Truth, Matter, and Spirit in Philosophy

Posted on Nov 5, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Introduction

Truth

Truth is a property of certain statements that:

  • Match with the world
  • Are accepted as valid by a community
  • Can be inserted into a system without causing contradiction

Truth exists on three levels:

  1. The level of the world or reality (scientific study)
  2. The level of scientific theories about the world (level 1)
  3. The level of philosophical theories about the world’s true theories (level 2)

Definition of Truth

Definitions, especially of abstract concepts like “truth”, are challenging. Throughout philosophy’s history, three definitions have emerged:

  1. Classical Greece: Early Greek philosophers saw truth as “uncovering” something hidden behind appearances that explains them. Heraclitus stated, “The true nature of things loves to hide.” This objectifies truth, making it a sought-after treasure.
  2. Middle Ages: This era marked a breakthrough. Medieval philosophers defined truth as “the result of a match between intelligence and the world.” Truth became a harmonious relationship between intellect and the world, called correspondence.
  3. Twentieth Century: Analytic philosophy provided the latest perspective. This century’s linguistic turn shifted philosophy’s focus to knowledge itself. Truth became an abstract property of certain statements.

Types of Truth

Based on validity, we distinguish two types of truth:

  1. Necessary or Ultimate Truths: These are eternally valid and cannot be otherwise. For example, 2 + 3 = 5. Kant called these analytic truths, requiring only conceptual analysis of the terms used. Formal sciences provide such truths. However, these truths are considered empty, offering no new knowledge. Saying A = A is like saying every bachelor is an unmarried man—necessary but uninformative.
  2. Contingent or Provisional Truths: These are the opposite of ultimate truths. They provide new information and are subject to revision. Most sciences deal with these truths. Kant called them synthetic truths, requiring experience to formulate. We extract a property and apply it to a concept.

Criteria of Truth

These criteria help us determine if a proposition is true:

  1. Evidence: We know a proposition is true through evidence. “It’s raining now” is true because we see rain falling. Evidence implies direct reality. There are two types:
    1. Sensible: Our senses provide the evidence.
    2. Intellectual: Even simple things require prior knowledge, like arithmetic (e.g., 5 + 3 = 8).

Complex theorems, like Fermat’s Last Theorem, are accessible to few, requiring the criterion of authority. Evidence is relational—things are evident in relation to someone, including sensory evidence.

  1. Authority: Truth is determined by a competent authority. We use this criterion unconsciously in daily life (e.g., taking medicine prescribed by a doctor).
  2. Consensus: Truth is what the majority decides through rational dialogue. If consensus is reached rationally, it becomes evidence. If a few reach consensus and impose it on the majority, it’s authority. There are two types: majority and unanimous.
  3. Consistency: This is a theory of truth applied to systems of propositions. It focuses on the absence of contradiction. It’s a necessary but insufficient criterion for truth, indicating rationality. A proposition is true within a system if it doesn’t contradict others in the same system.
  4. Practical Implications: A belief system is accepted as true based on its positive practical consequences.

Reality: Spirit and Matter

Philosophers distinguish between material and spiritual (immaterial) realities. They have three types of relationships:

  1. Exclusion: One reality’s existence precludes the other’s. This leads to materialist and spiritualist metaphysics.
  2. Rationale: One reality is based on the other (Material → Spiritual or Spiritual → Material). Spiritual → Material implies reduction, a variant of exclusion.
  3. Coexistence: Both realities exist independently but can interact, revealing differences in connection.

Plato and Aristotle: The Fundamental Dilemma

According to Plato, reality is divided into two worlds:

  1. The Sensible World (Material): This is grasped through the senses. Everything changes, is born, and dies. It’s a copy of the supersensible/intelligible world, making it a false world.
  2. Supersensible/Intelligible World: This is grasped through intelligence. It’s eternal, consisting of ideas. These ideas express truth, and there’s only one idea for everything. The sensible world copies it.

Plato prioritizes the spiritual/immortal (supersensible) over the material. Aristotle, his student, prioritizes the sensible/material. For him, the material is real, and the spiritual exists within it.

The Spirit

Spiritualism posits that reality’s fundamental nature is spirit. It argues that psychic phenomena cannot be explained without assuming a spiritual/immaterial reality.

Evidence for the Spiritual/Immaterial: Objective-Subjective Perspective

Several phenomena suggest a spiritual/immaterial reality beyond the material. Material realities are accessed objectively, existing externally in space and time. However, within ourselves, we find phenomena existing only in time: our experiences, accessible only to us. The underlying causes of our experiences and brain processes are objective, but our experiences and feelings are not. We can convey feelings through words, but it’s difficult to convey an experience to someone who hasn’t had it.

The Elusive Self

Subjectivity takes the form of self-consciousness, an elusive phenomenon. Whenever we try to objectify it, it escapes. The self is always behind, the condition of representation, and cannot be captured by any thought. This is Kant’s “transcendental ego”, hinting at the spiritual’s existence.

Matter

We can distinguish two concepts of matter:

  1. Philosophical: Matter is what makes up things we perceive through the senses (solid, liquid, or gas). Ultimately, everything is made of atoms and subatomic particles, imperceptible to the senses. Another definition is “that which is made or may be something”, implying things are made of other things. This leads to different levels: first, second, third, etc. Matter is also what things are made of that have been made or have become something else. To explain change rationally, we must assume an immutable basis. Thus, the metaphysical/philosophical concept of matter is defined as:
    1. Substrate of change
    2. Element (what things are made of)
    3. Object of perception
  2. Scientific: Natural science provides the strongest argument for materialism, viewing matter as “that which fills space.” It can take two forms:
    1. Passive: As extension
    2. Active: As energy

Matter has five characteristics:

  1. Impenetrability
  2. Atomic structure
  3. Uniqueness (same for all objects)
  4. Constancy (as mass or energy, neither created nor destroyed)
  5. Essential ingredient of change

Materialism

Robert Boyle introduced the term in the 17th century. Descartes established the radical division of reality into material and spiritual. This led to metaphysical materialism, but there are six variants:

  1. Epistemological: Any cognitive statement must relate to material bodies to make sense.
  2. Monist: Only basic material reality exists, reducing all others to it.
  3. Hylozoist: Reality is a material machine.
  4. Mechanistic: Reality is a material machine.
  5. Dialectical: Reality is a substance in process.
  6. Historical: The material economic structure is vital in human history.

The 19th century saw a rise in materialism, including the six variants above, especially natural monist and mechanical materialism. The 20th century continued the debate, but in a more modern form: Can a machine think?

Can a Machine Think? Matter or Spirit

The spirit-matter problem asks if mental phenomena are entirely material or have a spiritual component. Materialists see the brain as the mind’s organ, a material object. Thinking is a physical process occurring biochemically in the brain. They believe complex physical systems like computers can also think. However, differences between brain and computer abilities are gradual. Computers surpass the human brain in many ways (e.g., Kasparov vs. Deep Blue). Some materialists see computers as the latest phase in intelligence evolution. Turing proposed a test to detect possible differences. Some argue that even if computers pass the Turing test, radical differences remain between human and computer minds:

  1. Intentionality: Human thought has intentionality. Signs used in thinking and language are meaningful because they point to something objective. Human thought is semantic, while computer thought is syntactic. For humans, “table” has meaning, but for computers, it’s a sequence of numbers (1,0,1,0,0…).
  2. Representationalism: Humans can represent objects mentally. We associate a mental image with a thing, which computers cannot do.
  3. Self-awareness: Humans are aware of themselves, their self, and their freedom. Computers rely on supplied information and lack self-awareness. Another difference is that computers work serially, while humans can operate in parallel, performing multiple tasks at once. The human mind works better because it’s vague.

Conclusions

  1. Dualistic: Those who defend two realities face the difficulty of interaction between material and immaterial. They deduce that material substances interacting with the body can produce a state of well-being/alertness (a spiritual state) and vice versa. The emerging explanation is that the spiritual emerges from the material.
  2. Monistic: They argue that all is matter. This reduction identifies the spiritual with the material, eliminating the spiritual and leaving only material reality.
  3. Reductionist: They argue that all is spirit. This position is not defended today because it would solve a difficult problem with an even more difficult solution.