An old essay by Andrei.
The
Illusion of Perception
By
Illustration
Essay
For
Melinda
Simmons
PHI-2010-30145
8
June 2009
Richard Pemberton
PHI
2010-30145
Melinda
Simmons
8 June
2009
The
Illusion of Perception
Humanity
always has had an overblown ego. No matter what religion prostrates
its self, claiming otherwise, it sticks to its assumptions as the
truest, or the most pure. Generally, those assumptions place humanity
on a pedestal under only God. And complementing this ego is how
easily humans fall prey to illusion – the illusion of creation, the
illusion of a monopoly on intelligence and language, and perhaps most
infamously the illusion of a soul, or even a separate ‘mind’.
Typically, a common belief through Judeo-Christian religion is that a
soul is unique to humankind, but what even constitutes a soul? Is a
soul constituted by the ability for self-awareness? Various animals
such as elephants and non-human primates have demonstrated this
capability through scientific testing (Jha). Is it through language,
moral behavior, empathy, and opinion – distinctly ‘human’
concepts? Again, non-human primates have demonstrated the capability
for genuine care for others, as well as opinion: all expressed
through human sign-language (“Koko’s World”). The last true
vestige of the idea of a soul may very well be that of an identity,
but as Phineas Gage demonstrated with his traumatic head injury – a
railroad spike through his skull – and an equally traumatic change
in personality, identity has much to do with the neural connections
of the brain (O’ Discroll, Leach). Indeed, it seems that
philosophers’ questions and ponderings on the matter have been
related explicitly to the scientific knowledge of the day and age,
and whether or not they subscribed to materialism. There are two
primary groups of thought, each with their own subgroups and
deviations – that of monism, the soul or mind being one with the
body, and that of dualism – that of separation.
Monistic
philosophers can be generally best thought of as materialistic. The
mind is part of physical reality, rather than a ‘soul’. Amongst
the Greeks, Democritus, living around the time of 450 BCE, theorized
essentially on the nature of reality – atoms and ‘the void’),
and Lucretius, living from 94 to 55 BCE, also held this view.
Lucretius went a step further, however, theorizing that the nature of
the mind must inherently be physical, for as the body ages, so too
does the mind wither. Aristotle, while holding a belief in the idea
of a soul, has a different definition than most would expect. Rather
than confining the idea to a particular set of attributes – such as
language, identity, et cetera – he confines it to one, all
encompassing attribute – that of life, existing in all things
organic. Furthermore, under Aristotle’s philosophy, the soul is in
fact inseparable from the body. Just as an eyeball does not hold the
power of sight alone if removed from the body, neither does the soul.
A non-materialist, metaphysical form of monism was espoused by
pantheist Benedict Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher born 1632 and dead in
1677. Spinoza holds that all is God, and everything is within God,
and that there in reality is no separation between the physical and
metaphysical – rather, all is of the latter. This view holds
similarity to the earlier Buddhist and Hindu philosophers, who held
the idea of the ‘self-God’, and mind as an illusion.
Dualistic
philosophers instead hold that the soul and body are, in fact,
inherently separate, and the former being immortal when compared to
the latter. The infamous Greek philosopher Plato – circa 427-347
BCA – elaborated on his dualistic philosophy through a Socratic
dialogue, arguably representing Socrates’ view on the matter as
well, having been a student of his. Plato held that the soul
contained the ‘moral’ traits of a human, and thus was limited to
humankind. The soul exists both before birth and after death in
Platonic philosophy, a view shared with slight alteration by British
philosopher Anne Conway, born 1631 and dead 1678. A differing form of
dualism, almost a middle ground between itself and monism, is
elaborated upon by French philosopher Renè Descartes, born 1596 and
dead 1650. The ‘mind’ is a separate entity, representing only
some of the physical, bodily impressions, connected to the brain
through the pineal gland.
Despite
an inherently atheistic view, I do not hold an objective concept of
reality. Though I am a skeptic, nothing has proven to me that the
‘supernormal’ (as in, actions within nature not yet proven for,
nor against, nor yet explained by science) does not exist. The
fundamental nature of metaphysics is not yet known, and there is
still much unexplained. My own monistic opinions concerning the
mind-body problem fall somewhere between materialism, with the mind
simply as an illusion purported by the brain’s senses, or
Aristotle’s idea of the soul being powered by the body. I do not
believe in a soul, nor afterlife, but see the mind as simply the
energy generated by a very much physical brain. Though, unlike a
machine that has been damaged, the brain may rebuild its connections,
resulting in an altered and very different mind.
Works Cited
Jha, Alok. “Elephants Pass Mirror Test of
Self-Awareness.” The Guardian.
31 Oct. 2006. 8 June 2009.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/oct/31/uknews>.
“Koko’s World.” The Gorilla
Foundation. 2006. 8 June 2009. <
http://koko.org/world/>.
O’Discroll, Kieran and John Paul Leach. “No Longer
Gage.” British Medical Journal.
19 Dec. 1998: 1673-1674. 8 June 2009.
<http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1114479>.
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