ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, I set out some of the elements of a thomist metaphysics. In touching briefly on the issues of mind and soul I sketched the form of an argument to the effect that since intellectual thought deals in general concepts, and where there is matter there is always individuality, therefore thought is not a material process. Then I suggested that given the principle that activity follows from, or expresses the nature of the agent, one may infer that if an activity is non-material then so too must be its subject, i.e. the agent whose activity it is. In the last chapter I returned to this theme now writing in terms of contemporary philosophy and proposing that certain features of thought constitute a problem for any naturalistic (physico-causal) account of the mind. Together these suggest that the ontological character of human persons is metaphysically other than that of purely material substances. In the present chapter, I shall explore further the question of the distinctive nature of the human by considering the fact that the understanding of our thoughts and actions calls for a special mode of interpretation which is distinct from that involved in explaining non-human, animal behaviour. Notwithstanding its marginalization of religion and the spiritual, in some quar-
ters English-language philosophy in the broadly analytical tradition is currently in something of a benign humanistic phase. I mean by this that there is now an inclination to reassert the existence and the validity of interpretative and evaluative styles of description and explanation. For the most part this gives rise to forms of conceptual dualism (to be contrasted with the more radical dualisms discussed in Chapter 6), as in some of the uses made of the contrasts between scientific and
manifest images, objective and subjective views, and causal and rational explanations, contrasts which are owing in recent formulations to the work of Wilfred Sellars, Thomas Nagel and John McDowell. Of course, to observe a duality is not necessarily to accord parity of esteem to
both parties. Quine famously conceded the irreducibility of intentional idiom in everyday discourse, but concluded that it must therefore be dispensed with when it comes to describing reality. Subsequently, and under the influence of Davidson, he softened his attitude, recognizing the ineliminability of psychological and semantic categories for any comprehensive account that we humans might ever wish to construct. Even so, the acceptance is reluctant, the acknowledgement a concession to human weakness. In contrast there is a growing reaction against the disposition to give priority to
the scientific, the objective and the causal. Some humanist ‘reactionaries’, like Thomas Nagel, look to a future synthesis; to forms of description and explanation that transcend existing dualities while acknowledging the validity of the perspectives they embody. Others are resigned to, reconciled with, or rejoice at an ineliminable dualism within epistemology and metaphysics. On this account there are two ways of knowing, and two kinds of fact – the personal and the scientific. One important source of inspiration for this pluralist attitude is Dilthey’s observation ‘nature we explain; man we understand’.2
