African Philosophy of Mind

1. African Philosophy of Mind

2. Anton Wilhelm Amo

3. Amo’s Philosophy of Mind • Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-1759?), a native of Ghana, became the first black professor in Germany • The Apatheia of the Human Mind: a critique of Descartes’s dualism

4. Amo’s Philosophy of Mind • Apatheia, from which we derive the word apathy, means nonreactiveness, passionlessness, imperturbability, or unresponsiveness • The Stoics thought of apatheia as an ideal state in which the mind is free of emotions and passions • But Amo uses it more broadly

5. Mind as Passive • Amo focuses on a distinction that underlies much Western thought about the mind • Emotions are called passions because the mind is thought to be passive in receiving them • Anger, love, desire, pleasure, pain are thought to be active in affecting the mind, which is passive in being affected by their causal power

6. Sensation • Sensation, traditionally, is thought to be similar to passion • The mind passively receives sensory impressions from the world • Notice the imagery: The world makes impressions on the mind much as a seal might make an impression on hot wax • The mind is active, on this picture, only when it exercises reason

7. Sensation • Sensation, Amo argues, is essentially bodily • It requires a complex physical interaction between a physical object and a perceiver’s body

8. Sensation

9. The Mind • But how does interaction between object and body have any effect on the mind? • Amo grants the Cartesian assumption that the mind is a spiritual substance • But a spiritual substance, he insists, is purely active and immaterial • It always gains understanding through itself (i.e., directly), and acts from self-motion and with intention in regard to an end and goal of which it is conscious to itself

10. Amo’s Paradox • The mind as spiritual substance is purely active • Anything receiving sensations is in so doing purely passive

11. Ideas • For Descartes, the gap between sensation and reason is filled with ideas; indeed, Descartes’s contribution to early modern philosophy is often summarized as “the new way of ideas.”

12. Two Roles • But Descartes is assigning ideas two different and, in Amo’s eyes, incompatible roles • There is a difference between Jones’s thinking ‘There’s a table’ and seeing the table

13. Two Roles • Amo argues that a spiritual substance could think, but not see, hear, or feel • The actual sensing must be material • The faculty of sensation is not mental but physical

14. A Thing that Thinks—and Senses • We are not essentially things that think, as Descartes declares, and only inessentially bodies • We are essentially both • A person is essentially a thinking being, but also essentially a sensing being, and therefore essentially embodied

15. Mind and Brain • The Akan language treats mind (adwene) as intellectual—a faculty of thinking rather than sensing or feeling. • In Western thought, identity theorists hold that the mind and brain are identical. • For the Akan, such an identification is impossible.

16. Mind • The mind is a “permanent possibility of thought,” which is not an object at all • The mind consists of thoughts, but it is not simply a bundle of thoughts • It is a certain kind of capacity, a capacity to have thoughts

17. Basis of the Mind • For the Akan, the brain is the basis of the mind • It is by having a brain that I have the capacity for thought

18. Mind and Person • A person consists of body, life-force, and personality • The mind is not a constituent of a person, for the simple reason that it is not a thing • The mind is not a component of a person for the same reason that moving is not a part of a car

19. Mind and Body • This dissolves the mind/body problem • Since the mind is not a thing, the question of how it can relate to a material thing, the body, does not arise

20. Dualities • Western philosophers often split the self into • mind and body, or • spirit and flesh, or • reason and desire • The dual elements are complementary but also conflicting • Reconciling and unifying them is the central human task

21. Creativity • The distinction between male and female provides a model for this kind of duality • The union of male and female brings about creation • So, too, is the union of dual elements a fundamentally creative process

22. Creativity • Human beings are thus essentially creative • Our central obligation is to create • We create things • We create a personality through our actions • Together we create a social order • In each case, we must reconcile and unite conflicting elements, synthesizing them into an organic whole

23. Freedom • Our creative essence rests on our freedom • The conflicting forces we must unite do not control or determine us • We are self-determining; we are free to reconcile conflicting elements as we please, creating, in the process, our own distinctive personalities and lives

24. Freedom • Our creative essence also rests on our choosing among possibilities • Possibilities, potentialities, are thus central to who we are • Finally, our creative essence implies that we are also essentially agents • We make choices and act, changing the world and ourselves as we do

25. “A Thing that Acts” • Descartes writes, “What am I? A thing that thinks.” • For the Akan, it would be more accurate to say, “What am I? A thing that acts.” • I am a thing that confronts and realizes possibilities, makes choices, reconciles conflicts, and creates things, including myself

26. “A Thing that Acts”

27. Personal Identity • Philosophers of mind ask not only • “What am I?” and • “What makes me human?” but also • “What makes me me?” • What makes me the person I am?

28. Personal Identity • Am I really the same person I was as a baby or a small child? • Will I be the same person when I am old? • If so, what explains that? • What makes me the same person throughout the entire course of my life?

29. Mind/Body/Identity • These questions are closely related • If I am essentially mind or consciousness, I will tend to look to mind or consciousness to explain my continuing identity • If I am essentially a physical being, I will tend to look for physical explanations of my continuity • Conversely, if I can explain my identity in certain terms, that will suggest that my essence can be understood in those same terms

30. Divided Self • The Yoruba, like many west African tribes, divide the self into three components: • the body, • the mind (or soul, or consciousness), and • the ori, the “inner head” or personality

31. Thought Experiments • If Jones’s brain (or mind) is transplanted into Smith’s body, is the resulting person Smith or Jones?

32. Thought Experiments • Jones? • Smith? • The Yoruba want to know how the resulting being acts • Does it act like Jones or like Smith? • The Yoruba see this as a question about ori. Does this person have Smith’s ori or Jones’s?

33. Personality • I am a being consisting of body and mind and personality • What is essential to my identity is my ori, my personality • That is what makes me me • Anything that radically changed my personality would disrupt my identity, even if it did not disrupt body or consciousness