1. African Philosophy of Mind

2. Anton Wilhelm Amo Amton Wilhelm Amo Statue at the
University of Halle, Germany. From BlackPast.org. Permission requested.

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

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

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

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

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

8. Sensation Nostra immagine
Canapo di artigianato orientale raffigurante tre figure femminili con canestro sul capo
Source
Twice25 & Rinina25
Date
07/08/07
Author
Permission
(Reusing this image)
Own work, attribution required (Multi-license with GFDL and Creative Commons CC-BY 2.5)
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
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9. The Mind
But how does interaction between object and body have any effect on the mind?
Amo grants the Cartesian assumption that the mind is a spiritual substance
But a spiritual substance, he insists, is purely active and immaterial
It always gains understanding through itself (i.e., directly), and acts from self-motion and with intention in regard to an end and goal of which it is conscious to itself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17. Basis of the Mind For the Akan, the brain is the basis of the mind
It is by having a brain that I have the capacity for thought
Makonde elephant. I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.
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18. Mind and Person A person consists of body, life-force, and personality
The mind is not a constituent of a person, for the simple reason that it is not a thing
The mind is not a component of a person for the same reason that moving is not a part of a car

19. Mind and Body This dissolves the mind/body problem
Since the mind is not a thing, the question of how it can relate to a material thing, the body, does not arise
Carving from Makonde. About 1967
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:
GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

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

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

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

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

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

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

26. “A Thing that Acts” Afrikanischer Maler Title
Deutsch: Weiße Dame von Auahouret
Year
Deutsch: um 4000 v. Chr.
English: c v. Chr.
Technique
Deutsch: Felsmalerei
Dimensions
Deutsch: ca. 140 × 100 cm
Source The Yorck Project: Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, ISBN Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.
Permission
[1]
Public domain
The work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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