PHILOSOPHY

IS THE
HANDMAID OF
THEOLOGY

Justin Palenzuela
St. Benedict’s academy
Guinobatan, Albay
 INTRODUCTION:

PHILOSOPHY AS HANDMAID OF THEOLOGY

How does philosophy become the handmaiden of theology? What is the connection of

philosophy to theology? Well, philosophy is able to be the handmaid of theology because it is

independent of theology, and based on its own principles. A philosophy that was neither

independent nor truly and totally rational could not be an aid to theology, because it wouldn’t

exist at all, much less help anything. Philosophy’s independence constitutes an essential part of

its own value as a handmaid.

It does not follow from this that philosophy is any less rational because it borrows various theses

from revealed theology and then establishes them on rational grounds. This is in fact a rather

unremarkable thing: just another instance of starting with something unknown and then finding a

middle term to prove it.

Philosophy’s place as handmaiden does not come as a result of the categorization of thought, but

in order of human fulfillment. Prayerful union of the soul with God is the end toward which

philosophizing is ordered. Since before the fall of Rome, monks had been spending great deals of

time copying, studying, and meditating on text as an aid to contemplation. St. Augustine, in de

doctrina christiana, argued that the preacher should take the best from all the sciences, like the

Israelites plundered Egypt, in order to further their study with God. He claimed that knowledge
of natural sciences and philosophy had a limited intrinsic value, but showed a great amount of

usefulness when used as an aid to the knowledge of God. As a result, philosophy is the

“handmaid” that prepares the human mind for contemplation – or theology, viewed not strictly as

a scientific examination of religious truths, but as prayerful meditation upon God Himself.

It’s important to understand that, for medieval, there is no strong distinction between scientific

theology, prayer, liturgy, and moral living. Evagrius ponticus, for example, wrote “if you are a

theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.” Theologians like

Bonaventure, Aquinas, and many others of the scholastics would continue to emphasize the

centrally of prayer in theological study, even after the great age of the contemplative monk had

ended.
 CHAPTER 1: DUALISM

Dualism – The concept

Dualism is the concept that our mind is more than just our brain. This concept entails that our

mind has a non-material, spiritual dimension that includes consciousness and possibly an eternal

attribute. One way to understand this concept is to consider our self as a container including our

physical body and physical brain along with a separate non-physical mind, spirit, or soul. The

mind, spirit, or soul is considered the conscious part that manifests itself through the brain in a

similar way that picture waves and sound waves manifest themselves through a television set.

The picture and sound waves are also non-material just like the mind, spirit, or soul.

The alternative concept is materialism. Materialism holds that everything in our universe is made

from physical materials including the human mind or brain and that spiritual attributes do not

exist in the universe. This concept holds that our mind and brain are one and the same.

Dualism – Expectations of a material only mind

If dualism is not true, the mind is limited to the physical brain. Assuming this scenario, what

kind of a mind would we expect? We certainly would not expect to have consciousness strictly

from materials. Perhaps we could expect to see a mechanical mind similar to a computer that is

run by a program. We would not expect things like consciousness, sensations, thoughts,

emotions, desires, beliefs, and free choice. Such a mind would behave in a deterministic way

based upon the laws of matter. Many scientists and philosophers are now concluding that the

laws of chemistry and physics cannot explain the experience of consciousness in human beings.
 We would not expect people with such a mind to be responsible for their behavior because

everything they do is determined by the attributes of matter. We all know that is absurd. Also, we

could not trust our minds since they are just a random collection of materials not produced by an

intelligent mind.

Dualism – Expectations of a spiritual mind

with dualism we would expect the spiritual mind to have similar attributes to that of its source. If

the source is the God of the Bible, the concept of dualism is consistent with the Bible. Genesis

1:26 states, “Then God said, ‘let Us make man in our image, according to our

likeness...’” Genesis 2:7 states, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and

breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Luke 23:46 states,

“And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend

my spirit.’”

Dualism – Rational and scientific support

A British study published by the journal “Resuscitation” provided evidence that consciousness

continues after a person’s brain has stopped functioning and he or she has been declared dead

supports the truth of dualism. In their journal article, physician Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick, a

neuropsychiatrist, describe their study of sixty-three heart attack victims who were declared

clinically dead but were later revived and interviewed. About ten percent reported having well-

structured, lucid thought processes, with memory formation and reasoning during the time that

their brains were not functioning. The effects of starvation of oxygen or drugs were ruled out as

factors. Researchers also found that numerous cases were similar.

J. P. Moreland, PhD, author and theologian states during an interview with Lee Strobel, “People
are clinically dead, but sometimes they have a vantage point from above, where they look down

at the operating table that their body is on. Sometimes they gain information that they couldn’t

have known if this were just an illusion happening in their brain. One woman died and she saw a

tennis shoe that was on top of the hospital.” This is strong scientific evidence for the validity of

her experience and the existence of a conscience mind that separates from the body at death.

There is no place in the brain where electric stimulation can cause a person to believe or decide.

When Roger Sperry and his team studied the differences between the brain’s right and left

hemispheres, they discovered the mind has a causal power independent of the brain’s activities.

This led Sperry to conclude that materialism was false.

Our thoughts can be true or false. However, brain states cannot be true or false.

Nobody can tell what we are thinking by measuring brain waves. We must be asked what we are

thinking.

When empirical information is used to as a basis for validating dualism, we can come to a

consensus that it is true. However, dualism vs. materialism is tied to the creation vs. evolution

debate. Consequently, evolutionists need to take unrealistic positions against dualism to defend

evolution. If dualism is true, we are created by God and macroevolution is false.

In a similar way, if only the objective scientific empirical facts are considered, evolution has no

support and creation is true by default.

 THE MIND – BODY PROBLEM

The mind-body problem is the problem: what is the relationship between mind and body? Or

alternatively: what is the relationship between mental properties and physical properties?

Humans have (or seem to have) both physical properties and mental properties. People have (or

seem to have) the sort of properties attributed in the physical sciences. These physical properties

include size, weight, shape, colour, motion through space and time, etc. But they also have (or

seem to have) mental properties, which we do not attribute to typical physical objects these

properties involve consciousness (including perceptual experience, emotional experience, and

much else), intentionality (including beliefs, desires, and much else), and they are possessed by a

subject or a self.

Physical properties are public, in the sense that they are, in principle, equally observable by

anyone. Some physical properties—like those of an electron—are not directly observable at all,

but they are equally available to all, to the same degree, with scientific equipment and

techniques. The same is not true of mental properties. I may be able to tell that you are in pain by

your behaviour, but only you can feel it directly. Similarly, you just know how something looks

to you, and I can only surmise. Conscious mental events are private to the subject, who has a

privileged access to them of a kind no-one has to the physical.

The mind-body problem concerns the relationship between these two sets of properties. The

mind-body problem breaks down into a number of components.

1. The ontological question: what are mental states and what are physical states? Is one

class a subclass of the other, so that all mental states are physical, or vice versa? Or are

mental states and physical states entirely distinct?

 2. The causal question: do physical states influence mental states? Do mental states

influence physical states? If so, how?

Different aspects of the mind-body problem arise for different aspects of the mental, such as

consciousness, intentionality, and the self.

3. The problem of consciousness: what is consciousness? How is it related to the brain and

the body?

4. The problem of intentionality: what is intentionality? How is it related to the brain and

the body?

5. The problem of the self: what is the self? How is it related to the brain and the body?

Other aspects of the mind-body problem arise for aspects of the physical. For example:

6. The problem of embodiment: what is it for the mind to be housed in a body? What is it

for a body to belong to a particular subject?

The seemingly intractable nature of these problems have given rise to many different

philosophical views.

Materialist views say that, despite appearances to the contrary, mental states are just physical

states. Behaviourism, functionalism, mind-brain identity theory and the computational theory of

mind are examples of how materialists attempt to explain how this can be so. The most common

factor in such theories is the attempt to explicate the nature of mind and consciousness in terms

of their ability to directly or indirectly modify behaviour, but there are versions of materialism

that try to tie the mental to the physical without explicitly explaining the mental in terms of its

behaviour-modifying role. The latter are often grouped together under the label ‘non-reductive
physicalism’, though this label is itself rendered elusive because of the controversial nature of

the term ‘reduction’.

Idealist views say that physical states are really mental. This is because the physical world is

an empirical world and, as such, it is the intersubjective product of our collective experience.

Dualist views (the subject of this entry) say that the mental and the physical are both real and

neither can be assimilated to the other. For the various forms that dualism can take and the

associated problems, see below.

In sum, we can say that there is a mind-body problem because both consciousness and thought,

broadly construed, seem very different from anything physical and there is no convincing

consensus on how to build a satisfactorily unified picture of creatures possessed of both a mind

and a body.

THE ARGUMENT BETWEEN PREDICATE DUALISM TO PROPERTY

DUALISM

I said above that predicate dualism might seem to have no ontological consequences, because it

is concerned only with the different way things can be described within the contexts of the

different sciences, not with any real difference in the things themselves. This, however, can be

disputed.

The argument from predicate to property dualism moves in two steps, both controversial. The

first claims that the irreducible special sciences, which are the sources of irreducible predicates,

are not wholly objective in the way that physics is, but depend for their subject matter upon

interest-relative perspectives on the world. This means that they, and the predicates special to
 them, depend on the existence of minds and mental states, for only minds have interest-relative

perspectives. The second claim is that psychology—the science of the mental—is itself an

irreducible special science, and so it, too, presupposes the existence of the mental. Mental

predicates therefore presuppose the mentality that creates them: mentality cannot consist simply

in the applicability of the predicates themselves.

First, let us consider the claim that the special sciences are not fully objective, but are interest-

relative.

No-one would deny, of course, that the very same subject matter or ‘hunk of reality’ can be

described in irreducibly different ways and it still be just that subject matter or piece of reality. A

mass of matter could be characterized as a hurricane, or as a collection of chemical elements, or

as mass of sub-atomic particles, and there be only the one mass of matter. But such different

explanatory frameworks seem to presuppose different perspectives on that subject matter.

This is where basic physics, and perhaps those sciences reducible to basic physics, differ from

irreducible special sciences. On a realist construal, the completed physics cuts physical reality up

at its ultimate joints: any special science which is nominally strictly reducible to physics also, in

virtue of this reduction, it could be argued, cuts reality at its joints, but not at its minutest ones. If

scientific realism is true, a completed physics will tell one how the world is, independently of

any special interest or concern: it is just how the world is. It would seem that, by contrast, a

science which is not nominally reducible to physics does not take its legitimation from the

underlying reality in this direct way. Rather, such a science is formed from the collaboration

between, on the one hand, objective similarities in the world and, on the other, perspectives and

interests of those who devise the science. The concept of hurricane is brought to bear from the

perspective of creatures concerned about the weather. Creatures totally indifferent to the weather
would have no reason to take the real patterns of phenomena that hurricanes share as constituting

a single kind of thing. With the irreducible special sciences, there is an issue of salience, which

involves a subjective component: a selection of phenomena with a certain teleology in mind is

required before their structures or patterns are reified. The entities of meteorology or biology are,

in this respect, rather like Gestalt phenomena.

Even accepting this, why might it be thought that the perspectivality of the special sciences leads

to a genuine property dualism in the philosophy of mind? It might seem to do so for the

following reason. Having a perspective on the world, perceptual or intellectual, is a

psychological state. So the irreducible special sciences presuppose the existence of mind. If one

is to avoid an ontological dualism, the mind that has this perspective must be part of the physical

reality on which it has its perspective. But psychology, it seems to be almost universally agreed,

is one of those special sciences that is not reducible to physics, so if its subject matter is to be

physical, it itself presupposes a perspective and, hence, the existence of a mind to see matter

as psychological. If this mind is physical and irreducible, it presupposes mind to see it as such.

We seem to be in a vicious circle or regress.

We can now understand the motivation for full-blown reduction. A true basic physics represents

the world as it is in itself, and if the special sciences were reducible, then the existence of their

ontologies would make sense as expressions of the physical, not just as ways of seeing or

interpreting it. They could be understood ‘from the bottom up’, not from top down. The

irreducibility of the special sciences creates no problem for the dualist, who sees the explanatory

endeavor of the physical sciences as something carried on from a perspective conceptually

outside of the physical world. Nor need this worry a physicalist, if he can reduce psychology, for

then he could understand ‘from the bottom up’ the acts (with their internal, intentional contents)
which created the irreducible ontologies of the other sciences. But psychology is one of the least

likely of sciences to be reduced.

CHAPTER 2: KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that the supreme principle of morality is a standard of

rationality that he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Kant characterized the CI as an

objective, rationally necessary and unconditional principle that we must always follow despite

any natural desires or inclinations we may have to the contrary. All specific moral requirements,

according to Kant, are justified by this principle, which means that all immoral actions are

irrational because they violate the CI. Other philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke and Aquinas,

had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these

standards were either instrumental principles of rationality for satisfying one’s desires, as in

Hobbes, or external rational principles that are discoverable by reason, as in Locke and Aquinas.

Kant agreed with many of his predecessors that an analysis of practical reason reveals the

requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental principles. Yet he also argued that

conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle), and hence to moral requirements themselves,

can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based on his

striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free, in the sense of

being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is

none other than the law of an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant’s moral philosophy is a

conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’

to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that
 Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and

deserving of equal respect.

Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy

The most basic aim of moral philosophy, and so also of the Groundwork, is, in Kant’s view, to

“seek out” the foundational principle of a “metaphysics of morals,” which Kant understands as a

system of a priori moral principles that apply the CI to human persons in all times and cultures.

Kant pursues this project through the first two chapters of the Groundwork. He proceeds by

analyzing and elucidating common sense ideas about morality, including the ideas of a “good

will” and “duty”. The point of this first project is to come up with a precise statement of the

principle or principles on which all of our ordinary moral judgments are based. The judgments in

question are supposed to be those that any normal, sane, adult human being would accept on due

rational reflection. Nowadays, however, many would regard Kant as being overly optimistic

about the depth and extent of moral agreement. But perhaps he is best thought of as drawing on a

moral viewpoint that is very widely shared and which contains some general judgments that are

very deeply held. In any case, he does not appear to take himself to be primarily addressing a

genuine moral skeptic such as those who often populate the works of moral philosophers, that is,

someone who doubts that she has any reason to act morally and whose moral behavior hinges on

a rational proof that philosophers might try to give. For instance, when, in the third and final

chapter of the Groundwork, Kant takes up his second fundamental aim, to “establish” this

foundational moral principle as a demand of each person’s own rational will, his conclusion

apparently falls short of answering those who want a proof that we really are bound by moral

requirements. He rests this second project on the position that we — or at least creatures with
rational wills — possess autonomy. The argument of this second project does often appear to try

to reach out to a metaphysical fact about our wills. This has led some readers to the conclusion

that he is, after all, trying to justify moral requirements by appealing to a fact — our autonomy

— that even a moral skeptic would have to recognize.

Kant’s analysis of the common moral concepts of “duty” and “good will” led him to believe that

we are free and autonomous as long as morality, itself, is not an illusion. Yet in the Critique of

Pure Reason, Kant also tried to show that every event has a cause. Kant recognized that there

seems to be a deep tension between these two claims: If causal determinism is true then, it

seems, we cannot have the kind of freedom that morality presupposes, which is “a kind of

causality” that “can be active, independently of alien causes determining it” (G 4:446)

Kant thought that the only way to resolve this apparent conflict is to distinguish

between phenomena, which is what we know through experience, and noumena, which we can

consistently think but not know through experience. Our knowledge and understanding of the

empirical world, Kant argued, can only arise within the limits of our perceptual and cognitive

powers. We should not assume, however, that we know all that may be true about “things in

themselves,” although we lack the “intellectual intuition” that would be needed to learn about

such things.

These distinctions, according to Kant, allow us to resolve the “antinomy” about free will by

interpreting the “thesis” that free will is possible as about noumena and the “antithesis” that

every event has a cause as about phenomena. Morality thus presupposes that agents, in an
incomprehensible “intelligible world,” are able to make things happen by their own free choices

in a “sensible world” in which causal determinism is true.

Many of Kant’s commentators, who are skeptical about these apparently exorbitant metaphysical

claims, have attempted to make sense of his discussions of the intelligible and sensible worlds in

less metaphysically demanding ways. On one interpretation (Hudson 1994), one and the same act

can be described in wholly physical terms (as an appearance) and also in irreducibly mental

terms (as a thing in itself). On this compatibilist picture, all acts are causally determined, but a

free act is one that can be described as determined by irreducibly mental causes, and in particular

by the causality of reason. A second interpretation holds that the intelligible and sensible worlds

are used as metaphors for two ways of conceiving of one and the same world (Korsgaard 1996;

Allison 1990; Hill 1989a, 1989b). When we are engaging in scientific or empirical

investigations, we often take up a perspective in which we think of things as subject to natural

causation, but when we deliberate, act, reason and judge, we often take up a different

perspective, in which we think of ourselves and others as agents who are not determined by

natural causes. When we take up this latter, practical, standpoint, we need not believe that we or

others really are free, in any deep metaphysical sense; we need only operate “under the idea of

freedom” (G 4:448). Controversy persists, however, about whether Kant’s conception of freedom

requires a “two worlds” or “two perspectives” account of the sensible and intelligible worlds.

Although the two most basic aims Kant saw for moral philosophy are to seek out and establish

the supreme principle of morality, they are not, in Kant’s view, its only aims. Moral philosophy,

for Kant, is most fundamentally addressed to the first-person, deliberative question, “What ought

I to do?”, and an answer to that question requires much more than delivering or justifying the
 fundamental principle of morality. We also need some account, based on this principle, of the

nature and extent of the specific moral duties that apply to us. To this end, Kant employs his

findings from the Groundwork in The Metaphysics of Morals, and offers a categorization of our

basic moral duties to ourselves and others. In addition, Kant thought that moral philosophy

should characterize and explain the demands that morality makes on human psychology and

forms of human social interaction. These topics, among others, are addressed in central chapters

of the second Critique, the Religion and again in the Metaphysics of Morals, and are perhaps

given a sustained treatment in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Further, a

satisfying answer to the question of what one ought to do would have to take into account any

political and religious requirements there are. Each of these requirement turn out to be, indirectly

at least, also moral obligations for Kant, and are discussed in the Metaphysics of Morals and

in Religion. Finally, moral philosophy should say something about the ultimate end of human

endeavor, the Highest Good, and its relationship to the moral life. In the Critique of Practical

Reason, Kant argued that this Highest Good for humanity is complete moral virtue together with

complete happiness, the former being the condition of our deserving the latter. Unfortunately,

Kant noted, virtue does not insure wellbeing and may even conflict with it. Further, he thought

that there is no real possibility of moral perfection in this life and indeed few of us fully deserve

the happiness we are lucky enough to enjoy. Reason cannot prove or disprove the existence of

Divine Providence, on Kant’s view, nor the immortality of the soul, which seem necessary to

rectify these things. Nevertheless, Kant argued, an unlimited amount of time to perfect ourselves

(immortality) and a commensurate achievement of wellbeing (insured by God) are “postulates”

required by reason when employed in moral matters.

 Throughout his moral works, Kant returns time and again to the question of the method moral

philosophy should employ when pursuing these aims. A basic theme of these discussions is that

the fundamental philosophical issues of morality must be addressed a priori, that is, without

drawing on observations of human beings and their behavior. Kant’s insistence on an a

priori method to seek out and establish fundamental moral principles, however, does not always

appear to be matched by his own practice. The Metaphysics of Morals, for instance, is meant to

be based on a priori rational principles, but many of the specific duties that Kant describes, along

with some of the arguments he gives in support of them, rely on general facts about human

beings and our circumstances that are known from experience.

In one sense, it might seem obvious why Kant insists on an a priori method. A “metaphysics of

morals” would be, more or less, an account of the nature and structure of moral requirements —

in effect, a categorization of duties and values. Such a project would address such questions as,

what is a duty. What kinds of duties are there? What is the good? What kinds of goods are there?,

and so on. These appear to be metaphysical questions. Any principle used to provide such

categorizations appears to be a principle of metaphysics, in a sense, but Kant did not see them as

external moral truths that exist independently of rational agents. Moral requirements, instead, are

rational principles that tell us what we have overriding reason to do. Metaphysical principles of

this sort are always sought out and established by a priori methods.

Perhaps something like this was behind Kant’s thinking. However, the considerations he offers

for an a priori method do not all obviously draw on this sort of rationale. The following are three

considerations favoring a priori methods that he emphasizes repeatedly.

The first is that, as Kant and others have conceived of it, ethics initially requires an analysis of

our moral concepts. We must understand the concepts of a “good will”, “obligation”, “duty” and
so on, as well as their logical relationships to one another, before we can determine whether our

use of these concepts is justified. Given that the analysis of concepts is an a priori matter, to the

degree that ethics consists of such an analysis, ethics is a priori as a well.

Of course, even were we to agree with Kant that ethics should begin with analysis, and that

analysis is or should be an entirely a priori undertaking, this would not explain why all of the

fundamental questions of moral philosophy must be pursued a priori. Indeed, one of the most

important projects of moral philosophy, for Kant, is to show that we, as rational agents, are

bound by moral requirements and that fully rational agents would necessarily comply with them.

Kant admits that his analytical arguments for the CI are inadequate on their own because the

most they can show is that the CI is the supreme principle of morality if there is such a principle.

Kant must therefore address the possibility that morality itself is an illusion by showing that the

CI really is an unconditional requirement of reason that applies to us. Even though Kant thought

that this project of “establishing” the CI must also be carried out a priori, he did not think we

could pursue this project simply by analyzing our moral concepts or examining the actual

behavior of others. What is needed, instead, is a “synthetic”, but still a priori, kind of argument

that starts from ideas of freedom and rational agency and critically examines the nature and

limits of these capacities.

This is the second reason Kant held that fundamental issues in ethics must be addressed with

an a priori method: The ultimate subject matter of ethics is the nature and content of the

principles that necessarily determine a rational will.

Fundamental issues in moral philosophy must also be settled a priori because of the nature of

moral requirements themselves, or so Kant thought. This is a third reason he gives for an a

priori method, and it appears to have been of great importance to Kant: Moral requirements
 present themselves as being unconditionally necessary. But an a posteriori method seems ill-

suited to discovering and establishing what we must do whether we feel like doing it or not;

surely such a method could only tell us what we actually do. So an a posteriori method of

seeking out and establishing the principle that generates such requirements will not support the

presentation of moral “ought” as unconditional necessities. Kant argued that empirical

observations could only deliver conclusions about, for instance, the relative advantages of moral

behavior in various circumstances or how pleasing it might be in our own eyes or the eyes of

others. Such findings clearly would not support the unconditional necessity of moral

requirements. To appeal to a posteriori considerations would thus result in a tainted conception

of moral requirements. It would view them as demands for which compliance is not

unconditionally necessary, but rather necessary only if additional considerations show it to be

advantageous, optimific or in some other way felicitous. Thus, Kant argued that if moral

philosophy is to guard against undermining the unconditional necessity of obligation in its

analysis and defense of moral thought, it must be carried out entirely a priori.

REFLECTION

Philosophy is able to be the handmaid of theology because it is independent of theology, and

based on its own principles. A philosophy that was neither independent nor truly and totally

rational could not be an aid to theology, because it wouldn’t exist at all, much less help anything.

Philosophy’s independence constitutes an essential part of its own value as a handmaid.

Philosophy’s place as handmaiden does not come as a result of the categorization of thought, but

in order of human fulfillment. Prayerful union of the soul with God is the end toward which

philosophizing is ordered. Since before the fall of Rome, monks had been spending great deals of

time copying, studying, and meditating on text as an aid to contemplation. St. Augustine, in de

doctrina christiana, argued that the preacher should take the best from all the sciences, like the

Israelites plundered Egypt, in order to further their study with God. He claimed that knowledge

of natural sciences and philosophy had a limited intrinsic value, but showed a great amount of

usefulness when used as an aid to the knowledge of God. As a result, philosophy is the

“handmaid” that prepares the human mind for contemplation – or theology, viewed not strictly as

a scientific examination of religious truths, but as prayerful meditation upon God Himself.

Dualism is the concept that our mind is more than just our brain. This concept entails that our

mind has a non-material, spiritual dimension that includes consciousness and possibly an eternal

attribute. One way to understand this concept is to consider our self as a container including our

physical body and physical brain along with a separate non-physical mind, spirit, or soul. The

mind, spirit, or soul is considered the conscious part that manifests itself through the brain in a

similar way that picture waves and sound waves manifest themselves through a television set.

The picture and sound waves are also non-material just like the mind, spirit, or soul.
 If dualism is not true, the mind is limited to the physical brain. Assuming this scenario, what

kind of a mind would we expect? We certainly would not expect to have consciousness strictly

from materials. Perhaps we could expect to see a mechanical mind similar to a computer that is

run by a program. We would not expect things like consciousness, sensations, thoughts,

emotions, desires, beliefs, and free choice. Such a mind would behave in a deterministic way

based upon the laws of matter. Many scientists and philosophers are now concluding that the

laws of chemistry and physics cannot explain the experience of consciousness in human beings.

With dualism we would expect the spiritual mind to have similar attributes to that of its source. If

the source is the God of the Bible, the concept of dualism is consistent with the Bible.

. In their journal article, physician Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist, describe

their study of sixty-three heart attack victims who were declared clinically dead but were later

revived and interviewed. About ten percent reported having well-structured, lucid thought

processes, with memory formation and reasoning during the time that their brains were not

functioning. The effects of starvation of oxygen or drugs were ruled out as factors. Researchers

also found that numerous cases were similar.

 When empirical information is used to as a basis for validating dualism, we can come to a

consensus that it is true. However, dualism vs. materialism is tied to the creation vs. evolution

debate. Consequently, evolutionists need to take unrealistic positions against dualism to defend

evolution. If dualism is true, we are created by God and macroevolution is false.

In a similar way, if only the objective scientific empirical facts are considered, evolution has no

support and creation is true by default.

The mind-body problem is the problem: what is the relationship between mind and body? Or

alternatively: what is the relationship between mental properties and physical properties?

Humans have (or seem to have) both physical properties and mental properties. People have (or

seem to have) the sort of properties attributed in the physical sciences. These physical properties

include size, weight, shape, colour, motion through space and time, etc. But they also have (or

seem to have) mental properties, which we do not attribute to typical physical objects these

properties involve consciousness (including perceptual experience, emotional experience, and

much else), intentionality (including beliefs, desires, and much else), and they are possessed by a

subject or a self.

Physical properties are public, in the sense that they are, in principle, equally observable by

anyone. Some physical properties—like those of an electron—are not directly observable at all,

but they are equally available to all, to the same degree, with scientific equipment and

techniques. The same is not true of mental properties. I may be able to tell that you are in pain by
your behaviour, but only you can feel it directly. Similarly, you just know how something looks

to you, and I can only surmise. Conscious mental events are private to the subject, who has a

privileged access to them of a kind no-one has to the physical.

The mind-body problem concerns the relationship between these two sets of properties. The

mind-body problem breaks down into a number of components.

Materialist views say that, despite appearances to the contrary, mental states are just physical

states. Behaviourism, functionalism, mind-brain identity theory and the computational theory of

mind are examples of how materialists attempt to explain how this can be so. The most common

factor in such theories is the attempt to explicate the nature of mind and consciousness in terms

of their ability to directly or indirectly modify behaviour, but there are versions of materialism

that try to tie the mental to the physical without explicitly explaining the mental in terms of its

behaviour-modifying role. The latter are often grouped together under the label ‘non-reductive

physicalism’, though this label is itself rendered elusive because of the controversial nature of

the term ‘reduction’.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that the supreme principle of morality is a standard of

rationality that he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Kant characterized the CI as an

objective, rationally necessary and unconditional principle that we must always follow despite

any natural desires or inclinations we may have to the contrary. All specific moral requirements,

according to Kant, are justified by this principle, which means that all immoral actions are

irrational because they violate the CI. Other philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke and Aquinas,
 had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these

standards were either instrumental principles of rationality for satisfying one’s desires, as in

Hobbes, or external rational principles that are discoverable by reason, as in Locke and Aquinas.

Kant agreed with many of his predecessors that an analysis of practical reason reveals the

requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental principles. Yet he also argued that

conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle), and hence to moral requirements themselves,

can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based on his

striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free, in the sense of

being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is

none other than the law of an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant’s moral philosophy is a

conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’

to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that

Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and

deserving of equal respect.

Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy

The most basic aim of moral philosophy, and so also of the Groundwork, is, in Kant’s view, to

“seek out” the foundational principle of a “metaphysics of morals,” which Kant understands as a

system of a priori moral principles that apply the CI to human persons in all times and cultures.

Kant pursues this project through the first two chapters of the Groundwork. He proceeds by

analyzing and elucidating common sense ideas about morality, including the ideas of a “good

will” and “duty”. The point of this first project is to come up with a precise statement of the

principle or principles on which all of our ordinary moral judgments are based. The judgments in
question are supposed to be those that any normal, sane, adult human being would accept on due

rational reflection. Nowadays, however, many would regard Kant as being overly optimistic

about the depth and extent of moral agreement. But perhaps he is best thought of as drawing on a

moral viewpoint that is very widely shared and which contains some general judgments that are

very deeply held. In any case, he does not appear to take himself to be primarily addressing a

genuine moral skeptic such as those who often populate the works of moral philosophers, that is,

someone who doubts that she has any reason to act morally and whose moral behavior hinges on

a rational proof that philosophers might try to give. For instance, when, in the third and final

chapter of the Groundwork, Kant takes up his second fundamental aim, to “establish” this

foundational moral principle as a demand of each person’s own rational will, his conclusion

apparently falls short of answering those who want a proof that we really are bound by moral

requirements. He rests this second project on the position that we — or at least creatures with

rational wills — possess autonomy. The argument of this second project does often appear to try

to reach out to a metaphysical fact about our wills. This has led some readers to the conclusion

that he is, after all, trying to justify moral requirements by appealing to a fact — our autonomy

— that even a moral skeptic would have to recognize.

Throughout his moral works, Kant returns time and again to the question of the method moral

philosophy should employ when pursuing these aims. A basic theme of these discussions is that

the fundamental philosophical issues of morality must be addressed a priori, that is, without

drawing on observations of human beings and their behavior. Kant’s insistence on an a

priori method to seek out and establish fundamental moral principles, however, does not always

appear to be matched by his own practice. The Metaphysics of Morals, for instance, is meant to
be based on a priori rational principles, but many of the specific duties that Kant describes, along

with some of the arguments he gives in support of them, rely on general facts about human

beings and our circumstances that are known from experience.

In one sense, it might seem obvious why Kant insists on an a priori method. A “metaphysics of

morals” would be, more or less, an account of the nature and structure of moral requirements —

in effect, a categorization of duties and values. Such a project would address such questions as,

what is a duty. What kinds of duties are there? What is the good? What kinds of goods are there?,

and so on. These appear to be metaphysical questions. Any principle used to provide such

categorizations appears to be a principle of metaphysics, in a sense, but Kant did not see them as

external moral truths that exist independently of rational agents. Moral requirements, instead, are

rational principles that tell us what we have overriding reason to do. Metaphysical principles of

this sort are always sought out and established by a priori methods.

Fundamental issues in moral philosophy must also be settled a priori because of the nature of

moral requirements themselves, or so Kant thought. This is a third reason he gives for an a

priori method, and it appears to have been of great importance to Kant: Moral requirements

present themselves as being unconditionally necessary. But an a posteriori method seems ill-

suited to discovering and establishing what we must do whether we feel like doing it or not;

surely such a method could only tell us what we actually do. So an a posteriori method of

seeking out and establishing the principle that generates such requirements will not support the

presentation of moral “ought” as unconditional necessities. Kant argued that empirical

observations could only deliver conclusions about, for instance, the relative advantages of moral

behavior in various circumstances or how pleasing it might be in our own eyes or the eyes of
 others. Such findings clearly would not support the unconditional necessity of moral

requirements. To appeal to a posteriori considerations would thus result in a tainted conception

of moral requirements. It would view them as demands for which compliance is not

unconditionally necessary, but rather necessary only if additional considerations show it to be

advantageous, optimific or in some other way felicitous. Thus, Kant argued that if moral

philosophy is to guard against undermining the unconditional necessity of obligation in its

analysis and defense of moral thought, it must be carried out entirely a priori.

johnson, r. (2004, february 23). stanford.edu. Retrieved from stanford encyclopedia of philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/