Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 2 – Souls and bodies

The final chapters in Darjesian empirical psychology concern the interaction of soul with the body. He is not yet trying to explain this interaction – explanations belong more to the next section or rational psychology. Thus, Darjes is now merely out to note the various situations where such interaction occurs.

Darjes begins by saying that we observe a certain complex entity or body as one constituent in my existence. Indeed, he notes, this body is a mechanistic machine or a system of non-spontaneous entities, and just like all machines, it can only work through motions. Now, at some situations we perceive that certain motions within my body – e.g. those occurring in my sense organs – correspond with certain cognitive states. When these movements stop, this specific cognitive state stops, when the movements change, so does the cognitive state, and finally, if some internal state of the body, like a disturbance in blood circulation, confuses the movements, the cognitive state becomes also confused and doesn't become clarified until the confused state of the body stops.

Clearly what Darjes has been describing is sensation, which is one type of the so-called inferior cognitive faculty. Yet, Darjes notes, not all inferior cognitive faculty need not have so close connection to motions of body. This is especially true of imagination, which associatively moves from one representation to another, which it has often been connected with. Thus, while the original representation might have a connection with actual motions in my body, the second representation might have no such connection. Furthermore, the association makes it also possible that superior cognition has some connection with motions of our body. In other words, we can use sensuous symbols to represent e.g. universal conceptions and so make it possible that motions of body awaken certain universal thoughts in us.

In addition to the relation of body with human cognition, Darjes also considers the relation of appetites and aversions with body. He firstly notes that appetites and aversions by themselves do not produce any motions in our bodies – if we just crave for food, this still does not make us do anything. One must also have made a decision on the means by which e.g. our hunger should be dealt with, and this decision of means will then be followed by movement of our body. Although body by itself is a system of non-spontaneous entities, because of this relation to spontaneous choices of human soul we can call certain motions of our bodies spontaneous and free. On the other hand, certain motions in our body have no such relation to spontaneous choices and can then be called forced motions.

Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 2 – Desires and fears

Darjes singles out a distinct group of cognitions, namely, those where the objects cognised are something which we either incline to or recline from, in other words, appetites and aversions. The difference between appetites and aversions and other cognitions is quite evident, whenever we have the object of appetite or aversion present to us – we feel pleasure or pain. On the other hand, whenever we do not have the object with us, we desire for or fear it.

Darjes notes that appetites and aversions can be quantified, depending on how strong the respective desire or fear is. This quantification comes to the fore especially when appetites and aversions contradict one another. In other words, whenever an appetite and an aversion clash, the stronger prevails. One might wonder how appetites and aversions could clash. The simple answer lies in two sources of human cognition. If our appetites and aversions are based on the inferior cognitive faculty, they are sensible, and if they are based on the superior cognitive faculty, they are rational or volitions and nolitions belonging to a faculty called will. Thus, our sensible and rational appetites and aversions can clash, and if the sensible have the other hand, we experience some affect, while if the rational side preponderates, we have something analogous to affects.

A further distinction Darjes mentions concerns the relation of appetites and aversions to previous cognitive states – some of these rise from earlier states, others are innate to human mind. He still does not mean that we could simply explain appetites and aversions mechanically through the earlier states or the nature of human mind. Indeed, he is quick to emphasise that appetites and aversions spontaneous and hence contingent. This does not mean that appetites and aversions would be completely inexplicable, just that these explanations would use other means than mechanical causality.

In case of volitions and nolitions in particular, the explanation is based on their goals. It is somewhat unclear whether these goals are chosen by the will or not. In any case, when these goals are given, the will considers all the possible means for this goal and freely chooses the one it considers best. Of course, at least humans can have an erroneous view on what means are best and even what goals are good. Darjes is adamant that this possibility of error is the only explanation for the human ability to freely choose bad things. In fact, a spontaneous entity who couldn't make errors could not choose anything bad, Darjes concludes.

Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 2 (1744)

The second volume of Darjesian metaphysics begins with empirical psychology – or pneumatics, as Darjes prefers to call it – that is, explication of things we can experience in ourselves. The starting point for Darjes is the observation that we have in us something that resembles things that are not part of myself. In other words, we have representations, through which we are conscious of objects. Having a representation and being conscious of it, Darjes insists, is still not completely identical – we can have obscure, unconcious representations, while consciousness brings clarity to representations.

An important aspect of representation and cognition Darjes emphasises is the spontaneity behind it: my representations continue sometimes as vividly as before, sometimes not, and it is up to my attention whether they do. Furthermore, I can direct my attention successively to different aspects of the object of my cognition, that is, I can reflect this object. While consciousness makes representation clear, refection makes it distinct. This state of distinctness, Darjes insists is something we can only achieve while awake, and indeed, Darjes defines being awake as a possibility to reflect.

Darjes notes that sometimes reflection is hindered by associations awakened by something we find in the reflected object. This association is connected with the capacity of cognition to reproduce earlier representations. Another faculty – memory – is then required for recognising reproduced memories.

We have mentioned so far only representations of individual things, but we can also compare and contrast objects. Thus, it is possible to represent also connections between things – these things are similar or not equal or one might be the cause of the other.

An important subset of representations Darjes touches upon are sensations or representations of things that induce mutations in me, that is, objects of our senses or sensibles. Darjes notes that sensations can be divided according to the different parts of body the sensible object affects – the same object is represented differently, when it affects ear and when it affects eyes. Following Wolffian tradition, Darjes calls the part of cognition dealing with all these different kinds of sensations inferior cognitive faculty. A partial reason for this evaluative nomenclature must be that sensations are distracting – reflecting on an object becomes impossible, because sensation of another object might be stronger and prevent our reflection.

Darjes notes that there is no guarantee that we would sense or represent all things that affect our body, and indeed, he suggests that there must be some further reason explaining why we sense something. Analogically, we might represent things that can induce changes in my body, while they are not actually inducing such changes. This is the faculty of imagination, which Darjes includes also under inferior cognitive faculty. He, furthermore, divides objects of imaginations into, firstly, phantasms, which are complete objects that can be also sensed, and figments, which are combinations of parts that can be sensed.

The inferior cognitive faculty can only represent things that affect us, thus, it cannot be used for representing e.g. essences of things or universals. This task, Darjes says, must be left for superior cognitive faculty, which represents things in an insensible manner, that is, in such a manner that it isn't and even cannot be sensed. Darjes doesn't go into further details as to how this insensible cognition happens, but notes only that it is possible through the faculty of reflection. Through reflection and the use of signs, cognition forms universal and distinct concepts. If the concepts concern things in themselves, without relations to other things, we are speaking of intellect or understanding, while if they concern relations between things, we are speaking of reason. It is good to note that while it it easy to conceptually represent connections between things, Darjes admits that the inferior faculty has something analogous to reason, through which it can also represent connections.

Before moving to the next part, concerned with appetites and aversions, we might very briefly note what Darjes has to say about habit. The basis of habit, he suggest, is repetition of representations and operations involved with them. This repetition makes concepts stronger and thus makes cognising them more easy.

Baumgarten: Metaphysics – Empirical psychology

Just like Wolff, Baumgarten divides psychology into two parts, empirical and rational. Yet, just like with the previous parts of his metaphysics, the interesting thing is to see where Baumgarten deviates from Wolff's examples. Like in many previous cases, the first obvious change is the lack of full proofs in Baumgarten's text. The existence of soul is almost just assumed from the fact of our self-consciousness – there must be something, which can be conscious of itself. Then, by just noticing that this soul must be that which underlies all states of being conscious of something – that is, of representing something – Baumgarten at once concludes that the soul must be a force or activity of representing things.

Just like with Wolff, in Baumgarten's psychology my body is not really mine at all, but just the material body that I happen to represent most often. Still, Baumgarten at least makes it clear that representations of a human soul are somehow directed by the position of its body – if my body would now be in Lincolnshire, I would have very different representations of the world around me.

Baumgarten assumes from Wolffian philosophy the hierarchy of different levels of clarity and distinctness of representations. A striking novelty is Baumgarten's idea that there are actually two different scales, according to which the clarity of a representations could be evaluated. Firstly, there is the intensive clarity, which measures how well we can distinguish a thing through that representation – this is the basis of what in Wolffian philosophy distinguished clear and eventually distinct representations. Secondly, there is extensive clarity, which measures how many individual characteristics of a thing are represented – in effect, it tells how vividly we experience some object. Extensive clarity is something that even non-distinct representations might have in abundance, and for evaluating such vividness Baumgarten suggests a completely new science, which he calls aesthetics. In effect, such aesthetics would include what we understand by the term, but it would in general be a science investigating all non-distinct or sensitive cognition.

Baumgarten's account of the sensitive cognition is somewhat more scholastic than Wolff's - while Wolff is often satisfied with indicating that several cognitive skills are somehow interrelated, Baumgarten tries to make clear divisions and thus presents far more individual faculties. Both philosophers have fairly similar stories to tell about the basis of all cognition, that is, sensation, which for Baumgarten refers to a cognition of the present state of the soul and the body (and thus mediately of the world), in which levels of intensive and extensive clarity are different.

Baumgarten's account of imagination shows already the scholastic tendency I mentioned. With Wolff, imagination was a name for a complex of interrelated skills, such as memory and invention, which all rely on our ability to represent things which are not present to us. With Baumgarten, on the other hand, imagination is merely this ability to represent things, which are not present us – and in fact, it is precisely an ability to represent past states of soul, body and world. Memory, or the ability to recognise an imagined representation as past, is already a distinct ability for Baumgarten. In addition to memory, Baumgarten also distinguishes such faculties as perspicacity (ability to perceive identities and diversities of things – note that this happens already at a level, in which we don't really have distinct thoughts) and innovation (ability to combine imaginations to form new representations). Especially the faculty of innovation comes with an interesting twist. Both Wolff and Baumgarten admit that even imaginations represent individual things, but whereas Wolff included innovation as one type of imagination and thus implied that even such fictional combinations of phantasms, like centaurs, are individuals, Baumgarten could conceivably state that such fictive innovations are no individuals, since innovation as a faculty differs from imagination.

In Baumgarten, our capacity to represent past things is based on the fact that all past and present things form a causal nexus. Because a similar nexus connects present to future states, Baumgarten concludes that we must have a faculty of representing future things and events, although this appears to be more obscure than representing past things. Just like Baumgarten distinguished sharply between imagination as representing past and memory as recognising something as past, he also points out a further faculty for recognising some representation as being of a future event – this is the faculty on which prophesising is based. A more mundane example of such a ”vision of future" Baumgarten presents in connection with another faculty or judgement, which means for Baumgarten representing or perceiving how perfect or imperfect something is (all of this happens still at the level of non-distinct cognition). If such a judgement is turned on future events, it can be used in practice for deciding how to act.

Just like with Wolff, intellect or understanding is not a completely distinct faculty separate from sensation, but more of a higher level of human mind, born out of sensations through attention, reflection and comparison. In difference to Wolff, Baumgarten points out that intellect forms only a one possible way to improve our cognition. Intellect or understanding is generated by purifying our sensations, that is, through clarifying our ideas, but it is also possible to make our representations more vivid – this makes our mind more in tune with what is beautiful.

Following Wolff, Baumgarten explains human feelings of pleasure and pain through the notion of perfection – perceiving something as perfect makes us feel it pleasurable, while perceiving something as imperfect makes us feel pain (of course, it is also possible that an object is not regarded as either). Expectations of pleasure and pain make our soul strive for something and thus act like motives.

Baumgarten is quite clear that our soul requires such a motive to do anything at all – if we are not forced to do anything, we will follow our own motives. Such motives could be generated either by mere sensations and other indistinct representations – then they are mere impulses – while conscious motives are caused always by distinct representations. Here a real freedom means then action instigated by such conscious motives.

The final topic of Baumgarten's empirical psychology is the interaction between soul and its body. Baumgarten says that on basis of mere psychology we cannot say which is better, the idea of a true causal interaction or the idea of a pre-established harmony. Yet, as we already know, his idea of the perfect possible world points towards the Leibnizian idea.

So much for Baumgarten's empirical psychology, next we shall see what he has to say about rational psychology.

Free to act

In previous post, I spoke of Wolff's general idea of the appetetive side of human mind and particularly of appetites based on unanalyzed information from perception, apperception and phantasms. Just like the move from lower to higher faculties of cognition happens through analysis of perceptions and phantasma, so does the move from lower to higher faculties of appetite, that is, from sensuous appetite to will. What distinguishes will from mere sensuous appetite or volitions from affects is that in case of volitions we can in general tell why we want or avoid something. In other words, volitions are based on conscious motives.

Although the existence of motives does characterize volitions, this doesn't mean that motives of our volitions would be completely transparent to us. Just like in case of concepts, the analysis of our motives could well be only partial and lead only to some gut feeling we couldn't really base on anything. Indeed, lack of reliable information could well lead us to volitions that we would discard at once, if we just knew better – for instance, we might follow a diet that we thought to make us healthy, even if more complete studies would reveal its inefficiency.

Furthermore, even if we knew well enough what was good for us, we might receive contradictory information from our senses that might be difficult to ignore due to its vividness, which might result in a mental conflict. Thus, we might well know that eating certain foods is bad for our condition, but the rich odours coming from grill might still seduce us to savour the taste of such detrimental nutrients.

Indeed, in actual decision making out motives are usually far from complete, and only in hindsight can we rationalize our actions and explain why we did them. This does not make us completely passive, because many impulses besides willing guide our activities. These other impulses also help Wolff solve the problem of Buridan's ass, that is, what to choose, when none of the options has a stronger motive than others. Wolff is of the opinion that we could choose in such cases, even if it would come about with great difficult. This choice could then be helped by other factors beyond motive. One of these is habit, which often takes the place of a motivated, reasoned choice. Thus, Buridan's ass might just prefer to pick out always a left hay stack, even if it had no reason to do this.

Wolff's account of Buridan's ass reveals that he doesn't think motives work in the same way as causes do – if two forces equal in quantity, but working in opposite directions would affect same object, no movement would occur, but two opposed motives do not prevent actions. Indeed, Wolff admits that motives do not so much determine actions, but give us a chance to choose some activity. Thus, humans cannot act without any motive at all, but they can still decide which motive to ignore and which not. This does not mean that we could choose what volitions and motives we do have, although Wolff admits that we could gradually teach ourselves to gain or lose some volitions. True liberty, Wolff concludes, lies actually in our ability to choose from given options the one pleasing us most. Because volitions are then not determined by the essence of the soul, this is enough to avoid Spinozistic conclusions, Wolff says.

Freedom to act is not restricted to choices within our own mind, Wolff argues further, because our actions do appear to have some effect on our bodies – if I decide to raise my hand, my hand is instantly raised. The power of mind over body is still not absolute, because we cannot just will our body to do physical impossibilities like flying. In addition, changes in body are instantly followed by changes in our mind, for instance, when light touches our eye. This is as much as we can empirically determine from their relation, that is, that they are dependent on one another. Real explanations of this interdependence will be offered in Wolff's Rational psychology, but now we are going to take a second look on Gottsched' philosophy.

Enduring pain

I have tried to criticize the common prejudice about Wolffian philosophy that he, in Kant's words, intellectualized appearances. As I have tried to show, this is a rather exaggerated and even misleading opinion. If anything, Wolff was Lockean, when it comes to the source of cognition, and even highly abstract concepts were for Wolff either phantasms dependent on perceptions or words symbolizing such phantasms. Instead of intellectualizing appearances, Wolff picked out a certain subgroup of them as an ideal of cognition, that is, distinct or analysed perceptions, which could be used as a basis for demonstrations.

Even if Wolff would not intellectualize appearances, he appears to fall into a second failing of many pre-Kantians, namely, he reduces appetetive side of human mind into its cognitive side. This seems evident from Wolff's suggestion that all cravings, desires, hopes, volitions etc. presuppose some cognition. In other words, we could not want anything to happen, Wolff says, if we could not see what the situation is like and compare it with some ideal how the situation should be. On top of this, Wolff defines all forms of enjoyment simply as intuitive cognition of something as perfect, making even bodily pleasure appear rather intellectual, like an aesthetic consideration of a statue.

The last problem is actually easy to solve, when one remembers that Wolffian cognition need not be highly conceptual. We need not be able make sophisticated explanations why a taste of sweetness or an orgasm is pleasurable, but we could just cry out ”Oh my God, yes, this is what I want” or even utter no comprehensible sounds. Indeed, the word ”intuitive” tells that this enjoyment does not need any linguistic expression at all, but is instigated by mere perception. What is important is that we human beings are, as it were, hardwired to seek for such feelings of perfection and to avoid respective feelings of imperfection.

Furthermore, we already know from the study of Wolff's theory of cognition that he acknowledges a difference in vividness and strength between sensations and higher intellectual representations. Indeed, a capacity to at least partially avoid the influence of distracting sensations was an essential precondition of more intellectual cognition. Similarly, Wolff can accept that bodily pleasures captivate us so strongly that it will cloud our reason – and similarly pain can make us unable to think clearly. Then again, we also can exercise an ability to become indifferent even to quite strong bodily pleasures and pains. Thus, although being tortured is painful, there have been people able to suppress these extreme feelings, and even if such extreme self-control is rare, all of us can in some degree endure at least some type of bodily discomfort.

A good question is whether Wolff is making an artificial restriction by declaring the appetites for pleasures and aversions of discomfort and pleasure to be essentially connected to cognitions. After all, appetites and aversions we are aware of might be just expression of some unconscious urges. Yet, Wolff is here purposefully restricting himself on what we can immediately observe of ourselves, while the explanations for these observations are left for rational psychology. Thus, Wolff can in empirical psychology point out only that conscious appetites and aversions are clearly dependent of cognitions. This still does not preclude the possibility of unconscious activities causing this whole play of appetites and cognitions.

In Wolffian system, why we feel positive and negative feelings is ultimately work of God and meant to be useful. For instance, bodily pleasure should reward us for benefiting the condition of our body, while bodily pain should warn us of harming our body. Yet, Wolff points out, enjoyment is defined only as cognizing something AS perfect, that is, there remains the possibility that what we enjoy is in truth really not perfect or even good for us. Taste of sugar sends a pleasurable feeling, because we require energy that is easily obtainable from sugar, but eating too much sweets will still be detrimental to our health. Similarly, pressure on nerves in our teeth will cause considerable pain as a warning for a possible dental injury, but similar pain felt in a dentist's chair occurs just as a side effect of fixing our teeth.

The possibility of deceptive enjoyments is essentially connected with the confusion of mere unanalysed sensations. Thus, pleasure or pain is just a murky feeling of ”Yes!” or ”No!” without any proper indication what actually is good and bad in the events causing these feelings. A good question is how we can then recognize enjoyment caused by true perfection and distinguish it from deceptive positive feelings – especially as working it out from Wolff's ontological definition of perfection seems rather difficult. Wolff's suggestion appears to be that constancy can be used as a relevant criterion – truly perfect things cause enjoyment that cannot be contradicted by future knowledge, while deceptive enjoyment could well be just momentary and fleeting.

Affects, like love and hope, fall usually to the more confused side of appetites and aversions – we have tender feelings toward a person and often just cannot explain why. Wolff presents an intricately detailed account of affects and defines them twice – first nominally, by explaining what e.g. love means, and then through its real definition which tells us how to generate love. As I said earlier when dealing with Wolffian theory of affects, the whole system of affects has too much material for a good blog text, thus, I will skip the topic now also. Hence, next time I shall move to consider the question of interaction between mind and body.

The height of cognition

When I look at the massive collection of Wolff's combined works, I get the impression he might have been a keen business man: after all, it requires a good sales pitch to get one's writings sold numerous times after the first print. Furthermore, it is not just the huge amount of reprints, which makes me consider the possibility, but also the fact that Wolff essentially made duplicated copies of his works in German and Latin. The most astonishing example is still Wolff's logic. The German version of logic was one of Wolff's first publications, but so fond of the topic Wolff was that he essentially summarised the main ideas of the book in his German metaphysics and especially in psychological chapters (after all, cognition is part and parcel of human mental life) and then years later in his book on morals (naturally, a moral person has a duty to find out as reliable information as possible). It is once again the point coinciding with logic I have now hit on Wolff's Latin psychology. Since I have so recently went through Wolff's Latin logic in quite a detail, I shall just do a quick summary of Wolff's ideas of intellect and cognition, especially from a psychological point of view.

Last time I described Wolff's notion of intellect as a faculty of distinct ideas. Although one can have distinct ideas of individual objects, it is especially universalities Wolff is interested here, because universalities are an essential ingredient in the more complex forms of intellectual cognition, that is, making judgements and reasoning on basis of judgements. I also noted Wolff's distinction between intuitive cognition based on direct observation of ideas and symbolic cognition based on language and generally signs and their manipulation. Wolff notes that this duality continues throughout all levels of cognition. Thus, we can have direct awareness of a universal feature shared by a number of entities or we can just refer to this feature with a general word, we can note a connection between certain ideas of universal features of we can express this connection with a string of words and we can use the connections we have observed to deduce more connections or we can use formal rules of syllogism and mechanically calculate consequences of certain linguistic expressions.

The capacity to draw inferences Wolff calls reasoning, and it is closely related to the faculty of reason, which is just the capacity to view a whole system of universal truths and their interconnections. The more pure a reason is, the less external material it has to use, and pure reason would observe a system based only on definitions and self-evident axioms – note that Wolff does not indicate what sciences actually belong to pure reason, but one would assume that at least mathematics is a part of it.

Pure reasoning is then expectedly a form of a priori cognition. In Latin logic Wolff made it clear that actually all cognition uses reasoning a priori, that is, also deductions based on experiences. Here Wolff also explains that all cognition based on experiences is a posteriori, thus making it possible that cognition is both a priori and a posteriori – this is what Wolff calls mixed cognition. Wolff is thus beginning to approach a position in which a priori and a posteriori refer to components and not types of cognition. We might also note that Wolff divides experiences and says that a posteriori cognition can be based on active experiments and passive observations, which includes in addition to sensuous perceptions also apperceptions, thus making psychology explicitly not part of pure reason.

We might finally point out that Wolff introduces the notion of an analogy of reason, which was especially important to Wolff's followers, such as Baumgarten. Wolff's idea appears to be that as the ideal of reason is a system of interconnected truths, we might expect that world conforms to this system in the sense that it is also a system of interconnected entities. Thus, if some part of nature is known to be structurised in a certain manner, we have a justification to assume that some similar part of nature is also structurised in the same manner.

So much for theoretical part of the soul, next time we'll start to tackle the practical side of our nature.

Reflecting on intellect

I have pointed out a number of times that although sensation as such belongs in Wolff's psychology to the less clear side of faculties, even sensations can be more or less clear. Just consider a common enough experience, such as perceiving a bicycle. When we notice a lone bicycle, the actual sensory data received by human mind contains a lot more than just the bicycle, for instance, balcony above the bicycle and bricks on the wall that the bicycle is leaning against. Then again, what we are clearly aware of includes only a fraction of this data, namely, just the bicycle, while the wall, the balcony and others recede into a murky background. This effect can be very pointed, as shown by the famous example of people counting how many scores a player makes in a basketball match not noticing a guy in a monkey suit dancing on the field. This difference in the levels of clarity Wolff considers under the concept of attention. We might say that if human consciousness is like a light, only some objects can be in its focus.

The effects of the faculty of attention seem not completely positive, because the necessity of focusing one's attention on a part of sensory data prevents the possibility of considering more than one thing at a time. This is especially lamentable in case of sensations, which are easily disturbed by other sensations. Thus, it is not easy to concentrate one's attention on some particular sensation for a long period of time, because other sensations constantly demand our attention too.

Yet, although attention itself has a limited range and might thus not show all facets of a thing, we can also systematically move our attention from one facet of a thing to another and thus ultimately go through it all – this method Wolff calls reflection. We can also imagine the various parts of the thing as separate from the whole – this is what is called abstraction. When we then reflect how the various abstracted parts combine into a totality, the result is a more detailed view of the structure of a thing, which is not just clearer, but also more distinct, due to us having discerned the various parts of the thing and their interrelations and retaining all of this in memory.

Now, this stage of representing things distinctly is already intellect, Wolff defines, thus further confusing the lines between sensational and intellectual faculties – looking at a particular bicycle and seeing how all its parts combine to form a complex machinery that will move the one riding forward is already work of intellect. In fact, this is also an instance of intuitive cognition, by which Wolff means cognition generated immediately by examining our ideas – such cognition can be confused, if we don't know anything about the structure of what we examine, but through reflection it becomes more distinct. Thus, Wolffian psychology allows for the possibility of intuitive intellect, although this notion has a completely different meaning than with Kant (I assume the awareness of the mechanics of a bicycle wouldn't be something Kant would call intuitive intellect).

Note that the use of intellect is not restricted to mere universalities, but intellect could be applied individual things, like bicycles. Still universals are a topic studied by intellect – we can not just reflect on parts of a thing, but also on similarities and differences between different things, thus becoming aware of universals or features shared by many things. Moving to universalities usually requires the use of words that can be used to symbolise individual things and especially universalities – the use of words is then properly called symbolic cognition. Although symbolic cognition thus makes it easier to reflect on universal features of things and might help us to invent new things (especially through some Leibnizian ars characteristica) and is especially useful in communication of ideas, we can always refrain from using it and remain on the level intuitive cognition, Wolff assures us.

While the level of intellect as such is already achieved, once we have distinct ideas, it is of course possible to have more distinct ideas (e.g. to know what the parts of the bicycle are made of). This possibility implies a final level of highest intelligence that has nothing but distinct ideas of everything (note that this would essentially require an infinity of ideas, because the things that we perceive are infinitely divisible). A notion distinct from the idea of a highest intelligence is that of a pure intelligence. Pure intelligence does not so much know everything perfectly, but is undisturbed by various sensations and uncontrolled imaginations that distract human attention so easily.

So much for a general look on reflection and intellect, next time I shall look more closely at the use of intellect.

Phantastic faculties

I have studied Wolff's idea of imagination in an earlier post quite extensively, but I still feel there's some possibility for clarifying the role of this faculty in more detail. Especially I shall have to emphasise its role as still officially one of the lower faculties, but even so, on a higher level than mere sensation as such.

Imagination, then, is supposed to be the faculty that reproduces ideas of certain individuals, even if they are absent. The reproduced ideas created by imagination Wolff calls phantasms. They are thus to be distinguished from sensuous ideas, which could not be produced without the presence of some concrete thing corresponding to these ideas. Still, there could be no phantasms without any sensations. That is, Wolff ascribes to Lockean principle that mind without experience would be like a blank slate without anything written on it.

I have already noted about the similarity of Wolffian distinction between sensations and phantasms and Humean distinction between impressions and ideas. Like Hume, Wolff also notes that phantasms or products of imagination are less vivid and have fewer details. Then again, this is actually positive according to Wolff and speaks in favour of phantasms. The vividness of sensations makes it difficult to concentrate on them: if we try to look at a beautiful painting, a sudden honk from car horns outside the window can ruin our aesthetic experience. The lack of unnecessary details in phantasms, on the other hand, helps to make them clearer, which is a requirement e.g. for mathematical thinking. True, phantasms can also be confused by sensations, and a honking car horn will make it difficult to follow mathematical constructions imagined in your head. Yet, even this obstacle can be circumvented, as soon as one finds a dark room isolated from all external stimuli.

The lack of sensations thus helps us to concentrate on our phantasms. Indeed, when all sensations have been cut out, phantasms become more vivid, which explains, according to Wolff, the seeming substantiality of our dreams. Like all experiences, dreams come with different levels of clarity, starting from a completely dreamless sleep and ending with lucid dreams, in which we are aware that we are dreaming.

Imagination as a faculty of producing phantasms is thus important for its own sake, but it also provides materials for other faculties, Wolff continues. Firstly, phantasms are more in our control than sensations are. In fact, a given phantasm can be, as it were, divided into its constituent phantasms – we can imagine a human head, independently of its body. Furthermore, we can also combine different phantasms, attaching a human head onto a body of a horse, thus creating the phantasm of a centaur. This is the work of what Wolff calls inventive faculty, which is responsible, among other things, all the works of fiction.

Secondly, we can use phantasms as indicators for something we have sensed or in general experienced at some past point of time. This is the task of memory, which Wolff clearly says not to be any container of images or memories. Instead, memory is actually a name common to various interacting faculties, which, for instance, recognise a sensation or phantasm as resembling something that we have witnessed, or produce phantasms of things we have witnessed.

Imagination, together with its related faculties, forms then a second level in the hierarchy of faculties in Wolffian psychology of cognition. Together with sensation, they form the lower level of cognition, in which imagination appears clearer than the multifarious and uncontrollable sensations. This does not mean that sensations could not be basis of clear and even distinct experiences, as becomes clear in the next post, where I will move to consider the higher levels of cognition.

Sensational cognition

After proving that soul or consciousness exists and that we can in some measure study it, Wolff begins to discuss the theoretical or cognitive part of soul. I might notice, by the way, that this is a rather common ordering, and indeed, I have never seen a philosophical study of consciousness begin with volition. The custom goes all the way back to Aristotle's De Anima, and presumably every philosopher has just copied his predecessors in this matter.

Before actually beginning to study any cognitive faculties, Wolff defines certain notions common to all of them, starting from the concept of faculty itself. Scholars of German philosophy are often so ingrained in the language of faculties that they fail to ask even what is meant by a faculty. Wolff actually defined the term already in his ontology, where it was explicated as any active potentiality, that is, any possibility to do something that was actually engaged with actualising this possibility. In other words, faculties of soul or mind are just capacities of mind to do something, but also not passive. Instead, they are active or actually use what they can do.

After faculty, Wolff continues by describing what is meant by clarity and distinctness of perceptions or representations. The notions themselves I have explicated quite sufficiently for a number of times: clarity means for Wolff ability to distinguish a perception, while distinctness means ability to recognise partial perceptions that help to distinguish the whole perception. I could still note one more time that these concepts should not be read as forming a strict division to e.g. clear and unclear perceptions. Instead, they work more as defining a scale of clarity and distinctness: we can distinguish an object with various accuracy in different situations, and analysis required for distinctness might reveal further characteristic marks. This notion is further backed up by the fact that Wolff calls clarity of perception light of soul – light does not form a clear division with darkness, but between light and total darkness there are many shadows and gray areas.

These very same perceptions can also be called ideas, although Wolff prefers defining idea as a representation, in which we are especially interested of the object represented: that is, when we talk of perceptions, we talk of an act of subject, but when we talk of ideas, we talk of individual objects. Concepts, on the other hand, are representations of general characteristics of things, of genera and species. Cognition, then, means acquiring ideas and concepts of various things, that is, conceiving what things and their characteristics are. Cognition can then have various levels of clarity, but Wolff places the most important distinction on whether the ideas and concepts involved are distinct, that is, analysed into further ideas and concepts. Cognition with distinct ideas and concepts is in Wolffian psychology on a level higher than cognition with obscure and confused ideas and concepts, that is, one should aim at analysing one's ideas and concepts.

Wolff begins the study of cognition from faculties of lower level. Wolff's choice reflects a natural development – we begin with confused and even obscure ideas, which little by little become clearer and more distinct. Thus, it is no wonder that Wolff begins with sensations, which presumably are the beginning of all cognition. Sensations are also the link of human cognition to the external physical world. An important element of this world is our own body that appears constantly attached to us and seems to be in continuous correspondence with certain perceptions (note how Wolff avoids the question whether this correspondence is explained by actual interaction between body and human mind or whether there is no interaction between them – such questions will be tackled in rational psychology). Sensation, then, is defined by the special correspondence between human mind and sensory organs of the body, that is, sensation is a perception that can be understood by basis of changes in these organs (even if they are not caused by these changes).

Because sensation is studied by Wolff in a part dedicated to the lower part of human cognition, it becomes natural to ask if Wolff completely discarded sensation as without any value and completely obscure. Yet, the idea of clarity and distinctness as a scale instead of division makes it possible that sensation could rise in clarity and even gain some distinctness. This is especially shown to be true by Wolff's investigation of attention and reflection, but even sensations themselves contain levels of clarity – a stronger sensation is also clearer than a weaker sensation. A further value of sensations lies in their relative freedom from arbitrary whims of human mind. Thus, if one is looking at some spot, one cannot just choose what one is seeing. The only way to control what one senses is to move to another spot or at least look to somewhere else.

So much for sensations, next time I shall turn to imagination.

Empirical psychology (1732)

After cosmology, Wolff turns his attention once again to human soul, and just like in his German metaphysics, he divides the topic into two parts. The book I now reading, or Psychologia empirica, concerns, as the title says, empirical psychology, which is meant to provide us with the experiential information that any theory of human soul or consciousness should be able to explain. Second part, or rational psychology, is then supposed to present the theory used for explaining the propositions of empirical psychology.

Psychology is so for Wolff an empirical science, and it is through experience that we must ascertain the existence of the very topic of psychological investigations, that is, the human soul. Wolff can finally apply the Cartesian strategy, with which he had started the German metaphysics. He begins from the rather indubitable fact that we are aware of things external to us. Note that we need not confirm that there are things outside us, just that there is this state of being conscious of them. Now, it is easy to conclude that there must also be someone who is conscious, or the ”I”.

Wolff declares that the starting point of the deduction or the state of consciousness of external things is so indubitable that psychology has as certain beginning as mathematics. Clearly, he once again does not want to say that the existence of external things is certain, but only that our consciousness of them is. Wolff thus suggests that the consciousness of external things is dependent on the possibility of being conscious of ourselves. Later on, Kant tried in his refutation of idealism, as it were, to reverse this line of thought and show that our self-consciousness is dependent on our consciousness of external things.

Wolff then defines soul as that which is conscious of itself and external things. One might wonder if Wolff is here moving to the perilous area of Kantian paralogisms. Yet, one must remember that at the stage of empirical psychology Wolff merely describes what can be experienced without committing himself to any theories explaining these experiences. Thus, Wolff can certainly assume that there is both consciousness of things and consciousness of this consciousness and that these two states of consciousness are part of same stream of consciousness. He might even have the right to call this stream soul, if he just refrains from saying that the soul is e.g. immortal and independent substance – it would be just a different name for human mind or consciousness.

A more difficult problem lies in the question about the relationship of soul and body. Like a good Cartesian, Wolff notes that soul is known before body, that is, while we can be quite certain of the existence of our soul, the existence of our body is more doubtful. One might think that this assumption relies on Kant's fourth paralogism about the supposed relationship of soul and body. Yet, when it comes to empirical psychology, Wolff even here remains within the limits of what Kant could accept. Even Kant doesn't deny that ”I am and I think I am” is far more certain that the statement ”I am a bodily being”. It is only when from these facts conclusions like ”I am not a bodily being” are drawn that philosophers stray from a safe path.

Wolff's empirical psychology is then not full of paralogisms – if these are anywhere to be found, it will be in rational psychology, where Wolff will try to explain the empirical facts of our mental life. Even so, we still have to ask whether Wolff's methodology in empirical psychology is acceptable, as even I have voiced some skepticism about it.

Now, the aim of empirical psychology, according to Wolff, lies in cognition of our own soul: cognition is here defined as nothing else but awareness or consciousness of something. The cognition of ourselves, Wolff continues, we receive through our capacity of apperception. The word ”apperception” was introduced by Leibniz, because he wanted to separate consciousness of external things (perception as such) from consciousness of oneself. Wolff follows this lead in a rather unimaginative fashion. Perception, he says, is simply representation of something, while apperception is then perception of ourselves. All perceptions involve the possibility of apperception, that is, when we observe, for instance, an apple, we can also note that we are observing this apple. Wolff just takes it for granted that this self-observation is unproblematic, without considering in Kantian manner how this self-observation takes place. Yet, despite these methodological problems, we might still accept the results of such a self-observation, just as long as we do not make any problematic inferences from them – that is, just as long as we remain at the level of empirical psychology and note, for instance, that we have memories, without stepping to the field of rational psychology by trying to explain why we can remember things.

Before moving onward to a more substantial account of capacities of human mind, I shall make a note of the structure of the book. Wolff uses the trusted notion that human mind has a cognitive and volitional part, basing even the division of the book on that presupposition. Within each major part, Wolff then differentiates between less and more clear faculties – sensory perceptions from understanding, sensuous impulses from free will. Next time, we shall be looking at the book in more detail, starting from sensation or perceptions.

Christian Wolff: Remarks on Reasonable thoughts on God, the world and the human soul, also on all things in general - Fragments of empirical psychology

It is especially in Wolff's comments on empirical psychology where his wish to show the usefulness of his theories becomes evident. Wolff emphasizes that he has especially found two different types of faculties in human mind: cognitive and volitional. The study of cognitive capacities should generally help to improve our mental capacities and particularly help us to find a proper methodology for science. Wolff makes here some barbed strikes against Lange's Mental medicine, which he dismisses as a useless piece of charlatanry that wouldn't help anyone know anything.

Wolff's strategy for improving cognitive capacities is based on his attempt to quantify all mental capacities: capacity of memory can be quantifies by the number of new things a person can hold in his mind at the same time etc. On this quantitative basis Wolff can then make such useful recommendations as that capacities of concentration are improved in the morning, when there are still less distractive stimuli. Wolff's quantification goes in some cases further than with some previous philosophers. For instance, while Descartes thought that all people have an equal light of reason, Wolff states that this light varies according to natural capacities.

The aim of the education of cognitive capacities is to make one's ideas more distinct, that is, analysed. Although Wolff does define sensations in terms of distinctness, this does not mean that he would want to base science in some non-empiricist manner, which has become increasingly clear. Indeed, Wolff merely suggests that we should continue to analyse or conceptualize our individual sensations and so transform them into experience. Wolff thus wants to say that experience is something more than mere sensation: in a somewhat rasist comment Wolff even says that Hottentots, Lapponians and Samoyeds don't really have reliable experiences, although they undoubtedly sense things. The conceptual analysis of sensations turns them into experiences, which then can act as basis of scientific axioms.

Wolff appears to admit that the cognitive capacities of human mind are in some sense unfree. This is clear with sensations: we cannot choose that we'll see green, when we focus our gaze on a certain piece of grass. Furthermore, in case of conceptual reasoning there are also certain restrictions: if we are following a line of reasoning, the conclusion isn't haphazard, but follows from the premisses, perhaps true some psychological necessitation.

In contrast, Wolff emphasizes that human will is definitely free and capable of undetermined choice – an answer to the accusation of Wolff being a determinist. As we saw earlier, Wolff suggests that a person cannot will to do something he is not motivated to do, but that he can emphasize some motivation over the others. True, even the volitional part of human mind can become unfree, if mind is slave to its own affections. Still, this state of slavery does not prevent the possibility of a truly free action. Indeed, it is just such a task of becoming as free as possible that makes the study of volitional part of the mind important for morality and ethics.

Next time I'll turn to Wolff's comments on cosmology.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - The animal that couldn't decide

Nominalist philosopher Jean Buridan is nowadays best remembered from the infamous ass that was placed at equal distance from food and drink and starved to death, because it couldn't decide which it should choose first. In effect, the story of the ass involves a question on how the capacity of deciding and willing works: if the ass has a capacity to make a spontaneous and completely arbitrary choice, it can avoid the trouble quite easily. The dilemma of Buridan's ass has a long history, but now we are interested in Wolff's manner of solving it.

Wolff defines willing (Willen) as an inclination towards something that is taken as good. Somewhat confusingly he defines unwilling (nicht Willen) as the inclination to avoid something that is taken as bad: I shall ignore this complication and treat Wolffian unwilling as a mere modification of willing. What is important is that Wolffian willing always requires a preceding notion of what is good and bad: this notion is a motive (Bewegungs-Gründe) for the act of willing.

Wolff seems then step right into the trap of Buridan's ass: if one cannot act without any reason, then one cannot just choose one form of sustenance over another. Yet, here the Leibnizian notion of inobservable effects on human soul becomes important. Wolff can assume in earnest that the case of Buridan's ass can never truly happen, because there will always be some small detail that will subconsciously make us inclined us to choose one possibility over the other.

Wolffian notion of subconsious motives implies that the process of human willing can never be completely transparent to the subject of willing. In other words, although a person would have a clear idea of what was good for her (such as not smoking cigarettes), an affect could still tempt her to act against her better interests. This is the idea of the enslavement of human will to the affects that was a common subject at the time of Wolff.

The problem of Buridan's ass is often connected with the question whether humans have a free will. In my opinion, the supposed connection is spurious: Buridan's ass could circumvent its dilemma through a simple flip of a coin or some quantum mechanical randomiser forcing the ass to act, but such a mechanism is not really free will. Now, Wolff appears to agree with me: if willing always requires a motive, a purely arbitrary choice is still not willing.

One might criticise Wolff for making human free will deterministic: if one would know all the motives of a person, one would know what she would choose in a particular situation. Yet, I find, firstly, that this possibility is just something that is commonly accepted: if one knows my likes and dislikes, one can immediately say that I will always choose a keylime pie over a chocolate cake, and in general, if a person's character is known, her actions can be predicted in some measure. The question of predictability of human willing cannot decide the question of the freedom of the will: chaotic phenomena like weather are practically unpredictable and quantum mechanical phenomena are unpredictable even in principle, but they cannot be called free actions.

Furthermore, the whole setup of knowing all the motives of a person is rather unbelievable, especially as the person interacts all the time with her environment and might gain new, previously unknown motives. For instance, if I heard two persons betting over whether I will eat keylime pie or chocolate cake, I might choose the cake just for the sake of upsetting the gentlemen. Thus, the existence of motives for all human actions does not even rule out the unpredictability of these actions.

Wolff himself notes that the deterministic theory of human mind confuses the analogy between motives and causes. Both are types of reasons or grounds, but they are still essentially different. For instance, scales require some cause to move them out of the state of equilibrium, but they cannot be motivated to do something as humans are.

Wolff himself places the freedom of human will in the capacity of self-determination. This does not mean that a human being could arbitrarily choose what it wills, because Wolff thinks such a notion would lead to a vicious circle. Instead, Wolff emphasises the fact that a free action is caused by the human being itself, according to its own notion of what it would be good to do in the current situation. Hence, Wolff can present a sort of evaluation of actions: the more a person knows about what is truly good for him, the more freedom his actions show. On the other hand, freedom cannot be forced on anyone, because a forced freedom would be just externally determined self-determination – a contradiction in terms.

With this text, the chapter on empirical psychology in Wolff's German metaphysics is closed. Well, Wolff does remark that the processes of human soul appear to be related to processes in our body, but this unification of soul and body will be dealt in more detail, when we come to rational psychology.

In the next post I shall begin the study of Wolffian cosmology, but I would still like to make some comments on empirical psychology in general and especially its Wolffian version. Later German philosophers were not really enthusiastic about this discipline. Hegel's criticism is still rather mild: empirical psychology is just disorganised observation of whatever capacities we happen to find within ourselves and does not reveal the nature of consciousness, of which all these capacities are mere modifications. Hegel's description is rather accurate, especially in case of Wolff, who has merely moved from one faculty of soul to another, still, a bit unfair: the nature of the soul Wolff intends to reveal in another chapter, dealing with rational psychology. Analogically, one should not disregard natural history just because it does not offer any general theory of nature, but mere empirical observations on individual natural phenomena.

Kant's objections against empirical psychology in his Metaphysical foundations of natural science are more severe: science of psychology based on empirical observation is an impossibility, because a) all true science, such as physics, must use mathematics, b) all mathematics requires constructing concepts in a priori intuition, c) the a priori intuition corresponding to the object of psychology or soul is time and d) time as one-dimensional cannot be used for constructions.

Kant's argument is rather convoluted, especially as we are still far from Kant's main works and concepts like ”a priori intuition” and ”construction” in their Kantian sense are to be defined only much later in my blog. Yet, we may for now note one important link in the argument: psychological notions cannot be quantified. Indeed, if by science is meant something like physics, science aims largely to discover relations between various quantities.

Now, Wolff appears actually to uphold the ideal of mathematized science, as befits a mathematician. In fact, he points out that many human faculties come in grades, that is, have a quantity that is analogical to numbers and sizes. For instance, a person can have a better or worse memory and one might even improve one's memory or enlarge its grade.

Of course, the existence of quantities of mental faculties does not still mean that these quantities could be measured, which is a condition for truly quantifying phenomena. Yet, in case of some mental faculties this seems rather easy. For example, we could well measure the grade of our memory e.g. by measuring how many words I could remember after a certain time of practice: the relation between the time and the number of the words might then be used as describing the grade of one's memory.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - All you need is love

The early modern philosophers were fascinated by the problem of human emotions that appeared to combine the imcombinable, that is, the material world of bodies and the spiritual world of human souls. For instance, anger is a conscious state, but also something you feel in your chest. They might be called passions or affects, but the task was still the same: to catalogue and define their seemingly endless variety.

It is thus no wonder that Wolff also spends a considerable number of paragraphs on the issue of affects. I already mentioned briefly in the previous post that Wolff had accepted the Leibnizian idea of imperceptible changes in the human soul. Thus, Wolff has to add a layer of sensuous or indistinct subconscious desires (Begierde) and aversions (Abscheu) that we do not consciously perceive, although they do affect us. It is only when such a desire or aversion – or a combination of several – becomes great enough that we experience a real affect.

It would be quite pointless to go through all the different affects in detail: the truly interested will find a short summary of the Wolffian definitions of them at the end of this text. I shall instead investigate one important affect – love – and its definitions in Descartes, Spinoza and Wolff.

Starting with Descartes, we find him defining love as an emotion that induces the human soul to desire joining with the object of its love. I might be reading more to the Cartesian definition than I should, but the mention of joining suggests the idea of matrimony or even the more physical joining in sex. Of course, love is used as an euphemism for sex – we do call sex making love, and when Janet Jackson speaks of loving someone under cover, we know what she is insinuating. Yet, Descartes would still have failed to characterise all types of non-sexual – e.g. parental – love.

Moving on to Spinoza, we find him criticising Descartes for confusing a certain consequence of love with love itself. Spinoza's himself defines love as a pleasure together with an idea of its cause. One might be wary of Spinoza's emphasis on pleasure: term ”lovesickness” tells rather well that love is not always just fun and games. Yet, Spinoza knows that pleasure of love is often mixed with various negative feelings, such as jealousy. Somewhat more disturbing is that Spinoza fails to specify humans as the object of love. True, we do speak of loving chocolate, detective stories or a sip of white wine, and Shirley Bassey sings of Mr. Goldfinger who loves only gold. Still, we usually feel that these are just secondary types of love or even mere likings compared to our love of fellow humans.

Wolff, finally, defines love as a preparedness to be noticeably delighted of the luck befallen on beloved. Compared with Descartes' and Spinoza's rather crude forms of love, Wolffian love is quite refined, altruistic and even saintly. This is the love that mystics spoke about and that Beatles made their song of: all you need is not sex nor gold, but love – respect and care for other living beings and their welfare. Yet, no matter how refined love of Wolffian definition is, it is also removed from the ordinary earthly love – tell a person that she should be glad of her spouse getting lucky and you will probably be thought a bit naive.

Descartes, Spinoza and Wolff have thus been able to define some aspects of love, embodied in the figures of Don Juan, Uncle Scrooge and Buddha, but none of them has truly captured the totality or essence of love. This just shows how complex a seemingly simple emotion like love can be – and indeed, we may wonder if ”love” or "Liebe" designates more than one emotion. Furthermore, this complexity might make us disbelieve that love would be something that could be pointed out in a brain scan: this man obviously loves, because that area is red, says the neuropsychologist, and we may ask what he means by loving – sexual infatuation of a playboy, miser's lust of money, mystical absorption into pantheistic unity or something else?

So much for affects and especially affection or love. Next time, we shall speak of will.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - Anytime you feel the pain

Being a human is not just about sensing, imagining and reasoning, which all are relatively passive capacities. In addition, human beings are active and change the world around them. Yet, they do not just act haphazardly, but for reasons: they act, beacuse they feel that they should do something. In other words, they value different situations according to some standards.

Wolff introduces the human faculties of valuing out of the blue. We have seen him defining perfection as an objective value not dependent on any human being: if something is perfect, it is perfect, no matter what. Now Wolff suggests that human beings can intuit or perceive things as perfect or as imperfect. These perceptions he calls respectively Lust and Unlust, which could be translated perhaps as like and dislike. Note that the two feelings of like and dislike are not the only options: one can also perceive things as indifferent.

Like and dislike need not be connected with true perfection – we can like things that just appear to be perfect. In other words, knowing what is objectively good and bad – say, for our health – is completely different from feeling it in our guts that something is nice (candies) or disgusting (Brussels sprouts). Wolff also makes the suggestion that the difference between the two is only a matter of clarity and that by clarifying one's notions of good and bad, one could learn to like what is truly or invariably good. Yet, this suggestion seems somewhat implausible: although I know very well that candies are bad for my teeth, I still feel enjoyment when eating them.

Even more unsatisfying is Wolff's inability to distinguish like and dislike concerning bodily feelings from those concerning other things. We have already noted that Wolff has clear dualistic tendencies and that body is for him just some external thing that happens to be constantly connected with human soul. Now, just because the body is there always disturbing the clarity of our thoughts, we have to take a special care of its perfection.

At times, the body is somehow broken – Wolff speaks in a very literal manner of a cut in the continuity of a body, such as a wound is, but I think we need not follow him in this regard. Such a state of brokenness Wolff calls Schmertz, which would usually be translated as pain, but the word is truly unsuitable here: pain is a feeling, while Wolffian Schmertz is just a state of a body. Of course, this state is usually accompanied by a feeling of dislike, but only because the imperfection of the body is constantly there to remind us. If I had an ugly painting constantly in my field of vision, I would find the situation not just less uncomfortable, but also qualitatively different from a situation where I would be having a constant headache – the ugliness of painting would not concern me, but something external to me.

Wolff's account of pain has a further difficulty. If Wolff is right, I will always feel pain, when I am conscious of the imperfection of my body. Yet, there are cases where this is not true. For instance, I could know that I have a tumour somewhere in my body without having any pain to show for it. Wolff might answer to me by insisting that I would indeed have a sensation of pain in this case, but it would be of so small a magnitude that I would not be aware of it.

Still, Wolff's explanation fails to account for an experience familiar to all who have gone through dental surgery, that is, the anesthesia of one's mouth. When the anesthesia is working, you literally cannot feel any pain within your mouth – for instance, you might even bite your tongue accidentally, causing Wolffian pain, but feel nothing until the anesthesia stops working. In this example, the quantity of the supposed pain cannot just be very small, because then one would still have the possibility of enlarging the pain to a level of conscious awareness – but this very awareness of pain is prevented by the anesthesia.

So much for pain. Next time, we shall discuss affects.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - I just don't understand

I have already investigated Wolff's views on understanding in a series of texts based on his German logic. Hence, I shall ignore familiar details in Wolff's account of understanding in German metaphysics – such as the levels of clarity in concepts – and instead focus on presenting a general account of understanding in Wolff.

According to Wolff, the faculty of understanding is based on something more active than mere passive sensibility: the idea of an active understanding will be developed in more detail by Kant and the later German idealists. The particular activity Wolff is speaking of is the capacity of concentrating one's attention (Aufmerkung) to a certain thought: this thought will then become clearer than all the other current thoughts. In other words, we cannot decide that we are seeing a bunch of trees, a rock and an ant hill in front of us, but we can choose to ignore everything else and look at the anthill more carefully – or we can even forget all the information given to us by senses and recollect the football match of the previous night.

Through the capacity of changing and concentrating our attention, we can go through even an object with a complex and multifaceted structure (Wolff calls this ability überdenken). Then again, we can also recognise through our memory that a certain complex structure is something we have been earlier aware of. A thought of a general structure repeating itself in various situations is what Wolff calls concepts (Begriff). What Wolff is describing here is a process of abstraction: one compares different situations and notes they share some complex of characteristics and so one is able to think of the general notion of having such a complex.

As we might remember from Wolffian logic, distinct concepts are such that we can define, and when we think of something through a distinct concept, we understand it (verstehen): similarly, the capacity to think or cognise some possible thing through distinct concepts is understanding (Verstand). In other words, understanding uses the results of analysis in order to see what there might be. We may note in passing how this Wolffian notion of understanding as the capacity of using distinct concepts will be changed by later philosophers. For Kant, understanding becomes a source of certain concepts – namely, categories – while in Hegel, the understanding is finally the source for all concepts, that is, the very act of analysing and abstracting that creates all general concepts.

When the human understanding thinks or cognises a thing, it makes judgments. That is, the understanding represents the thing as having certain characteristics, although at the same time it is aware that the thing and its characteristics cannot be identified, because e.g. redness is something that is not restricted to berries. This rather awkward definition of judgement is essentially retained by later German philosophers.

Note how the capacity of judgment is here seen as a mere modification of the general capacity of understanding. Indeed, because the faculty of understanding is not the source, but the application of concepts with Wolff, it is natural to equate understanding with the capacity for making judgments. With Kant and the later German idealists the identification is not self-evident, because understanding is already a faculty for making concepts: in some cases they appear to follow Wolff, but in other cases they appear to distinguish judgement as a separate faculty.

The judgements are then mental processes, but they can also be translated into verbal form through use of words. Wolff undertakes an investigation of grammar that need not concern us. What is important, instead, is that Wolff distinguishes between what he calls intuitive (anschauende) and figurative (figürlich) cognition. This distinction is nearest Wolff comes to separating intuition and understanding. Still Wolffian distinction is not a distinction between constituents of experience, but more one between different types of experiences, in which different consituents preponderate.

In intuitive cognition one is thinking directly a thing appearing to our senses: this is what happens when we perceive or imagine things. Intuitive cognition is characteristically limited to individual things – we cannot see, for instance, a triangle in general, but only individiual triangles. In figurative cognition, on the other hand, we do not investigate things as such, but only signs referring to those things. The most common of these signs are probably words, but Wolff also recognises the importance of mathematical symbols. The figurative cognition is in a sense based on the intuitive knowledge, because the words and the symbols must refer to general characteristics of individual things. Yet, it is the figurative cognition that has more value for Wolff, because it allows us to cognise general structures.

The difference between sensation/intuitive cognition and understanding/figurative cognition is reproduced in a higher level in the difference between experience and reason (Vernunft), which were the two recognised sources of knowledge in the premodern philosophy. We have seen in an earlier text that Wolff was not a pure rationalist, and indeed, accepted as a valid source of knowledge the experience, that is, cognition based on perceptions and observation of mental processes (note that Wolff included both passive observations and active experiments under experiences). Experiences can tell us, Wolff suggests, that our concepts refer to possible structures (we know there can be flying machines, because we have seen them) and that certain connections between concepts or judgements are valid. Finally, because we can see that certain judgments are valid only in certain contexts where determinate conditions hold, experiences can provide information about causal connections.

The problem in taking experience as the only source of knowledge is that experience can only tell that something is the case. At best, experiences can be generalised through analogies of the sort ”this has happened before in these circumstances, hence, it must happen always in similar circumstances”. Yet, even such generalisations do not tell why something is the case. Explaining a truth means for Wolff connecting it to other truths in a systematic manner: we understand why e.g. apples fall toward Earth by seeing how it follows from more primordial truths of physics. Wolff begins the tradition of calling the capacity for such systematics reason – a tradition continued by Kant and the later German idealists.

Later German classics usually distinguished reason and understanding – either they thought, like Kant, that reason was emptier of content than understanding, or they disparaged understanding for its incapacity of reaching the level of reason, like Schelling. But for Wolff, reason is just another modification of understanding, just like capacity of judgment is. More precisely, reason is in Wolff a capacity for using formal deductions to connect judgements. Note that the connection between reason and reasoning or deduction is something German idealists also accepted, although the formalism of reason will be rather difficult to combine with the more substantial notion of reason in later German idealists. Hegel in fact went so far as to call the reason as formal reasoning the reason in the guise of understanding – we might call this a partial return to Wolff's original notion of reason as a species of understanding.

We might finally note that the reasoning in Wolff is not limited to mere Aristotelian syllogistic. One might remember from an earlier post that Wolff supposed judgements have different levels of certainty. Wolff also notes that reasoning might be applied not just to certain truths, but also to judgements of uncertain nature. Wolff is thus envisioning a logic of probabilities, whereby we could deduce e.g. from almost certain judgements other almost certain judgements.

The hierarchy of senses/intuition/perception, imagination and understanding/judgement/reason is something that is faithfully followed by later German philosophers and taken almost as a universal truth of human consciousness. Despite the seeming perfection of the threefold scheme, Wolff himself notes that the nature of the human soul might not be exhausted by it. Indeed, the scheme deals only with different types of thinking or consciousness. Then again, consciousness might be only an external criterion for recogning one as a human soul and it might not tell the whole story of the essence of the humans. Indeed, human affections, pleasures and pains are something that is not reducible to theoretical capacities of cognition. We shall investigate in next post what Wolff has to say about this other side of human soul.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on God, world, and human soul, furthermore, of all things in general - Observing oneself

After a short Cartesian detour on the certainty of our own existence, Wolffian metaphysics began from ontology – after all, one has to look at all things in general, before one can say something about any particular thing. While Wolff's choice of beginning appears almost inevitable, it is not as easy to decide where to continue. Even if one is to leave God last as the metaphysical object most remote from us, one must still determine whether to start from ourselves or from the world around us. Wolff's strategy is mixed: we do first start from ourselves, but then go on with the world and afterwards return to discuss our own nature. What is behind the reason to divide the treatment of human consciousness in two parts?

The study of human nature or soul – traditionally called psychology – was at the time of Christian Wolff actually divided into two subdisciplines, empirical and rational psychology. The subject matter of both disciplines was the same, but they were distinguished by the method used. Empirical psychology was based on experiences: it described e.g. what sort of capacities one could find through observing oneself. Rational psychology, on other hand, tried to go beyond experience by help of deductions. Wolff is apparently following this division: he is firstly listing all the characteristics of consciousness that are apparent from introspection, and only after a digression to the world does he discuss what we can deduce of human consciousness beyond mere experience.

The starting point of Wolff's empirical psychology is then the same Cartesian idea of thinking, with which the whole Wolffian metaphysics began. I have already remarked in an earlier post that by thinking Wolff refers to all processes in which human being is conscious of itself. Despite his Cartesian beginning, Wolff is quick to point out that human beings appear to be involved also in processes in which they are not conscious of themselves, in other words, that the human minds are not necessarily conscious all the time. A simple example is the state of dreamless sleep, where there is no trace of self-consciousness to be found at all.

Wolff makes quickly the distinction between two self-conscious states. In one type, we are conscious also of other things beyond ourselves. We have already seen that Wolff has characterised these other things as spatial and complex or as constituted by other things. Now Wolff adds that there is one particular thing that we are always conscious of, although it is spatial and complex – this is obviously our own body.

Wolff is thus at the outset accepting a dualism between consciousness and its body: body is something different from the consciousness, although consciousness is – at least according to our experience – constantly connected to it. The obvious problem in such a dualistic notion is that it ignores the centrality of the body for the consciousness and treats it like any material object whatsoever, although one we are constantly aware of. We shall see in a later text how this problem makes Wolff's theory of pleasure and pain difficult to accept.

The consciousness of external objects is in some cases connected to physical processes involving our body. For instance, when I hear the voice of a violin, vibrations produced by the playing of the violin reach my ear. Such a state of consciousness Wolff calls Empfindung, and as I have noted earlier, Wolff appears to include, in addition to sensations, also perceptions under this notion. Still, Wolff's Empfindung and the corresponding capacity of Sinnlichkeit are passive like the respective Kantian notions: consciousness cannot decide by itself what it will sense, when it looks upon something.

Wolff's apparent confusion is a fine example how unanalysed the pre-Kantian psychological notions seem when compared with Kantian classifications. Then again, while Kantian analyses might suggest the idea that e.g. we could have sensations that are not components in any perception, the seemingly careless style of Wolff never hides the necessary interconnectedness of such components – individual sensations are always just sensations of an object and thus components of perceptions.

In addition to other things, we are also conscious of ourselves. As confusing as Wolffian account of Empfindung is from a Kantian viewpoint, as confusing is his idea of self-consciousness. Kant himself divided our consciousness of ourselves into two aspects, roughly corresponding to aspects of our consciousness of other things. Firstly, we have an capacity of inner sense, which is like ”outer sense” in its passivity, and secondly, we have a more active transcendental apperception. Wolff, on the other hand, speaks simply of our self-consciousness without any consideration of a possible complexity of that notion.

What is more confusing is Wolff's reluctance to relate his account of self-consciousness to his notion of Empfindung. Wolffian sensation/perception is clearly connected to the human body, but a possibility of a similar relation between self-consciousness and body is not even mentioned. Undoubtedly Wolff's dualistic presuppositions are the primary reason preventing him of even conceiving this possibility, because he does not even try to argue against it.

Indeed, when Wolff himself accepts the idea that some sensations/perceptions might be so faint that we are not consciously aware of them, he could not have dismissed the corporeal nature of self-consciousness just on basis of not being aware of any bodily processes, when thinking ourselves. Furthermore, one might even argue with Hegel that internal processes of human being have in some cases clear bodily manifestations, for instance, in a headache we feel after a long spell of abstract thinking.

Wolff's incapability of explaining what observation of oneself involves is especially fatal, because the very possibility of empirical psychology is based on such a capacity of introspection. In fact, Wolff's study of empirical psychology consists of Wolff remarking how we can observe ourselves doing something and concluding that we have a capacity for doing such a thing. One might note, by the way, how this line of reasoning is dangerously close to interpreting the capacities as modules separable from the ”soul” having these capacities – something which Hegel was later to criticise.

No matter how dubious Wolff's method of empirical psychology then is, we should still investigate what capacities or faculties he finds within human mind: after all, the Wolffian psychological terminology will be shared by later German philosophers. I shall continue with this task in the next post, but for now I shall note an interesting point that Wolff appears to accept the possibility of quantifying the different faculties of human soul, somewhat like intelligence is nowadays quantified in the IQ score. Thus, Wolff speaks of several faculties having different grades: remember that by grade Wolff means a characteristic that is analogical to a spatial or numeric quantity (of course, these grades are not static, because a person can e.g. improve his capacity of remembering things). This possibility of quantifying human capacities will be important for Kant in an attempt to show why traditional proofs of the immortality of soul must fail – and later on Hegel will criticise the very same notion Kant uses.