Can There Be Competing Monisms? Is There a Real Difference Between Materialism and Idealism?

The majority of metaphysical systems which one studies, from the pre-Socratics to the present day, can be lodged in one of two categories: dualism or monism. A dualist ontology posits two levels of reality, usually a material level and a mental level. The terminology will differ among various dualists.

Typical and even archetypal is the dualism of Descartes. The mind is composed of a mental substance, and the body is composed of a physical substance. The key feature, according to Descartes, of physical substance is that it is extended spatially. The key feature of mental substance is that it thinks, or at least that it can think.

Dualisms like this cartesian paradigm have both strengths and weaknesses, which are revealed as dualists debate with monists.

Monism asserts that there is only one level of reality. This simplified ontology, while in some ways unsatisfying, relieves its proponents of the task of explaining some type of interaction between two different types of substance.

Looking at monisms, scholars often distinguish between the materialists and the idealists. Materialists would be those who assert that a physical level of reality exists, and is indeed the only level of reality that exists. The materialists argue that there is no such thing as a mental substance. Most forms of materialism assert, among other things, that “humans are entirely physical beings,” in the words of Scott Calef.

Idealists, on the other hand, are monists who deny the reality or existence of a physical substance, and argue that only mental substances exist. As Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann write, the “ontological” or “metaphysical” form of idealism asserts that “something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality.”

One way to phrase it is this: the materialist asserts that only physical substances and objects exist; what seems to be a non-physical object, like a mind or a memory or an idea, has no real independent being. The idealist, by contrast, argues that there are no independently really existing physical substances or objects, and what seem to be objects, like rocks or rivers or trees, are merely ideas or constructs in our non-physical minds.

Over the centuries, a number of major philosophers have lined up on either side of this debate, and each has produced a unique and nuanced version of one side or the other.

Thus far is a more-or-less standard account of dualism and monism, and of the two types of monism.

The question now at hand is this: Is it possible or plausible to argue that the two monisms, idealism and materialism, are reducible to each other? Because each asserts that there is only one level of reality, only one type of substance, can it be that it makes no sense to label this one substance as either ‘material’ or ‘mental’?

Do the words ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ have usefulness only in the context of two types of substance? If there is only one type of substance, to label it as ‘non-physical’ or ‘physical’ might be senseless.

The materialist argues that the mind is the physical brain and its neurochemical and neuroelectrical processes; the materialist argues that there is no non-physical mental substance which composes the mind.

The idealist argues that the mind is composed only of a non-physical mental substance, and that there is no physical substance which composes the brain.

Aren't the two of them saying the same thing? Both of them agree that mind/brain dualism is wrong. Both are saying that the mind exists in one level of reality, composed of one type of substance, and that there is no other type of substance. One might appeal here to Leibniz and his identity of indiscernibles.

Assuming that dualism were ruled out altogether, and that either materialism or idealism must be an accurate description of reality, which experiment would one conduct to decide between the two? If monism is granted, then is there any detectable or verifiable difference between idealism or materialism? Or are all monisms essentially one?

What It Means to Be Human: Marc Benioff and Klaus Schwab Get It Wrong

Generations of students have been assigned to write essays on the topic, “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” The result has been a collection of some of the worst prose known, and raging headaches for the teachers and professors who had to read it. Yet, as bad as most attempted answers to this question are, the question perpetually poses itself. Texts of today and tomorrow address it, as do texts from 3,000 years ago, and from every era in between.

Although getting the right answer, or answers, to this question is somewhere between difficult and impossible, and therefore a task undertaken only by the wise and brave, or by the ignorant and foolish, it is perhaps somewhat easier to identify what the answer, or answers, are not — to discern which answers are wrong.

Yet this approach has the defect of leaving one in the position of being labeled as purely negative: the armchair critic.

So perhaps a moderate approach to this question would be to do a little of both: to rightly discover the weaknesses in proposed answers, and to point to possible components of correct answers, without claiming to have precisely, exhaustively, and finally identified the correct answer or answers.

As a point of departure, Marc Benioff asserts that human nature is malleable, mutable, and changeable. He writes that not only is human nature capable of being changed, but rather also that it is in fact being altered:

The convergence of digital technologies with breakthroughs in materials science and biology means that we are seeing the emergence of entirely new ways in which to live. In both subtle and explicit ways, technology is changing what it means to be human.

There are reasons to question Benioff’s proposition that human nature can be altered. First, he asserts that “technology” is changing human nature; yet technology is a product of human nature. Any technology which acts upon humans is merely an extension of humanity itself.

In some science-fiction scenario where robot overlords, or AI run amok, or genetic engineering influences human beings, that is merely humans shaping themselves. To have an effect on one’s self — as in, the entirety of humanity having an effect on itself — is substantially different than being changed or altered by some external force.

If humanity acts upon itself, it will not change human nature, but rather merely be a working out, an extension, of what humanity is.

Technology can and does change a great deal about the world, and this is easily seen. But to say that it changes human nature is a different matter.

Benioff’s concept is essentially structured in the passive voice: “what it means to be human” is being changed by technology. If human nature can be changed by technology, then technology is in some sense superior to, or higher than, or dominant over, human nature. Yet technology is a product of, an extension of, human nature, and is therefore less than, or at most equal to, human nature.

Thus understood, Marc Benioff is partly correct and partly wrong when he writes:

In the coming decades, the technologies driving the fourth industrial revolution will fundamentally transform the entire structure of the world economy, our communities and our human identities.

To say that technology will change the economy, communities, and human identity is, respectively, correct, debatable, and wrong.

“The world economy” consists of what people value, how that value is produced, how it changes over time, how trades and exchanges are made, how local variables influence global patterns of valuation and exchange, etc. — All of which points to the malleability of economies. Indeed, a reasonable argument could be made for the hypothesis that economies are by nature changing and not static.

“Communities” are collections of humans who interact with each other on a frequent enough and significant enough level to create a communal identity in addition to the identity of each individual who is part of that community. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the word ‘community’ has been abused and misused to the extent that it needs some clarification. For example, there is talk of the “African-American community” or the “Latino / Hispanic community” or other alleged communities. But to assert that every African-American is part of some community, or that every Latino / Hispanic is part of some community, is to assert that a university-educated African-American millionaire on Wall Street is in community with an impoverished African-American farmer in rural Arkansas and with a blue-collar African-American in inner-city Chicago. It is to assert that a Latino professor of physics at the University of Michigan is in community with a Hispanic shop owner who operates a small business in Los Angeles. This is a thorough misunderstanding of what community is: community is more than a statistical sharing of only one of hundreds of demographic variables.

Before deciding whether, how, or to which extent human communities are mutable, it must first be determined what community is: a usable definition for the word ‘community’ must be found.

Human identity, on the other hand, is clearly non-malleable. One either is, or is not, human; and if one is human, then a change in “our human identities” would entail that some individuals would cease to be human if they met the criteria for the old version of humanity but not for the new version, and that, likewise, other individuals who were previously not human would become human through this “transforming” of human identity. Benioff’s assertion leads inexorably to some conclusions which even he himself might not desire.

Klaus Schwab echoes Benioff’s proposition:

Of the many diverse and fascinating challenges we face today, the most intense and important is how to understand and shape the new technology revolution, which entails nothing less than a transformation of humankind.

After an examination of Benioff’s and Schwab’s assertions about human nature — those assertions amount largely to the assertion of pliability — the task remains to make positive postulations about human nature: hypothesizing without going “a bridge too far” and claiming to have made a final and ultimate definition of human nature.

Therefore, the following are to be understood as suggestions — as indications about a possible path to a definition of humanity — and not as an exhaustive declaration of “what it means to be human.”

First, humans are rational, knowing, deliberate agents. A debt to the general trend of Lockean thought is evident here. Humans are rational: the powers of reasoning and logic are universal among human beings, even if the development and degree of that characteristic varies from one individual to another — 7 + 5 = 12 is a universal human truth. Humans know: they possess knowledge and information. Humans deliberate: the application of rationality to knowledge is part of deliberation, but there is more to deliberation than that: a teleology — deliberation calculates about a goal, or a set of goals, and how to reach those goals, and how to understand the possible tradeoffs between multiple dearly-held goals. Humans are agents: after reasoning, knowing, and deliberating, humans act. Thus described, human nature is immutable, and has not changed in all of recorded history — whether that be reckoned as 6,000 years or 10,000 years or some other number. It is not possible, nor even conceivable, that it should change.

Second, human nature is essentially imperfect and broken. Rationally, humans are liable to error in their deliberations. Cognitively, humans are liable to misunderstanding and misremembering. Morally, humans are liable to wrongdoing, to evil, to sin. Collectively, this is understood as “fallenness” or weakness — or, in the broader sense, mortality.

Third, humans have passion. Love and hate, sadness and joy — emotions are essentially human, despite the occasional attribution and misattribution of such to animals, and humans are essentially emotional.

Fourth, humans are communal. Aristotle’s comment on this is frequently quoted and as frequently misunderstood. Humans are innately social. Wittgenstein went so far as to write that language’s ability to have meaning is based on humanity’s social nature. Admittedly, humans can live in isolation: Defoe’s novel shows this, as does Mary Shelley’s less-known novel, The Last Man. The ability of humans to survive alone does not contradict the thesis that humans are intrinsically social.

No claim is here made that the above four assertions together constitute a complete or comprehensive definition of humanity. Rather, they are at best hints toward a rough working draft of such a definition. It is, however, plausible that the four qualities listed above are inherent, immutable, and immalleable, and that therefore, despite a changing context, human nature does not change.

What’s the Speed Limit? And What Would Edmund Burke Say About It?

A resident in the United States will be familiar with the roads and streets in her or his neighborhood and beyond. An obvious feature of almost any thoroughfare is a speed limit, which is often, but not always, posted. Laws regulating the speed of cars is a common type of legislation; it is also an example of the principles which Edmund Burke sought to explain.

In many of the fifty states, there is a general principle which states that city streets have a speed limit of 25 miles per hour, and country roads have a limit of 55 miles per hour. These two clear and simple axioms would seem to generate a decision procedure for most, if not all, thoroughfares.

Yet, in practice, one will encounter posted speed limits of all kinds of arbitrary numbers — limits other than 25 or 55 MPH. One commonly sees posted limits in multiples of five — 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 MPH — and occasionally numbers like 8 or 12 MPH.

Sometimes speed limits in cities will exceed the usual 25 MPH, and countryside limits will sometimes be below the standard 55 MPH. Freeways will have limits of 70 or 75 MPH, and sometimes even higher numbers.

The thought of Edmund Burke is often best understood in the context of the French Revolution and his commentary on it.

The style of political ideology which energized the French Revolution would embrace the axiomatic system of 25 MPH for city streets and 55 MPH for country roads absolutely and simplistically. There would be no other speed limits considered. Every street in the nation would be either 25 or 55 MPH, and the choice between the two would be based upon whether the thoroughfare was urban or rural. No other variation would be allowed or even contemplated.

By contrast, Burke would survey the situation as it is, with not only posted limits of 25 MPH and 55 MPH, but also with posted limits of all kinds of other numbers, and he would consider whether there was some reason for all these different numbers. Burke would proceed on the assumption that there is a reason why things are the way they are. If a local town council chose to post a limit other than 25 or 55 MPH, then it would be prudent to inquire as to why and how the council arrived at the decision to post the number it did.

Here the reader may imagine all kinds of scenarios: some streets in the town have few residents and few intersecting streets, and so a limit of 30 MPH seemed safe; other streets have thick traffic, many residential structures and many intersecting roads along their paths, and so a limit of 20 MPH seemed wise. In the countryside, perhaps a particular road was winding and tended to accumulate ice in cold weather, and so a lower limit of 50 MPH seemed appropriate.

Burke might suggest that decades of experience informed legislations prescribing all manner of speed limits other than 25 and 55 MPH. He would not argue that such laws are sacrosanct and can never be questioned. On the contrary, he would encourage such questioning, and encourage the questioner to consider the answers carefully.

There is a reason why things are the way they are.

There are reasons why societies and cultures have arrived at the patterns which they have. It is possible to contemplate adjustments to convention, but it is wise to do so only after carefully weighing the generations of experience which have brought society to those conventions.

The apparent patchwork of varying speed limits may appear to be illogical and haphazard. A system which assigned every road and street to either 25 MPH or 55 MPH might seem more rational and axiomatic. But the patchwork system is the accreted wisdom of decades. Successive city councils will have encountered varying events and circumstances, and will have adjusted legislations accordingly.

It is impudent to arrive lately to the question and presume to impose a rationalized system upon a complex state of affairs.

Simplistic and absolute patterns, imposed arbitrarily in the name of being imposed rationally, lead more often to problems than to resolutions.

This is one of the major tenets of Burke’s thought.

Edmund Burke’s plea is for the would-be revolutionary to consider that the system which he desires to destroy is, while not perfect, still the accumulation and coalescence of decades and generations of experience — of people encountering a wide range of conditions and events, of people having already seen the results of a variety of responses to those conditions and events, and having learned the results and having chosen carefully from among them.

Complex systems are the result of a history of varying experiences — and of people having made varying decisions in response to those experiences — and a massive catalog of such experiences and the sundry responses to them constitutes a nuanced reality which in turn informs legislations. Burke does not argue for the permanence of societal standards, but rather he argues for a nuanced examination of the existing norms before any alteration is suggested — and such proposed alterations are better when they are slight and not radical.

Being and Existence: Passive or Active?

Those who analyze language as a way to investigate metaphysics have long wrestled with the verb ‘to be’ in various languages and various grammatical forms. Verbs like ‘see’ and ‘eat’ and ‘sing’ seem intuitively easy to define. The verb ‘be’ is intuitively understood in daily practice, and yet the definition of this verb and the referent of the word ‘being’ are debatable.

The reader will be aware that Martin Heidegger explored ‘being’ by contrasting two German words, Sein and Dasein. The former corresponds roughly to the English infinitive construction ‘to be’ and the latter is used in everyday speech to indicate ‘being there.’ Heidegger uses Dasein to refer to human existence: a human’s experience of being. He uses Sein to refer to being in general.

The detailed interpretation of Heidegger’s use of Sein, Dasein, ‘being,’ and ‘existence’ is a complicated and controversial discipline unto itself.

For the present discussion, it is worth noting that Sein and Dasein are active verbs, for which no passive form is possible. The same is true of the English verbs ‘be’ and ‘exist’ — these verbs all have active nominative subjects and no accusative direct objects. These verbs denote some type of agency.

There is another linguistic artifact which expresses being in a transitive way: the German construction es gibt. This structure is usually rendered into English as “there is” or “there are.” But the grammar of es gibt makes the being thing — the thing which is — into a direct object. The existing thing is being put into, and kept in, existence. There seems to be no clearly analogous construction in the English language. It is left as an exercise for the reader to survey English idioms, past and present, to see if there is some such analogous formulation.

Heidegger hints at this type of being — or this aspect of being — which lacks agency when he uses the word Geworfenheit. This word is often translated into English as ‘thrownness’ — human existence is beyond its own control: a human being finds himself thrown into a time and a place not of his own choosing. Not only is the spatial-temporal physical location not chosen, but also cultural and social contexts are not chosen.

The question at hand is this: to investigate the nature of Being by contrasting and comparing the grammatical nominative subject with the accusative direct object. There remains, of course, the question of whether it is a valid or sound method to use the grammar of natural language to explore metaphysical questions.

The reader will remember that Heidegger wrote that Die Sprache ist das Haus des Seins, but while that sentence is thought-provoking, it hardly serves to solve or explain these questions.

One might postulate a spectrum, at one end of which is Being as absolute agency: God said, “I am that I am,” a sentence which has kept philosophers, theologians, and Semitic philologists busy for 3,500 years. Being is in this sense an assertion and an action. Being as a choice and as an act of the will.

At the other end of the spectrum is Being as ultimate passivity: That which is — things which are — have been thrown into existence. A conscious, knowing, deliberate thing — a person, a human — finds himself thrown into existence. One simply is, and is at a time and place not of one’s choosing. Searching one’s memory, one finds that at some point in time, one started to be. One simply was. It was certainly not a volitional act. One did not choose to be, nor was one at first even conscious of being. Somehow, it gradually dawned upon one, that one was.

Perhaps one clue is to be found in this usage: that es gibt is often used of inanimate things, and more often used of unaware and non-sentient things. To be sure, this is not a universal rule, and exceptions will be found. But might one generalize that es gibt mainly describes unconscious objects?

On the other hand, Heidegger’s Geworfenheit describes the experience of beings which are aware, conscious, and sentient.

Questions about Being are so foundational and basic that they link automatically to other branches of philosophy and to the written works of many different philosophers. When one notices one’s awareness — whether it be the earliest childhood memories or simply awakening each day — one is suddenly confronted with a world which “is there” — eine Welt, die es gibt — Who put it there? Why is it there? Why is there something rather than nothing?

To be aware and to be conscious leads to experiencing this sense of “thrownness” and to ask, in the first person, Who threw me? Why did someone throw me? Who made me? What is this world into which I am suddenly and involuntarily thrown?

To fully explore Being, the reader will need, in addition to Sein and Dasein, a sense of es gibt.

Hermeneutics: What?

Students routinely encounter the word ‘hermeneutics’ with a sense of mystery. Articles in scholarly journals use the word on the assumption that the readers are already familiar with it, and introductory textbooks often fail to define it.

One edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica offers this explanation:

Exegesis is the actual interpretation of the sacred book, the bringing out of its meaning; hermeneutics is the study and establishment of the principles by which it is to be interpreted.

The mention of the ‘sacred book’ alludes to the origin of both hermeneutics and exegesis as spiritual disciplines. Examples of both are in the Talmud.

Both ‘exegesis’ and ‘hermeneutics’ are subject to varying usages, and can be in some circumstances nearly synonymous, having among their manifold referents sometimes overlapping semantic fields. Dorothee Kimmich writes:

Hermeneutik ist Reflexion, Systematisierung und Theorie einer bestimmten Konzeption von Textauslegung und Interpretation. Nicht gemeint ist damit eine spezielle Methode oder ein bestimmter Komplex von Formen und Regeln. Die Hermeneutik hat eine lange Tradition. Je radikaler man das Verstehen von Texten selbst als ein historisches Phänomen ansah, desto umfassender wurde das hermeneutische Problem. So entwickelte sich im Umgang mit den je verschiedenen Texten, die im Laufe der Zeit zum Gegenstand hermeneutischen Interpretierens wurden, eine Vielzahl von Fragestellungen, Praktiken und Zielen. Eine Erläuterung des Begriffs Hermeneutik fordert also nicht nur eine systematische, sondern immer zugleich auch eine historische Darstellung.

As noted, ‘hermeneutics’ and ‘exegesis’ have varying definitions. Among the common and preferable usages, ‘hermeneutics’ has broader and higher scope. Hermeneutics operates at a metalevel. If ‘exegesis’ routinely refers to the interpretation of a particular text and the methods used to extract meaning from this text, then ‘hermeneutics’ is the discussion and examination of the general process of interpreting texts and extracting meaning from them.

Hermeneutics might examine exegetical results, or compare exegetical methods.

If the exegete is analyzing the text and obtaining meaning from it, the hermeneutician is watching the exegete and analyzing his method of extracting meaning from the text. Dorothee Kimmich continues:

Hermeneutik beschäftigt sich mit den Fragen der „richtigen“, d.h. angemessenen, kohärenten, kompetenten, sinnvollen und nützlichen Auslegung schriftlicher Texte. In den meisten Fällen handelt es sich dabei entweder um normative, sakrale und kanonische Texte – so v.a. in der Spätantike und im Mittelalter – oder – und das gilt für antike und insbesondere für die moderne Hermeneutik – um poetische Texte. „Modern“ wird die Hermeneutik genannt, die versucht, Einzeldisziplinen, wie z.B. die juristische, die theologische und die altphilologische Hermeneutik unter abstrakten und umfassenderen Kategorien zu einer Grundlagendisziplin zusammenzufassen und sich zudem bemüht, den hermeneutischen Gestus als allgemeinen, existentiellen Zugang zur Welt zu qualifizieren. Schleiermacher gilt als Initiator solcher Bemühungen, Nietzsche formuliert das Programm am radikalsten, durch Heidegger erfährt es seine ontologische Wende und Gadamer ist einer der einflussreichsten Vertreter dieser Tradition im 20. Jahrhundert.

Hermeneutics can be, and often is, a valuative activity: it will judge the exegetical methods.

The big question is: by which criteria does one evaluate an exegetical methodology?

Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

The distinction between hermeneutics and exegesis is between theory and practice, hermeneutics being the definition of the principles according to which the Bible is to be interpreted and exegesis being the application of those principles; historically and practically, of course, hermeneutics and exegesis are inseparable.

As noted above, the origin of both exegesis and hermeneutics is in the study of sacred text. While their most focused and thorough application remains in biblical context, literary studies have borrowed these methods and techniques and used them to study the works of a wide range of authors, from Trakl to Hölderlin, from Ernst Stadler to Gerrit Engelke.