Students’ mind-boggling questions have been flooding into the online Philosophy and Theology classrooms over the past week in celebration of World Philosophy Day. It has been wonderful to see so many students expressing curiosity about some of the largest and most fundamental questions of life.

While other areas of knowledge focus on individual aspects of reality, the disciplines of Philosophy and Theology uniquely investigate reality as a coherent whole—its ultimate epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical nature, including our relational place within it.

For their particularly thought-provoking questions, prizes were awarded to the following students:

• Calli (Upper III), who asked, “Is the mind the same as the brain, or do we have souls?”
• Charlotte (Lower IV), who asked, “What is the most important philosophy question?”
• Hannah (Lower IV), who asked, “When you travel into the past, does the past become your new future?”

Our Philosophy and Theology teachers took on the challenge of answering each of these questions in under a minute! Transcripts can be found below.

Special recognition is also given to Teodora (Upper IV) for her highly commended question:
“If our past experiences shape who we are, and the experiences that are the actions of others are also their past experiences, then who we are is already decided by the past experiences that have already happened. This causes a chain of reactions, shaping us, and the decisions we make are the reactions to the lives we’ve lived, which were formed by the lives of others in the past. So, is fate just a chain reaction of past experiences?”

Is the mind the same as the brain or do we have souls?

Believing in the possibility of a soul means there is hope for life after the death of the physical body, and even the possibility that we existed before we were born.

The philosopher, René Descartes, thought the mind and body are completely different things. He believed the mind (or soul) was a non-physical part of us. It’s responsible for thoughts, emotions, and self-awareness. The brain on the other hand is just part of the physical body. Like Descartes’ friend, the Princess of Bohemia, I wonder about how something non-physical like a soul could interact with and affect the physical body.

I also wonder whether there is still space to believe in a non-physical soul, now that scientists have discovered so much about how our feelings, thoughts and self-awareness are shaped by our physical bodies, including brain activity.

The philosopher Patricia Churchland thinks we should accept that we are just physical beings, and that the things we associate with a mind or soul, are really just complex physical processes happening in the brain. Similarly, Daniel Dennet argues that the feeling we have that we are something more than a brain is an illusion created by brain activity.

What do you think: can everything about our thoughts, feelings, and sense of self be explained by the brain on its own?
Mrs Jest

What is the most important philosophy question?

There are plenty of good candidates. Philosophers who are interested in the nature and limits of human knowledge might argue that the most fundamental and therefore important question is ‘what can we know?’ because until we sort out an answer to that question, all others might just be a waste of our time. For ethicists, the most important question is probably ‘what is moral’ and its corollary: ‘what should I do?’

But I think that you may have just asked the most important question that any philosopher can ask herself.

Being a philosopher is hard work. Philosophy requires careful thought and sustained effort. All philosophers work on questions that they believe are important and interesting. So from a practical perspective, determining which is the most important philosophical question is the starting point for any philosopher. As the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, ‘what use would it be for me to discover a so-called objective truth…. if it had no deeper meaning for me and for my life?’

Philosophy is a conversation between thinkers, each of whom has their own interests, passions, and preoccupations. The philosopher Immanuel Kant was ‘awakened from slumber’ and inspired to write what is probably his most important work after reading the philosophy of David Hume. If you haven’t already figured out what the most important philosophy question is for you, you only need to read some more philosophy to see what other philosophers care about and start to formulate your own answer. As Kant would say: Sapere Aude!
Dr Cuthbertson

When you travel into the past, does the past become your new future?

Yes. When Doctor Who visited the Aztec empire, he told his companion, Barbara, “you can’t rewrite history! Not one line!” – it was not possible for Barbara to make meaningful change because in that view time would simply reassert itself. The things that were always going to happen would continue to happen. The events that she remembered from the past would therefore still be the events that took place in her new future.

Or perhaps no… Doctor Who soon abandoned the “observers unable to make changes” format. In the most recent series, new companion Ruby treads on a bug in prehistoric times and is instantly transformed into a different species. This is an example of the butterfly effect, an aspect of chaos theory. A small change in the past results in huge changes in the future. However, not only has Ruby’s species changed but all of her memories have updated to fit her new situation. So although the past has changed, she is now remembering the new past, so that past is still her future.

So still yes.

Or perhaps no… In Back to the Future, Marty McFly changes his future, just as Ruby did and when he returns at the end of the movie, he now belongs to a wealthier family as a result of his actions in the past. However, unlike Ruby, Marty retains all of his former memories. He has simply been diverted along a different path. He has created a new universe, branching off from the original in 1955, like a train directed onto a new track. All of the events that he remembered happened in that other universe, but in the new alternative universe different events have occurred, so Marty’s past is not in his future. A new set of events will be.
Mr Ellis