Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
February 25, 2017 at 2:42 am
(This post was last modified: February 25, 2017 at 3:35 am by Mudhammam.)
If you ask the average person, “What is a table?” you are likely to confront a fair amount of bewilderment. They might reply with, “Do you want me to give a precise definition of the term ‘table’? It is a piece of furniture that has a flat surface and is supported by--” As a philosopher, you will quickly inform them that this is not the kind of answer you seek. To clarify matters, you might point to a specific object that resembles what is commonly accepted to be a table, and once again ask, “What is it? Don’t simply tell me that it appears to you to have this or that feature. Tell me the stuff that it is made of.” Perhaps this time your interlocutor will respond with a statement involving matter and the simpler constituents that the table is thought to be comprised of, such as molecules, atoms, electrons, etc. This reply is more to the point, but is unlikely to be found satisfactory -- unless you identify as a materialist.
In the following essay I will survey the question “What is a table?” from three philosophical perspectives, along with some of the problems that accompany each point of view: First, I shall examine Cartesian dualism as put forth by René Descartes and embraced by thinkers such as John Locke, along with the majority of people who perceive the world through some version of Christianity or Islam. From there I will take a look at idealism and the various forms inspired by the philosophers George Berkeley and Immanuel Kant. Finally, I will consider materialism, embraced by the likes of Thomas Hobbes and the lesser known Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and even most scientists today. So, then,
What is a table?
On Cartesian dualism, a table is an extended body, composite in nature, that exists independently of the mind, or thinking substance -- the latter of which may interact with extended things so as to act (in virtue of a will) or be acted upon according to some causal relation. The dualist argues that a body, e.g., a particular table, extended and therefore composite, must be wholly distinct from those objects thought to be simple: souls or minds. Even non-dualists commonly agree that consciousness seems essentially qualitative while the functions associated with it quantitative. It is easy to understand the notion of drawing a line on a piece of paper and halving it multiple times over, but it is difficult to make sense of the proposition that conscious experience or a thought itself (as opposed to the object of the thought) could be divided. Split-brain patients still claim to exhibit a unity of consciousness insofar as their subjective experience is concerned. Further, the dualist will note that an experience of the table, and all experiences for that matter, involves an impression or idea, which suggests a problem: how can one know that the table is not merely an impression or idea? How can we be confident that experience represents a body that is external to the mind? Does a body “out there” affect our perceptions “in here,” giving rise to notions like magnitude and divisibility, none of which, the dualist has insisted, can be predicated on truly simple substances? Thus, if there is a table that lies “outside” of the mind, then there must be no less than two fundamental substances (whether we conceive these as infinite or finite) that are capable of receiving the various predicates attributed to mind and body, and which seem to stand in dialectical opposition.
I have suggested two central problems that confront the dualist, one ontological and the other epistemological. First, if the table is a bodily substance that shares no common feature with thinking substances, then how can a thought or impression be affected by it and vice versa? (We can subsume what is generally known as the “hard problem of consciousness” in our dilemma here). If we are to intelligibly conceive how it is that a thought or intention “maps” onto a body, allowing one or the other to be caused or moved via thought or its inverse, then it must involve an interaction of some sort, namely, a cause and effect. But such a cause would necessarily be of a sort that is compatible with body and mind, and then we must ask why that not be designated a substance that is more fundamental than either. Thus, we would arrive at a substance monism. We might further inquire if the interaction should occur in some “place,” or how it becomes nonspatial (assuming this is true of thoughts and intentions). Leibniz famously tried to mitigate this “interaction problem” through his “principle of universal harmony.” It invokes intrigue but little conviction.
The epistemological problem, which I mentioned previously, is not exclusive to Cartesian dualism. To state it another way, if I am a thinking substance that exists wholly independently of other substances, such as those which are bodily (e.g., our table), how do I know that I am not the only substance and that everything of which I believe myself to be conscious is no more than mere dreams and delusions? Descartes believed that the ontological argument for God’s existence could provide the solution; if God can be known by thinking substances to be absolutely perfect, then we (I?) can be assured that God could have no just or beneficent grounds for deceiving us all of the time, or even most of the time (that we are sometimes deceived can be conceded but naturally this is to be blamed on our hastiness in judgment). It seems like objects are really outside of our minds and that history isn’t a figment of an overactive imagination. And since God exists and cannot (nor would not!) totally deceive us, we can be confident that reality does consist of other objects, including minds. What Descartes did not seem to consider is that an all-good God could have justification to deceive us, albeit in everything besides the one truth that Descartes was able to establish with apodeictic certainty, that my experiences are real even if I am mistaken in what I believe them to represent, i.e. an external, material world. Is that great achievement, that there is one thing the elusive “I” cannot doubt, alone enough to justify substance or Cartesian dualism? Or is the interaction problem too much to overcome? Finally, then, to return to our first question: what is a table on this viewpoint? It is an object that, at bottom, consists of bodily substance, i.e. matter and all of its predicates (“observed” either directly or indirectly, from the quantum world to our everyday perceptions); known through ever-changing qualities that affect the senses, and hence, our thought (the Cogito), even if how this interaction occurs -- between matter and ideas (or impressions) -- is in principle unknowable.
Idealism, as formulated by Berkeley and Kant, may answer the question, “What is a table?” in one of the two following ways: Berkeley, borrowing from the empirical thesis of John Locke (himself, we noted, a follower of Descartes’ dualism) but applying the same reasonings to primary qualities that hitherto had been only considered relevant to secondary qualities, would deny that there is a bodily or material substratum underlying the perceived existence of the table, or any so-called “external object.” Berkeleian idealism has the advantage that the major ontological issue plaguing dualism is resolved if materialism is wholly eliminated from the “furniture of the universe” and all is made to be mental substance. Moreover, Berkeley argues that the very idea of an object that exists unconceived is literally inconceivable, and hence, a contradiction in terms; to reflect upon the nature of the table as a thing-in-itself, independent of a perceiving subject, first requires that the one who is reflecting be a subject, of which the consequence is that no point of reference can be established beyond his or her own perceptions of the table. It is impossible to make contact with anything outside of one’s own mind. So, what about the epistemological dilemma, namely, the solipsism for which Descartes required a Deity who could not justly deceive his subjects all of the time? Berkeley makes a similar move, and invokes an infinite perceiver to secure the appearance of regularity that seems to account for our experiences of reality as a coherent whole. God is necessary to insure the continued existence of objects when no perceiving creatures are present and to explain the fact that objects are often found to be in the same conditions in which we left them. Some might consider this ad hoc appeal to a Divine Mind, wherein all objects (including our table) are ideas -- in essence no different than those encountered in dreams except that the latter are our private ideas, whereas the world as it is perceived by us consists of God’s ideas -- to be a bit more extravagant than an appeal to a “material substratum.”
Kant was among those who rejected what he called the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley. One of his criticisms was that “for Berkeley experience could have no criteria of truth, because its appearances (according to him) had nothing underlying them a priori.” Berkeley’s empiricism, through which he doubted the possibility of matter, and hence, an objective reality that exists independently of a Mind, rather than demand the existence of God as a theoretical posit, could really only serve to weaken such a claim. As we saw, Descartes invoked God as a means by which certain knowledge could be secured, following a long tradition of rationalists who attempted to establish truth on similar epistemological grounds; he could at least attempt to offer an a priori justification for the statements that a benevolent God exists, and also, by extension, an objective world. But if all knowledge is derived from experience as Berkeley insisted (“esse est percipi”), which, as previously suggested, can never furnish us with the concept of “an object that exists unconceived,” then clearly we are in no better position to call the objects of our experience “divine ideas” rather than “material substratum,” unless we are more readily able to conceive an “infinite consciousness, or God,” as an object of thought than we are “matter.” Further, all that I experience -- whether matter or divine thought -- is exclusively mine. As far as empiricism is concerned, to say more than simply, “It belongs to me,” is to step beyond my own experience and predicate all knowledge upon a rational basis, the very move that he denies the materialist. To suggest that the properties of objects also subsist in the perceptions of other beings, finite or infinite, is a clear violation of the empiricism upon which Berkeley’s entire system rests. Kant also points out that an inner intuition (for example, that one is a “thinking thing”) is only made possible through a contrast with outer intuition, that is, of external objects. To answer the question, “What is a table?” on Kant’s scheme, we must briefly discuss his transcendental idealism.
To begin, Kant made a subtle distinction between reality and appearance which allowed him to establish the validity of synthetic a priori judgments; in turn, he was able to condition all perception upon things-in-themselves, the objects that Berkeley would not admit as “material substratum.” The nature of these mysterious entities which fill Kant’s noumenal realm can only be known through the phenomenonal, or, experience -- always mediated by the “unity of apperception,” i.e the conscious mind, and the categories of the understanding that necessarily accompany our intuitions of time (inner) and space (outer). The Kantian answers our foremost query by agreeing with Descartes that establishing the external reality of our table is a problem, but not one that is insurmountable. The rules or logical functions of the mind through which experience is made possible provides an a priori ground for asserting the table’s objective existence. To this extent his transcendental idealism is a refutation of Berkeleian idealism. However, Kant nearly agrees with Berkeley that the objects we perceive are nothing but appearance (in fact, he goes further and accuses Berkeley of rendering all objects illusory), by which he only means that they are not mind-independent insofar as they appear in our experiences; yet he argues that simply because we do not perceive the objects in their naked entirety does not mean that all of reality is necessarily mind-dependent and has no existence in-of-itself. For Kant, the properties of a table as a thing-in-itself might not resemble those which are encountered in our perceptions of a table, but unlike Berkeley, he does not therefore conclude that perception is required for a thing-in-itself to exist; this is only true of the representation of a table, the boundary that halts our senses and cognitions from meaningfully proceeding further -- apart from a “critique of pure reason” and the postulates ostensibly extracted therefrom, which at most are but speculative or practical.
By taking two separate standpoints, Kant believed that he could resolve what he called the “antinomies of pure reason,” finally settling the disputes that time and time again have arisen between the champions of reason and experience. If we consider the epistemological problems of “body-mind interaction” that Descartes’ rationalistic approach could not resolve, or the solipsism that Berkeley’s empirical method seemed unable to avoid, transcendental idealism offers a fine solution. But the metaphysical ambiguities of that solution are less attractive. Is Kant’s idealism dualistic, given that all phenomenal experience must consist of matter and form, the latter of which produces speculative and practical “Ideas” (essentially Platonic), necessary for said experience though, as things-in-themselves, unknowable? Or is it monistic, and all that appears is of the the same fundamental substance as those objects identified as purely noumenal, made singular in the “unity of apperception” of beings that are both rational and sensitive? Or is the advancement of a noumenal reality wholly superfluous? To conclude, according to Kant, we must remain agnostic regarding the “stuff” of our table -- as a thing-in-itself -- but may still investigate its objective existence to the extent that it subjectively appears to creatures such as ourselves.
Our final examination of the question “What is a table?” implores the doctrines of materialism, specifically with reference to Thomas Hobbes and Julien Offray de La Mettrie. The materialist is in a similar position to the idealist or immaterialist but on the opposite end of the spectrum. Both find Cartesian dualism unsatisfactory; La Mettrie, for example, noted that they had “made the same mistake” as the “Leibnizians” in that they “spiritualized matter" instead of "materializing the soul. How can we define a being whose nature is absolutely unknown to us?” Perhaps the reader is struck by the observation that each school has charged the other with paradoxes that are bound to conclude in futility: Cartesian dualism’s interaction problem is avoided by the monist systems of idealism and materialism, but neither of these (so they argue against the other) are any more capable of defining fundamental substance or what it is in which objective reality consists. Hobbes wrote that “if a man should talk to me of a round quadrangle; or accidents of bread in cheese; or, immaterial substance… I should not say he were in an error, but that his words were without meaning; that is to say, absurd.” How can an object, such as a table, be known as a thing that is fundamentally material, what might be the properties of matter, and more importantly, how can the soul be “materialized”?
To consider that last question, the metaphysics of materialism has in one sense a relatively easy time resolving how it is that the external world can be known, for it is all that we experience in our waking life when our senses are operating under normal conditions. The harder problem is what to make of the mind, which both dualists and idealists not unreasonably view as pivotal for experience. Some materialists wish to define mind as indistinguishable from matter, seeking a material explanation for the qualitative nature of our private experiences and insisting that the qualitative aspect, while it may be described in ideal terms, is nothing more than the sum of the parts that comprise a functioning brain, as yet dimly understood by neuroscience. Other materialists may grant property dualism, agreeing with their opponents that the mind consists of something which cannot be reduced to the physical parts of the brain, but denying that it has a distinct existence from the underlying material processes that make all thought possible. La Mettrie observed the fact that “the soul and the body fall asleep together… [the body's muscles] can no longer hold up the weight of their head, while the soul can no longer bear the burden of thought.” One hundred years earlier, Hobbes stated that “there is no conception in a man’s mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.”
The materialist seems to be freed from the thorny epistemological issues that led to the “solipsism-sans-God” verdict which plagued both Descartes’ and Berkeley’s theories of reality, but the subject-object quandary that fueled Kant’s agnosticism (with regards to objects as things-in-themselves) seems to remain intact. The claim that the mind which perceives the table is in essence no different than the table which it perceives is perhaps less liable to the criticisms that might be hurled against the statement that everything, including ideas, are au fond material. But whether one takes an eliminativist approach, or assents to property dualism (which itself struggles to deal with the interaction problem as it relates to how it is that consciousness emerges, and moreover, what it contributes to survival), this would appear to be the conclusion that a materialist must reach. Like the popular North American Whac-A-Mole game, on materialism the epistemological and ontological problems of the alternative perspectives, if cleared up at all, only resurface in different guise. Additional questions like, “Does the materialist grant a priori knowledge if all thoughts are ‘materialized’? or is all reasoning at best only probable and all truth provisional?" persist. "What even remains of (abstract) truth? Universal values?” Thus, “What is a table” on materialism is just what I suggested at the outset of this examination -- “the simpler constituents that the table is thought to be comprised of, such as molecules, atoms, electrons, etc.” -- ironically, a collection of theoretical entities which apparently share a material nature, though one never directly comes into contact with this “substratum” -- a feature that will always lend credit to Berkeley’s incisive derision. “What is it that experiences the table?” is a more difficult question to answer on materialism.
In conclusion, it looks to me as though each theory of reality, while making useful contributions to our inquiry, either fails to give a fully satisfactory account of experience by floundering in empty concepts (in spite of so many fine words!), or collapses inward upon itself due to the weight of inconsistencies. I would personally answer the question “What is a table?” in the following manner: First and foremost, it is my contention that “mind-body” is a false dichotomy, though the subject-object distinction is not. Given the arguments I suggested in the discussion of dualism, I would postulate a neutral monism: there is one fundamental substance rather than two, and from this simple unknown substance, which has a specific nature, everything that has ever existed or will exist is produced. This includes minds, which perceive according to the mode in which our hominid brains have evolved; I suspect that mind and matter are very much different attributes of substance (maybe but two of an infinite number, which would require a shift from property dualism to a radical pluralism) though inextricably interdependent. That is, the conditions of matter depend upon mind in ways that are completely disparate though equally necessary (for experience) to those others in which mind is contingent upon matter. Perhaps we even experience "time" and "space" in ways that aren't really fundamental to whatever can be said about the “true” nature of this Something. I find that Spinoza is commonly interpreted to have advocated for a similar philosophy in his Ethics, though I would drop the pretensions to pantheism; he used "God" and "Nature" interchangeably. Granted those were different times, it is not appropriate to use them as such now. In terms of epistemology, as I cannot but help see the object-subject distinction as valid, the question inevitably arises of how it is that we can have any knowledge of the objective world, and whether all comprehension is merely probable or based in real absolute truths, fixed in what may be called the rational or intelligible "structure" of objective reality. On this front, I am inclined to side with the rationalists, and see no deep issue with taking a Platonic or idealist view of truth, values, numbers, etc., without invoking an infinite perceiver or Deity. This lands me closer to Kant’s belief in noumenal reality. Like him, I am forced to admit my agnosticism about what “ultimate substance” could possibly be as a thing-in-itself. Nonetheless, I remain unsettled by the multiplication of entities such as “matter,” “minds,” and these so-called “truths” about them supposedly lingering around, just waiting to be discovered. I accept the reality of the table, but what it is outside of my experiences, I cannot tell. If it is I to whom it be said, “Don’t simply tell me that it appears to you to have this or that feature. Tell me the stuff that it is made of,” I shall be pressed to reply in a sheepish voice those words that Socrates proudly recited at his trial: “In this small extent I am wiser: that what I do not know, in no way I think I know.”
In the following essay I will survey the question “What is a table?” from three philosophical perspectives, along with some of the problems that accompany each point of view: First, I shall examine Cartesian dualism as put forth by René Descartes and embraced by thinkers such as John Locke, along with the majority of people who perceive the world through some version of Christianity or Islam. From there I will take a look at idealism and the various forms inspired by the philosophers George Berkeley and Immanuel Kant. Finally, I will consider materialism, embraced by the likes of Thomas Hobbes and the lesser known Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and even most scientists today. So, then,
What is a table?
On Cartesian dualism, a table is an extended body, composite in nature, that exists independently of the mind, or thinking substance -- the latter of which may interact with extended things so as to act (in virtue of a will) or be acted upon according to some causal relation. The dualist argues that a body, e.g., a particular table, extended and therefore composite, must be wholly distinct from those objects thought to be simple: souls or minds. Even non-dualists commonly agree that consciousness seems essentially qualitative while the functions associated with it quantitative. It is easy to understand the notion of drawing a line on a piece of paper and halving it multiple times over, but it is difficult to make sense of the proposition that conscious experience or a thought itself (as opposed to the object of the thought) could be divided. Split-brain patients still claim to exhibit a unity of consciousness insofar as their subjective experience is concerned. Further, the dualist will note that an experience of the table, and all experiences for that matter, involves an impression or idea, which suggests a problem: how can one know that the table is not merely an impression or idea? How can we be confident that experience represents a body that is external to the mind? Does a body “out there” affect our perceptions “in here,” giving rise to notions like magnitude and divisibility, none of which, the dualist has insisted, can be predicated on truly simple substances? Thus, if there is a table that lies “outside” of the mind, then there must be no less than two fundamental substances (whether we conceive these as infinite or finite) that are capable of receiving the various predicates attributed to mind and body, and which seem to stand in dialectical opposition.
I have suggested two central problems that confront the dualist, one ontological and the other epistemological. First, if the table is a bodily substance that shares no common feature with thinking substances, then how can a thought or impression be affected by it and vice versa? (We can subsume what is generally known as the “hard problem of consciousness” in our dilemma here). If we are to intelligibly conceive how it is that a thought or intention “maps” onto a body, allowing one or the other to be caused or moved via thought or its inverse, then it must involve an interaction of some sort, namely, a cause and effect. But such a cause would necessarily be of a sort that is compatible with body and mind, and then we must ask why that not be designated a substance that is more fundamental than either. Thus, we would arrive at a substance monism. We might further inquire if the interaction should occur in some “place,” or how it becomes nonspatial (assuming this is true of thoughts and intentions). Leibniz famously tried to mitigate this “interaction problem” through his “principle of universal harmony.” It invokes intrigue but little conviction.
The epistemological problem, which I mentioned previously, is not exclusive to Cartesian dualism. To state it another way, if I am a thinking substance that exists wholly independently of other substances, such as those which are bodily (e.g., our table), how do I know that I am not the only substance and that everything of which I believe myself to be conscious is no more than mere dreams and delusions? Descartes believed that the ontological argument for God’s existence could provide the solution; if God can be known by thinking substances to be absolutely perfect, then we (I?) can be assured that God could have no just or beneficent grounds for deceiving us all of the time, or even most of the time (that we are sometimes deceived can be conceded but naturally this is to be blamed on our hastiness in judgment). It seems like objects are really outside of our minds and that history isn’t a figment of an overactive imagination. And since God exists and cannot (nor would not!) totally deceive us, we can be confident that reality does consist of other objects, including minds. What Descartes did not seem to consider is that an all-good God could have justification to deceive us, albeit in everything besides the one truth that Descartes was able to establish with apodeictic certainty, that my experiences are real even if I am mistaken in what I believe them to represent, i.e. an external, material world. Is that great achievement, that there is one thing the elusive “I” cannot doubt, alone enough to justify substance or Cartesian dualism? Or is the interaction problem too much to overcome? Finally, then, to return to our first question: what is a table on this viewpoint? It is an object that, at bottom, consists of bodily substance, i.e. matter and all of its predicates (“observed” either directly or indirectly, from the quantum world to our everyday perceptions); known through ever-changing qualities that affect the senses, and hence, our thought (the Cogito), even if how this interaction occurs -- between matter and ideas (or impressions) -- is in principle unknowable.
Idealism, as formulated by Berkeley and Kant, may answer the question, “What is a table?” in one of the two following ways: Berkeley, borrowing from the empirical thesis of John Locke (himself, we noted, a follower of Descartes’ dualism) but applying the same reasonings to primary qualities that hitherto had been only considered relevant to secondary qualities, would deny that there is a bodily or material substratum underlying the perceived existence of the table, or any so-called “external object.” Berkeleian idealism has the advantage that the major ontological issue plaguing dualism is resolved if materialism is wholly eliminated from the “furniture of the universe” and all is made to be mental substance. Moreover, Berkeley argues that the very idea of an object that exists unconceived is literally inconceivable, and hence, a contradiction in terms; to reflect upon the nature of the table as a thing-in-itself, independent of a perceiving subject, first requires that the one who is reflecting be a subject, of which the consequence is that no point of reference can be established beyond his or her own perceptions of the table. It is impossible to make contact with anything outside of one’s own mind. So, what about the epistemological dilemma, namely, the solipsism for which Descartes required a Deity who could not justly deceive his subjects all of the time? Berkeley makes a similar move, and invokes an infinite perceiver to secure the appearance of regularity that seems to account for our experiences of reality as a coherent whole. God is necessary to insure the continued existence of objects when no perceiving creatures are present and to explain the fact that objects are often found to be in the same conditions in which we left them. Some might consider this ad hoc appeal to a Divine Mind, wherein all objects (including our table) are ideas -- in essence no different than those encountered in dreams except that the latter are our private ideas, whereas the world as it is perceived by us consists of God’s ideas -- to be a bit more extravagant than an appeal to a “material substratum.”
Kant was among those who rejected what he called the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley. One of his criticisms was that “for Berkeley experience could have no criteria of truth, because its appearances (according to him) had nothing underlying them a priori.” Berkeley’s empiricism, through which he doubted the possibility of matter, and hence, an objective reality that exists independently of a Mind, rather than demand the existence of God as a theoretical posit, could really only serve to weaken such a claim. As we saw, Descartes invoked God as a means by which certain knowledge could be secured, following a long tradition of rationalists who attempted to establish truth on similar epistemological grounds; he could at least attempt to offer an a priori justification for the statements that a benevolent God exists, and also, by extension, an objective world. But if all knowledge is derived from experience as Berkeley insisted (“esse est percipi”), which, as previously suggested, can never furnish us with the concept of “an object that exists unconceived,” then clearly we are in no better position to call the objects of our experience “divine ideas” rather than “material substratum,” unless we are more readily able to conceive an “infinite consciousness, or God,” as an object of thought than we are “matter.” Further, all that I experience -- whether matter or divine thought -- is exclusively mine. As far as empiricism is concerned, to say more than simply, “It belongs to me,” is to step beyond my own experience and predicate all knowledge upon a rational basis, the very move that he denies the materialist. To suggest that the properties of objects also subsist in the perceptions of other beings, finite or infinite, is a clear violation of the empiricism upon which Berkeley’s entire system rests. Kant also points out that an inner intuition (for example, that one is a “thinking thing”) is only made possible through a contrast with outer intuition, that is, of external objects. To answer the question, “What is a table?” on Kant’s scheme, we must briefly discuss his transcendental idealism.
To begin, Kant made a subtle distinction between reality and appearance which allowed him to establish the validity of synthetic a priori judgments; in turn, he was able to condition all perception upon things-in-themselves, the objects that Berkeley would not admit as “material substratum.” The nature of these mysterious entities which fill Kant’s noumenal realm can only be known through the phenomenonal, or, experience -- always mediated by the “unity of apperception,” i.e the conscious mind, and the categories of the understanding that necessarily accompany our intuitions of time (inner) and space (outer). The Kantian answers our foremost query by agreeing with Descartes that establishing the external reality of our table is a problem, but not one that is insurmountable. The rules or logical functions of the mind through which experience is made possible provides an a priori ground for asserting the table’s objective existence. To this extent his transcendental idealism is a refutation of Berkeleian idealism. However, Kant nearly agrees with Berkeley that the objects we perceive are nothing but appearance (in fact, he goes further and accuses Berkeley of rendering all objects illusory), by which he only means that they are not mind-independent insofar as they appear in our experiences; yet he argues that simply because we do not perceive the objects in their naked entirety does not mean that all of reality is necessarily mind-dependent and has no existence in-of-itself. For Kant, the properties of a table as a thing-in-itself might not resemble those which are encountered in our perceptions of a table, but unlike Berkeley, he does not therefore conclude that perception is required for a thing-in-itself to exist; this is only true of the representation of a table, the boundary that halts our senses and cognitions from meaningfully proceeding further -- apart from a “critique of pure reason” and the postulates ostensibly extracted therefrom, which at most are but speculative or practical.
By taking two separate standpoints, Kant believed that he could resolve what he called the “antinomies of pure reason,” finally settling the disputes that time and time again have arisen between the champions of reason and experience. If we consider the epistemological problems of “body-mind interaction” that Descartes’ rationalistic approach could not resolve, or the solipsism that Berkeley’s empirical method seemed unable to avoid, transcendental idealism offers a fine solution. But the metaphysical ambiguities of that solution are less attractive. Is Kant’s idealism dualistic, given that all phenomenal experience must consist of matter and form, the latter of which produces speculative and practical “Ideas” (essentially Platonic), necessary for said experience though, as things-in-themselves, unknowable? Or is it monistic, and all that appears is of the the same fundamental substance as those objects identified as purely noumenal, made singular in the “unity of apperception” of beings that are both rational and sensitive? Or is the advancement of a noumenal reality wholly superfluous? To conclude, according to Kant, we must remain agnostic regarding the “stuff” of our table -- as a thing-in-itself -- but may still investigate its objective existence to the extent that it subjectively appears to creatures such as ourselves.
Our final examination of the question “What is a table?” implores the doctrines of materialism, specifically with reference to Thomas Hobbes and Julien Offray de La Mettrie. The materialist is in a similar position to the idealist or immaterialist but on the opposite end of the spectrum. Both find Cartesian dualism unsatisfactory; La Mettrie, for example, noted that they had “made the same mistake” as the “Leibnizians” in that they “spiritualized matter" instead of "materializing the soul. How can we define a being whose nature is absolutely unknown to us?” Perhaps the reader is struck by the observation that each school has charged the other with paradoxes that are bound to conclude in futility: Cartesian dualism’s interaction problem is avoided by the monist systems of idealism and materialism, but neither of these (so they argue against the other) are any more capable of defining fundamental substance or what it is in which objective reality consists. Hobbes wrote that “if a man should talk to me of a round quadrangle; or accidents of bread in cheese; or, immaterial substance… I should not say he were in an error, but that his words were without meaning; that is to say, absurd.” How can an object, such as a table, be known as a thing that is fundamentally material, what might be the properties of matter, and more importantly, how can the soul be “materialized”?
To consider that last question, the metaphysics of materialism has in one sense a relatively easy time resolving how it is that the external world can be known, for it is all that we experience in our waking life when our senses are operating under normal conditions. The harder problem is what to make of the mind, which both dualists and idealists not unreasonably view as pivotal for experience. Some materialists wish to define mind as indistinguishable from matter, seeking a material explanation for the qualitative nature of our private experiences and insisting that the qualitative aspect, while it may be described in ideal terms, is nothing more than the sum of the parts that comprise a functioning brain, as yet dimly understood by neuroscience. Other materialists may grant property dualism, agreeing with their opponents that the mind consists of something which cannot be reduced to the physical parts of the brain, but denying that it has a distinct existence from the underlying material processes that make all thought possible. La Mettrie observed the fact that “the soul and the body fall asleep together… [the body's muscles] can no longer hold up the weight of their head, while the soul can no longer bear the burden of thought.” One hundred years earlier, Hobbes stated that “there is no conception in a man’s mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.”
The materialist seems to be freed from the thorny epistemological issues that led to the “solipsism-sans-God” verdict which plagued both Descartes’ and Berkeley’s theories of reality, but the subject-object quandary that fueled Kant’s agnosticism (with regards to objects as things-in-themselves) seems to remain intact. The claim that the mind which perceives the table is in essence no different than the table which it perceives is perhaps less liable to the criticisms that might be hurled against the statement that everything, including ideas, are au fond material. But whether one takes an eliminativist approach, or assents to property dualism (which itself struggles to deal with the interaction problem as it relates to how it is that consciousness emerges, and moreover, what it contributes to survival), this would appear to be the conclusion that a materialist must reach. Like the popular North American Whac-A-Mole game, on materialism the epistemological and ontological problems of the alternative perspectives, if cleared up at all, only resurface in different guise. Additional questions like, “Does the materialist grant a priori knowledge if all thoughts are ‘materialized’? or is all reasoning at best only probable and all truth provisional?" persist. "What even remains of (abstract) truth? Universal values?” Thus, “What is a table” on materialism is just what I suggested at the outset of this examination -- “the simpler constituents that the table is thought to be comprised of, such as molecules, atoms, electrons, etc.” -- ironically, a collection of theoretical entities which apparently share a material nature, though one never directly comes into contact with this “substratum” -- a feature that will always lend credit to Berkeley’s incisive derision. “What is it that experiences the table?” is a more difficult question to answer on materialism.
In conclusion, it looks to me as though each theory of reality, while making useful contributions to our inquiry, either fails to give a fully satisfactory account of experience by floundering in empty concepts (in spite of so many fine words!), or collapses inward upon itself due to the weight of inconsistencies. I would personally answer the question “What is a table?” in the following manner: First and foremost, it is my contention that “mind-body” is a false dichotomy, though the subject-object distinction is not. Given the arguments I suggested in the discussion of dualism, I would postulate a neutral monism: there is one fundamental substance rather than two, and from this simple unknown substance, which has a specific nature, everything that has ever existed or will exist is produced. This includes minds, which perceive according to the mode in which our hominid brains have evolved; I suspect that mind and matter are very much different attributes of substance (maybe but two of an infinite number, which would require a shift from property dualism to a radical pluralism) though inextricably interdependent. That is, the conditions of matter depend upon mind in ways that are completely disparate though equally necessary (for experience) to those others in which mind is contingent upon matter. Perhaps we even experience "time" and "space" in ways that aren't really fundamental to whatever can be said about the “true” nature of this Something. I find that Spinoza is commonly interpreted to have advocated for a similar philosophy in his Ethics, though I would drop the pretensions to pantheism; he used "God" and "Nature" interchangeably. Granted those were different times, it is not appropriate to use them as such now. In terms of epistemology, as I cannot but help see the object-subject distinction as valid, the question inevitably arises of how it is that we can have any knowledge of the objective world, and whether all comprehension is merely probable or based in real absolute truths, fixed in what may be called the rational or intelligible "structure" of objective reality. On this front, I am inclined to side with the rationalists, and see no deep issue with taking a Platonic or idealist view of truth, values, numbers, etc., without invoking an infinite perceiver or Deity. This lands me closer to Kant’s belief in noumenal reality. Like him, I am forced to admit my agnosticism about what “ultimate substance” could possibly be as a thing-in-itself. Nonetheless, I remain unsettled by the multiplication of entities such as “matter,” “minds,” and these so-called “truths” about them supposedly lingering around, just waiting to be discovered. I accept the reality of the table, but what it is outside of my experiences, I cannot tell. If it is I to whom it be said, “Don’t simply tell me that it appears to you to have this or that feature. Tell me the stuff that it is made of,” I shall be pressed to reply in a sheepish voice those words that Socrates proudly recited at his trial: “In this small extent I am wiser: that what I do not know, in no way I think I know.”
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
