Epistemology & The Soul

Philosophy

An essay that investigates the possibility of knowledge and the existence of a soul that persists after bodily death. It was shortly after finishing the second edition of Natural Theology & Classical Apologetics that I wrote this essay. It is clear that at the time of this writing I did not possess the understanding of some of the ideas that I now have. Some ideas in this essay are oversimplified and reflect the infancy of my own understanding.

EPISTEMOLOGY & THE SOUL Preface It was shortly after finishing the second edition of Natural Theology & Classical Apologetics that I wrote this essay. It is clear that at the time of this writing I did not possess the understanding of some of the ideas that I now have. Some ideas in this essay are oversimplified and reflect the infancy of my own understanding. Epistemology and the Metaphysics of the Soul by Joshua Synon If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides my diet, I need not trouble myself. If I am willing to pay, I need not think. Others will do it for me. – Immanuel Kant When I began to inquire into the relationship of the body to the mind, spirit, or soul, I had no idea how deeply profound the topic really is, and how hotly debated it has been throughout history. Most people today would explain, in a very Neoplatonic way, that the human soul is analogous to a truck driver with the body being the truck. This is an ancient approach to the issue that is termed dualism in which the human being is comprised of two ontologically separate substances, namely the body and the soul. In this vitalistic understanding, the soul, the vital essence of life, is said to live on after bodily death and, hence, is the real us, the truck driver. In most cases, it seems, the soul is synonymous with the mind. But dualism is not the only view of reality prevalent in history. What evidence do we have that a soul or a vital substance that is ontologically separate from matter actually exists? Cannot the natural sciences explain self-consciousness and thought in totality? Many have thought so and, if so, then there seems to be no need to postulate a separate substance that animates our body. This latter group posits that all that exists is the material world of matter and energy. The ancient Eastern sages did not develop great epistemological systems, mostly because they were a more practical lot, but they seem to believe the nature of the human soul to be part of a mystical grand system of order, perhaps a universal consciousness or a type of pantheism, which has moral responsibilities to other beings. They seem to presume that we are spiritual creatures. Some claim that reality is multifaceted and therefore ultimately inarticulate. The goal of the Buddhist, for instance, is to achieve a state of complete emptiness or "no-thing-ness" with only experience of the moment remaining, a completely spiritual and selfless state of being. Western thinkers, however, have attacked the notion that consciousness can exist without sense data to interpret or think about. In this case, what is one really conscious of? To answer that one is conscious of his own consciousness is only begging the question. As soon as consciousness is conscious of some "thing" an interpretation has already taken place. As Eastern mysticism has not satisfied the majority of Western thinkers, the West has developed grand epistemological and metaphysical systems, grounded in reason, that attempt to make sense of reality and discover the true nature and purpose of human being. In order to counter the antifoundational and relativistic thinking of the sophists, Plato (427-348 B.C.) argued that for us to even have ideas in our mind there must be an external world (a foundational reality) that we do not directly interact with where these ideas come from. The world that we experience merely takes part in or resembles this perfect and timeless world of Forms (a type of emanationism). From this he developed the notion that all knowledge is recollection. He invoked his famous allegories of the divided line and the cave to explain this point. Plato ultimately divided the soul into three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. Reason is our rational side, spirit has to do with our will, and appetite is synonymous with our natural desires. Plato taught that reason should rule our spirit and appetite. The nature of the soul was said to be immortal and upon bodily death, then, it was said that the soul is released into this perfect reality of Forms, which later became adopted by the Christians as the concept of Heaven. This dualistic view led Plato's followers, including said Christians, to view the body as evil or a type of prison for the soul. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was by far Plato's greatest student and, even so, disagreed with his teacher on many grounds. Aristotle was a naturalist and thus rejected the existence of a separate world of perfect Forms. He rather took the stance that the "Form" of a thing is actually in the thing itself. Aristotle posited that everything can be explained in totality in terms of four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. The material cause is simply the substance or matter that a thing consists of. The formal cause is what makes a thing as it is. The form of a thing, for Aristotle, was synonymous with the soul. The efficient cause is simply the how of a thing; how it has come into existence, what (materially speaking) caused it to be. The final cause is synonymous with the end or purpose of a thing. Consider the example of a statue of a woman. The material cause would be stone; the formal cause a statue of a woman; the efficient cause the sculptor; the final cause the depiction of a woman for the sake of aesthetic or religious value. Aristotle had this idea that formed matter held its final cause, its entelechy as he called it, its ultimate purpose, within itself. It is the job of the formed matter to realize this purpose or entelechy. Modern functionalism is reminiscent of Aristotle's concept of the soul. Aristotle held that the human soul is entelechy. It is therefore incoherent to suggest that the soul could be separated from the body. Additionally, he suggested that there exist three types of soul: vegetative, sensitive, and rational. All the vegetative soul does is absorb matter from other things. Plants could be said to possess this type of soul. The sensitive soul is a step up in that it can "register information regarding the form of things, but does not absorb or become those things" (Soccio 170). Animals possess the sensitive soul. Human beings are said to possess the highest form of soul, the rational form. This form includes the other two, but goes beyond with "capacities for analyzing things, understanding various forms of relationships, and making reasoned decisions" (ibid). A human being can choose to realize his entelechy or not. For Aristotle, the soul is not a separate mystical reality such as dualism might suggest. The formed body cannot exist without the soul, and vice versa. It is nonsensical to speak of the soul without reference to a body of some sort. In effect, his approach is dissatisfying to many because it seems to deny any notion of life after death. But in all actuality, his view does not, indeed cannot, negate a personal afterlife. It simply has nothing to say of such matters. In any case, the ancient Greeks were of diverse opinion with some considering biological reproduction (or even "intellectual offspring") sufficient to constitute the notion of human immortality. One intriguing view that is related to Aristotle's is termed nonreductive physicalism. This is a form of materialism, but it claims that the form of something, including mental processes, cannot be reduced to merely physical aspects. Thus, physics alone can never fully explain the universe. "Philosophers of mind call the subjective aspects of mental events qualia (or raw feels). There is something that it's like to feel pain, to see a familiar shade of blue, and so on; there are qualia involved in these mental events. And the claim is that qualia seem particularly difficult to reduce to anything physical" ("Dualism"). There have been many attempts to explain these qualia, both physically and mentally based theories. Nonreductive physicalism seems to hold to a form of property dualism, which "asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e. in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge" (ibid). Like Aristotle's position, this position cannot say anything about life after bodily death. Any notion of an afterlife would be purely speculative. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), an English political philosopher, was of the opinion that, "All that exists is bodies in motion." The natural sciences and modern psychology seem to be inclined to a materialistic monism, or physicalism, which claims that matter is all that exists. In this system, mental states are reduced to nothing more than physical states. Consciousness is then merely an artificial property that we ascribe to ourselves in an attempt to meaningfully describe the interaction of various atoms and chemicals in an otherwise random and meaningless system. Colors and sounds are merely waves and vibrations that we artificially apply meaning to. It must follow that we also ascribe artificial meaning to morality, the soul, and free will. Hobbes believed that before each decision we make, we unconsciously (and/or consciously) and mechanistically weigh a list of pros against a list of cons to decide which choice to make in a matter. We will always choose, it is claimed, whichever decision will bring the most pleasure and/or relieve the most pain, whichever decision will fulfill the strongest present desire. If we do happen to choose otherwise, it is only because we were ignorant of the opposing list, and the result is a "bad" decision. This way of thinking is reminiscent of Socrates' view that it is impossible for a human to knowingly will evil. The trouble that I run into with this theory is in finding a basic principle that defines pleasure. The natural schools of science such as behaviorism, eliminative materialism, and type identity theory hold that everything can be explained in full by physical laws and natural processes. As such, they are deterministic and mechanistic views that seem to deny the reality of free will and an external supernatural or nonphysical reality. Indeed, a truly free will makes no sense in a determined universe, it is quite inconceivable. If our actions are just effects of biological and physical processes, then there is no such thing as morality or responsibility. Free will is then an illusion. Atoms cannot make choices. Mind, therefore, is really matter and there is no getting past our human nature. Modern psychology has attempted in many ways to describe the human mind in purely physical ways. Hobbes, however, was a compatibilist with regard to free will. He would define free will in a different way than most would today. Rather than claim that free will is the absolute ability to choose between two or more options concerning a matter, he would claim that free will is "a hypothetical ability to have chosen differently if one had been differently psychologically disposed by some different beliefs or desires" ("Compatibilism"). With this definition, free will is said to be compatible with a determined universe. But this definition seems to lack the complete and utter freedom that "free will" implies. It would seem, rather, that we are definitely influenced by beliefs, desires, and physical "laws," but by no means determined. However, more problems arise when we attempt to prove the free will of beings other than ourselves. It seems a mistake, as Hume would suggest, to generalize these laws of physics and then apply them back to human actions and claim that mankind is completely deterministic, thereby opposing the commonsensical notion of free will. As Kant argued, which we will see later, "[W]hen a theory results in conclusions that are clearly inconsistent with experience, real-world evidence must outweigh theoretical consistency" (Soccio 325). Though some people argue for a strict determinism, nobody lives as though they actually believe it. It must be noted, however, that even if the mind can be fully explained via natural processes it seems that, although it would rule out the need to invoke a soul, it cannot deny the possibility of a soul (as we will also see later). Some claim that modern quantum mechanics lends support to the notion of free will. In the tiny world of quantum physics, it is said that events can occur without any reason whatsoever, essentially randomly. To some, this implies that not everything is determined, including the human will. But the problem here is that this would reduce free will to a purely random, chaotic phenomenon. Free will is indeed indeterminate in a sense, but it is still caused by an act of volition on the free agent's part. Since both pure determinism and pure chaos are opposed to free will, quantum physics does not seem to lend much help to the argument for free will. It does, however, go to show that we cannot definitely state that the universe is strictly determined, thus leaving the door open for faith in free will. René Descartes (1596-1650), a noted French philosopher, is generally considered the father of rationalism in modern philosophy. He posited that the only way to gain absolutely certain knowledge is through reason alone (i.e. a priori). He chose to doubt everything that his senses told him because he believed that they could be deceiving him: perhaps we are all now dreaming, or perhaps there is an evil demon that is deceiving us. In doing so, he started with a blank slate and his first conclusive, undoubtable claim was the knowledge that he exists as a thinking being. This thinking being, he concludes, is his mind or soul and exists independent of the body. The view is espouses is termed substance dualism, which holds that the mind and body are distinct and separate substances. Unlike much of Christendom, Descartes makes no distinction between the mind, spirit, or soul. But if the dualistic model is true, then how can the soul actually interact with the body and vice versa (save the speculative and mystical notions of occasionalism or parallelism, both of which invoke God, but have no real explanatory power)? If the mind is substantially different than the body, then why is it that when the body drinks, the mind becomes drunk? Descartes would reject the truck driver analogy in favor of a more intimately united theory with the pineal gland being the epicenter of interaction between body and soul. He then proceeds to prove the existence of a good God a priori via ontological arguments and develops a trust of his basic senses on that foundation. While reading Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, however, I began to ask some serious questions and found that I was not alone in my inquiry. What can a mind without a body know or even think about? Is it really possible to know anything a priori? Certainly a spirit cannot know anything a priori pertaining to bodily or sensational experience because it lacks a body itself. It has been postulated that things such as mathematics and geometry are true a priori independent of whether anybody knows this or not. But can a spirit know such things a priori? Concepts such as mathematics and time exist as human ideas of relations of objects and events, but do they actually exist in and of themselves as Plato would claim? How can mathematics or geometry be knowable in a purely spiritual or rational realm, as the are both merely descriptions of relationships between material objects of human perception? Once we invoke bodies, then mathematics seems to apply. But before that, there is nothing for mathematics to explain. It seems impossible to teach a spirit the concept of numbers or for a spirit to even think about mathematics. Indeed, I cannot think of anything that a spirit could think about without reference to any material form. Similarly, it would seem that if we were to shut off all of our senses, we could not think of anything other than, perhaps, our past experiences while in the body. It seems, then, that experience must be the ultimate seat and cause of all knowledge. Furthermore, if a spirit cannot think about anything or know anything (besides, perhaps, past bodily experiences), and a spirit is defined as mind without body, then is it really mind? Is it not rather nothing? This is not even to mention the complex processes involved in the human brain. It seems to follow that if God is spirit, as is traditionally thought, the only conclusion to be reached is that God is nothing – nonexistent. As we will see later, Descartes failed in his attempt to prove the existence of God or even the reality of the self. The view that all knowledge comes from experience (a posteriori) is termed empiricism and was espoused by an influential English philosopher named John Locke (1632-1704). This man came to deny the possibility of innate, a priori, ideas. He believed that human beings are born with a blank slate, a tabula rasa, which is gradually filled with sense data. Locke claims that, "Nothing exists in the mind that was not first in the senses." He does recognize, however, along with Descartes, that we do seem to possess a substance that is separate from our body; a thinking substance. Locke divided qualities of experience into two categories, namely primary and secondary qualities. Primary (i.e. objective) qualities are those that are independent of any perception of them, such as shape, size, and location in space. Secondary (i.e. subjective) qualities are those that depend on the perceiver, such as color, sound, or taste (Soccio 290). In Locke's epistemology our experiences are nothing more than photographs or copies of the real thing (think re-presentation). As we all know, a photograph is never equal to the real thing. Therefore, we can never experience any thing-in-itself as it exists objectively. But if everything that we think we know about external things is actually just sense data in our own minds, then how can we even be sure that there exists anything outside of our own minds (cf. solipsism)? Ah, but what if the only thing that actually exists is mind (or will)? What if what we call reality and matter is actually an effect of, and dependent on, the mind or soul, an active product of the thinking spirit? Would this not solve our problem? George Berkeley thought so. He took Locke's epistemology a step further to one of its extreme, albeit logical, ends. Berkeley contends that all that really exists are Locke's secondary qualities. We cannot even say anything about primary qualities, for it would be unintelligible to attempt speaking of them. So who is to say that they exist when nobody is perceiving them? This would relieve us from looking for meaning in our existence because existence would be meaning. God would, of course, be the ultimate mind, which makes all other minds possible. If this were the case, however, it would seem that I could simply will certain things to happen, such as bending a spoon with my mind. But perhaps there are mental limits imposed by God that prohibit my mental bending of the spoon. God is what holds everything in existence while we are not experiencing it, for he is the all-perceiver. This can easily lead to a form of pantheism, such as that which Spinoza espoused. However, Berkeley failed to prove the existence of an all-perceiver. In this case, however, it seems to make absolutely no difference to our experience whether noumena exist or not, whether we label it as matter or mind. It seems that Berkeley was simply giving a different name to the same thing as the materialists. The renowned British empiricist David Hume (1711-1776) pursued Locke's epistemology to its furthest logical end. In his works, Hume "makes compelling arguments against materialism, the possibility of a spiritual, supernatural reality, and personal immortality... [and] challenged established religious beliefs, moral judgments, reason and rationalism, earlier forms of empiricism, and the certainty of science" (Soccio 296). He was of the opinion that neither matter nor mind exist, a complete skeptic or agnostic. He denied that we can know anything. He even denied the concept of a persisting self. When I speak of me, what am I speaking of? This thing that is doing the speaking of course. But can I explain the concept of me outside of any sensational experience? I cannot think of a way to do so, to describe my mind, or my self, without reference to my body or its perceptions. It seems, then, that the mind is inseparable from the body. We seem to be merely a bundle of sense perceptions, impressions as Hume called them, that are diluted into "ideas" (synonymous with Locke's copy theory). If something did not come from an impression then it is meaningless. His conclusion is "that identity is not a property of things, but a mental act" (Soccio 302). Furthermore, Hume tells us that "beliefs that cannot be reduced to sense experience are technically not 'ideas' at all: They are meaningless utterances" (Soccio 300). Included in these beliefs that are not empirically experienced are those of God and the spirit or soul. If my body is not different in any sense from my spirit or my self, then life after bodily death seems to be ruled out. Again taking Locke's epistemology to its logical conclusion, Hume concludes that the only thing we can know is our own perceptions, which occur in some type of pattern or regularity to which we ascribe meaning and coherence. He denies the rationality of inductive logic, which science depends on. Induction "reasons from the particular to the general" (Soccio 304). But Hume would claim that we have no right to make that jump. This is why he rejects even seemingly self-evident concepts such as cause and effect or objective morality. David Hume's philosophy has devastating effects on faith, reason, and science. He concluded that we can be sure of absolutely nothing. But surely nobody can consistently live a truly skeptical life. The only reason Hume gives for being able to live a normal life in light of his skepticism is that nature tends to take over and fill in the gaps when he is not thinking about it (Soccio 304). This complete skepticism really leaves us nowhere and gives us nowhere to go, not only concerning the relationship of the mind to the body, but concerning anything at all. Thus far we have explored dualistic and monistic (both physical and mental) views of reality. However, there also exist two other less widely known views: pluralism and neutral monism. While the former posits that there exist more than two essential substances in the universe, the latter suggests that there does indeed exist only one substance, but that substance is neither material nor immaterial. Rather, this single substance is said to be neutral, capable of existing as both matter and non-matter. Some have claimed, however, that this is simply a rehash of Berkeleian idealism. Each of these, however, seem to be venturing into the metaphysical realm of unfalsifiability. Perhaps it is again a mistake to generalize things. Strict materialism, any type of monism really, seems to be begging the question in that it defines everything that exists and is sensible as matter and natural and then claims that nothing exists besides matter and the natural. If any genuinely new type of thing were to be discovered, including something that many would deem supernatural or somehow inherently new, it could then be labeled natural, sensible, and material. Idealism seems to do the same exact thing. In this way they are both unfalsifiable and seem to be giving different names or descriptions for the same exact stuff. Perhaps our definition of spirit as mind without body is flawed. Perhaps the soul is as complex, in some way, as the body. Perhaps we cannot properly understand the nature of spirit. As my studies continued I inevitably encountered the German philosopher named Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant's philosophy was an effect of the inadequacies of the two major philosophical schools and the deterministic implications of science in his day. The rationalists "established grand systems of logical relationships ungrounded in observation or perception," while the British empiricists viewed "the human mind as the passive receiver of impressions and experiences" (Soccio 322-3). All the empiricists were left with in the end were ideas, which could never really bring them back to experience of external realities, the result of which was "Hume's admission that we must believe in an external world, in selves, and in causes and effects, without ever knowing them" (ibid). Kant saw philosophy tending toward absurd conclusions and science leading to a mechanistic universe with no basis for free will or morality. Moreover, a strict empiricism, Kant claims, aside from presupposing what it sets out to disprove, restricts us from making judgments about our experience, while a strict rationalism produces antinomies such as it being possible to prove both that the world had a beginning in time and is limited in space and that the world had no beginning and has no limits. As both notions are absurd, it would seem that neither reason alone nor sensations alone can render knowledge. Kant began by stating that the normal division of knowledge into a priori and a posteriori was insufficient: [The] old division between a priori truths and a posteriori truths employed by both camps [rationalism and empiricism] was insufficient to describe the sort of metaphysical claims that were under dispute. An analysis of knowledge also requires a distinction between synthetic and analytic truths. In an analytic claim, the predicate is contained within the subject. In the claim, "Every body occupies space," the property of occupying space is revealed in an analysis of what it means to be a body. The subject of a synthetic claim, however, does not contain the predicate. In the phrase, "This tree is 120 feet tall," the concepts are synthesized or brought together to form a new claim that is not contained in any of the individual concepts. The Empiricists had not been able to prove synthetic a priori claims like "Every event must have a cause", because they had conflated "synthetic" and "a posteriori" as well as "analytic" and "a priori." Then they had assumed that the two resulting categories were exhaustive. A synthetic a priori claim, Kant argues, is one that must be true without appealing to experience, yet the predicate is not logically contained within the subject, so it is no surprise that the Empiricists failed to produce the sought after justification. The Rationalists had similarly conflated the four terms and mistakenly proceeded as if claims like, "The self is a simple substance," could be proven analytically and a priori. Synthetic a priori claims, Kant argues, demand an entirely different kind of proof than those required for analytic, a priori claims or synthetic, a posteriori claims. Indications for how to proceed, Kant says, can be found in the examples of synthetic a priori claims in natural science and mathematics, specifically geometry. Claims like Newton's, "the quantity of matter is always preserved," and the geometer's claim, "the angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees" are known a priori, but they cannot be known merely from an analysis of the concepts of matter or triangle. We must "go outside and beyond the concept... joining to it a priori in thought something which I have not thought in it." ... A synthetic a priori claim constructs upon and adds to what is contained analytically in a concept without appealing to experience. So if we are to solve the problems generated by Empiricism and Rationalism, the central question of metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason reduces to "How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" ... If we can answer that question, then we can determine the possibility, legitimacy, and range of all metaphysical claims. (McCormick) Kant proposed an extraordinary idea, such that he termed it a Copernican Revolution of his own in philosophy: "He would reverse the course of his philosophical predecessors and assume that instead of the mind having to conform to what can be known, what can be known must conform to the mind" (Soccio 325). Knowledge then becomes a "kind of interaction, a two-way street between the knower (the subject) and the known (the object)" (ibid). Kant's answer to the question is complicated, but his conclusion is that a number of synthetic a priori claims, like those from geometry and the natural sciences, are true because of the structure of the mind that knows them. "Every event must have a cause" cannot be proven by experience, but experience is impossible without it because it describes the way the mind must necessarily order its representations. (McCormick) Kant divides reality into two categories: phenomenal and noumenal. The phenomenal is reality as we experience it, while the noumenal is reality as things are in themselves. The only thing we can know about noumena is that it exists, at least logically: We can experience only what our human faculty of understanding is capable of... Kant argues that although we cannot directly experience noumena, a special class of transcendental ideas bridges the gap between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. Empirical ideas are validated by sense data (experience). Transcendental ideas are "triggered" by experience when we rely on them to impose unity on the totality of our experiences. They "unify" or "make possible" having experience in the first place. Without some sort of unifying structure, Kant argues, the mind could not 'experience' raw sense data. It would be meaningless, undifferentiated – unexperienced. (Soccio 327) These transcendental ideas, almost reminiscent of the Greek logos, can be said to be structures in the mind that interpret phenomena. It is this structuring in the mind that makes any experience possible. Kant developed a table of categories that is comprised of these ideas or structures. "Kant identified three transcendental ideas: self, cosmos (totality), and God... Kant goes on to say that we must act as if self, cosmos, and God refer to existing things but that, as in the case of all noumena, there is no way empirically to verify that they do. They refer to universal ideas that regulate human understanding" (Soccio 328). These ideas or structures make up the faculties of synthesis and understanding in the mind: We must assume the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality, Kant says, not as objects of knowledge, but as practical necessities for the employment of reason in the realm where we can have knowledge. By denying the possibility of knowledge of these ideas, yet arguing for their role in the system of reason, Kant had to, "annul knowledge in order to make room for faith." (McCormick) Kant holds that the very intelligibility of the universe necessarily implies certain ideas, including God, but that the nature of human reason renders direct (noumenal) knowledge of the ontological status of such a transcendental (noumenal) being utterly impossible. In saying this, "Kant means that God is not the kind of thing that can be verified by an appeal to experience... Kant, however, claims that it is not possible to dismiss the idea of God..." (Soccio328). However, "a consciousness that apprehends objects directly, as they are in themselves and not by means of space and time, is possible – God, Kant says, has a purely intuitive consciousness – but our apprehension of objects is always mediated by the conditions of sensibility" (McCormick). The metaphysical implications of Kant's transcendental idealism are staggering. His philosophy is to be differentiated from the idealism of, say, Berkeley because Kant is an empirical realist. However, he says that we can only know things as they appear to us. His revolution ratified the sense of self and an external reality, and therefore the natural sciences, from Hume's radical skepticism, pronounced the subjectivity of truth (which was later expounded on by the existentialists), and threw most metaphysics and speculative theology out the window. There could be an infinite amount of things out there that are real, but we as human beings cannot say anything about them. We cannot possibly comprehend them, unless we are afforded some new type of sense. It would be like trying to teach a man blind from birth the concept of color; like a sphere trying to describe the concept of three dimensions to a circle. Even then, we could still only know some new phenomena, but not the noumena directly. It seems to follow that the only way for human beings to understand anything about a metaphysical reality outside of the five senses must be in the form of analogy from a divine or supernatural source. Even then we cannot properly understand the details of any different metaphysical reality. We can only be certain that a reality outside of what we experience does indeed exist. This would seem, then, to lead toward a type of theological agnosticism. Moreover, it appears that Plato's cave allegory fits quite nicely with Kant's philosophy. Any man that has indeed seen beyond what normal humans sense would have trouble explaining it to others. Kant also lays out a remarkable moral philosophy that is described as a sense of duty found within all rational creatures, which posits the reality of free will and moral responsibility: "Kant asserts that it is possible to be both determined, or unfree (in the phenomenal world), and free (in the noumenal world)" (Soccio 330). While it is interesting to speculate, it may not be possible until bodily death to say anything absolute about the nature of the human soul or what happens to it thereof. Perhaps we shall never know. Where any of this gets us in life I have failed to ascertain. Perhaps the ancient Eastern sages were wise in not wasting time developing elaborate epistemological systems. Any system that attempts to explain the universe is going to be inadequate and insufficient. Perhaps we should stop all of this nonsensical reasoning and begin to live life instead of attempting to make sense of it. It is easier to indulge in abstract thought than it is to exist. – Kierkegaard You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. – Albert Camus Bibliography "Compatibilism." Wikipedia. 26 April 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism. Descartes, René. "Meditations on First Philosophy." The Philosophy Source. Version 3.0. CD-ROM. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004. Gogan, Aisling. "God in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason." Memorial University of Newfoundland. 26 April 2006. http://www.mun.ca/phil/codgito/vol3/v3doc1.html. McCormick, Matt. "Immanuel Kant – Metaphysics." The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Ed. James Fieser. 2006. 26 April 2006. http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kantmeta.htm. O'Connor, Timothy. "Free Will." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. 2005. 26 April 2006. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/. "Philosophy of Mind." Wikipedia. 26 April 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_problem. Pratt, David. "Consciousness, Causality, and Quantum Physics." Exploring Theosophy.1997. 26 April 2006. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/jse.htm. Robinson, Howard. "Dualism." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. 2003. 26 April 2006. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/. Soccio, Douglas. Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004.


Philosophy

Examining imagination, 4E cognition and the arts together expands our understanding of them all. 4E cognition is a framework that comprises the theories separately known as embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition. This paper draws on research in cognitive science (including 4E and recent predictive processing approaches), ideas in phenomenology, and artworks from The Extended Mind exhibition (2019â20). The artworks offer diverse reflections on 4E cognition, as well as revealing personal, political and ethical benefits and issues predicated on a 4E cognition perspective. This approach further provides a way of defending the epistemic value of the imagination and of unpacking the four key puzzles associated with its relationship with the arts regarding its production of emotional response, imaginative resistance, and moral persuasion, and the paradox of our attraction towards horror and tragedy. The arts are a valuable mode of inquiry into the nature of cognition and neglect of their relevance negatively impacts understandings of the mind.

European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education 02 2022 vol. 07 Editorial 10th issue of the European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education Ketil Thorgersen Editor in Chief t is winter and Christmas and new year is approaching where I live in Sweden. For me personally, the last months have been blessed as I have had the opportunity to be on parental leave for my little baby boy. The only work related task I have done since June is to try to keep up with editing EJPAE and participate in a book translation project. Every hour, minute, and second of the rest of the time has been filled with becoming in synergy with a small person growing into the world. Babies develop so quickly that the tasks of education becomes very prominent: To encourage, to facilitate, to see and recognize, to correct to learn ourselves etc. It also becomes very prominent how much fun music can be – and how reading and acting can create spaces for understanding and growth. As a teacher educator in music and the arts, and editor of a journal of philosophy of education and the arts, this direct application of the ideas, ideals and thoughts that drive our fields is not always this close. It is therefore with a newly recognized gratefulness I welcome all you readers to this issue that contain interesting and important insights into learning and the arts. I This issue of EJPAE contain more articles than any previous issue. I interpret this as a sign that EJPAE is getting more known and also gaining respect among scholars 4 EJPAE: 02 2022 vol. 07 Thorgersen; Editorial in the relevant fields. This time we can present authors from Scotland, the Nether lands, Norway and Sweden, representing the fields visual art, art history, language, dance and music. The first article in this 10th issue of EJPAE provides interesting tools for thinking about arts education in a broad sense. Miranda Anderson from the University of Edinburgh dives into a cognitive framework called 4E in the article 4E Cognition and the Mind-Expanding Arts. Anderson argues that there are several benefits for arts education to apply a 4E framework on the teaching. 4E refers to embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition and is based on recent cognitive and brain research. She combines this framework with phenomenological philosophy and a discussion of how imagination is of fundamental value to both the arts and for the hu man as a species. The argument centres around a particular exhibition that exemplifies how imagination and the arts are vital to understanding and interacting with the world. The second article comes from the Netherlands and is unusually close to empirical education for EJPAE. Starting from an idea of commoning in an action research project situated in a higher education visual arts programme, Frederiek Bennema from Hanze University of Applied Sciences constructs an argument for Artistic Educational Commoning (AEC). The idea is to evolve educational activities as creative co-constuctive learning arenas rather than a knowledge-factory. Bennema argues that such an approach to education can be beneficial in creating a higher degree of demo cratic and non-hieararchical spaces for learning. The third article is by Cecilia Ferm Almqvist and Linn Hentschel from Sweden, Södertörn University and Umeå University. The article Lived time in "relay-method" based arts education – sharing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as an example, employs a phenomenological theoretical framework to discuss how perception of time is vital in arts education. The themes they discuss are: lived time in mean5 EJPAE: 02 2022 vol. 07 Thorgersen; Editorial ingful arts education, lived time as diminishing or disappearing in aesthetic pedagogy, lived time and artworks in aesthetic pedagogy, and lived time as didactic frame in aes thetic pedagogy. Synnøve Myklestad from Norway and Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences is the author of the fourth article in this issue. Her article The Pedagogue and the Poetic Kristeva and the Quest for Singularity in Education presents an interesting argument that the concepts semiotization and transubstantiation can be utilized to counter neo-liveral tendencies of effectivisation. In line with what several other articles in this issue argues, Myklestad warns against a view of education as mere fulfilment of standards. Instead, education should encourage exploring and experiences. From Sweden, Marie-Helene Zimmerman Nilsson and Jo Smedley present the last article in this issue. The article discusses how musical knowledge and skills can be acquired and how they can have a positive impact on various areas of life. It also ex amines the relationship between musical instrumental learning and reflective practice, and the role of self-regulation in music learning. The text suggests that musical skills may influence the way that learners engage with and manage information, and that this experience may enhance their broader knowledge management skills. It also suggests that there is a lack of research on the possible links between musical knowledge and broader information management skills, and calls for further investigation in this area. The five articles are held together by a desire to connect musical learning to larger issues such as society, personal development etc. All articles also strives at being critical towards narrow-minded views of arts education. I hope the articles will give you as much pleasure as they gave me. ENJOY! Ketil Thorgersen Editor-in-Chief Stockholm December 14th 2022


Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life, by Krista Thomason (Book Review)

Philosophy

"Naked" is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in shame and its role in morality. The book is particularly timely given how common public shaming has become in online settings. Krista K. Thomason argues that, even though shame is a negative emotion with potentially damaging consequences, its dark side is outweighed by its moral benefits insofar as shame is constitutive of desirable moral commitments. According to the author, being liable to shame is constitutive of respecting other peopleâs points of view, acknowledging othersâ moral standing, and accepting that our identities are not only set by what we think of ourselves, but also by factors outside of our control that include our personal histories and other peopleâs opinions of us.

Krista K. Thomason Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life Reviewed by Carissa Véliz, University of Oxford Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 23 June 2018 https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/naked-the-dark-side-of-shame-and-moral-life/ Naked is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in shame and its role in morality. The book is particularly timely given how common public shaming has become in online settings. Krista K. Thomas argues that, even though shame is a negative emotion with potentially damaging consequences, its dark side is outweighed by its moral benefits insofar as shame is constitutive of desirable moral commitments. According to the author, being liable to shame is constitutive of respecting other people's points of view, acknowledging others' moral standing, and accepting that our identities are not only set by what we think of ourselves, but also by factors outside of our control that include our personal histories and other people's opinions of us. Chapter 1 introduces three philosophical positions on shame: the traditional, the naturalistic, and the pessimistic views. What Thomason calls the traditional view of shame presents shame as the result of realising one has failed to live up to one's ideals. While this view can account satisfactorily for moral instances of shame (e.g. feeling shame about having done something wrong), Thomason argues that it fails to provide a convincing account of some of the most paradigmatic, yet non-moral cases of shame (for example, a boy caught masturbating). The naturalistic view sees shame as the result of not behaving in accordance with public norms and standards. In describing shame's role as incentivising social conformity, it does a better job than the traditional view of accounting for non-moral instances of shame. On the downside, this view lacks a normative stance: it tells us nothing about whether and when shame might be an appropriate response. Finally, the pessimistic view of shame argues that shame is a negative emotion that ought to be overcome. Thomason's ultimate objective will be to argue that shame is morally necessary, and not something to get rid of. In Chapter 2 Thomason examines the connection between shame and violence. When faced with feeling shame, or with the threat of feeling shame, people sometimes resort to aggression and violence. She argues that neither the naturalistic nor the traditional view can explain this phenomenon. The naturalistic view cannot explain violence in response to shame because it goes against its main argument: that shame is a way for people to show appeasement to dominance. Similarly, the traditional view cannot explain why someone would respond to shame by doing something even worse than failing to live up to an ideal. Thomason argues that a better way to interpret the connection between shame and violence is to think about violence as a reaction to a lack of control in relation to an unflattering part of our identity that we "do not embrace or identify with" (pp.7475). Thomason further elucidates why shame can turn into violence in the following 2 chapter. Readers interested in Thomason's original account of shame can skip the first two chapters, which can be seen as an extensive prolegomenon. In Chapter 3, Thomason offers her account of privacy, arguing that shame is an experience of tension between one's identity (who we are, which is partly determined by features of our histories and by how others see us) and one's self-conception (who we think we are). When we feel shame, we feel defined by some feature of our identity that overshadows our self-conception; we suddenly feel like we are nothing other than what we feel shame about. Thomason's account of shame is original and appealing. It gives a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenology of shame, and does a good job of explaining the link between violence and shame: shame makes us feel powerless because it makes us feel defined by an aspect of ourselves we do not wish to be defined by, and violence is an act of self-assertion that helps us feel empowered, more like agents and less like passive victims of others' judgments. Thomason's account can also explain difficult cases that other accounts struggle with: feeling shame when being the recipient of positive attitudes, feeling shame about others' misdeeds or flaws, and feeling shame about one's physical features. On Thomason's view, when Schindler is faced with the gratitude of people whose lives he saved, he feels shame because, in his modesty, he does not feel like a hero. Schindler feels "unworthy" of praise because "the image that others have of him feels false from his own point of view" (pp.105-106). Likewise, we are capable of feeling ashamed of our families, whose behaviour we do not control, because they are people we acknowledge as being part of our identities (p.107). When we feel shame about our physical features-a crooked nose, for instance-we feel that it defines us, that it is what others will judge us by (p.110). A trickier case is that of the shame felt by victims of rape. Following the work of Susan Brison, Thomason argues that the shame felt by rape survivors can be understood as an attempt to "regain power or control" (p.122). Shame would be a kind of defence mechanism; by accepting at least some degree of responsibility for what happened through feeling shame, the victim feels less powerless: "even though blaming yourself feels bad, it feels better to do that when your other option is simply to feel powerless" (p.122). But this interpretation does not seem to fit her account. First, it assumes that feeling shame is associated with feeling responsible, when at other parts Thomason has been successful in showing that shame can be felt about things that are beyond our control and responsibility (for example, a crooked nose). Second and more importantly, this description seems to speak against her explanation of violence. On the one hand, she contends that people who feel shame may behave violently as a remedy to the feelings of powerlessness attached to shame. On the other hand, she says that victims of rape feel empowered by shame through the attached feeling of self-blame and responsibility. It is not clear how shame can have the opposite effects of sometimes making people feel disempowered (passive) and other times making them feel empowered (agents). However, it is also not clear that Thomason needs shame to have those contrary effects for her theory to work; victims' shame could be the result of feeling eclipsed or overly defined by the rape they suffered. 3 A further advantage of Thomason's account is that it does not need to divide shame into moral and non-moral types, which makes for a simpler model. Her view, nonetheless, seems more similar to the traditional view than one might have expected. "Instead of feeling shame because we fail to live up to our values," Thomason writes, "we feel shame because our actions, judgments, or feelings do not match up with the way we represent our moral character to ourselves" (p.116). It could be argued, however, that the way we represent our moral character to ourselves is very closely related to our ideals and values. If one thinks of oneself as a good person, or an honest person, that ideal is at least partly constituted by values. Furthermore, our self-conceptions are often more normative than Thomason's description might lead us to think. Someone who has low self-esteem and considers herself to be a bad person can presumably still feel shame when confronted with a misdeed of hers. Such shame might be felt, not because there is a mismatch between her misdeed and the way she sees her moral character, but because there is a mismatch between her misdeed and the person she would like to be, or she thinks she could be or ought to be. Thus, it looks like our self-conception might be at least partly constituted by our ideals and values. In Chapter 4, the author argues against the pessimistic view and contends that shame is a morally valuable emotion. Thomason first acknowledges the dark side of shame, including how it can cause both violent and self-destructive behaviour (p.131). She then goes on to point out that, despite shame's danger, shamelessness is typically considered a vice. On her account, shamelessness is bad because "it is a failure to entertain other points of view about who we are" (p.151). The shameless person is impervious to others' criticisms. If one is not liable to shame, the authority of one's self-conception is never doubted or challenged. Emotions, Thomason argues, are ways of recognising the authority of others. What we feel says something about what we think and the kind of person we are. Susceptibility to grief, for example, expresses the depth of our feelings for others (p.147). Similarly, "liability to shame is partially constitutive of our respect for others as moral agents" (p.155). While I find Thomason's view thought-provoking, I remain unconvinced. Shame might be sufficient to show that someone is willing to entertain others' views, but that does not make it a necessary condition to respect others. It is perfectly imaginable that someone might be responsive to others' criticisms without feeling shame. Thomason believes that the "same features of moral psychology give rise to both respect and to shame" (p.157) and endorses Rawls's view that our emotions are interconnected in such a way that, if we were to get rid of one emotion, the rest would be "disfigured" (p.147). But no evidence is offered in support of this claim. Even if it were true that changing one emotion would change others, perhaps getting rid of shame would rid us of other undesirable emotions and commitments, rather than desirable ones. For a book on a topic in moral psychology, it is slightly thin on empirical evidence. For shame to be necessary for being good moral agents, it has to be irreplaceable. Thomason, however, is not successful in showing that liability to guilt or regret would not be enough for people to acknowledge others' views. Against guilt, Thomason argues that it can be just as consuming as shame (p.162), and that, because guilt is an emotion that is 4 directed at our actions and not our identities, it can lead people to adopt an "overly narrow" view of themselves (not accepting that our identities are partly made up of elements beyond our control), which the author thinks of as "morally immature" (p.164). One advantage of guilt over shame, however, is that it focuses on the harm done; it thus typically looks to victims (Williams 1993, 93), and is connected to remorse, regret, and reparation (Nussbaum 2004, 208, Fessler 2004). The person who is feeling shame is in pain about herself; shame is a self-centred emotion. But morality is arguably more about concerning oneself with others' interests and needs, with others' emotions, rather than one's own. Thomason argues that critics of shame make the mistake of equating "a virtuous moral psychology with a positive moral psychology," and that we do not have to "feel good in order to be good" (8). Evidence suggests, however, that positive moods lead to prosocial behaviour (Carlson, Charlin, and Miller 1988), while self-centred negative emotions like personal distress detract from it (Eisenberg et al. 1994). It is easier to be good when one feels good. Thomason admits that if we were to find someone who was able to recognise other points of view and the limits of her self-conception without being liable to shame, her theory would be falsified, as it would show that shame is not constitutive of those commitments (p.166). Readers' experiences will surely vary in this respect, but anecdotally, I can think of at least one person I know well who reports not feeling shame, in whom I have never seen symptoms of shame, and who is nonetheless clearly open to taking other people's criticisms seriously and admitting mistakes and flaws. Perhaps Thomason could argue that even if someone has felt no shame in a long time, they might still be liable to feeling shame in the right circumstances. Maybe more would need to be said about what those circumstances might be, although Thomason argues that shame has no appropriateness conditions on account of it being an emotion that refers to how we experience ourselves and not the world (pp.170-171). In any case, while a personal anecdote is surely not enough to refute Thomason's argument, it does suggest that whether someone can recognise others' moral standing without feeling shame is an empirical question that can be tested and cannot be entirely decided from the armchair. Chapter 5 explores the morality of invitations to shame (privately nudging someone into self-awareness), shaming (holding up misdeeds or flaws for public scorn), and stigmatising (shaming someone into a marginalised group). Thomason argues that invitations to shame are morally acceptable in moral self-defence cases (p.190), but that shaming and stigmatising are unjustified on the grounds that attempting to define another person's identity in social life is "an illegitimate exercise of power over another moral agent" (13). People who shame refuse to acknowledge the self-conception of the shamed person; therefore, for Thomason, shaming is as unjustifiable as shamelessness, given that both involve ignoring others' points of view. This book is undoubtedly a valuable contribution to furthering the conversation about shame and its proper place in morality. Thomason's account of the nature of shame is alluring and deserves serious consideration. The jury is still out about whether shame is a desirable emotion, however. Thomason's bet is for it. Mine is against it. Philosophers seeking to better inform their own bets would do well in reading Naked. 5 References Carlson, M., V. Charlin, and N. Miller. 1988. "Positive mood and helping behavior: a test of six hypotheses." J Pers Soc Psychol 55 (2):211-29. Eisenberg, N., R. A. Fabes, B. Murphy, M. Karbon, P. Maszk, M. Smith, C. O'Boyle, and K. Suh. 1994. "The relations of emotionality and regulation to dispositional and situational empathy-related responding." J Pers Soc Psychol 66 (4):776-97. Fessler, Daniel M.T. 2004. "Shame in two cultures: implications for evolutionary approaches." Journal of Cognition and Culture 4.2:207-262. Nussbaum, Martha. 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1993. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press.


Review of Kurt Smith, _Matter Matters: Metaphysics and Methodology in the Early Modern Period_

Philosophy

Smith, Kurt, Matter Matters: Metaphysics and Methodology in the Early Modern Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 299pp., ISBN 978-0-19-958365-2. Kurt Smith's intriguing new book covers a host of topics in Early Modern philosophy that will be familiar to scholars of this period, in particular, Descartes' method in the Meditations and other works, but Smith's approach and arguments will strike many as refreshingly innovative and, it must be admitted, fairly controversial. In the Preface, Smith states that his book "is about the methods of analysis and synthesis, and how they underwrote what can be called the 'mathematization' of early modern physics" (p.vii), but the main emphasis is on Descartes, and to a lesser extent, Leibniz, with two general themes interrelating the many separate issues covered in the work: first, to show how many modern mathematical concepts can be used to help elucidate Descartes and Leibniz' analytic and synthetic methods, and second, to argue that Descartes' system relies on the existence of matter to render mathematics intelligible (likewise for Leibniz). Part I, however, largely treats ancient philosophy, with the intention being to uncover "in what ways Plato's method of analysis looks to be connected to Aristotle's theory of classification" (p.11). Since later portions of the book consider both Plato and Aristotle's various influences on Descartes' approach, in addition to other ancient sources, these three early chapters set the stage for these further discussions. In the four chapters that comprise Part II, Descartes method of analysis is investigated from the perspective of several modern logical or mathematical concepts and techniques, e.g., enumeration, partitions, equivalence relations, etc., in an attempt to disclose the inner structure of Descartes' methodology. Part III, whose five chapters cover synthesis, chiefly investigates Leibniz within the framework of the concepts of combinatorics and group theory, although Descartes figures prominently in these discussions as well. Many of the main arguments put forward in the book are further developed and defended in the four chapters that constitute Part IV, alongside a critique of the work of several contemporary philosophers who have commented on Descartes' methodology (such as Nelson, Lennon, Nadler, Nolan, and Friedman, to name some of the more prominent ones). For many contemporary analytic philosophers, the utilization of the mathematicallogical vocabulary that was forged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (by the positivists, among others) is a fairly common means of investigating metaphysical issues. Hence, Smith's attempt to employ these conceptual resources in assessing seventeenth century philosophy can be viewed as justifiable, and it is often quite illuminating. (Indeed, this reviewer is clearly not averse to employing modern conceptual resources to investigate seventeenth century theories of physics, and so is supportive of Smith's effort.) Nevertheless, there is at times a sneaking suspicion in reading Smith's book that a sort of mathematical sledge hammer is being used to crack a very puny methodological nut, such that the reward of utilizing all of these sophisticated resources is somewhat meager. Take for example, Smith's treatment of enumeration in Descartes, which he briefly defines as "a categorizational scheme or structure . . . that explicitly shows how the various classes of simple natures are related to one another" (p.96). While Smith makes a good case that enumeration play an important role in the earlier Rules, he responds to the criticism that this procedure plays little role in Descartes' later work by 2 invoking three alleged instances of enumeration in the Meditations: first, there is the method of doubt, which partitions all beliefs into sensory or non-sensory beliefs; second, the classification of ideas according to how much objective reality they contain; and third, the categorizing of the possible causal sources from which the idea of body is derived (pp.110-112). Yet, even granting the adequacy of this enumeration-oriented analysis, isn't it true that all philosophers categorize and classify things (that often involve an infinite number of instances), and so isn't it fairly obvious that examples of enumeration will be located in the later Cartesian corpus as well? In fact, it might be much more difficult to locate a philosopher of any era, and not just the Early Modern period, who did not exploit something like an enumerative process at some juncture in her philosophical career! This last point ties into a general criticism of the strategy involved in this book. Smith's Introduction provides a nice overview of one of his major goals for Parts II and III: The equivalence relation (or common nature, as Descartes calls it) that serves to 'divide' (or sort) the objects of inquiry into the atomic categories (of the system) when performing analysis is nothing short of the binary operator we find at work in the synthetic system. Given that the latter system is a group, which is a mathematical system, and the system established by analysis is isomorphic to it, then the system established by analysis is a mathematical system. Thus, analysis and synthesis, understood as meeting the criteria of a group, are what conceptually account for the 'mathematization' of early modern physics. So, it is by way of these methods that seventeenth-century thinkers succeeded in producing a conceptual landscape that made possible a genuinely mathematical physics. (p.11) Yet, the transition from Smith's summary concerning analysis and synthesis to his conclusions about "physics" in the above passage appears a bit dubious. As mentioned above, much of the discussion of Descartes' methodology concerns his metaphysics, as does much in the sections on Leibniz, along with a number of other topics that should properly be considered within the scope of their work on logic or pure mathematics (e.g., determinants, logarithms, etc.). The important breakthroughs in Descartes and Leibniz' physics per se, such as the development of laws of nature and conservation principles, collision rules and the calculus, etc., are simply not the main issues addressed in Smith's book. (Physics does come up at various points, although often tangentially, and much less then one would have expected given the constant references to the importance of these conceptual developments for the rise of the new mathematical physics). Consequently, it might be more accurate to conclude, given Smith's work, that aspects of Descartes and Leibniz' approach to analysis and synthesis can be interpreted as involving conceptual resources that are similar (and sometimes identical) to the mathematical structures used by physicists in later centuries-but this admission is a far cry from claiming that these Rationalist analytic and synthetic methodologies "made possible a genuinely mathematical physics". Smith's claim is very contentious, to put it bluntly, and thus requires a vast amount of evidence and argumentation to demonstrate that the use of these mathematical ideas in later physical theories can be directly traced back to Descartes and Leibniz' analytic and synthetic methodologies (i.e., an awareness on the part of later 3 physicists that these particular Rationalist methodologies do indeed contain mathematical ideas that can be put to a very different use in their physics). Unfortunately, Smith just does not provide much evidence to establish this claim, other than citing various historians and philosophers of mathematics who cite these philosophers (especially Leibniz) as having anticipated, or had a rough understanding of, these later mathematical procedures (e.g., p.141). This is not to say that Descartes and Leibniz' methodological work, as spelled out in Smith's exegesis, did not contribute to these later mathematical breakthroughs in physics, it is just that the case is not really laid out in Smith's book. On the other hand, since Smith provides a number of informative and entertaining discussions of the conceptual tools that these Rationalists employed, and how they relate to later mathematical ideas, the overall value of Smith's work is certainly not diminished by his (possibly overreaching) claims about the influence of these Rationalist methodologies on the course of physics. In fact, many philosophers will likely find the wealth of historical data and side discussions that Smith offers (where he brings forth such luminaries as Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Russell, to name only a few) to be one the central strengths and major contribution of the book. So, the above criticism must be put in its proper context. On the other hand, there are a number of more crucial interpretive problems that involve the central thesis of Smith's book, namely, that matter is so essential for Descartes and Leibniz' systems that "in a world where there is no matter, there are no mathematical truths" (p.2). Smith also contends that the existence of matter "is sufficient for guaranteeing the intelligibility (or possibility) of mathematics", but, in what follows, we will focus on the stronger claim: "the existence of matter is taken to be necessary for the intelligibility of mathematics" (p.3). One of the first questions that can be asked here is what Smith means by "intelligible". Although it is never quite defined, it likely means the "possibility" of mathematics, as in the parenthetical remark above. Turning to the evidence for Smith's main thesis, there are two cases that figure prominently in his discussions. First, Descartes argues in the Principles that "for the continuous quantity ten feet, although this is unintelligible without some extended substance of which it is the quantity, it can be understood apart from this determinate substance" (CSM I 226; Philosophical Writings, vol.1, Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch, eds., Cambridge, 1984). In one of his comments on this passage, Smith asserts "that Descartes is committed to the inference that if were there no matter, mathematics (here mathematical entities like the magnitude ten feet and the number ten) would be unintelligible" (p.280). Yet, as the juxtaposition of Descartes and Smith's quotes clearly reveals, Smith's inference does not accord with Descartes' claim. It is the continuous quantity "ten feet" that cannot be understood apart from matter, and not the mathematical entity "ten feet" (or "ten"). The reasoning behind Descartes' assertion that the quantity "ten feet" is not intelligible without a substance is due to the fact that he regards extension as the principle attribute of corporeal substance (CSM I 210), and that "nothingness cannot possess any extension" (CSM I 231; i.e., an attribute must be the attribute of a substance, a point that Smith himself acknowledges, p.116). Hence, there are two sorts of "extension" that need to be kept apart in examining these passages: first, extension considered as a bodily property, and which Descartes conceives in a Scholastic manner according to the traditional substance/accident scheme (however modified by his reliance on "modes" of substance, etc.); and, second, extension considered as a 4 mathematical entity. In this second way of considering extension, Descartes also follows the Aristotelian/Scholastic tradition, since he rejects the independent existence of mathematical entities as existing on their own separate from corporeal or incorporeal substance-that is, Descartes rejects a Platonic, or Pythagorean, conception of mathematics, and posits a nominalist conception instead. This stance is also clearly expressed in the Principles: "number, when it is considered simply in the abstract or in general, and not in any created thing, is merely a mode of thinking; and the same applies to all other universals, as we call them" (CSM I 212). Accordingly, one of the main criticisms that can be leveled at Smith's main thesis is that he seems to conflate these two distinct senses of mathematics and extension (with "extension" equated here, as in Smith's book, with three-dimensional geometry): namely, mathematics/extension "considered simply in the abstract" (as a universal) or "in any created thing" (as an attribute of substance). In short, a valuable topic that is never mentioned in the book, but which needs to be examined given Smith's overall interpretation, is the nominalist/Platonist divide in mathematics, since it is this debate that directly concerns the status of mathematical entities and truths. Connected to these last comments, another issue that fails to receive the attention that it deserves in Smith's work is the status of the so-called "eternal truths", which include mathematical truths and are such that they "have been laid down by God and depend on him entirely no less than the rest of his creatures" and "are all inborn in our minds" (To Mersenne, 15 April 1630; CSMK III 23; Philosophical Writings, vol.3, Cottingham et al., eds., Cambridge, 1991). It is with respect to this continuing correspondence with Mersenne that Smith wields his second piece of evidence for the necessity of matter for the intelligibility of mathematics. In a letter dated 27 May 1638, Descartes states: You ask whether there would be space, as there is now, if God had created nothing. At first this question seems to be beyond the capacity of the human mind, like infinity, so that it would be unreasonable to discuss it; but in fact I think it is merely beyond the capacity of our imagination, like the question of the existence of God and the human soul. I believe that our intellect can reach the truth of the matter, which is, in my opinion, that not only would there not be any space, but even those truths which are called eternal-as that 'the whole is greater than the part'-would not be truths if God had not so established, as I think I wrote you once before. (CSMK III 102-103) As regards this passage, Smith asserts that Descartes "seems to be suggesting that God's not creating space (that is, Cartesian matter) entails God's not creating other items such as mathematical truths" (p.279-280, see also p.116). In furnishing this quote, however, Smith fails to attach the last few clauses, "if God had not so established, as I think I wrote you once before". This is important, for the earlier letters to Mersenne deal with eternal truths at great length (as hinted above in the letter from 15 April 1630). Indeed, in these earlier letters Descartes frequently asserts that the eternal truths are not independent of God: "As for the eternal truths, I say once more that they are true or possible only because God knows them as true or possible. They are not known as true by God in any way which would imply that they are true independent of him", and "[s]o we must not say that if God did not exist nevertheless these truths would be true" (To Mersenne, 6 5 May 1630; CSMK I 24). Hence, the context of the discussion in the letter from 27 May 1638 involves the hypothetical situation where God "created nothing", and the contention is that not only would space not exist, but none of the eternal truths would exist either "if God had not so established". Smith's reading of this passage is thus not supportable: Descartes is grouping space with the other eternal truths here (presumably as geometric truths), whereas it is rather awkward to translate his use of the term 'space' as specifically designating matter, as does Smith. Put differently (as suggested by a colleague), if we accept Smith's interpretation of this quote, then Descartes is claiming that even the nonmathematical eternal truths (such as "the whole is greater than the part") depend on the existence of matter, and that seems far-fetched (since the cited eternal truth must apply to incorporeal substance as well as the corporeal). Likewise, there are many other quotation that can be offered that would seem to undermine Smith's claim that matter is necessary for the intelligibility of mathematics. In the Fifth Meditation, he comments that "I find within me countless ideas of things which even though they may not exist anywhere outside me still cannot be called nothing", and "[w]hen, for example, I imagine a triangle, even if perhaps no such figure exists, or has ever existed, anywhere outside of my thought, there is still a determinate nature, or essence, or form of the triangle which is immutable and eternal, and not invented by me or dependent on my mind" (CSM II 44-45; Philosophical Writings, vol.2, Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch, eds., Cambridge, 1984). Concerning a similar quotation in the First Meditation (CSM II 14), Smith replies (p.117) that this may not be Descartes' actual position (that mathematics is intelligible apart from all matter) since the existence of the evil genius is still in play at this stage in the work. Yet, by the Fifth Meditation the evil genius has largely been vanquished; moreover, Descartes argues for our certain knowledge of the existence of God via analogies with our certain knowledge of mathematical truths-and, of course the corporeal world has not been proven at this point in the Meditations, either, contra Smith's main thesis. Finally, Smith offers the argument that mathematics requires matter because the divisibility required for mathematics can only be obtained from Descartes' divisible, corporeal substance, whereas his notion of thinking substance is indivisible (p.281). But, this once again seems to run together epistemological and ontological issues pertaining to mathematics (and substances). To follow up on some of these last points, what is interesting about Descartes' approach to mathematics is that, while he remains a nominalist about mathematical entities (as noted above), he holds a Platonist conception of the understanding or psychology of mathematical truths (for lack of a better term). That is, in true Platonist fashion, Descartes argues against Gassendi's abstractionist conception of geometry in the Fifth Set of Replies, contending instead that "we could not recognize the geometrical triangle from the diagram on the paper unless our mind already possessed the idea from some other source" (i.e., "the idea of the true triangle was already in us": CSM II 262). In other words, since Descartes accepts a nominalism about mathematical entities alongside a Platonism concerning the understanding of the eternal truths of mathematics, one can therefore possess and grasp those eternal truths even if they are only made manifest in corporeal substance, or fail to be instantiated at all. It should be noted, however, that this mixture of Platonism and Aristotelianism in Descartes' thought is discussed at times (e.g., pp.24-25), and Smith does explore a distinction between our intellectual grasp of mathematics and the mathematical nature of matter (a distinction he dubs "intelligible" 6 and "sensible" matter; e.g., p.237). Part of the reason for Smith's quest to bi-conditionally link the existence of matter to mathematics, it would seem, is to counter the skeptical worries that are addressed in Part IV, where, for instance, Michael Friedman's arguments are explored that severe the tie between intelligible and sensible matter for Descartes (pp.237-240). Smith offers a transcendental argument, modeled on Kant, in an effort to counter these types of interpretations (pp.267-278), but it must be admitted that this sort of strategy just does not seem supportable given the lack of textual evidence (or, at least, this reviewer remains skeptical). Turning to Leibniz, Smith reckons that matter is necessary for his mathematics as well, although he offers fewer specific arguments. One tentative suggestion is that, for Leibniz, "number and shape are not perfections, and so are not attributes of God", from which he infers that "in a world where God is the only thing, numbers and shapes are nowhere to be found" (p.282). Nonetheless, this is quite hard to reconcile with a number of passages, such as the following from the Discourse on Metaphysics: "the eternal truths of metaphysics and geometry . . . are rather the consequences of his [God's] understanding" (Philosophical Letters, Loemker, ed., Dordrecht, 1969, p.304). The main focus of Smith's attempt to link mathematics and matter in Leibniz involves the monads, however. In a nice summery, he contends that "if the monad is taken to be analogous to the Euclidean point, and God creates a multitude of monads . . . , and a relational nexus emerges necessarily among them, matter can be understood as arising from God's creating the multitude of monads" (p.282). How mathematics ties into this story is unclear, but there are substantial grounds for rejecting the assumption that extended matter necessarily arises from the monads (e.g., in the correspondence with Des Bosses, a materially unextended world with monads is indeed contemplated; Philosophical Essays, Ariew and Garber, eds., Hackett, 1989, p.206, although the unextended primary matter of the monads remains). On the whole, there are a number of interesting and informative discussions in the portions of the book dedicated to Leibniz, including a number of useful analogies regarding the monadic system: Smith hints at information theory, and puts the combinatoric component of Leibniz' theory to good use by suggesting many other contemporary analogies. On the debit side, Smith offers something like a group theoretic interpretation of the monads, tentatively comparing them to the points of a vector space, etc. (p. 178)-yet, Leibniz is clear that monads are not spatial ("there is no spatial or absolute nearness or distance among monads", Loemker, p. 607), so such analogies run a serious risk of imposing too much structure on Leibniz' conception (and these sorts of interpretations have been suggested by many previous commentators as well). In general, the above criticisms should not be taken as comprising a negative review of Smith's book. There is much that is valuable and noteworthy in this provocative work, and it will likely engender a reevaluation by scholars of many well trodden and seldom questioned aspects of Descartes and Leibniz' methodological systems. While this reviewer may have not been won over by various arguments put forward in the book, the journey that Smith leads his reader is well worth the time and investment, and will likely aid in drawing the attention of many Early Modern scholars to these important and fertile issues for further research. Edward Slowik Winona State University