Matter and Spirit (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

MATTER AND SPIRIT

JAMES BISSETT PRATT

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

122 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10011

ISBN: 978-1-4114-6283-0

PREFACE

The principal excuse for a new book on the eternal problem of matter and mind is just the fact that the problem is eternal. And not only is it eternal: it is so complex that there is no end of illuminating ways in which it may be presented. A further excuse, if it be needed, is to be found in the many new attitudes toward the question which contemporary thought has suggested. A fairly rapid survey of the various answers, old and new, which have been given to our question—a bird's eye view, so to speak, of this ancient problem in its modern setting—seems to be called for by the times in which we live. The need for such a review becomes more patent the moment one stops to consider the absolutely central place of the mind-body problem in metaphysical speculation, and the fundamental nature of metaphysics in knowledge and in life. If we knew just how mind affects body and how body affects mind we should have the clew to many a philosophical riddle, and a clew that would give us much-needed guidance not only in philosophy but in many a region of practical, moral, and religious activity and experience in which our generation is groping rather blindly and is longing very eagerly for more light.

If there be anything individual about this book it is, I suppose, its outspoken defense of Dualism. The time has come, as it seems to me, for those of us (and we are many) who refuse to be brow-beaten by the fantastic exaggerations of a dogmatic Naturalism and who are no longer to be fooled by the spiritual phraseology of a monistic Idealism which is really no less destructive to most of man's spiritual values and most of his dearest hopes than is Naturalism itself—it is time, I say, for those of us who cannot accept either of these most unempirical philosophies to come forward frankly with the opposing view and call ourselves dualists before our critics have the opportunity of branding us with that opprobrious title. For my part, at any rate, I am glad to accept the accusation and to be called, as a writer in a religious periodical recently called me, an avowed dualist and unashamed. Derogatory epithets seldom hurt if accepted willingly. Puritan and Unitarian have long since become at least respectable, and even Yankee has not proved fatal.

The material here presented is a somewhat amplified form of the Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectures which I delivered at the Yale Divinity School in April 1922. One of the additions to the original addresses—which is now the latter part of Lecture I—appeared, in modified form, in the Journal of Philosophy;¹ and to the editors of that periodical I am indebted for their kind permission to reprint it here. Most of all am I indebted to my kind hosts at New Haven—notably Professor Sneath, Professor Macintosh, and Dean Brown—for the stimulus and the encouragement which made the original lectures possible and which emboldened me to publish them in their present form.

Williamstown, Mass.,

July 1922.

CONTENTS

I. THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM AND THE MATERIALISTIC SOLUTION

II. PARALLELISM

III. THE DENIAL OF THE PROBLEM

IV. THE DIFFICULTIES OF INTERACTION

V. A DUALISM OF PROCESS

VI. THE CONSEQUENCES OF DUALISM IN MORALITY AND RELIGION

LECTURE I

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM AND THE MATERIALISTIC SOLUTION

It is a reproach commonly leveled against metaphysics that the problems it deals with are immeasurably remote from the life of man. To their remoteness from life is usually attributed both their apparent insolubility and their alleged lack of real importance. Plainly, therefore, the question of their importance and of the possibility of their solution would take on a very different aspect, even to the popular mind, if it could be shown that one of the most crucial and fundamental of all metaphysical problems is to be found not in the starry heavens nor in the distant æons of unimaginable time, but centering round a process that is going on within the psychophysical organism of each one of us at every moment of his waking life. That such is the actual situation is my firm belief,—a conviction that grows upon me with every year of further pondering. I refer, of course, to the processes found in sensation and voluntary activity. If we could understand what really happens when we see each other's faces, or when we lift our hands or speak each other's names, we should have the clue to many a mystery; and the point of view that we shall take upon the nature of these common events will determine for us the major portion of our metaphysics.

The crucial significance of the mind-body relation is no new discovery. Not only the ancient Greek philosophers, but thousands of years before them primitive men the world over made it the starting point of their thought and based upon their particular solution of this question nearly the whole of their philosophy of life and nature. But while they understood very well the decisive position of this problem they had little inkling of its real difficulty, nor did they even imagine the varied ways in which the mind-body relation is capable of being expressed. As a fact, since the days of the Greek philosophers some eight or nine different solutions have been offered, and as much of the best philosophic thought has busied itself with this problem for many centuries it seems unlikely that anything very radically new will be suggested in the future. In fact it can be shown in something like mathematical fashion that we have in our hands already all the possible solutions. For either body and mind are causally related or they are not. If for the present we leave on one side the denial of such relationship, the number of possible ways in which they may be related is obviously limited. I hasten to add that I mean the word "causally" as used above to be taken in sufficiently large fashion to include every kind of implication or influence; and that for our present purposes the word body, or matter, may be interpreted in either realistic or idealistic fashion. Whatever interpretation we put upon matter, idealists and realists alike will acknowledge that the words matter and mind have distinguishable meanings. With so much agreed upon, we can easily work out the chief ways in which the two may conceivably be related. If for the moment we omit detailed variations within the principal groups, there are four and only four of such possible relations. Firstly, mind and body may mutually influence each other. Secondly, body may alone be causally effective and mind merely a result. Thirdly, mind and body may flow on parallel with each other, each causally efficient within its own banks, so to speak, but neither ever affecting the other. Fourthly, mind alone may be efficient, and body merely a resultant or appearance of mind. Variations of detail may be suggested and have been suggested within most of these principal types of relationship; but plainly no other relationship of a general nature is thinkable. The diagram on page 9 will, I trust, make plainer the four types of theory and their principal subdivisions.

If, then, mind and body are causally related their relation must be one of the four kinds here suggested. And if, either by positive arguments in favor of one of these views, or negatively through the elimination of three of them, we can determine which of the four is true, we shall find not only that this particular problem is solved, but that we have a new and piercing light into many a hitherto obscure corner of our universe—a light which may dissipate not only some of our theoretical doubts but even some of our practical uncertainties.

The first of the four general views that I mentioned above, commonly referred to as the theory of Interaction, is naturally the first to present itself to the naive mind. It appears indeed to rest upon actually observed facts—in sensation we seem to find a physical process operating upon our consciousness, and in volition we feel ourselves, as psychical beings, operating upon the physical world. It is not strange, therefore, that Interaction should be the first theory of mind and body to be explicitly developed, both by the individual and by the race. Primitive man founded his animistic philosophy upon it; and both Socrates and Plato were convinced interactionists. They made a sharp distinction between body and soul, a distinction which they regarded as of the utmost importance; and it could easily be shown that most of their moral and religious teachings and much of their cosmic speculation would go to pieces if based on any other foundation than the interaction theory. It was an essential part of the larger Platonic dualism, and it formed the basis of Plato's firm conviction in the soul's immortality. The rise of Christianity brought additional strength to the doctrine, for the Christian Fathers regarded body and soul as distinct entities and in their mutual influence upon each other they found much of the cosmic struggle centering. It was not strange that with Christianity and Platonism uniting their forces in its support the doctrine of Interaction should have held the field almost without a rival for well over 1,500 years.

NOTE.—In each case the arrows in the upper line represent mind, those in the lower line matter or physical energy. The light arrows indicate a real entity, the heavy black an epiphenomenon, appearance, or aspect.

With the rise of modern natural science, however, new considerations and new motives appeared upon the scene which were destined to put Interaction upon the defensive and give its rivals an enormous advantage. A new conception of physical nature came over men's minds. Mathematical and mechanical laws were found to dominate regions of the universe where their presence had hardly been suspected. Everywhere quality came to be reduced to quantity, the indefinite to the measurable. Once the mechanistic explanation was thoroughly applied to the inorganic world the attempt to extend it to the realms of life and mind became inevitable. And this for two reasons. The world of living matter being made of the same elements as the inorganic world, and forming as it does so minute a portion of the whole of Nature, it seemed most improbable that the laws which hold everywhere else should be subject to exception in this little corner. And secondly it was seen that the extension of mechanical law to this last region would make the entire physical universe an open book to science, all of it at length being susceptible to the same sort of description, explanation, and prediction. The door to this last conquest of mechanistic science was, oddly enough, opened by the greatest interactionist of his century, René Descartes. For, though he maintained that body and mind were absolutely distinct in man, he taught that animals were merely automata, and that all their actions must be accounted for on mechanical principles only. It was but a step from this to the suggestion that in man also consciousness, though of course present, never interfered with the activities of the body and that all these might be explained by physical laws alone. Two further advances of Science, made in the 19th Century, added enormously to the strength of this naturalistic attack upon Interaction. These were the formulation of the law of the conservation of energy and the Darwinian doctrine of evolution. For if no energy can ever be created or destroyed, plainly mind cannot interfere with bodily processes; and since man is descended from the lower animals there is no reason why his actions should not be explicable by the same general law as theirs.

Thus it has come about that when the natural scientist approaches the mind-body problem he almost invariably rules out Interaction first of all, as being quite out of the question. This procedure he justifies by two general reasons. The first is the incompatibility, already referred to, of Interaction with the mechanical view of physical nature, and in particular with the law of the conservation of energy. The second reason is of a more philosophical sort—the difficulty, namely, that has been pointed out ever since the days of Descartes in seeing how two such diverse things as matter and mind could possibly affect each other. How indeed can one imagine an idea producing a motion in the matter of the brain? As easily, says Clifford, might we picture the two halves of a heavy train kept together by the feelings of amity between the stoker and the guard.

The naturalistic movement, having discredited Interaction, was bound to offer some theory of mind and body in its place. As a fact it offered two, each of which in turn possessed two or more variations, I refer to Materialism and Parallelism. Materialism in its origin was largely a psychological reaction from the extreme spiritualistic position of scholasticism. It has two sub-types although its adherents have not always recognized the fact nor distinguished them clearly enough in their own minds for us to be invariably certain which of the two types, in any given case, they are upholding. The first of these materialistic views maintains that consciousness is a form of brain activity;—that it is either some fine and subtle kind of matter, or (more commonly) some form of energy, either kinetic or potential. This type of Materialism had a considerable vogue in Büchner's day, but fortunately for your patience we need not dwell upon it, for it has been pretty generally discredited. To say that consciousness is a form of matter or of motion is to use words without meaning. The identification of consciousness and motion indeed can never be refuted; but only because he who does not see the absurdity of such a statement can never be made to see anything. Argument against