The setting of the question is clear. We find that certain states of our mind correspond to certain states of our body. This is evident in case of sensations, when e.g. a visual experience corresponds to our eyes receiving light rays. Similar correspondence happens in some cases with emotions, for instance, when a feeling of rage is connected to rapid movement of heart. Finally, often our volitions (like me wanting something to eat) correspond to bodily movements (me moving toward the kitchen). Such correspondence asks for an explanation, Knutzen says, and it is the duty of philosophers to come up with such explanations.
As is familiar, three possible explanations were provided for the correspondence: firstly, the theory of physical influx, according to which mind and body really act upon each other, occasionalism, according to which God in each individual case arranges mind and body to change their state accordingly, and pre-established harmony, according to which mind changes its state according to its own laws and body according to its own laws, but God has ordered these changes to harmonise, when designing the world.
Knutzen does not add any further type of explanation, but suggests that these three explanations were the only ones possible. Explanation, he suggests, requires finding the cause for the correspondence. Such a cause can be either intrinsic to a human being as a combination of mind and body or extrinsic to it. If it is extrinsic, then we are suggesting, in the vain of occasionalism, that some entity outside the human being makes e.g. an arm move, whenever a certain type of volition occurs in the human mind. If the cause is intrinsic to a human being, Knutzen continues, then either one part of the human being (mind or body) affects the other part – this is obviously what the theory of physical influx says – or mind and body form closed causal chains, states of mind affecting further states of mind and states of body affecting only further states of body. In the latter case, the correspondence or harmony of mind and body is just a brute fact, which must then be further explained, as in the theory of pre-established harmony, by God fixing the causal chains of mind and body to harmonise with one another.
How then to decide between the three systems? Knutzen notes that the question cannot be decided by experience, since we cannot literally perceive mind and body acting on one another or God intervening in the causal chains, not to mention God making before the creation of mind and body a decision to harmonise them. What we are then left with is to find some reasons why we should prefer one system over the others.
Knutzen’s strategy is to ground his reasoning in the philosophical paradigm in Germany of his time, that is, Wolffian philosophy, by making references to Wolff’s works, whenever possible. Thus, Knutzen begins by pointing out that mind or soul is a simple substance, which has both intellect and free will and particularly has representations of its own body. As a simple substance, he continues, the mind is immaterial, while the body is a composite of many parts. Then again, even bodies must ultimately be composed of simple substances or elements, since otherwise a body would have an infinite amount of parts, which Knutzen thinks an absurd idea.
Knutzen goes on by defining what an action means: a thing acts, when it has in itself a reason why something else exists or changes. The reason in question is called a force, which is thus a tendency to act or generate and change things. Furthermore, Knutzen adds, force is always a sufficient reason for acting, that is, if no obstacle prevents, force generates an action, no matter what.
Following Leibniz’s relational definition, Knutzen takes space to be an order of coexisting things. A place of a thing is then just a definite mode of being in that order or of relating to other things. Thus, at least finite substances cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Motion, furthermore, is a change of place: thing changes its relation to other things. Because this change affects only the relations of a thing, it does not intrinsically affect the moving thing. The motion is still based on something more substantial, Knutzen says, namely, the motive force making a thing move.
All existing things must be determined in every manner, Knutzen says. Particularly, their relations to other coexisting things must also be determined, in other words, they must exist in some definite place. This truth, Knutzen continues, holds also of simple substances, such as the elements of the bodies. Furthermore, since bodies move, elements must also move. Then again, they do not fill a space or have an extension, since they have no parts, of which they would consist.
Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time, which means, Knutzen suggests, that a thing resists the other taking its place. When a thing moves, it takes the place of another thing, in other words, it must overcome this resistance through some force. Particularly, Knutzen concludes, the elements of the body must use force to overcome this resistance of other elements and push them away, thus, the elements truly affect one another. Since a cause can be known from its effect (an accepted truth in Wolff’s ontology), we could even say that through changes caused by other elements an element represents or perceives other elements.
If elements act upon another, we can thus say that some simple and perceiving things interact with each other. This raises the probability of the mind also interacting with its body, Knutzen suggests, since the mind would interact with the body by interacting with the elements, of which the bodies consist. Of course, there is still a possibility that a mind would be different from elements on this point: perhaps interaction with elements of matter is somehow an imperfection that would not befit the status of a mind. Yet, Knutzen points out, God is thought to act on elements, and as God is absolutely perfect, the interaction with elements cannot be an imperfection.
In addition to showing the probability of the system of physical influx or real interaction of the mind and the body, Knutzen adds some further points to convince the reader the choose this system over the others: occasionalism is based on God doing constant miracles, while the system of pre-established harmony cannot explain why the bodies should be created in the first place. Furthermore, Knutzen also tries to directly prove the truth of the interaction. Just like other simple substances, a human mind must exist in some place, and indeed, it exists in a place where it is constantly together with its body. Thus, the mind must move with its body. Either it is passively moved by the body – and the interaction is real – or mind moves itself – and then it must be able to push other simple things around it, in other words, to interact with them.
Opponents of the physical influx had often stated that such an influx is just an empty word that has no meaning. Knutzen thinks this is a false accusation, since we have a perfectly good explanation of what physical influence means: real interaction of a mind and its body. Then again, he admits we cannot completely comprehend what the physical influx is like, since an interaction of simple things is something we cannot fully understand: we humans require distinctions in our cognition, but such an interaction can only happen instantaneously and no distinctions can be made in instantaneous changes. This is still no detriment to the truth of physical influx, since there are many things, Knutzen says, we can know to be true, although we cannot intuitively grasp them.
A further common objection to the system of physical influx was that it breaks the law of nature which states that the quantity of the motion in the universe cannot be changed: when I will my hand to move, I create new motion. Knutzen’s answer is that this supposed law is based only on observations of material objects and their interactions and that we need not suppose that it is correct for the interaction of the mind and the body.
Knutzen also considers the objection that we really cannot derive a force for moving material objects from a force of representing things, which should be the essence of a human mind. Knutzen thinks such a derivation is fairly simple. A force of representation, he explains, does not mean just a passive capacity to represent things, but active striving to try to represent things. Since representations of the mind correspond to the states of the body, the force of representation must also involve a force to change the body and its place in the universe.
Finally, Knutzen answers some objections that suggest physical influx would degrade the worth of a human mind. Firstly, he says, physical influx does not make the mind completely passive and dependent on the body, since the mind can also affect the body and does also have activities beyond interaction with the body.
Furthermore, Meier continues, physical influx does not contradict the immortality of the mind. Such a denial of immortality was based on the supposition that since the theory assumes sensations to be caused by the body, the destruction of the body would lead to a life with no sensations and thus without any consciousness. Knutzen notes that there is no reason why we shouldn’t get new bodies after our death. In addition, even if we did not get a new body, we might have sensations of other kinds, such as direct experience of other minds. Finally, Knutzen concludes, even if we wouldn’t have any sensations, our mind could still do a lot of things, such a abstract reasoning, which would entail consciousness.
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