PHILOSOPHY A.S. UNIT 2 PAPER, JANUARY 2009 SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO SELECTED QUESTIONS In writing the answers to past exam questions, I have referred to AQA s mark schemes (available on their website) as far as possible. However, my answers should not be treated as carrying AQA s stamp of approval. They represent my considered opinion as to how these questions might reasonably be tackled. The BPA takes no responsibility for the examination performance of students who have used these answers. There are of course a range of valid ways of tackling most of these questions and mine represent, in each case, just one possible approach. Theme: Knowledge of the external world (a) Explain and illustrate one argument for distinguishing between primary and secondary qualities. (15 marks) The primary qualities of objects are those that figure in physical laws, e.g., size, shape, mass, weight, motion, rest etc., as opposed to the secondary qualities, which play no part in such laws, e.g., colour, sound, texture, taste etc. From a physical point of view, primary qualities are more fundamental than secondary ones: it seems that the latter can be explained in terms of the former. For example, the secondary quality of redness could be defined as the disposition to produce a sensation of redness in observers with normal colour vision under conditions of normal lighting, but the explanation for this disposition must lie in the primary qualities of the objects, i.e., the arrangements of particles of various kinds on the surface of the object. (b) Consider whether the strengths of idealism outweigh the weaknesses. (30 marks) Idealism is the theory that reality is ultimately mental in nature. Despite having almost no adherents amongst contemporary analytic philosophers, idealism does appear to have certain strengths. Some idealists claim that ordinary objects are ideas in our minds and this would seem to agree with the common sense idea that we perceive objects directly and not through any intermediate process. Also, idealism s emphasis on the point of view of the observer resonates with important concerns in contemporary philosophy regarding anti-realism and instrumentalism about science. But perhaps the two most significant advantages of idealism from the point of view of contemporary philosophy are: (a) its ontological simplicity; and (b) the fact that it provides a convenient way out of the mind-body problem. These two advantages are linked together: both derive from the idealist s rejection of matter as an independently existing type of stuff. Those who support the use of Occam s razor ( Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity or, roughly: don t accept the reality of anything unless you re forced to) will not want to recognise two fundamental types of thing (mind and matter) when they can make do with only one; and clearly if there is no such thing as matter, then the problem of how the mental world relates to the material (physical) world disappears.
However, it is not at all clear that these strengths outweigh the weaknesses. One of the weaknesses is the fact that idealism s apparent agreement with common sense in supposing that we perceive objects in the world directly is more illusory than real, at least if the theory is stated with sufficient care. For the partial and fleeting sense impressions that we have in our minds relating to physical things cannot be identified with the permanent, objective entities which we think of such things as being. This does not automatically entail, of course, that idealists cannot accommodate ordinary objects within their theory, merely that this cannot be done through simply equating these objects with our sensations of them. So what positive account can they give? Perhaps physical things can be treated as collections of sense-data. But this cannot mean only actual sense-data. If I look at a coin, for example, I might get a sensedatum that is elliptically shaped. Others will get differently shaped sense-data by viewing the coin from a different angle. All these would presumably need to be added to the collection, but what about the shapes that can be obtained by viewing the coin from angles that nobody happens to be, and perhaps never have been and never will be, looking at it from? It would be arbitrary to exclude these from the set after all, the existence of the coin does not depend on its actually being perceived. There are two possible ways an idealist might respond to this. She might say: Existence does necessarily depend on perception this is the essence of the idealist position so if the existence of coins and other physical objects appears to be independent of perception, so much the worse for coins and other physical objects! Such things are not real. A different and more sophisticated idealist response avoids simply repudiating physical objects; rather, it tries to show how physical object talk can be analysed in terms of what sense-data would be perceived under hypothetical circumstances. This is known as phenomenalism. According to the phenomenalist, even a statement about a completely unobservable theoretical object of science, such as a quark, can be translated into a set of statements about what sense-data people would have if they did certain experiments or got themselves into certain sorts of situations (where these experiments or situations must themselves be specified purely in terms of sense-data). However, when they have tried to produce such translations for particular physical object statements, phenomenalists have never been able to come up with ones that succeed in capturing the full meanings of the original statements. There is a way that an idealist can get around the above problem, though it is rather drastic. It is the view attributed (perhaps incorrectly) to Berkeley, according to which the existence of objects unperceived by humans consists in the fact that they are perceived by someone, namely God. (Although Berkeley did of course believe in God and believed that God perceives everything, his view of the reality of physical things seems to have been closer to phenomenalism, according to J.O. Urmson.) However, most philosophers would not want to make the reality of physical objects depend upon the existence of God, given that the latter is usually considered to be more questionable than the reality of the physical world. In summary, I would argue that the two main weaknesses of idealism are these: (a) it is not as congenial to common sense as some idealists (such as Berkeley himself) claim; and (b) in order to account for the physical world it must either adopt phenomenalism, which is difficult to sustain, or commit itself to theism, a hypothesis
that many consider extravagant. I believe these weaknesses of idealism outweigh its strengths. Theme: God and the world Question 4 (a) Describe one feature of the World that appears to show design. Explain one reason for doubting this feature does show design. (15 marks) The giraffe s long neck is precisely what it needs to reach the leaves of tall branches; the duck s webbed feet are exactly what the duck requires for paddling; an intestine is perfect for digesting food and so on. These are all examples of life on Earth being fit for purpose. When we see evidence of design in the natural world, it is surely reasonable to infer that there must have been some agent (or agents) who did the designing: it seems highly improbable that it could have come about by chance alone. Darwin s theory of evolution by natural selection creates severe difficulties for this argument. According to Darwin, design in nature is an illusion. What appears at first sight to be the deliberate matching of biological features to an organism s needs is now seen as simply the product of millions of years of adaptive selection operating on random mutations. A possible Darwinian explanation for the giraffe s long neck is that at some point in the evolution of giraffes, random miscopying of genes caused certain giraffes to have slightly longer necks than the norm, and these giraffes had access to slightly higher leaves, went less hungry and consequently stayed alive longer than their shorter-necked relatives, giving them more opportunity to reproduce; and this process continued until giraffes necks generally reached the sort of length they have today. On this view, life is not like a watch or any other designed artifact. If we infer a designer in the case of life, that is because we overlook another way in which well-functioning living things could have come about, the way described in Darwin s theory. (b) Natural evil does not count against the existence of God. Discuss. (30 marks) At first sight it would seem that natural evil does count against the existence of God. God is normally conceived of as being both all-good and all-powerful. But an allgood and all-powerful God would by definition have both the desire and the means to prevent any evil from coming into being. Yet clearly there is natural evil. This has often been seen as providing a proof of atheism. The reference to natural evil makes the problem particularly severe for theists. If it were a question of moral evil, the theist might appeal to the free will defence, for such evil can be ascribed to free human choice, and God s goodness might be seen as requiring him to grant humans free will, even though he must have known that this gift might be abused. In contrast to this, the evil of natural phenomena such as diseases, earthquakes and tsunamis cannot so easily be blamed on human beings.
In fact such things can be blamed on human beings, if one is prepared to adopt a particularly severe form of theism. Orthodox Christians cite original sin Adam s decision to defy God as leading to the expulsion from Eden and the consequent entry of natural evils into human life. More recently, some American right-wing evangelists have extended this idea to the point of explaining particular natural evils by invoking human wickedness (e.g, claiming AIDS was caused by sexual immorality). But this raises the following objection: if God is all-powerful, why could he not have limited the painful consequences of such behaviour at least to those morally responsible for them, without also dragging in millions of innocent human beings, such as young children? (It should not be forgotten that being all-powerful entails having total control over natural laws of cause and effect.) A more plausible (and certainly less repellent) idea is that natural evil is necessary for us, since in order for us to develop in the way God wishes us to, we have to cope with, and overcome, real obstacles and hardship. According to this view, God does not want us to suffer, but he must allow suffering in order to produce the greater good. If it is asked why the suffering has to be so random in its distribution why it seems to affect the innocent as much as the wicked it might be replied that it needs to be this way so as to foster the development of a strong faith that can withstand confrontation with an apparently unjust universe. However, all solutions of this kind come up against a fundamental difficulty, which is that they involve God creating or allowing natural evil as a means to an end. The problem is that this makes no sense in the case of an omnipotent being. Such a being, restricted only by the laws of logic (and that hardly counts as any sort of restriction) can just will things into existence: he does not need to create something else in order to bring them about and if the something else is morally undesirable and he is morally perfect, he will not do so. But perhaps there is still a way out for the theist. Perhaps she can avoid the contradiction involved in the problem of natural evil by giving up her belief either in God s omnipotence or his omni-benevolence or both. This possibility was suggested by John Stuart Mill. In responding to Henry Mansel, who suggested that the problem of evil might be overcome by supposing that the term good had to be understood in a different sense when applied to God from the way we apply it in everyday life, Mill passionately objected: I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go. But Mill did not deny God s existence; instead he believed in a God that was less than fully omnipotent. Evil exists because God s power is not absolute, according to his view. Of course, the problem could equally well be solved by denying God s absolute goodness, but this seems a less attractive solution, especially if it involves supposing that his compassion is not total. It seems far better to suppose that God s power is limited. It should be noted that this would not prevent us from saying that his power was still very great and that it might legitimately inspire awe and a worshipful attitude. Theists are usually reluctant to endorse Mill s position. They do not wish to accept any limitations on God s power or goodness. They either ignore the problem of natural evil or adopt one of the traditional solutions to it, such as those discussed above. But as I have shown, these solutions are not easy to defend.
Theme: Free will and determinism Question 5 (a) Explain and illustrate the distinction between reasons and causes. (15 marks) Here I have probably given more ideas than are needed for 15 marks. Reasons and causes can both be used to explain actions, but they do so in different ways. Giving a reason explains the agent s actions in terms of her plans, goals or intentions, whereas giving the cause explains them in terms of a scientific system of natural law (or the rudiments of this within common sense ). Reasons are part of the intentional stance for viewing human behaviour, in which we understand it in terms of the agent s beliefs and desires. For example, we might give someone s reason for hanging about backstage after a performance of a play as consisting in a desire to meet the leading actor plus a belief that hanging about there would make this more likely. Causes, on the other hand, are part of the mechanistic stance adopted by physics or neurology. The intentional stance is vital to us, as without it, we cannot make sense of the actions of other agents and hence interact with them on a human level. Another difference is that whereas causes are often argued to be distinct existences, a reason and the action it produces may be intrinsically or conceptually related. For example, describing an action as an act of murder tells us about its reason or intention: to bring about a person s death. It can be argued that reasons are much more important to our understanding of agency than causes. A (voluntary) action would have to have some sort of reason, but it might lack a cause. In fact, some go further and argue that a true action (i.e. a free, autonomous action) cannot have a cause, as the cause would necessitate the action and so rob the agent of free will in initiating it. It also seems significant that reasons can be good or bad, but causes are neutral. Thus reasons form a part of our moral conception of human agents, whereas causes in themselves have nothing to do with this. (b) Explore the claim that because human beings have minds as well as bodies, they have free will. (30 marks) Our bodies are governed by physical laws that can be established through scientific enquiry. But the mind (it can be argued) is not subject to the laws of physics it is not made of physical stuff. It follows that our decisions, being mental in character, demonstrate our free will as entities that exist, at least partly, outside the natural realm. Such an argument would have appealed to dualist philosophers of mind at least since the days of Descartes. However, there are several things that can be said against it. First, even if dualism is true (and it is hardly a well regarded theory at the present time), the metaphysical libertarianism outlined above does not inevitably follow from
it. For it is possible to be an epiphenomenalist, i.e., to think that while minds exist independently of bodies, they do not affect them in any way. The causation between mind and body works in only one direction, according to this view: physical processes can cause mental events, but not the other way around. There is even empirical evidence for this view. Neurologists appear to have shown that the feeling of bringing about one s voluntary bodily movements is slightly preceded in time by the executive neural events that make them happen. Assuming that a cause must occur no later in time than its effect, it follows that this feeling cannot be the cause of the movements. Another reason for doubting that having a mind guarantees free will is the status of non-human animals. Most people seem to agree that at least the more advanced nonhuman animals have some form of consciousness. A dog, for example, seems to be capable of having beliefs and desires, of feeling pleasure and pain and so on. Yet few would accept that dogs and similar non-humans have anything resembling the free will or autonomy of persons. (If they did, wouldn t we have to think them capable of moral responsibility? That seems outlandish.) Thus having a mind does not necessarily enable a creature to escape the causal nexus of the natural world. And of course what goes for non-human creatures may also go for humans too. So having a mind is insufficient for possessing free will. It might also be suggested that it is not necessary, assuming that by a mind is meant something that we have in addition to our bodies (as the question seems to imply). The concept of free, but purely physical, persons might be defended in one of two ways. We might be beings, which, though entirely physical, are not fully determined. (After all, quantum theory seems to have revealed aspects of the natural world that are not fully determined.) This, however, is not entirely satisfactory, since it appears to make a dubious identification of autonomy with mere randomness. A more appealing idea is the position of a philosopher like Daniel Dennett who (a) accepts determinism, (b) denies the independent reality of minds and (c) accommodates free will through compatibilism. This raises the question of whether determinism can indeed be reconciled with free will. This is certainly a popular position and has been so at least since Hobbes. But can it be sustained? Note that if determinism is true, everything that happens is determined by preceding events together with the totality of natural laws. These events are in their turn determined by other, still earlier events. This continues either ad infinitum or until we reach an initial state of the universe. Human actions are treated in just the same way as other events. It follows that one could in principle track the causes of my actions to events that took place long before I was born. But how could I be held responsible for such actions if they were caused by events that occurred before my birth and which I therefore could not possibly control? To punish me if such actions were bad would seem unjust. If this line of argument is right, then at least in so far as free will implies moral responsibility, it is incompatible with determinism. What makes compatibilism seem plausible is surely the fact that there is a sense in which we can be free despite being determined, a sense explained with varying degrees of subtlety by compatibilists throughout the centuries (and with particular sharpness in the last fifty or so years). It does not follow that this is a sense that supports the idea of moral responsibility. If the foregoing is correct, the suggestion that we might be free in a sense that is relevant to moral responsibility, even if we lack minds that are in some sense entities over and above our bodies appears highly doubtful, assuming our bodies are deterministic mechanisms.