but the coherence of our understanding of human experience generally. The key to Onwuanibe’s argument is the fact of subjective transcendence revealed in the sense of the presence of other persons. First, there is the realization that persons are somehow more than just their physical facticity or the social roles they play. Second, there is the undeniable option of relating to others either as other subjects or as objects; the mere fact that the choice exists means that human beings are capable of recognizing personhood as such. Here, Onwuanibe’s phenomenological investigation of consciousness demonstrated not only that there is support for his claim that there exists a reasonable alternative to the materialist/physicalist view of the person but also that one need not rely on materialist methodology to assemble meaningful evidence for this alternative. It is important to note, claimed Onwuanibe, that the personhood he describes cannot be reduced to more primitive components. Though one might wish for the relative simplicity of the fundamental entities of most scientific and technological operations, this is not possible when trying to understand persons. There can be no compromise on the issue of the integrity of the person in Ibo metaphysics. That the person is an irreducible subjective reality may require acknowledging something mysterious and not readily discoverable about existence, but given the evidence of our own experience, this alternative is still better than the false clarity of reductive materialism. Note on Selection 16.1: What Léopold Sédar Senghor meant by the phrase “sympathetic reason.” When Senghor advocated sympathetic reason, he was not talking just about a way of thinking but about a way of being in the world. Sympathetic reason, in Senghor’s definition, refers to a complex process of acquiring understanding that he says is typical of black Africans. Moreover, he asserted that if one develops a good understanding of sympathetic reason, one will be able to explain important differences between black African cultures and European cultures. That there are differences is undeniable; Senghor wanted to explain these differences in a way that satisfies not only the person creating the explanation but also all parties referred to by the explanation. He was well aware that Africans and Europeans have diverse ideas about his theory and that racial characteristics seem to play little part in determining who accepts his claims and who rejects them. Actually, that fact might be taken as weak evidence against the claims he was making, but that would be a hard argument to make. Essentially, sympathetic reason entails bringing oneself into virtual identity with the thing one wants to know. In this state of identification of self and other, all the senses and capabilities to discover are brought into play. In the operation of sympathetic reason, separateness dissolves in an experience of creative discovery. This, said Senghor, is not pure emotion. It must be understood as a definite kind of reason, one that he said is closer to the Greek concept of logos than the Latin concept of ratio. In making this contrast, Senghor not only had in mind the larger scope of meaning of logos but also the history of the concept’s role in the thinking of being. Sympathetic reason, because of its more holistic epistemology, enables the knower to appreciate the being of the other in ways that the more abstract ratio inhibits. This energetic way of knowing, which does not hold things at arm’s length to get “objective distance” on a problem or question, is a superior choice, claimed Senghor. In his understanding, Europe’s reason of the eye gives way to the reason of the embrace. Clearly, Senghor did not mean that sympathetic reason is superior for every purpose, especially if one honestly includes developing technology, conquering territory, and a host of other things people have considered important throughout history. Instead, a reasonable reading of Senghor suggests that this path of participation excels at helping the individual develop a deep understanding that includes a large element of appreciation. Senghor, in effect, was seeking to redefine how we understand thinking in order to encompass new possibilities. For postcolonial thinkers, the critical possibilities that have presented themselves through the redefinition of terms and reconstruction of contexts have been extremely important. In this case, Senghor showed that it is possible to reconceptualize epistemology in a way that makes traditional European rational methods look limiting and unnecessarily oblivious to the body. If it is accepted that Africans have been using a more comprehensive mode of thinking, Senghor will have succeeded in bringing the world to accept a new basis for interpreting the achievements of African civilizations. That, in turn, furthers the postcolonial project of retrieving native cultures from the coercions of conquerors’ histories and categorizations. Philosophers’ Principal Works Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) The Mission of the Poet (1966) The Collected Poetry (1991) Desmond Tutu (1931– ) Hope and Suffering: Sermons and Speeches (1983) Crying in the Wilderness: The Struggle for Justice in South Africa (1986) The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (1986) The Rainbow People of God: The Making of a Peaceful Revolution (1994) No Future Without Forgiveness (1999) Made For Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference (with Mpho Tutu) (2010) Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) The Trumpet of Conscience (1987) The Measure of a Man (1988) I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World (1992) Letter From the Birmingham Jail (1994) bell hooks (c. 1952– ) Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989) Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1990) Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995) Salvation: Black People and Love (2001) Chaikh Anta Diop (1923–1986) The African Origin of Civilization (1974) Molefi Kete Asante (1942– ) The Afrocentric Idea (1987) Afrocentricity (1988) Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge (1990) Malcolm X as Cultural Hero: And Other Afrocentric Essays (1993) Erasing Racism (2003) Cornel West (1953– ) The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989) The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (1991) Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism (1993) Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (1993) Race Matters (1993) The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country (with Henry Louis Gates Jr.) (2000) Democracy Matters (2004) Carlos Astrada (1894–1970) Existentialism and the Crisis of Philosophy (1963) Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869– 1948) The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (1986–1987) An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1993) Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) The Religion of Man (1988) The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore (1994– ) CHAPTER 17: FOUR PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS Main Points Free Will 1. Determinism is the idea that whatever you do and whatever you become, you were destined to do and become. 2. Psychological determinism holds that your choices are determined by your preferences, all of which ultimately stem from environmental and hereditary factors of which you have little or no knowledge, and none of which ultimately were created by you. 3. Neuroscientific determinism holds that what you think and do is determined by neurophysiological events of which you are mostly unaware and over which ultimately you have no control. 4. Causal determinism holds that every event is determined by earlier events, from which it follows (if your actions are events), that your actions had to happen. 5. Causal determinism is summed up in physicist Arthur Eddington’s remark, “What significance is there in my struggle tonight whether I shall give up smoking, if the laws that govern matter already preordain for tomorrow a configuration of matter consisting of pipe, tobacco, and smoke connected with my lips?” Consciousness 6. The problem of consciousness is the concern of the philosophy of mind, an area within analytic philosophy. 7. Philosophy of mind seeks to understand (analyze) everyday psychological language and to encompass the research of psychologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, linguists, artificial intelligence researchers, and other specialists. 8. Dualism. A human being has (or is) both a physical body and a nonphysical mind, and these two things are interactive. (Not all dualists believe the immaterial mind and the material body interact, but most dualists do, so dualism as used here, unless otherwise noted, refers to interactionist dualism.) 9. Many analytic philosophers reject dualism and tend to subscribe to the physicalist theories of behaviorism, identity theory, or functionalism. 10. Behaviorism. As a methodological principle of psychology, behaviorism holds that fruitful psychological investigation confines itself to such psychological phenomena as can be behaviorally defined. 11. Ryle: Philosophical behaviorism is the doctrine that (1) There is no such thing as a non-physical mind—there is “no ghost within the machine.” (2) Mental-state thing-words do not really denote things; statements in which such words appear are loose references to behaviors and behavioral dispositions. (3) Statements about a person’s mental states cannot, despite (2), actually be translated into some set of statements about the person’s behavior and behavioral dispositions Behaviorism seems to solve the interaction problem. 12. Identity theory. So-called mental phenomena are physical phenomena within the brain and central nervous system (CNS). 13. Among the adherents: Australian philosopher J. J. C. Smart. 14. Identity theory is easily confused with behaviorism, but it is a distinct theory. The identity theory holds that mind-states are brain states, that reference to a person’s beliefs or thoughts is in fact reference to events and processes within that person’s brain and nervous system. Philosophical behaviorism holds that the psychological vocabulary used in describing a person is just a shorthand way to talk about that person’s behavioral dispositions. 15. Functionalism. Many physicalists question the identity theory (wherein each distinct mental state or process equates with one and only one brain-state or process) since it is possible that beings with very different arrangements of matter might also have certain psychological states such as feelings, hopes and desires. 16. Functionalism defines a mental state not by some arrangement of physical matter but by its function. A mousetrap is not defined by the matter it is made of but by what it does. 17. Because functionalism is a physicalist theory, it doesn’t commit the researcher to any form of Cartesian metaphysics, on one hand, or the implausible reductionist idea that psychology is ultimately nothing but neurophysiology, on the other. 18. Critics of functionalism (including David Chalmers) claim it does not explain what it is like to have a conscious experience, what it is like for the person experiencing a mental state. 19. Chalmers: Rather than solve the “hard problem of consciousness,” functionalism, behaviorism, and identity theory seem to discount it as not worth thinking about. The Gift 20. The theme of the gift is one of the main focal points where all contemporary interdisciplinary discourses intersect 21. The challenge of studying the complexities of the gift is to attempt to determine whether there can be a pure gift 22. The question of time enters into the possibility of the gift as outside the circle of commodity exchange 23. the gift is intrinsically related to both our social, economic, and political practices 24. Derrida's claim is that a true gift must be entirely unconditional 25. Derrida asks us to consider if the conditions of the possibility of the gift are also the conditions of its impossibility Aesthetics 26. Aesthetics, the philosophy of art, asks among other questions What is art? What makes art good? How can we judge art good or bad? How is it possible to tell stories about things that do not exist? What is creativity? 27. What is art? Is something a piece of art because of special features it has? Can you tell just by looking at sculpture if it is a work of art? If so, then why are Andy Warhol’s Brillo box sculptures considered works of art when the same containers stacked elsewhere would not be? 28. Arthur Danto said that the features defining art have to do with interpretation and creation. What kinds of interpretations and creations transform nonart into art? 29. Knowing what art is doesn’t tell us why we value it. The capacity of many artworks to arouse emotions is one source of their value. But how this works isn’t clear. How do movies and TV shows that are tear-jerker tragedies bring pleasure? 30. The paradox of fiction: We often respond emotionally to fictional characters, but how can this be since fictional characters aren’t real? How can we feel sad for Anna Karenina given that she never existed? 31. The puzzle of music: How can music express emotions given that it does not represent anything? 32. The idea that music expresses emotions composers felt seems false. And the idea that music arouses emotions faces the difficulties that listeners can detect joyfulness in music even when they are not feeling in the least bit joyful. 33. Other questions: Why is a perfect forgery not as valuable as the original painting? Why should knowledge about an artist’s life impact our appreciation of his or her work? Does a work of music exist if nobody plays or listens to it? Why listen to it if you can read the score? Boxes Causal Determinism (Atoms are governed by physical law) Monkeys Control Robotic Arm (Monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts) Bogg’s Bills (Life-size drawings of currency) Readings 17.1 J. J. C. Smart, from “Sensations and Brain Processes” Smart explains identity theory, first by clarifying the nature of the equation between sensations and brain processes, and second by replying to objections to the view that sensation statements report processes in the brain. 17.2 Sam Harris, from Free Will Harris explains why we choose what we do but do not choose what we choose to do. Lecture and Discussion Ideas Present reasons for believing that a human being is not entirely a physical thing. a. People, unlike physical objects, have feelings, emotion, thoughts, and beliefs and can perform lots of acts purely physical things cannot. The best explanation of these facts is that people have something that purely physical things don’t have, something nonphysical. — Rejoinder: Yes, the best explanation of these facts is indeed that people have something that nonthin king things don’t have, but that something doesn’t have to be nonphysical. It could just be the vastly complex human brain and nervous system. b. People, unlike physical objects, have free will, which they wouldn’t have if their minds were mere physical things. — Rejoinder: First, it isn’t clear that humans do have free will. Second, it isn’t clear that physical things could not have free will, if by having free will is meant merely that one could have acted differently in the same circumstances. Third, it isn’t clear how, if humans viewed as purely physical could not have free will, having a nonphysical mind could remedy that deficiency. c. People are creative and have aesthetic sensibility—impossibilities for mere blind material things. — Rejoinder: We really don’t know what creative ability or aesthetic sensibility are. A chess-playing computer would seem to act creatively to a human opponent who did not understand how the computer was programmed, and it may be that so-called creative human actions are the result of the “programming” done on humans by experience. Or, human creativity could just be the result of electrical disturbances in the human brain, misfiring’s of neurons, or whatnot. As for aesthetic sensibility—again, what is it? Humans are moved by poetry and music (some are, anyway), but they are also moved by pleasures of the palate and bedroom. What, then, is pleasure other than an internal stimulus to repeat or renew or continue an activity, a phenomenon that can be given a physiological explanation, one that would not require mention of anything nonphysical? d. People can sometimes override the constraints of physics, as when they overcome a terminal disease through exertion of will. People often demonstrate the power of mind over matter. — Rejoinder: There really is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that people can override the constraints of physics. If ten percent of those with some disease survive, you can be sure that the ninety percent who do not survive exert their “will” just as strenuously as those who do survive. The only demonstrated power that mind has over matter is that which is evident in ordinary volition, as when you move your arm, and it is not clear in ordinary volition that the mind that moves the arm is anything other than the brain. e. People can have knowledge of nonmaterial things, like the truths of mathematics. Therefore they are not themselves totally physical. — Rejoinder: For some reason this argument seems to be very popular with students who wish to defend dualism. Unfortunately, it is difficult to understand, and the conclusion seems to be a non sequitur. Is the idea that, because we can have knowledge of the truths of mathematics, we must share some of the immateriality of those truths? Would a fair parallel be arguing that, since we can have knowledge of horses, we must be partially equine? Also, mathematical truths have other features than immateriality; for example, they are eternal. Would it be acceptable to argue that, since we have knowledge of these truths, we must be eternal? Why is it the immateriality feature of mathematical truths that we must share rather than some other feature? Concerning another matter, handheld calculators can give the correct answer to arithmetical questions. Presumably, however, the dualist who proposes the argument stated above will deny that handheld calculators have knowledge. The dualist must therefore be cautious not to beg the question by assuming as an unstated premise that only nonmaterial things can have knowledge. f. It is possible to doubt the existence of any given physical thing, but it is not possible to doubt the existence of your own mind. Therefore your mind is not a physical thing. — Rejoinder: The underlying principle here seems to be this: if it is possible to doubt the existence of X but not possible to doubt the existence of Y, then X is not Y. This principle is doubtful. Imagine Samuel Clemens being struck a blow on the head and forgetting that he wrote books as Mark Twain. Mark Twain, he believes, is just a fictitious character like Uncle Sam. When someone tries to tell him that he, Samuel Clemens, is Mark Twain, he reasons: I can doubt the existence of Mark Twain but I cannot possibly doubt the existence of Samuel Clemens. Therefore I am not Mark Twain. g. Beliefs and thoughts have properties that physical things by definition cannot have. Beliefs, for instance, are true or false. Physical things are not. So beliefs and thoughts are not physical. Conversely, physical things have properties that beliefs and thoughts cannot have, properties like location, density, temperature, and so forth. The same conclusion follows. — Rejoinder: Following the contemporary philosopher John Searle, we must distinguish between the global features of a person and the microfeatures of the neurons and molecules that make up the person. The global features will then have certain properties that the neurons and molecules do not have. For example, a global feature of a person is that he or she has beliefs, things that are true or false. Although the neurons and molecules that make up the person do not have those properties, the person is still a physical thing. Computers can play chess but silicon chips and electronic circuitry can’t; still, computers are nothing but silicon chips and electronic circuitry. Water molecules are triangular and in constant motion, and water is not. Yet water is nothing but H O molecules. And so on. h. I have knowledge of my mental states, but it is not gained through observation. Physical states, on the other hand, I find out about only through observation. So physical things and my mind-states are essentially different. — Rejoinder: Essentially the argument begs the question, because if the physicalist is correct, it turns out that brain-states are knowable through introspection and that therefore the second premise is false. — — A note on the proble of individuation. — — The individuation problem is this: — — — Here is a fact: Bruder and Moore cannot have only one mind between the two of them. — If minds were physical, this fact would be easily explained, because Bruder and Moore occupy separate locations and a physical thing cannot occupy two separate locations at the same time. Those who believe that the mind is nonphysical, however, cannot explain this fact, because non-physical things don’t occupy space. (Sharper students may object that shapes occupy space and are not physical things. Shapes, however, are not really things at all. They are universals.) Given this, those who believe that the mind is nonphysical cannot cite the fact that Moore and Bruder are in different places as their explanation for why Moore and Bruder must have different minds. So their theory does not explain as much as does physicalism, according to which minds do occupy space. — We don’t know of a good rejoinder to this objection to the idea that the mind is nonphysical. Those who believe that the mind is nonphysical cannot believe that minds occupy space, because if minds did they would be physical. But if minds don’t occupy space (according to those who believe that the mind is nonphysical), there isn’t an explanation for why Bruder and Moore do not have the same mind. You could object that a boundary or a point is a nonphysical thing that, despite being nonphysical and not occupying space, cannot be in two separate places at the same time. But boundaries and points are abstractions, and minds, presumably, are not abstract things. Those who believe that the mind is nonphysical cannot argue that a mind is a point or a boundary. — The only alternative left for those who believe that the mind is nonphysical is to say that non-physical things can occupy space. But if we permit nonphysical things to occupy space, there is no distinguishing them from physical things. Philosophers’ Principal Works J. J. C. Smart (1920– ) Philosophy and Scientific Realism (1963) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Robert Spiller et al, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971 Emerson's Antislavery Writings, eds. Len Gougeon and Joel Myerson, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995 Emerson: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought), ed. Kenneth Sacks, Cambridge: Cambridge Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) De quelques formes primitives de classification, (with Emile Durkheim) 1902. Esquisse d'une théorie générale de la magie, (with Henri Hubert) 1902. Essai sur le don, 1924. Georges Bataille (1897-1962) Histoire de l'oeil, 1928. (Story of the Eye) (under pseudonym of Lord Auch) L'Anus solaire, 1931. (The Solar Anus) The Notion of Expenditure, 1933. Friederich Nietschze (1844–1900) ———— (1961) [1883–85], Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and For None, trans. RJ Hollingdale, New York: Penguin Classics. ———————— (1886), Beyond Good and Evil ———————— (1887), On the Genealogy of Morality Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London: SCM Press, 1962) Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. by Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990) Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) Language and Symbolic Power, Harvard University Press 1991. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, Stanford University Press, 1998. The Social Structures of the Economy, Polity 2005. Helene Cixous (1937-) The Book of Promethea (1980, translated 1983) Angst (1977) Jours de l'an (1990) Jacques Derrida (1930–2004 Glas, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. & Richard Rand (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986) The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1995 Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1992 Instructor Manual for Philosophy: The Power of Ideas Brooke Noel Moore, Kenneth Bruder 9780078038358