Metaphysical Import Research Articles

The irreducibility of consciousness

Abstract In this paper, by analyzing the Chalmers-Searle debate about Chalmers’ zombie thought experiment, I attempt to determine the implications that the irreducibility of consciousness has for the truth of materialism. While Chalmers claims that the irreducibility of consciousness forces us to embrace dualism, Searle claims that it has no deep metaphysical import and, in particular, that it is fully consistent with his materialist theory of mind. I argue that this disagreement hinges on the notion of physical identity in play in the discussion. Clarifying this notion in turn helps to clarify what it means to claim that consciousness is irreducible, and provides insight into the implications that the truth of this claim would have for the dualism-materialism debate. Ultimately, I suggest that the sort of irreducibility that can be motivated by the zombie thought experiment is not sufficient to require the rejection of materialism.

Stoic Metaphysics and the Logic of Sense

In The Logic of Sense [LS], Gilles Deleuze embarks on a unique kind of metaphysical project: to articulate a program for working philosophically within the realm of sense. I choose these words deliberately. The project is a metaphysical one, and sense is a realm. Sense has a real metaphysical status, but in the course of the text these descriptors-real, metaphysical-come to have a new meaning. If sense is metaphysical, that must be understood in the context of Stoic metaphysics, which have not, heretofore, set the tone for metaphysical thinking. The articulation of a metaphysics of sense is Deleuze's Stoic project. To be sure, he relies on the exemplary poetry of Lewis Carroll in arriving at his destination, and the presence of Artaud, Simondon, Lacan, Klein, and others cannot be ignored. But the logic of sense is above all Deleuze's great Stoic moment, or so I shall contend. And so it is the aim of the present essay to present the Logic of Sense as a figurai study of Stoic metaphysics.1 Indeed, the Stoic presence in that text is almost as ubiquitous as that of Carroll, and it is quite incredible that Deleuze's singular, momentous contribution to the field of contemporary Stoic studies has remained obscure. The present essay will have succeeded, then, if it demonstrates the Logic of Sense's rather important contribution to Stoic studies, and if, in turn, it demonstrates the importance of Stoic metaphysics to the Deleuzian project. I would like to begin with some brief remarks on historiography. As is well known, the Aristotelian syllogistic dominated all philosophical thinking on logic for thousands of years. During this time, some Stoic fragments on logic were always available, but they were almost entirely ignored or misunderstood. Indeed, the details of Stoic logic look bizarre and sometimes even trite; they were known to contemplate the truth-value of such conditional statements as "if it is day, then it is night," and "if it is day, then it is day."2 And so through the early twnethieth century, classicists and philosophers tended to dismiss the Stoic achievement in logic. The eminent German classicist Carl Prantl wrote in his 1855 history of logic, "it must have been a frightfully decadent and corrupted age that could designate so hollow a head as Chrysippus as its greatest logician."3 But the situation turned around drastically when, in the late 1920s, the Polish logician Jan Lukasiewicz noticed that the Stoics had actually been working on a sophisticated version of propositional logic, which went even further than the categorical predications that constituted the Aristotelian syllogistic. Following Lukasiewicz's discovery, two important monographs were published in English-one by Benson Mates (1953) and one by Kneal and Kneal (1962)-which set the standard for our contemporary understanding of Stoic logic. But this renaissance of Stoic logic just happened to coincide with the age of Frege, Russell, and Carnap, whose influence is all too palpable in the otherwise helpful publications I just mentioned. For example, the Stoics had a theory of sense, which they referred to with the term lekta-that which is sayable.4 They thought that propositions were meaningful (corporeal) utterances that signified some other (incorporeal) thing: the sense of the proposition. As Sextus Empiricus reports: The Stoics defended the first opinion, saying that three things are linked together, "the signified" [to s'mainomenon], "the signifier," and "the name-bearer." The signifier is an utterance, for instance "Dion"; the signified is the actual thing [pragma] revealed by an utterance, and which we apprehend as it subsists in accordance with our thought, whereas it is not understood by those whose language is different, although they hear the utterance; the name-bearer is the external object, for instance Dion himself. Of these, two are bodies-the utterance and the name-bearer; but one is incorporeal-the thing signified and sayable, which is true or false. …

The Influence of Maximus the Confessor on Eriugena’s Treatment of Aristotle’s Categories

The Aristotelian categories are a fundamental element in Eriugena's philosophical system on account of his realist view of dialectic. He received his texts concerning the categories from Boethius and the De decem catagoriis, but key ideas in his treatment of them-namely, the metaphysical importance of dialectic, the unknowability of essence, and the origin of being in place and time, ideas fundamentally rooted in Byzantine developments of the Christology ofChalcedon-are taken from Maximus the Confessor. Eriugena's work on the categories represents an attempt, much misunderstood, to assimilate the richness of the Eastern tradition to Western philosophical and theological method. This paper examines the synthesis of Maximus's ideas with Ciceronian and Boethian elements in Eriugena's striking treatment of the Aristotelian Categories.

The Brilliant Hallucination of Untested and Unmeasured Theory

The Brilliant Hallucination of Untested and Unmeasured Theory

La fondation de la psychophysique de Fechner : des présupposés métaphysiques aux écrits scientifiques de Weber

Summary : The foundation of Fechner's psychophysics : From metaphysical presuppositions to Weber's scientific works. The present paper has two aims : (1) to celebrate the bicentenial of Fechner's birth, and (2) to present an analysis of his fundamental book on psychophysics entitled Elemente der Psychophysik. (1860). Three elements are highlighted : (1) the importance of philosophy and metaphysics in the elaboration of his psychophysics ; (2) the importance of Weber's works (1834, 1846) which are analysed here and (3) the importance of the distinction between inner psychophysics (the relation between neurolectric responses and sensation strength) and outer psychophysics (the relation between intensity and the response reflecting sensation strength). Key words : Fechner, Weber, psychophysics, metaphysics.

Fides et Ratio et…

Although Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas are often cited in support of faith and reason, the doublet achieved prominence in that form only in the nineteenth century. The encyclical Fides et ratio can be seen as forming Aeterni patris, humani generis, and Dei verbum into a tradition. Indeed, it looks back to the nineteenth century and remains at best uninterested in twenthieth-century thought. One difficulty with the expression is that each of faith and reason invites abstraction from all contexts, including exegesis and love, imagination, and sacrement. Properly undestood, faith and reason implies faith and reason and... The encyclical is unclear at crucial moments. Is begins to speak of reason, then slides into talk of rationalism. It regards a crisis of rationalism as leading to nihilism, but the conclusion is haslty drawn, at best. It underlines the importance of metaphysics and is critical of the end of metaphysics, but confuses different sense of the word.

‘contrefais al vif’: nature, ideas and the lion drawings of Villard de Honnecourt

Early thirteenth-century Europe presents a distinctive setting for word and image problems. Not only were the terms of visuality itself changing, but the new influx of Aristotelian ideas provoked changes in the metaphysical import of words, as well. New formulations eventually arose from this unsettled situation. On the one hand, Roger Bacon, John Pecham and Witelo were to put the science of optics on a new footing.1 On the other, more subtle epistem. ological theories appeared,2 and the debate between universals and particulars became formalized.3 The incipient stage of these new formulations is marked by new relations between words and images. This was apparent even in such essentially conservative contexts as the Scriptures. In the early thirteenth-century Bibles moralisees, for example, the traditional relationship between words and images has, in many respects, been reversed: the written text is no longer predominant but has given way to a dramatic proliferation of images which, in the Old French version in Vienna, occupy the central columns, the written text forming a ‘gloss’ in the margins.4 The new currency accorded to images is also signalled in the legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which specified that the titulus of every altar should be clearly indicated either with a written inscription or, significantly, by means of an image.5 One of the factors that provoked this new relationship is the development of more empirical, and consequently less textually based, approaches to knowledge. Just such an empirically based instance of this word-image relationship, one that has not hitherto been addressed in these terms, is provided by another early thirteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘album’ or ‘sketchbook’ of Villard de Honnecourt. Among the heterogeneous contents of this manuscript are several drawings with ‘captions’ that purport to explain the drawings. Two instances of these captioned drawings, in particular, will be analysed here (see figures 1, 2), and conclusions will be drawn on the intellectual environment of productive change affecting their distinctive charactcristics and, in particular, on the claims arising from the discourse between words and Images.

Language and Nature

I would like to discuss an approach to the that considers and similar phenomena to be elements of the natural world, to be studied by ordinary methods of empirical inquiry. I will be using the terms mind and here with no metaphysical import. Thus I understand to be on a par with optical, or electrical. Certain phenomena, events, processes and states are informally called chemical etc., but no metaphysical divide is suggested thereby. The terms are used to select certain aspects of the world as a focus of inquiry. We do not seek to determine the true criterion of the chemical, or the mark of the electrical, or the boundaries of the optical. I will use the same way, with something like ordinary coverage, but no deeper implications. By mind I just mean the mental aspects of the world, with no more interest in sharpening the boundaries or finding a criterion than in other cases. I'll use the terms and language in much the same way. We focus attention on aspects of the world that fall under this informal rubric, and try to understand them better. In the course of doing so we may-and apparently do-develop a concept that more or less resembles the informal notion of language, and. postulate that such objects are among the things in the world, alongside of complex molecules, electrical fields, the human visual system, and so on. A naturalistic approach to linguistic and mental aspects of the world seeks to construct intelligible explanatory theories, taking as real what we are led to posit in this quest, and hoping for eventual unification with the core natural sciences: unification, not necessarily reduction. Largescale reduction is rare in the history of the sciences. Commonly the more fundamental science has had to undergo radical revision for unification to proceed. The case of chemistry and physics is a recent example;

Naturalism and dualism in the study of language and mind

The terms of the title can be understood in various ways, along with the frameworks in which they are embedded. I would like to outline interpretations that I think are useful and proper, and to suggest a more general thesis, which would require much more comprehensive argument: that there is no coherent alternative to proceeding in this way for the range of issues addressed, and that other endeavors in roughly the same realm are clarified and facilitated if understood as extensions of the approach outlined. Deflating the terms Putting “language” aside for the moment, let's begin by taking the other terms of the title in ways that are innocent of far-reaching implications, specifically, divorced from any metaphysical connotations. Take the term “mind” or, as a preliminary, “mental.” Consider how we use such terms as “chemical,” “optical,” or “electrical.” Certain phenomena, events, processes, and states are called “chemical” (etc.), but no meta-physical divide is suggested by that usage. These are just various aspects of the world that we select as a focus of attention for the purposes of inquiry and exposition. I will understand the term “mental” in much the same way, with something like its traditional coverage, but without metaphysical import and with no suggestion that it would make any sense to try to identify the true criterion or mark of the mental.

Dynamics and Transubstantiation in Leibniz's Systema Theologicum

Dynamics and Transubstantiation in Leibniz's SystemaTheologicum DANIEL C. FOUKE 1. INTRODUCTION FROMTHE X66OSto the end of his life, two of Leibniz's primary concerns were to reunify the churches and to provide a defense of the rationality of Christian theism. Both projects require, among other things, some account of the "mysteries " of the faith. The "mysteries" are doctrines, like those of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and transubstantiation, which are revealed and must be believed, but which yet remain beyond the power of reason to either demonstrate or comprehend., The epistemic status of these mysteries is therefore highly problematic : how can one believe in a proposition which cannot be understood, and if such belief were possible, then how could it be defended against charges of irrationality? Leibniz approaches this problem by interpreting the mysteries as pr/mafac/e impossibilities. The job of the theologian and apologist is then to demonstrate, through metaphysical analysis, that these mysteries are genuine logical possibilities which transcend the natural order, but which may be realized at least through the power of God. In this way, it is possible to understand and believe the claims of the Church, even though faith still has its role, because reason is helpless to demonstrate that such mysteries actually occur." Among the mysteries of the faith which Leibniz discusses, there is none to which he devoted more labor than the Eucharist. Leibniz's lifelong project of ' See Denzinger, "SystematicIndex of Dogmaticand Moral Matters," Ib, in The Sourcesof CatholkDograa, trans. RoyDeferrari (St.Louisand London: B. Herder, 1957). 9For an interesting and thorough discussionof the epistemologicalstatus of the Christian mysteries,and howLeibnizconfrontsthisproblemwitha theory oflanguage,seeMarceloDascal, "Reasonand the Mysteriesof Faith: Leibnizon the Meaningof ReligiousDiscourse,"in Le//m~" Language,S/gasand Thought(Amsterdamand Philadelphia:John Benjamins,1987). [45] 46 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:1 JANUARY 1994 reunifying the churches forced him to give some discussion of this bone of contention among Christians.s It has been shown elsewhere that the early attempts to demonstrate the possibility of transubstantiation (which were part of Leibniz's effort to reunify the churches) exercised a significant influence on the development of Leibniz's mature metaphysics.4 While Leibniz continued to work for reunification of the churches during his middle period,5 there are important changes in both his explanation of transubstantiation and the role of this explanation in his metaphysical development. In his early period Leibniz concentrated on the Eucharist as one of the central puzzles to be solved in a first step toward reunification of the churches and a defense of Christian rationality. He experimented with a variety of metaphysical systems which would allow him to account intelligibly for substantial change in the Host, and was finally led to place primary emphasis on minds as the only genuine sources of substantiality. This was a significant step towards the metaphysics of the mid-168os and the 169os. Leibniz again turns to a discussion of transubstantiation in the Systerna Theologicurn and the correspondence with Pellison 6 and Bossuet, the Bishop of sAfter Boineburg's death, Leibniz reveals his view that transubstantiation is of central metaphysical importance in a letter to DukeJohann Friedrich into whose service Leibniz had entered. In this letter of 1679 Leibniz proposes the revival of a project he had earlier pursued for Boineburg, a work to be entitled Dmon.arat/onesCaato/kat. This work was to be written in three parts, the first giving demonstrations of the existence of God and the soul, the second giving proofs of the possibilities of the mysteries, and the third dealing with the relations between the Church and the state. It was to be accompanied by a preface which would include a new logic dealing with Utheart of weighing probabilities and discovering to which of two sides the balance tips," and was also to indude a treatment of metaphysics clarifying the notions of'God, the soul, person, and the nature of substance and accidents." In particular the metaphysical discussion would aim to reestablish and intelligibly explain "the substantial forms that the Cartesians claim to have destroyed as inexplicable chimeras, to the prejudice of our religion, whose mysteries would be only impossibilities if the nature of bodies consists...

Hume's Dialogues on Evil

74 HUME'S DIALOGUES ON EVIL Only two sections of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion are concerned with the topic of the benevolence of the designer of the world (Parts X and XI), and the conclusion reached is stated by Philo in an unambiguous manner: The true conclusion is, that the original source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles, and has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy. (D 212) In light of the fact that much of the Dialogues is concerned with setting out sceptical or Pyrrhonian objections to positions in natural theology which reveal our ignorance in this area, it is important for an understanding of Parts X and XI to ask whether we are meant to take Philo's conclusion seriously; that is, does Hume intend Philo's conclusion in Part XI to be a truth in natural theology? Nelson Pike answers this negatively: Philo claims that there is an 'original Source of all things' and that this source is indifferent with respect to matters of good and evil. He pretends to be inferring this conclusion from observed data. This represents a departure from Philo's much professed skepticism in the Dialogues. ... I think the center of Philo's remarks in this passage must be located in their skeptical rather than their metaphysical import. Philo has proposed a hypothesis which is counter to the one offered by Cleanthes. And he claims that this hypothesis is the 'true conclusion' to be drawn from the observed data. But the point is not, I think, that Philo's new hypothesis is true, or even probable. The conclusion is, rather, that the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes is false, or very 75 improbable. when claiming that evil in the world supports a hypothesis which is counter to the one offered by Cleanthes, I think Philo simply means to be calling attention to the fact that evil in the world provides evidence against cleanthes' theological position. It is true that at certain points in the Dialogues Philo does profess to be a sceptic (Pyrrhonian), and he often attempts to show Cleanthes that his hypothesis is false by generating an hypothesis from the available data which is as plausible as Cleanthes' hypothesis (e.g., Part IV, where they debate Cleanthes' view that God is external to the world which He has designed), or which has greater plausibility than Cleanthes' hypothesis (e.g., Parts VI and VII where Philo argues against Cleanthes' claim that the available data support the hypothesis of an intelligent designer for the world). However, whenever Philo proceeds in this manner, he makes it clear that he has no hypothesis on the matter under discussion (e.g., D 164) which he is willing to defend, and that he has proceeded in this manner, not to argue for a position — he maintains that the available data are not adequate to do so — but to argue against the position Cleanthes is defending (see, for example, D 177). In fact, at one stage in the discussion, Philo urges against embracing any religious system, because of the victory which awaits the sceptic: All religious systems, it is confessed, are subject to great and insuperable difficulties. Each disputant triumphs in his turn; while he carries on an offensive war, and exposes the absurdities, barbarities, and pernicious tenets of his antagonist . But all of them, on the whole, prepare a complete triumph for the sceptic; who tells them, that no system ought ever to be embraced with 76 regard to such subjects: For this plain reason, that no absurdity ought ever to be assented to with regard to any subject. A total suspense of judgment is here our only reasonable resource. (D 186-187) This passage, which appears toward the end of Part VIII, is reminiscent of the point Philo made in Part I, when he warned of arguments which "run wide of common life." In the case of such arguments, "the most refined scepticism comes to be upon a footing with them, and is able to oppose and counterbalance them. The one has no more weight than...

Leibniz and Degrees of Perception

Leibniz and Degrees of Perception ROBERT B. BRANDOM THE CONCEIT OF REPRESENTATION is at the center not only of seventeenthcentury theories of knowledge but of their corresponding ontologies as well. Descartes was impressed and illuminated by mathematical innovations that enabled, on the one hand, a precise geometrical account of the optical transformations of figures and images in vision and, on the other, the formally adequate representation of such geometrical situations by nonspatial, discursive expressions in coordinate algebras. God aside, the real was for him accordingly divided into the purely geometrical realm of extension and the realm of thought (taking algebra as its model), which represents what is extended. Leibniz, with a reservation of profound consequence for subsequent German idealism, would deny metaphysical reality to what is representable but not itself a representing. Defining perception as the representation or expression of the many in the one, l Leibniz adumbrates a metaphysical system whose primary features follow from the doctrine that to be is to perceive. Put in his inherited terminology, monads alone are true subAbbreviations D "Discourse on Metaphysics," in G, 4:422-63. Translations herein are from G. W. Leib'aiz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, trans. L. E. Loemker, 2rid ed., 2 vols. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969); cited by section numbers. G Die philosophischen Schriften yon G. W. Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerl~ardt, 7 vols.(Berlin, 1875-9o). GM Die mathematischen Schriften yon G. W. Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin and Halle, 1849-63). M "Monadology," in G, 6:6o7-23 (translations herein from Loemker); cited by sec. nos. NE New Essays concerning Human Understanding, trans. A. G. Langley, 3rd ed. (LaSalle, I11.: Open Court, 1949); I have emended the translation herein where necessary; cited by sec. and p. nos. PNG "Principles of Nature and Grace," in G, 6:598-6o6 (translations herein from Loemker); cited by sec. nos. G, 2:a21,311; 3:69, 574; 6:598, 6o8; 7:317,529 . [4471 448 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY stances, and perception is their fundamental attribute. Perceivings, the modifications of substances in that attribute,' are monadic properties. Relations , for example, spatial ones, cannot be perceivings, but are rather merely perceivable, as features of the multiplicity that is unified in a single perception . As nonperceiving creatures of perception, space, time, and matter--no less than color and odor--are relegated to the second-class metaphysical status of "true phenomena. ''3 To understand Leibniz's version of reality as a privileged class of representings 4 we must understand four features of his account of perception. First, the genus of which perception is a species is that of expression or representation . Leibniz says generally, "One thing expresses another.., when there is a constant and regulated relation between what can be said of the one and of the other. ''5 Favorite examples are the relations between a map and the corresponding geographical region and between a minature model of a machine and the machine itself. Second, as noted above, the specific difference defining perceptual representations is that in perception a multiplicity is expressed in a unity. Third, each monad (indeed, each set of contemporaneous perceptions of any monad) expresses its whole world6---the "flower in the crannied wall" doctrine occasionally glossed by the claim that a perfect intelligence could deduce every feature of the universe from the consideration of the perceptions of a single monad. Fourth, perception comes in degrees, variously referred to as degrees of perfection or distinctness. The last of these features is of cardinal metaphysical importance, since it is explanatorily responsible both for the diversity of points of view of the monads and for the preestablished harmony between them that is Leibniz's systematic synthesis of the principles of unity and of maximal multiplicity. Leibniz explains the relation between the diversity of monadic perspectives and the expression by each of its whole world in the Monadology: [A] The nature of the monad being to represent, nothing can limit it to representing only a part of things, though it is true that its representation is merely confused as to the details of the whole universe, and can be distinct for a small part of things only, ' I ignore here appetitions...

Science and philosophy in Aristotle's Generation of animals.

In the Generation of Animals, Aristotle tries to solve a group of problems which are central both for biology and for Aristotle's philosophical system. The biologist supposes that he has made some progress toward the understanding of life if he has understood how a new life begins; Aristotle shares this concern with origins, and the explanation of animal generation also has metaphysical importance for him. Individual animals are among his paradigm cases of "entities" (ousiai); if his metaphysical system (which depends so much upon the concept of an entity) is to be validated, then the generation of an entity must be explicable within that system. He sketches the sort of explanation which he supposes must be given, in the Metaphysics:

The Free-will Controversy

Few philosophical controversies have been waged with greater acrimony than the controversy between the libertarians and the determinists; the vigour with which both sides of the question have been espoused is due not only to the metaphysical importance of the issue—which is indeed considerable—but more especially to its moral and religious implications. No other philosophical issues, with the exception of those pertaining to God and the immortality of the soul, are of greater ethical and theological moment. So thoroughly has the question been debated that further consideration of it may seem futile. Has not the evidence been so completely canvassed on both sides of the controversy that further discussion will be a fruitless reiteration of long familiar arguments? The free-will problem is considered by many contemporary thinkers an admittedly unsolved but completely outmoded problem to which they respond with impatience or complete indifference. This attitude toward the problem is quite indefensible since the question of the freedom of the will is one of those perennially significant philosophical issues which takes on new meaning in every age and is particularly significant in the context of contemporary science and philosophy. Recent psychology, in large measure through the influence of Freud, has achieved a more penetrating analysis of human motivation by bringing to the fore certain hitherto obscure factors which are operative in volition. The psychology of the subconscious by filling in apparent gaps in the psychological causation of volition has furthered the case for determinism.