Tag Archives: Causality

Mr. Nobody: A True Philosophical Journey

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mr_nobodyI have just seen the movie ‘Mr. Nobody’, and I recommend anyone who is interested in philosophy to go see this movie. It’s by far the most philosophical and mind-boggling movie I have ever seen. The movie shows, among other things, the lack of control we have over the course of our lives. Each and every moment in life you make decisions that make you go one way or another, and this string of decisions is – in fact – what we call our lives. The movie also portrays a rather deterministic view on life. The butterfly effect, as explicated in the movie, is the prime example of this; even the smallest change in the course of history can make our lives turn out completely different from what it would have been without the change.

Each movie can be interpreted in multiple ways, and that surely goes for Mr. Nobody. Nonetheless, I believe that from a philosophical point of view there is at least one issue that is very prominent, and that is the struggle between free will on the one hand and determinism on the other.

What will follow might be hard to grasp for those who have not seen the movie yet. Therefore I assume that, by this point, you have seen the movie. At first sight, Mr. Nobody is all about choices. That is: what will happen in Nemo’s life given that he has made a certain choice (e.g., to either jump on the train or not). The fact that there is this possibility of at least two different worlds Nemo could live in (i.e., the one with his mother and the one with his father) seems to imply that Nemo had (in retrospect) the possibility of choosing either of the options. And it is this element of what seems to be some form of autonomy (the ‘free will’ element) that returns frequently in the movie. Another instance of it can be found in his meeting with Elise on her doorstep. In one ‘life’ Nemo expresses his feelings for Elise, after which they get married and get children. In another life, Nemo does not express his feelings, and his potential future with Elise never occurs.

However, the true question I asked myself after watching this movie was: does Nemo in fact have the possibility to choose? Or are his ‘choices’ predetermined by whatever it is that occurs in his environment? An instance of the latter could be found in Nemo loosing Anna’s number because the paper he wrote her number on becomes wet (and therefore unreadable). In other words, these circumstances seem to force (or at least push) Nemo in the direction of a life without Anna; a circumstance that ultimately results from an unemployed Brazilian boiling an egg, which is another instance of the butterfly effect. So although it might appear that Nemo has the opportunity to make choices, it might in fact be that ‘the world’ (as in the environment he is living in) has already made this choice for him.

The struggle between the apparent existence of free will and the ‘true’ deterministic nature of the world is just one among many philosophical issues raised by this movie. Another is that of the arrow of time: the fact that we cannot alter the past but can influence the future. It is this aspect of time (the fact that it moves in one direction only) that makes the free will versus determinism issue so difficult (if not impossible) to resolve. After all, if we could simply go back in time, and see whether we would have behaved in the same manner, irrespective of the non-occurrence of any circumstances, we might get a much better feel on the nature of free will. After all, if we would happen to act more or less the same, irrespective of the circumstances we would be put into, we would appear to have something resembling free-will. If not, determinism might be the more realistic option.

Nonetheless, this is a very interesting movie whom those interested in philosophy will surely enjoy. And to those who have seen it I ask: what did you think of it?

Do we Need the Social Sciences?

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There is a debate in philosophy of science about the status of “entities” like “churches”. Most of the philosophers agree on the fact that “churches” don’t really exist; that is, don’t really exist apart from the people that are part of a church. Just like a forest cannot exist apart from the trees being part of it. That’s pretty clear, right? The sum is merely a collection of its parts; “1 + 1 is always 2”. This is the ontological part of philosophy; the part of what exists out there in the world, with the position of “ontological individualism” winning the battle.

But there is a problem. Because if “churches” don’t really exist – in the sense I explained above – then they cannot have causal powers. After all, how can you cause something if you don’t exist? That’s impossible, right? But if that is true, a painful question arises: what then about sociology? Or what then about any social science dealing with entities like “churches”?  If these entities can’t cause anything, why then use them in “social laws” like, “If a group has the property of being a church, then its degree of solidarity will be higher than groups that do not have this property”? Then this “law” wouldn’t make sense, right? Unless, of course, it is not a causal relationship being “captured” in this ‘law”, but merely a correlation between the properties of “being a church” and “having a high degree of solidarity”. In this latter interpretation of “law” it can be true that members finding themselves to be “part of a church” have a relatively high degree of solidarity.  But then this would be merely an observation, right? Not a law representing the “causal nature of the universe”, right?

This is difficult issue for philosophers to crack. Since it is appears not to be easy to do without terms like “churches” in “social laws”; that is, if we would claim that “churches” don’t really exist and that the “laws” making use of the term “church” are not really laws, then we would have to come up with an alternative; an alternative posed in terms of individual properties instead of social properties like “being a church”, “being a football game” or “being an argument”. So how are we going to do this? Well, we could come up with a list consisting of all the “individual level properties” belonging to the social level property “being a church”. That list could look something like this: (1) the individuals share a building in which they pray, (2) the individuals believe in the same God…etc. etc. You get it? But then the problem would be that this list can go on forever! How could we ever put this in a law?! That’s impossible, right? And because this is impossible to do, it also becomes impossible, according to certain philosophers, to do away with social properties like “being a church” in social “laws”; after all, they claim, these social terms are needed to make sure that we don’t regress to those kinds of infinitely long lists.

The conclusion of this debate? Social laws are needed. Although churches might be composed of nothing more than individuals; it is conceptually impossible to reduce “social level entities” to “individual level entities”; where the former are used in sciences like sociology and the latter are used in sciences like psychology, neuroscience etc. Another implication of this observation is that it is impossible to do away with the social level sciences – like sociology – by reducing them to individual level sciences – like psychology. Therefore, our efforts to do so have failed miserably……although I seriously doubt the validity of this argument. But that’s something for another article.

But what do you think?

The Mind or The Body: Who Is In Charge?

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We are under the impression that we are in charge of our bodily actions. We believe that by steering our thoughts, we are somehow able to steer our bodies. If you are hungry and want to grab some food, ‘you‘ – the entity that is in charge of your mental processes – seem to somehow cause your body to move to the refrigerator and grab a sandwich. But how is that possible? How can something that is immaterial, which our thoughts seem to be, cause reactions in a physical world? Is there some kind of causal linkage between these two domains? Or are our thoughts nothing but a by-product of the physical existence of our bodies, and thus unable to – although it might appear to be otherwise – cause any physical activity?

You could say that there are two ‘kinds of explanation’ we could turn to in order to explain our sense of consciousness or our sense of control over our bodies. The first kind consists of explanations pointing to what might be the biological causes for our sense of consciousness. The other kind consists of explanations pointing to what might be religious or spiritual causes. I will not zoom in at the second kind of explanations because – frankly – I have very little to say about it; except for the fact that if there would be some kind of deity which has endowed us with our sense of consciousness, there would be little left to explain. But even if that would be the case, it is still highly unlikely that we will get to know this during our stay on this earth.

Within the biological spectrum of explanations, again a distinction can be made between what appear to be two incompatible ‘stories’. The difference between these stories does not so much reside within the causes they say are responsible for our sense of consciousness, but more in the consequences attached to each of these causes. The first branch of biological explanations claims that our human consciousness has come into existence at some point during the stay in our mother’s womb; at a certain point in the growth process of ours, our neurological development crossed a certain naturally determined threshold, thereby initiating what might be an ever recurring neurological signal; a signal that is coextensive with our mental processes (our thoughts, so to say) and that has a causal influence on our bodily behaviors. This explanation thus explicitly points to our thoughts as being causally related to our neurological activities. This explains why it seems to us that we are able to steer our bodily actions.

However, the question that immediately comes to mind after thinking about this explanation is: how could it ever be possible for something like the mind, that is involved with the ‘realm of thoughts’, to be connected to the physical world? That is: how can thoughts, that most of us consider to be immaterial, steer our bodies, that are material? This question remains yet unanswered.

The other type of biological explanation seems to do a better job at explaining the mysterious connection between our minds and bodies. This explanation claims that our consciousness is nothing more than an accidental byproduct of our neurological development, and has, subsequently, no causal influence on our bodily actions. That is: although we might have the impression that our thoughts are steering our bodies, in reality our physical bodies are, via our brains, steering our thoughts and therefore the content of our sense of consciousness (our thoughts). Our consciousness is no more than the activation of different regions of the brain, triggered by bodily actions in the physical world. Our mind is, as it is being called, ‘epiphenomenal’ on the body. And although this explanation might appear to be (very) counter-intuitive, it does a remarkably good job at clarifying the connection between our thoughts and actions.

Maybe one day science will be able to provide us with the final answer to the question of who is in charge: our minds or our bodies. Until that moment has come, we should stay ‘open-minded’ about what this relation might look like. No matter how counter-intuitive the explanations might be.

But what do you think?

Note: if you found this article interesting, then you might also enjoy this one.