Existentialist Metaphysics

Existentialist Metaphysics

I won’t attempt to explain, let alone justify, the existentialist philosophy laid out in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness; I will simply presuppose it. My concern is with the metaphysics that goes along with it (which Sartre completely ignores).[1] We have the in-itself and the for-itself. The in-itself is what it is; the for-itself is what it is not. The essence of the in-itself is inert matter; the essence of the for-itself is consciousness. The essence of inert matter is being; the essence of consciousness is nothingness. The essence of being is unfreedom; the essence of nothingness is freedom. So, the essence of the in-itself is unfreedom and the essence of the for-itself is freedom. The for-itself can be in bad faith, but the in-itself cannot. It is the essence of the in-itself (matter) to lack freedom; it is the essence of the for-itself (consciousness) to be free. Matter cannot be free; consciousness cannot be anything but free. This is because matter has no intentionality and consciousness is all about intentionality. The in-itself and the for-itself are categorically distinct—this is an irreducible dualism at the heart of reality (nothingness is real, all too real). Metaphysically, the in-itself and the for-itself are the opposite poles of the real. Being cannot be nothingness and nothingness cannot be being. Call this Sartrean dualism, analogous to Cartesian dualism.[2]

Now apply this system to panpsychism. Panpsychism says that matter is (partly) mental: the intrinsic nature of any material thing is mentality, i.e., consciousness. In addition to what we see of matter externally, matter also has an unseen inside—how it feels internally. Thus, matter is imbued with both being and nothingness, unfreedom and freedom, inertia and will. An electron, say, is both an in-itself and a for-itself, these being opposite types of reality: it both is what it is and what it is not. This makes it contradictory, which is impossible. Therefore, panpsychism posits a contradictory ontology. Existentialism doesn’t do this, since mind and matter are deemed separate things: one is free and the other is unfree. It is as if one is in jail and other isn’t. But you can’t be both. So, adopting Sartre’s ontology, panpsychism is a contradictory doctrine; it both affirms and denies that matter is free (a for-itself and an in-itself). That is, it says that matter is nothingness and that it is not nothingness (but is being).

How does Sartre’s system relate to the mind and body? The mind is consciousness, so it is nothingness (a for-itself); the body is inert matter, so it is being (an in-itself). Mind and body are therefore an irreducible duality. Human reality (as Sartre would say) is a double reality: we are all two things roped together–animals included. We are made of a free thing and an unfree thing, a thing of being and thing of nothingness. There is nothing contradictory about this, since body and mind are distinct existences (to borrow Hume’s indispensable phrase). There is no reason to think that Sartre would deny this; indeed, it is baked into his existentialist philosophy. Sartre is a metaphysical dualist with regard to mind and body. Fine, no problem about logical consistency. But not everybody is down with that; some folks want to retain a type of monism about human (animal) reality. How do they do this? They introduce a third category of thing, which they label the person or the self or the ego or the subject. This is commonly regarded as distinct from the mind and body, being instead an amalgam of the two—or better, something that has the other two aspects. That is, they talk this way, perhaps claiming that the concept of a person is primitive and not reducible to its physical and mental “aspects”. This sounds all well and good, given that we know what it means to talk of aspects of the same thing (e.g., the color and shape of a material body). Evidently, this third thing is neither an in-itself nor a for-itself—it isn’t pure matter and it isn’t pure mind, but a confluence of both (whatever that means—is it like two rivers joining together?). For want of a better label, let’s call it the “at-itself”, since the mind and body are both at a person—they are where a person is at. (It’s better than saying “up-itself” or “with-itself”.) The question then is whether the at-itself is real—can we quantify over at-itselves? I should bally well say not, as Bertie Wooster might phrase it; eff that, as others might put it. Because such a thing would involve a contradiction: for the at-itself is both free and not free, an in-itself and a for-itself, being and nothingness combined. What the flipping eff! The problem with the at-itself is that it isn’t real; it’s a myth dreamt up to avoid admitting dualism. This is why you can never quite put your finger on it (as Hume complained). The only realities here are the body and the mind, the in-itself and the for-itself; there is no third thing over and above these, acting as their bearer, their supervisor, their plus one. Look inside yourself: you are a body and a mind, and that’s it. There is no third thing lurking in the shadows and slouching around the premises—a homunculus or succubus. The person is a mythical creature, metaphysically. It is a handy way to talk, serving forensic purposes, but it is not a fundamental constituent of reality. Worse, it is bally contradictory—and we know what we say to that. In point of fact, Sartre never soils himself by introducing such an entity (he is a good empiricist); there are no persons in his ontology—no psychophysical hybrids. You are either an in-itself or a for-itself, no mixing or merging allowed. Here Sartre follows Descartes, who also eschewed the at-itself—the thinking-and-extended thing. We may talk this way for convenience, but in serious ontology we do better without it; once you have mind and body, you have covered the ground. Accordingly, Sartrean dualism and Cartesian dualism have no room for double aspect theories, these being deemed contradictory. This is not to say that they are all fine and dandy, only that they avoid a certain tempting move that ultimately leads nowhere. There are no metaphysical double agents, just a trick of language.[3]

[1] See my “Incompatible Minds”.

[2] We can label these views “French dualism”—firm distinctions not hazy continua (“Tibetan dualism”).

[3] Am I saying there are no people? Yes, I am saying that—no people in a metaphysically interesting sense. Of course, there are minds and bodies, but no third entity that has both a mind and body. There is no “I” but these. There are two things there not three. Similarly, there are no cats and dogs distinct from cat and dog minds and bodies. We can’t say, “Here is a cat mind, and there is a cat body, and over there there is a cat”. Nor can we say a cat is the mereological sum of its mind and body, as if they are cat parts. Ontologically, an animal is two things combined, not a third thing over and above the things combined—something like a zoological point or particle or spectral shadow. We can talk that way, but it is not serious metaphysics (like “sakes”). We should not be trinitarians about animal ontology (“the body, the mind, and the holy beast”). There is therefore really no such subject as the theory of personal identity, though there is certainly such a subject as body identity or mind identity. The person is nothing like a peg.