Notes for Class Twelve: The Nature of Reality

The study of the nature of reality is also called "ontology," which literally means the "study [logos] of being [ ontos]." Since what it means for something to be or to be real is an issue beyond what is physically accessible, ontological questions are metaphysical. Metaphysics includes not only the study of being and reality but also the study of specific kinds of beings (such as minds). Metaphysics in general and ontology in particular are both interested in providing a "logos," a rational explanation for existence.

II. Mythos and Logos: A rational explanation differs from a mythic explanation insofar as myth provides an account or story about how things come to be as they are. A rational explanation of something does not require that we know why the thing is that way; it only requires that we understand how that thing makes sense in terms of our experience of nature. It does not ask why there is anything at all (including nature), because to do so would require us to appeal to yet another principle of explanation, and that would generate an infinite regress.

Mythos, on the other hand, attempts to explain the natural world ultimately by appealing to supernatural or divine forces. For the mythic mind, the act of recounting the myth or casting a spell reinvokes what it means to say that something exists in the first place. Myth identifies things as real without attempting to justify such identifications. A mythic pronouncment is thus not the natural speech or act of a human being; it is the supernatural speech or act of the gods.

By contrast, a rational or "logical" explanation tries to justify why something is the way it is by appealing to things in nature that are not themselves questioned but are simply accepted as the way things are in nature. Myth identifies those unquestioned things for us and provides us with our understanding of what logos (logic, meaning, reason) is.

Ultimately, there is no rationale or justification for myth because it is through myth that reason itself is identified. That is, myth does not "explain" how things are as much as it simply reveals how things are. Apart from such a revelation, it makes no sense to try to talk about things.

Some philosophers (e.g., Nietzsche) object to the metaphysical attempt to provide a totalizing, eternal, uniform picture of reality. Others (positivists) argue that metaphysical speculation is meaningless since it cannot be falsified and is not true by definition. To such objections metaphysicians often reply that the attempt to understand the nature of reality is not concerned with being true as much as with being helpful in making sense of life.

III. Views on the Nature of Reality:

• Materialism: only material bodies are real.
• Critical Naturalism: only natural, physical things are real, but they are not reducible to bodies.
• Idealism: only minds and their ideas are real.
• Dualism: material bodies and immaterial minds make up reality.
• Pluralism: no single substance is ultimately real; rather, there is a multiplicity of real substances.
• Naive Realism: "real" is a function of how we speak about the world.

Variations:

• 1. Behaviorism: all statements about minds, mental life, or mental events can be expressed in terms of behaviors. Otherwise, such terms are nonsense.
  • Hard behaviorists (e.g., Skinner) say that there are no such things as minds, mental events, states, or processes; there are only bodies in motion (behaviors). Mental vocabulary is misleading and should be deleted from our speech. Just because we speak about ideas and intentions, that does not mean there are such things. For clarity's sake we should abandon such ways of speaking. Beliefs in freedom and moral dignity are out of touch with the scientific reality. Objections: Unlike my account of other minds, I do not explain my own mind by observation of my behavior. Also, the vocabulary of intentional states would have to be modified in a non-common sensical way.
  • Soft behaviorists claim that there may be minds and mental events and processes, but we don't need to think that they are real since a behaviorist methodology can account for everything that is interesting about them.
  • Logical behaviorists (e.g., Gilbert Ryle) claim that the mental or intentional refers to ways of behaving. It is OK to speak of minds and use mentalistic terminology (contra Skinner) as long as we recognize how such talk, like talk of bodies, is not a claim about their reality apart from their logical status as modes of behavior or dispositions to behave. To talk of bodies is to describe certain observable behaviors that we identify as things. Minds are not such things (ghostly or otherwise)--that would involve the "category mistake" of thinking of bundles of characteristics as being things; minds are only ways of describing bodily activities. Nonetheless, we should maintain the logical distinction between the mental and the physical: without such a distinction (based on the manner of behavior), we could not distinguish between intentional and accidental behaviors.
• 2. Mind-Brain (or Neural) Identity Theory: contrary to hard behaviorism, there are real mental events; however, they are not macro-level behaviors but rather micro-level, neurological events. Mental states and processes like sensations are simply brain states and processes. What it means for someone to have an idea or experience an emotion is obviously not the same as understanding that a neuron is firing in the brain--both are intelligible in terms of their own domains of discourse. But even though they mean something different and are spoken of differently in our language, they both refer to the same neurological event.

  Objections:

  • (1) if thoughts do not have the spatio-temporal characteristics of neurophysiological events, then how can we say they are the same or refer to the same thing? [Answer: maybe we simply need to get used to a different way of speaking.]
  • (2) Even if we recognized that mental states are correlated with brain states, that would not prove that they are identical, and there would be no way to falsify (and thus make scientific) the theory. [Answer: eliminative materialism: ways of speaking not based on materialism are old-fashioned and need to be eliminated. Rorty: our linguistic expressions (e.g., about pain) have meaning and truth value only in terms of their places in discursive networks or language games that permit explanation and prediction. However, pain does not seem to be limited to particular language games or theories; so eliminative materialism seems to be unable to fulfill its aim of eliminating all mental expressions.]

• (1) If materialism is correct, then even materialist philosophy is nothing other than the motion of matter. It can hardly be said to be "true" or to "explain" anything, then, for an explanation of something (seemingly) would be different from that which it claims to explain.
• (2) If there is no purpose in the universe, then there would be no purpose in trying to prove that there is no purpose--which is exactly what the materialist tries to do.
• (3) Certainly, to say that I have a thought is not the same thing as to say that a neuron fires in my brain--but that is what the materialist seems to say.
• (4) Reductive materialism (the attempt to give a purely physical description of so-called mental states) is somewhat unpersuasive regarding emotional states and really unpersuasive regarding social or legal states (e.g., being married). Why should everything be reducible to physics?

Objections:

• (1) Though the notion of emergent levels of reality may describe how consciousness came into existence, it does not explain why there is consciousness in the first place (other than to attribute the development of higher forms of life to chance genetic mutations--which doesn't explain anything).
• (2) If human behavior exhibits purpose and value, why can't the same be said for the rest of nature too?
• (3) A naturalistic picture of reality is barren, devoid of the variety and beauty we encounter in experiencing reality.

• (a) Subjective idealism (Berkeley): reality is what we experience of things, for we have no idea what it would mean to talk about reality apart from the reality that we perceive: to be is to be perceived or to perceive. [Objection: this seems to make reality depend on the individual subject.]
• (b) Objective idealism: all reality (including individual minds) is an expression of a universal or absolute Mind. The world of changing, material objects is merely a fleeting image of Intelligibility or Mentality itself--what Plato calls the realm of the Forms. Mind (or Mentality itself) is what makes the universe orderly, intelligible: in fact, Mind is the intelligibility of the universe, the means by which it is conceivable as some thing in the first place. Through Mind, evolution is not merely a process of random, chance variations, but rather is a process whose aim is revealed in the success (not simply, the survival) of the fittest. The universe has a purpose, goal, or direction: in short, it exhibits a teleology. Guiding the universe is a purposive mind, God.

• (1) Idealists believe that, because human beings think in terms of mind and purpose, then the universe must be that way; but that is mere anthropomorphizing (reducing everything to human terms).
• (2) Idealists forget that, while structure or form is part of what things are, there is matter too; for there is no such thing as a form or structure without it being a form or structure of some matter.
• (3) Talk of minds or spirits is unnecessary if we can explain what we observe in material terms alone.

Objections:

• (1) how is interaction between a purely spiritual and a purely material thing possible?
• (2) if mind is known only introspectively, how do we know that others have minds?
• (3) if the mind is influenced by the body (which itself is completely determined), how can the mind be free?

E. Pluralism: reality includes a plurality of different kinds of things. According to Aristotle, things are distinguished as being different substances, each with a different essence (or "form") that makes it be the kind of thing it is, and the material that comprises each individual member of that kind or species is what distinguishes it from other members of the same kind.

F. Naive Realism: the variety of things (e.g., symphonies) cannot be reduced to one or two basic kinds, and the best way to address the issue of the basic ways of speaking of reality is to notice how ordinary language distinguishes things and how they are ordinarily characterized. One "real" world is no more real than another if both are part of ordinary discourse. According to J. L. Austin, the point of referring to what is real is not to identify reality but to distinguish how we normally differentiate between what is real and what is not real.