UNIT 3: Metaphysics: Reality, Existence, God

Mr. A. Wittmann - Earl Haig S.S.

Specific Unit 5 Expectations (2013 Ontario Curriculum Grades 11 and 12 Social Sciences and Humanities, p.342)

C1. Understanding Metaphysics: demonstrate an understanding of the main questions in metaphysics, and of the positions of major philosophers and schools of philosophy with respect to some of these questions;

C2. Exploring Metaphysics: demonstrate an understanding of metaphysical theories, and evaluate responses to some of the main questions in metaphysics by major philosophers and schools of philosophy;

C3. Making Connections to Metaphysics: demonstrate an understanding of connections between metaphysics and other areas of philosophy, other subject areas, and various aspects of society, including everyday life;

C4. Philosophical Reasoning in Metaphysics: use philosophical reasoning skills to develop, communicate, and defend their own responses to metaphysical questions

Week 1:

CLASSWORK:

Lecture: Introduction to Metaphysics
Lecture: Materialism
Lecture: Idealism
Seminar: The Neutrino
Seminar: Parallel Universes
Seminar: Reality of Corporations
Seminar: Do Our Brains Make Our Decisions Before We Consciously Make Them?

HOMEWORK:

Reading: Velasquez, On Hobbes & Berkeley, p.1-9
Reading: Hobbes, Leviathan, p.9-39

REVIEW QUESTION:

Do only sensations, perceptions, and minds exist, if we have no evidence for the existence of other things?

1. Introduction to Metaphysics Keynote.pdf

Introduction to Metaphysics

2. Materialism & Ordinary Keystone.pdf

Materialism

3. Idealism Lecture Keystone.pdf

Idealism

Velasquez, On Hobbes and Berkeley.pdf

Velasquez, On Hobbes & Berkeley

Hobbes, Leviathan.pdf

Hobbes, Leviathan

The Neutrino

The neutrino is perhaps the most bewildering of all the elementary particles known to physics and among the most philosophically provocative. It has no physical properties—no mass, no electric charge, and no mag- netic field. It is neither attracted nor repelled by the electric and magnetic fields of passing particles. Thus, a neutrino originating in the Milky Way or in some other galaxy and traveling at the speed of light can pass through the earth as if it were so much empty space. Can it be stopped? Only by a direct, head-on collision with another elementary particle. The chances of that are infinitesimally small. Fortunately, there are so many neutrinos that collisions do occur. Otherwise, physicists would never have detected them. Just think, even as you read this sentence, billions of neutrinos coming from the sun and other stars are passing through your skull and brain. And how would the universe appear to a neutrino? Eminent astronomer V. A. Firsoff provides a picture:

The universe as seen by a neutrino eye would wear a very unfamiliar look. Our earth and other planets simply would not be there, or might at best appear as thin patches of mist. The sun and other stars may be dimly visible, in as much as they emit some neutrinos. . . A neutrino brain might suspect our existence from certain secondary effects, but would find it very difficult to prove, as we would elude the neutrino instruments at his disposal.

Our universe is no truer than that of the neutrinos—they exist, but they exist in a different kind of space, governed by different laws. . . The neutrino . . . is subject neither to gravitational nor to electromagnetic field. . . It might be able to travel faster than light, which would make it relativistically recede in our time scale.

QUESTIONS:

1. What impact does the presence of neutrinos have on your view of reality?

2. Arthur Koestler writes: “To the unprejudiced mind, neutrinos have indeed a certain affinity with ghosts—which does not prevent them from exist- ing.” What does this mean?

_________________________________________________

Sources: V. A. Firsoff, Life, Mind and Galaxies (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1967); Arthur Koestler, The Roots of Coincidence (New York: Random House, 1972), 63.

Parallel Universes

Max Tegmark, a physicist/astronomer highly respected as an international expert on the nature of the universe, has argued that there must be parallel universes: other areas of space that are about the size of the universe that is visible to us and that are exact replicas of own visible universe. (The “visible universe” consists of a sphere around us whose farthest point is the longest distance from us that light has been able to travel during the 14 billion years since the Big Bang began everything.) Such a replica of our visible universe would have to contain “a person who is not you but who lives on a planet called earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and sprawling cities. . . The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect.”

The idea that there must be another area of space that is an exact copy of our visible universe and that contains an exact copy of you is required by the fact that astronomers have concluded that the entire cosmos, that is, everything that extends beyond our visible universe is infinite and is uniformly filled with galaxies, stars, and planets like our own visible universe. A volume of space the size of own visible universe, if it were fully packed with matter, could contain only up to 10 to the power of 118 protons. In a different volume of space the same size, each of these protons may or may not, in fact, be present. Hence there are, at most, only 2 to the 10 to the power of 118 different possible arrangements of protons in a volume of space the size of our own visible universe. That means that, in a volume of space larger than 2 to the 10 to the power of 118 times the volume of our own visible universe, the arrangements of protons would have to start repeating. Beyond that huge volume, then, there would have to be a volume of space the size of our own visible universe that was, proton for proton, an exact copy of our own visible universe. Because observations of the cosmos indicate that it is infinite in volume, this means that somewhere in that infinite volume there must be an area of space the size of our own visible universe that is an exact replica of the volume of space we call our “visible universe” and that therefore includes an exact replica of you.

QUESTIONS:

1. Tegmark makes assumptions about what lies beyond the visible universe (the part of the uni- verse that we cannot perceive with even the most powerful telescopes or any other instruments we could possibly invent). In what sense do you think such parallel universes are “real”?

2. What would a materialist, an idealist, a pragmatist, a phenomenologist, or a logical positivist probably have to say about the reality of these parallel universes?

___________________________________________

Source: Max Tegmark, “Parallel Universes,” Scientific American, April 14, 2003; see also Joel Achenbach, “The Multiuniverse,” National Geographic, August 2003.

Reality of Corporations

Several years ago the Department of Defense charged that a corporation had sold it computer parts without testing them properly and then had falsified records to cover up the fraud. The computer parts are now installed in ships, planes, weapons, and nuclear bombs around the world and cannot be tracked down. A government official commented that if a component malfunctioned, "We're talking about lives. You could have a missile that would end up in Cleveland instead of the intended target."

Although the corporation was indicted on criminal charges, no individuals were ever charged. The Department of Defense objected that because a "corporation acts only through its employees and officers." the individuals who make up the company should have been held responsible for the crimes. The company's president felt differently: "We totally disagree with the Defense Department's proposal. We have repeatedly stated that we accept responsibility as a company only and we steadfastly continue to stand by that statement. "According to the company president, corporations and not their members should be held responsible for such criminal acts. The position of the Department of Defense was defended by metaphysical individualists. Metaphysical individualism says that only individuals are real and that corporations are fictitious mental constructs; consequently, only individuals can be responsible for crimes.

The position of the company's president was supported by metaphysical collectivists, who hold that corporations are as real as individual human beings. Metaphysical collectivism says that corporations are like living organisms that think, act, and direct the activities of their members and that, consequently, the corporation and not its members must be held responsible for its criminal acts. Legal experts are divided on this issue, some siding with individualism, others with collectivism.

QUESTIONS:

1. What kind of reality does an organized group such as a corporation have? Is a corporate group nothing more than the sum of its members, or is it more like a living organism?

2. Which theory should our legal system use when determining punishments for corporate crimes: the individualist theory or the collectivist theory? Why?

____________________________________________

Source: San Jose Mercury News, May 31, 1984, p. ,1 and June ,4 1984, p. 7

Do Our Brains Make Our Decisions Before We Consciously Make Them?

Four scientists found that your brain appears to deter- mine what you will do about seven seconds before you “freely” decide to do it. In their study, the four scientists found that brain activity indicating which hand participants would use to press a button near each hand was present in the brain seven seconds before the participants consciously decided which hand to use. They wrote:

The impression that we are able to freely choose between different possible courses of action is fundamental to our mental life. However, it has been suggested that this subjective experience of freedom is no more than an illusion and that our actions are initiated by unconscious mental processes long before we become aware of our intention to act. We directly investigated which regions of the brain predetermine conscious intentions and the time at which they start shaping a motor decision. [Our] subjects carried out a freely paced motor-decision task while their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging [FMRI] machines produce images of the brain that show what parts of the brain are active when the image is made]. Subjects were asked to freely decide between [pressing] one of two buttons [and to indicate] when their motor decision was consciously made. We found brain regions encoded [indicated] with high accuracy whether the subject was about to choose the left or right response prior to the conscious deci- sion. . . .[One] region was in [the] frontopolar cortex. The predictive information in the FMRI signals from this brain region was already present 7 seconds before the subject’s [conscious] motor decision. This prior activity is not an unspecific preparation of a response. Instead, it specifically encodes how the subject is going to decide. The lead times are too long to be explained by any timing inaccuracies in reporting the onset of awareness.

Some scientists have concluded from experiments like these that if our unconscious brain determines our decisions before we have even consciously made a deci- sion, then our feeling that we consciously and freely make our decisions is an illusion: Our unconscious brain, not our conscious mind, makes our decisions.

QUESTIONS:

1. Do you see any way of arguing that even if the experiment is correct, free will is not an illusion?

2. Some people have suggested that choosing which hand to use to press a button is not the kind of complex decision in which we humans express our freedom, such as a decision to marry or to choose a certain career. These complex human decisions indicate that we have free choice, so the experiment does not really show that we are not free. Do you agree with this suggestion?

_____________________________________

Source: Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, and John- Dylan Haynes, “Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain,” Nature Neuroscience, April 13, 2008.

Week 2:

CLASSWORK:

Lecture: Pragmatism & Others
Lecture: Determinism vs. Free Will
Seminar: The Experience Machine, or Does Reality Matter?
Seminar: God’s Omniscience and Free Will
Seminar: Religion and Science
Seminar: Defining Religion
Viewing: The Elegant Universe: Parts 1

HOMEWORK:

Reading: Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, p.1-31
Reading: James, What Pragmatism Means, p.1-11

REVIEW QUESTION:

Is string theory a scientific theory or a philosophical theory?

4. Pragmatism & Others Lecture Keystone.pdf

Pragmatism & Others

5. Determinism vs. Free Will Lecture Keynote.pdf

Deteminism vs. Free Will

The Elegant Universe (Part 1).mp4

The Elegant Universe: Part 1

The Elegant Universe (Part 2).mp4

The Elegant Universe: Part 2

The Elegant Universe (Part 3).mp4

The Elegant Universe: Part 3

Metaphysics & Free Will.mp4

Metaphysics & Free Will

Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas & Philonous.pdf

Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

James, What Pragmatism Means.pdf

James, What Pragmatism Means,

The Elegant Universe Transcript.pdf

The Elegant Universe Transcript

The Experience Machine, or Does Reality Matter?

In his book, The Examined Life, philosopher Robert Nozick suggests the following “thought experiment”:

Imagine a machine that could give you any experience (or sequence of experiences) you might desire. When connected to this experience machine, you can have the experience of writing a great poem or bringing about world peace or loving someone and being loved in return. You can experience the felt pleasures of these things, how they feel “from the inside.” You can program your experiences for tomorrow, or this week, or this year, or even for the rest of your life. If your imagination is impoverished, you can use the library of suggestions extracted from biographies and enhanced by novelists and psychologists. You can live your fondest dreams “from the inside.” Would you choose to do this for the rest of your life? If not, why not? . . The question is not whether to try the machine temporarily, but whether to enter it for the rest of your life. Upon entering, you will not remember having done this; so no pleasures will get ruined by realizing they are machine produced.

Nozick suggests that at least the first instinctive impulse of most of us would be to choose not to enter the machine where we would live forever in a dream world that, unknown to us, was not real.

QUESTIONS:

1. Nozick claims that the reason most of us would not enter the experience machine forever is because we don’t just care about the feelings and sensations we experience but also want our lives to be based on reality and not only a delusion. Do you agree? Is it enough to spend your life just thinking that you are accomplishing great things, are engaged in fulfilling and worthwhile activities, and are loved by, say, your children and a wonderful spouse? Or would these things have to be real to be worth devoting your life to them? Explain.

2. If a person in the experience machine thinks his experiences are real, then are they real? Is reality whatever you experience and think is real?

______________________________________________

Source: Robert Nozick, The Examined Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 104–105.

God’s Omniscience and Free Will

According to the traditional Western concept of God, God is omniscient—that is, God is all-knowing. But does God’s knowledge leave any room for free will? Many people believe it does not. If God is all-knowing, they claim, then humans cannot be free. Here is how they argue:

1. Suppose God is all-knowing.

2. If God is all-knowing, then God knows what I will do in the future.

3. God cannot be wrong, so if God knows what I will do in the future, then it has to happen.

4. So what I will do in the future has to happen.

5. But if what I will do in the future has to happen, then I am not free to do anything else.

6. So I am not free—I am not able to do anything other than what God now knows I will do.

But this conclusion is distressing to believers. For if our actions are not free, then we cannot be held responsible for them. That is, I cannot be blamed for doing something if I was not able to do anything else. But if we can’t be blamed for anything we do, then what of traditional doctrines of heaven and hell? How can we be punished for something if we couldn’t do anything else? How can we “repent” if we never had the ability to avoid any sinful action? How can I be blamed for what I had no power to change?

To avoid these conclusions, believers have rejected one or more of the premises of the preceding argument. Some reject point 1 and say God is not all-knowing—his knowledge is limited. Others reject point 2 and say God does not know now what I will do in the future because I have not yet decided what I will do. Others reject point 3 and say that God can be wrong because God is a fallible God. But, obviously, none of these options is very attractive to the believer.

QUESTIONS:

1. If you are a believer, do you agree with the preceding argument? If you don’t agree with it, which premise do you think you should reject?

2. Suppose that instead of “God,” the preceding argument was about a supercomputer that knew everything that would happen in the future and was infallible. Assuming such a supercomputer is possible, would the argument still work?

________________________________________

Source: Velasquez, Manuel. Philosophy: A Text with Reflection readings, 9th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2010

Religion and Science

The highly respected scientific journal Nature regularly publishes articles on the relationship between religion and science. An article published in 2004, for example, asserts that science and faith have collided with “explosive force” over the issues of “nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, cloning, creationism and genetic modification.” According to the authors of the article, stem cell research, in particular, has strained the relationship between faith and science because it involves a clash between the “religion-based belief in the sanctity of human life even . . . of an embryo,” and the “desire to alleviate suffering and cure disease” which are the aims of stem cell research. Dr. Francis Collins, a Christian scientist who heads up the U. S. National Human Genome Research Institute, is quoted as saying he is “intensely conflicted” about stem-cell research. This conflict between the “religion-based” value of embryonic life, and stem cell research which destroys human embryos, the article claims, lay behind the decision of President George W. Bush--who is himself an evangelical Christian- -to forbid the use of federal funds to pay for any stem cell research that destroyed more embryos. (This Bush policy ended with President Barack Obama.) Not all scientists feel that religion and science are opposed. The National Academy of Sciences, the most distinguished group of scientists in the United States, declares on its website that “Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution.” On the website of the BioLogos Foundation Francis Collins (the Christian scientist quoted earlier) defends “the compatibility of Christian faith with what science has discovered about the origins of life and the universe.” Collins argues that many scientific findings, such as the Big Bang and the universal effectiveness of our mathematics, “point” to a God and that scientific theories such as evolution can be reconciled with faith.

QUESTIONS:

1. Are there any aspects of science that make you more inclined to religious belief? less inclined?

2. Should the sincere religious beliefs of those in public office (such as the president) influence policies regarding scientific research that they put in place?

___________________________________________

Sources: Tony Reichhardt, David Cyranoski, and Quirin Schiermeier, “Religion and Science,” Nature, December 9, 2004, 432:666; National Academy of Sciences website at http://www.nationalacademies.org/ evolution/Compatibility.html; Dennis Collins on BioLogos Foundation website at http://biologos.org/about.

Defining Religion

Sometimes the most ordinary things create tremendous bafflement. Everyone knows what religion is. But can you define it? Here are several attempts:

Religion is the ritual cultivation of socially accepted values. (J. Fischer)
Religion is a propitiation of, and dependency on, superior powers which are believed to control and direct the course of nature and human life. (Sir James G. Frazer)
Religion is a theory of man’s relation to the universe. (S. P. Haynes)
Religion is a sense of the sacred. (Sir Julian Huxley)
Religion is (subjectively regarded) the organization of all duties as divine commands. (Immanuel Kant)
Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man. (Max Muller)
Religion is one’s attitude toward whatever he considers to be the determiner of destiny. (James Bissett Pratt)
Religion is the feeling of utter dependence upon the infinite reality, that is, upon God. (F. Schleiermacher)
Religion is man’s ultimate concern for the Ultimate. (Paul Tillich)
Religion, as a minimum, is the belief in spiritual beings. (E. B. Taylor)
Religion is a belief in an ultimate meaning of the universe. (Alfred R. Wallace)

Obviously, the very definition of this pervasive phenomenon is controversial. Even today there is no widespread agreement about how to define religion, although everyone seems to know exactly what it is.

QUESTIONS:

1. How would you define religion?

2. What is counted as religion by one definition is often not counted by others. How might this disarray be understood?

________________________________________

Source: Velasquez, Manuel. Philosophy: A Text with Reflection readings, 9th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2010

Week 3:

CLASSWORK:

Lecture: Nature of God
Lecture: Arguments on Existence of God
Viewing: Power of Myth: Message of the Myth
Viewing: Power of Myth: Masks of Eternity

Questions: Answer the following questions...

Message of the Myth

1. Why should we have myths? (3:00)

2. How are myths clues? (04:00)

3. What is the meaning of life, according to Campbell? (05:00)

4. According to Campbell, what is god? (06:00)

5. What do myths refer to? (08:00)

6. What is the nature of everything within the field of time? (10:00)

7. What is the one problem of life? (10:30)

8. What caused us to move out of the mythological zone, in western thought? (13:00)

9. How does the relationship between god and nature differ between eastern and western religion? (14:00)

10. What are we looking for in myth and religion? (16:00)

11. How does the representation of snakes differ between western and eastern myth? (20:00)

12. What does Schopenhauer say about life? (23:00)

13. Explain “…everything you do is evil to someone”. (24:00)

14. What is the function of life? (26:00)

15. What does myth inspire? (30:00)

16. How are all myths and religions true? (31:00)

17. How is religion a literary problem? (32:00)

18. What is within us? (33:00)

19. What are myths metaphors? (34:00)

20. How is religion like software? (42:00)

21. Why can’t modern cultural myths develop in our own time? (44:00)

22. What are the 4 functions of myth? (45:00)

23. Which function are we focused on? (46:00)

24. Which function should we be focused on? (46:30)

Masks of Eternity

1. Explain what is meant by “…participating in divinity”. (5:30)

2. Complete the following statement. “In most Oriental thinking the gods are…” (6:20)

3. According to Campbell life comes from what? (9:20)

4. What does Campbell mean by “…Christ in you”? (12:00)

5. What is the difference of an impersonal god and a personal god? (15:00)

6. Explain the meaning of the Latin word religio. (16:00)

7. What is the importance of the circle? (16:40)

8. What is the significance of the trickster god? (26:00)

9. Explain Jung’s statement “religion” is a defense against the experience of God? (29:00)

10. What is the difference between Laslow’s peak experience and James Joyce’s epiphany? (30:00)

11. What is Brahman, god, etc.? (40:00)

12. What is the purpose of poetry? (42:00)

13. According to Campbell, does life have a purpose? (46:00)

14. What is the function of art? (47:00)

15. What is the significance of Shiva’s dance? (49:00)

16. What did Goethe say? (50:00)

17. What are the 4 elements of AUM? (51:00)

HOMEWORK:

Submit Power of Myth answers

5. Nature of God Lecture keynote.pdf

Nature of God

6. Arguments about the Existence of God Lecture keynote copy.pdf

Arguments on Existence of God

Joseph Campbell, Message of the Myth.mp4

Power of Myth: Message of Myth

Joseph Campbell, Masks of Eternity.mp4

Power of Myth: Masks of Eternity

Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth.pdf

Power of Myth Transcript

Week 4:

CLASSWORK:

Culminating Evaluation: Unit 3 Test

UNIT 3 TEST OUTLINE:

Brightspace online quiz
Available from the beginning of class to the end of class
1 attempt for each question, so be careful

Part A Knowledge & Understanding:

- 25 multiple choice questions, 1 mark each
- May be, but not only, based on the following...

Saint Augustine

Thomas Hobbs

Democritus

Idealism

Materialism

Neutrino

Subjective idealism

Pragmatism

George Berkeley

Phenomenology

Edmond Husserl

Compatibilism

Jean-Paul Satre

Martin Heidegger

Existentialism

String theory

Metaphysical Collectivism & corporations

George Berkeley

Immanuel Kant

Parallel universes

Social/cultural Idealism

Universals

Nature of God

Arguments about God

Theism

William James

Part B Communication & Application:

Choose and answer one of the Unit 3 review questions in 200-300 words, 10 marks

(Incomplete 0)

Incomplete response, with inconsistent structure of intro, body & conclusion

Uncommunicated response, using very little philosophical language & style, with some formatting issues

(Needs Improvement 5)

Weak organization of response, with some structure of intro, body & conclusion

Unclearly communicated response, using some philosophical language & style, with some formatting issues

(Satisfactory 6 or 7)

Somewhat organization of response, including clear structure & some evidence of previous thought & inquiry

Somewhat organization of response, including clear structure intro, body & conclusion

(Good 8 or 9)

Logical organization of response, including clear structure & clear evidence of previous thought & inquiry

Clearly communicated response, using philosophical language & style

(Excellent 9.5 or 10)

Skillful organization of response, including clear & strong structure & strong evidence of previous thought & inquiry

Skillful organization of response, including clear & strong structure intro, body & conclusion

Part C Thinking & Inquiry:

Answer following provided question, in 200-300 words, 10 marks
- In what respects does pragmatism incorporate materialism and idealism?

(Incomplete 0)

Incomplete response, with inconsistent structure and no evidence of previous thought & inquiry

(Needs Improvement 5)

Weak organization of response, with some structure & little evidence of previous thought & inquiry

(Satisfactory 6 or 7)

Somewhat organization of response, including clear structure & some evidence of previous thought & inquiry

(Good 8 or 9)

Logical organization of response, including clear structure & clear evidence of previous thought & inquiry

(Excellent 9.5 or 10)

Skillful organization of response, including clear & strong structure & strong evidence of previous thought & inquiry

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