General Philosophy – Professor Atchison -- Some notes on Blackburn, Chapters 2-4

1. The questions we have been considering fall within the area of philosophy called ‘metaphysics’. (Metaphysics deals with questions about existence and reality. “Does God exist?” is a classic metaphysical question. We’ll get to that one later.) More specifically, we are investigating metaphysical questions about us, about people (or persons). What is a person?

a. In Blackburn’s Chapter 2 the focus is on the fact that people have minds. What is a mind? To account for minds do we have to suppose that a person is more than just a physical body? Do minds have to involve something like souls or spirits that are (as Descartes said) distinct from our physical bodies? If so, how would these non-physical things be related to our physical bodies? If not, how can we understand our mental lives (thoughts, feelings, sensations, dreams, wishes, desires, etc.) in purely physical terms?

b. In Chapter Three (and in the selection we read from Hume) the focus is on our decisions and choices. When I decide to act in a certain way, we suppose, I could have done something else. (My choice was free, not pre-determined.) Is this an illusion? If every event has a cause, doesn’t that have to include mental events like deciding and choosing? And if my choices are caused, then aren’t they determined (even pre-determined)? How then can my choices be free? (This sort of reasoning has led some thinkers to conclude that free will is an illusion. Can we avoid that conclusion?)

c. In Chapter Four the focus is more directly on the concept of a person. What makes me the person I am? My body? My memories? My soul? I have a self (or should we say “I am a self”?) But what sort of thing is a self?

2. The topics of these three chapters are connected -- and not just because they all concern the metaphysics of persons. In each, though the focus and the questions may change, the parties to the debate are roughly the same. On one side we have a traditional view, a view that finds support in the Christian tradition (and in some other religious traditions as well). On the other side we have a view rooted in a scientific conception of the world and of human beings.

Blackburn calls the traditional view “Cartesian dualism,” since he sees Descartes as a philosophical defender of the tradition. (But we saw that it was Plato’s view as well.) In Chapter Two, Cartesian dualism is introduced as the view that holds that we are made up of two distinct substances – two kinds of stuff: physical stuff and spiritual or mental stuff. In Descartes’ terms there are thinking things (things that have experiences) and there are extended things (things that take up space). Blackburn follows Gilbert Ryle in saying that this view understands a human person as a “ghost in a [biological] machine.” (See pp. 50-52.) In Chapter Three this view appears again to defend a traditional notion of free will – what Blackburn calls “interventionist” free will. The Cartesian dualist explains our ability to make choices as belonging to our spirit or mind (the Real Me), something that can stand outside the chain of cause and effect, because it is not a physical thing. (See p. 88 and p. 96.) In Chapter Four the dualist appears again as the defender of the possibilities on List 2 on page 121. The possibilities are defended by supposing that there is “a mysterious, simple, soul of Me.” (P.128)

The other side of the debate does not have a single name in Blackburn’s text, but we might call it ‘naturalism’ or ‘materialism’ or ‘physicalism’. In Chapter Two it appears in two forms -- as logical behaviorism and as psycho-physical identity theory – two different ways of explaining our mental lives in purely physical terms. In Chapter Three it appears as determinism – either the ‘hard’ determinism that tells us there is no such thing as free will or the ‘soft’ determinism (compatibilism) that tells us to interpret ‘free choice’ in a way that is compatible with determinism – as a choice determined by causes that include our own beliefs and desires. In either form, determinism can dispense with immaterial souls and stick to physical processes and a scientific view of human beings. In Chapter Four Blackburn expresses the view thus: “I am a large human animal. My biography is like that of other animals, beginning with a natural birth, including natural changes, and ending with a natural death. I am firmly located and bounded in space and time. I survive various natural changes, such as ageing. But that is all.” (P. 122) (This is the passage that makes me want to call the view “naturalism.” I take it that the opposite of “natural” here is “supernatural.”)

3. It may seem that Blackburn doesn’t come to any very definite conclusions in these chapters. But it would be a mistake to think that he is not trying to advocate a particular view. On page 148 he says, “Cartesian dualism … does not die easily. The reader is free to try to protect it against the line of thought of this chapter and the preceding two.” This implies that he sees himself as having pursued a single line of thought through three chapters and that he has thereby undermined Cartesian dualism and the traditional beliefs that go with it. Some highlights:

a. He says that, if we accept dualism, then we have no way to avoid the outlandish possibilities he describes under the heading “Zombies and Mutants” in Chapter 2. Notice that the point of this section is not that we should worry about whether or not our friends are really zombies or mutants. The point is that, if we are dualists, then we seem to have no way to tell what our friends’ mental lives are like.

b. He points out that dualism faces a difficult, perhaps insoluble, problem: how to explain the interaction between soul and body, mental stuff and physical stuff.

c. The discussion of color perception on pp. 75-78 is supposed to illustrate how an understanding of the details of the physical side of our experience can make it less plausible to think of the mental side as something quite separate from the physical. At first it seems to make sense to suppose that two people who are physically the same could have very different experiences. After we think more carefully about the way our perceptual apparatus works it doesn’t make so much sense.

d. In Chapter Three Blackburn argues that it is a mistake to think that dualists have an easier time explaining the freedom of the will than physicalists do. It looks at first as if a dualist has an advantage: she can say that our ability to make free choices is explained by our possession of a non-material soul. Since the soul is not a physical thing, it is not subject to the laws of physical causation. But, says Blackburn, if we think more carefully, we will realize that this is really no solution at all. The ‘dilemma of determinism’ (p.84) comes back again when we try to understand the freedom of a soul. Either a soul obeys causal laws (the laws of spiritual causality, we might call them), and its decisions are determined by prior causes, or it is subject to chance, and random spiritual impulses seem no more suitable as candidates for free and responsible actions than random physical motions do. (See pp. 88-89.)

e. Chapter Four makes a similar point. It may seem as though the existence of a soul would solve the problem of personal identity. We can say that what makes me the same person through all the changes I endure (physical changes, personality changes, memory lapses, etc.) is the fact that I continue to have the same soul. But, when we think more carefully, we realize, again, that this is no solution at all. Continuity of spiritual substance is no more necessary to (and no more sufficient for) personal identity than continuity of physical substance is. (See pp. 128-130)

f. Chapter Four also offers a diagnosis of our temptation to think that we can make sense of the idea that we have souls: we suffer from “delusions of imagination.” (See pp.140-144.) When I imagine my own funeral, it seems as if there is an ‘I’ there witnessing the event, and this slides all too easily into the idea that I (i.e., my soul) might literally witness that event. But this is no more evidence for the possibility that I have a soul than a mirage is evidence for the possibility that there is water over the next sand dune in the desert. (Keep in mind that Blackburn is not just challenging the claim that, in fact, we have souls. He is challenging the claim that it even makes sense to think that we might have such things. He’s not saying, “I know perfectly well what you mean when you talk about an immaterial soul, but I question whether any such thing exists.” He is saying, “You think that it is at least possible that you have an immaterial soul, but I question whether the idea is even intelligible or coherent.” If he is right, then an immaterial soul is not a possible thing that may or may not exist – like a unicorn or the Loch Ness monster. It is an impossible thing, like a round square or a number that is both odd and even. We can say the words, but we don’t really know what they mean.)

g. It is also part of Blackburn’s case against dualism to suggest non-dualistic ways of understanding our experiences, our abilities, and our selves. In Chapter Two the non-dualistic alternative is that the mind or soul just is the brain (or, for functionalism, the pattern of activity instantiated in the brain). (See. pp.65-72.) In Chapter Three it is the compatibilist approach to the problem of free will. (See pp.91-107.) In Chapter Four it is the idea that the self is just a representation of one’s own point of view -- a representation that any intelligent system, even a rather simple robot, would need in order to interpret its experience and make sense of its environment. (See pp.138-140.) If these non-dualistic ways of thinking can be made attractive to us, then it will be easier to give up dualism.

4. Blackburn does not claim that he has proved that dualism is wrong. As is often the case in philosophy, we don’t get anything as definite as ‘proof’. We get a variety of considerations that are supposed to add up to a fairly convincing case. Whether the case is convincing is something we must try to judge for ourselves. An intelligent judgment will require considering and testing each of the parts of the case, trying to imagine or recall what Blackburn may be leaving out or ignoring, and then assessing where the ‘preponderance of the evidence’ leads us.