Week 3: Metaphysics and The Important Book
[edit] Teaching The Important Book
1. The Philosophy of Essential Properties
You should read the chapter in Big Ideas on The Important Book. It emphasizes the nature of metaphysics, the philosophical field this book is concerned with. Although metaphysics is often described as the “science of being,” we will only be discussing one metaphysical issue: whether there are essential properties. Basically, Aristotle introduced a substance-attribute metaphysics that has dominated Western thought ever since. The basic things in the world he designated as substances, things that were able to exist without being dependent on other things. Dependent beings he designated as attributes or what we might call “properties.” So a more colloquial way of referring to Aristotle’s metaphysical view is as one in which the world consists of things that have properties. An example of the distinction is the difference between you – a substance – and the property you have of having hair – a property that I am slowly losing!
On Aristotle’s view, not all the properties of a thing are on equal footing. There are some properties that a thing can lose and still be the thing that it is. Having hair, for example, is such a property, which gets termed an accident. But Aristotle thought there were properties that a thing had to keep in order to be the thing that it is. The easiest examples to support this idea of essential properties are artifacts, things that we have created to fulfill our needs. Take a knife. It’s essential property is cutting. Nothing can be a knife, on this view, if it can’t cut. So the ability to cut is an essential property of a knife, a.k.a. its essence.
When we move beyond artifacts, it’s not as clear that things have essential properties. Do you think you do? Is there something that you could not lose without ceasing to be you? Your mind might seem a good candidate. But are Alzheimer’s patients no longer the people they once were? As you can see, we can have a long philosophical discussion about essential properties. It is also worth pointing out that there is a difference between the claim that knives as a type of entity have an essential properties and that an individual knife does. It seem indisputable that knives are things that cut, but it’s not so clear that this knife sitting on my computer table has to be able do so. It might be broken, yet still be a knife, in some sense. Ah… the complexities of things.
2. Our MLK Session
We will begin our MLK session differently that we have previously. As you know, the book consists of ten double pages, each of which repeats the same pattern: One object is focused on – a spoon, a daisy, rain, grass, snow, an apple, the wind, the sky, a shoe, and you – and an identical pattern is followed. First, the important thing about that object is stated; then, a number of other things (properties) of the object are stated; finally, the important thing about that object is reiterated.
To begin, we are going to choose three “objects”: a spoon, an apple, and you. What I would like you to do is to make a chart that recapitulates what the book says. To do that make three columns: Object/Most Important Thing/Other Things. Fill in each object and then ask the children to tell you what the book says is the most important thing about it. Finally, ask them to tell you what other things the book says apply to the object.
| Object | Most Important Thing | Other things |
|---|---|---|
| Spoon | You eat with it | Like a shovel, etc. |
| Apple | It is round | It is red, etc. |
| You | You are you | You were a baby, etc. |
Make sure to fill out the chart with everything the book says about each object.
Once you have done that. You should start with the spoon and ask the children if the most important thing about the spoon is that they eat with it. We have found that they take to this question really well. They generally point out that you eat with other things, like forks. The tendency is to think that this means that “you eat with it” can’t be the most important thing about a spoon. (This confuses necessary and sufficient conditions, something I’ll explain in class because it is very confusing and hard to keep straight.) So you need to get them to see that, even if the most important thing about forks is also that you eat with them, this does not mean that that can’t also be the most important thing about a spoon.
When you turn to an apple, your aim is to get the children to see that the book is simply wrong. Being round is not the most important thing about an apple. First, some of them may say that apples are not round. Whether that’s true depends on what “round” is taken to mean. So you need to ask them what they think round means. If it means “spherical,” apples are certainly not that. But it could also mean “has no sharp points,” and that’s true of apples. But, in any case, apples need not be round. Ask them if there could be a square or a banana-shaped apple. Ask them if they think there is a “most important thing” about apples. The best candidate is that it contains seeds for an apple tree. But you can ask them if they have seen seedless watermelons. Could there be seedless apples? In this part of the discussion, you should tell them that they are right to criticized the book, that it is just wrong about what it says is the most important thing about apples (assuming, of course, that they all agree about that.)
You probably won’t have time to discuss “you.” This is where the distinction between humans in general as a species and you as an individual human being comes in. It seems like the book is talking about the latter, which would be like talking about an individual spoon or an individual apple. But let’s not worry about that unless a child points that out. What’s hard here is that the meaning of “that you are you” is not clear. It could mean that everything about you is an important thing about you, but baldness is a counterexample to that claim. It might be thought to say that there is some special quality that makes you you. But it’s not clear what that could be. So this part of the discussion should get them to think about whether there is something that makes each of them the very special person they are.
You should encourage the teachers to do a follow-up activity, either the one mentioned in Big Ideas or else one they devised of having the kids pair up and each of them do an Important Book page about their partner.
