Example of a hasty
argument:
Another
objection the materialist may have is that the soul must be bound by
time and space, which are necessary truths. If our soul is our
rationality, freedom and consciousness, then it must exist through the
creation of free, rational thoughts. They may then argue that since the
process of thinking takes a specific time and place, thoughts and the
mind - or soul - exist within a specific time and space as well.
A response to this claim may be that time and space are relative to the
observer. Perception of time and space is not absolute. If our
perception of these is relative then the mind - or soul - could not be
bound by space or time.
This paragraph
is an attempt to deal with an argument that could be proposed by a
materialist. It is good that the student has anticipated this
materialist argument. There is one minor error with this paragraph - a
small point, but it requires a lengthy explanation. It is not correct
though to say that space and time "...are necessary truths". A truth
has to be expressed in the form of a proposition. It is true that my
office has a window. But the office is not true, nor is the window.
They are objects, not propositions. An object can be described as
necessary or contingent. My office is a contingent object. Some
philosophers would say that numbers, or God, are necessary objects, and
therefore could act as truthmakers for necessary truths. (My office is
not true, but my office and its window make it true that there is a
window in my office. "4" is not true, but for a platonist, the numbers
"2" and "4" are what makes it true that "2+2=4"). Time and space are
not truths, and it is not even clear that they are objects - Kant would
say that they are intuitions that make our experience of objects
possible. We say that an object is in a particular part of space, but
space itself is not in some part of space - it is what objects are in.
(Of course, 'space' here does not refer to 'outer space' - beyond the
Earth's atmosphere. We are here using 'space' to include the entire
universe - within Earth's atmosphere and beyond). That point aside, the
first paragraph is good. I say this point is a minor one, because there
was no need to say that space and time are necessary truths - the
paragraph works fine without that claim.
The difficulty comes with the response. If space and time are relative
to an observer, that places the observer within space and time. The
keyboard on my computer is near to me, but far from you. My
sixty-fourth birthday is in my future, but when I am 64, my writing of
this will be in my past. It is because we are in space and time that
some things are nearer to and further from us. But observing is, surely
a part of our mental life. If I, as an observer, am in space and time,
then my mind is in space and time. According to the student writing
this paper, the relativity of perception demonstrates that the mind is
not bound by space and time. But if the mind is the thing to which
perception is relative, then the mind seems to be very much in space
and time. So the argument proves the opposite of what it is supposed
to.
How did this mistake happen? I suspect it comes from thinking too
quickly. I can see how, with some vague knowledge of Einstein, one
jumps from writing about space and time to writing about relativity and
perception. But this is then expressed in the simple thought "Space and
time are not absolute", without giving much consideration to what it
means for something to be relative or absolute. The non-absoluteness of
space is just thought of as being an imperfection, a weakness of space:
something not absolute cannot be powerful enough to act as a real
constraint. That. I imagine, is how the student is thinking. It is easy
to fall into this trap of vague thinking - as though whatever is
absolute is therefore strong and powerful. It happens with words like
"subjective", "valid" or "second-order". When you use such words, think
about what they really mean, and then consider carefully the
implications of what you are saying.
Back to PHI 2010