Metaphysics, along with epistemology and ethics, is one of the foundational areas of philosophical inquiry. That said, "metaphysics" as a field of philosophical inquiry is notoriously hard to define. This is because, among other reasons, the scope of metaphysical inquiry is immense. Metaphysics primarily concerns itself with the nature of being and the world. It investigates the categories by which we understand existence, reality, and objects, as well as the properties-- like space, time, cause and effect-- by which we understand our experience of existence, reality and objects. Because the constitution and resolution of all metaphysical questions requires thinking, the Philosophy of Mind is an appropriate correlate, as the primary concerns of that field are the nature of the mind, mental properties and functions, consciousness and the relationship of all of these to our physical bodies. So, with "mind and metaphysics," we set before ourselves the project of considering the entire array of questions that address both being and thinking. A formidable project, indeed.
I chose Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige to begin our course because the quite remarkable story depicted in it is driven in large part by two phenomena that stymie the human mind's ability to understand reality. Those two phenomena, which are so similar in our experience as to be often indistinguishable, are magic and miracles. Here is the trailer for the film:
Because of the nature of the "illusion" featured in The Prestige, there are a lot of interesting questions raised regarding the uniqueness and persistence of personal identity, the relationship of mind and body, our perception of "reality," space and time... not to mention also what can be known and what should be doubted. Every illusion, we are told, has three parts: first, there is the setup, or the "pledge," in which the illusionist shows us something that appears ordinary but is probably not, making use of misdirection. (Example: a magician shows a dove.) Second, there is the performance or the trick, known as the "turn," in which the magician makes the ordinary extraordinary. (The bird disappears.) Lastly, there is the "prestige," in which the effect of the illusion is produced. (The bird reappears.) The central idea driving this film is that every illusion needs its third part, the prestige. No one claps when a magician makes a bird disappear because, as the film suggests, it isn't enough just to make something disappear. You have to make it come back again. The "prestige" is what makes we spectators wonder to ourselves: how did he do that? was that a magic "trick"? or was it "really" miraculous?
Of course, we all know that the illusion that we experience in a magic trick is not "real"-- that is, whatever it is we perceive to have occurred is contrary to what really occurred and, quite often, could not have occurred in reality. However, our experience of the illusion is real, our perception of the illusion is real, even if what we experienced or perceived did not really happen as we experienced or perceived it. If what we experienced/perceived in a magic trick were really what happened, it wouldn't be an illusion or a magic trick, it would be a miracle. What the good magician or the good illusionist aims to accomplish is the production of a perfect simulation of reality, such that the spectator is forced to really wonder whether what s/he saw was real or not.
The difference between the experience of a perfect simulation, on the one hand, and the experience of the experience of a perfect simulation, on the other hand, poses interesting questions for both metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind. It highlights something structurally similar to the difference between the experience of "magic" (with an understanding here that "magic" is really illusion and trickery) and the experience of a "miracle." A perfect magic trick aims to entirely veil the part of it that is a "trick," to produce the illusion of not being an illusion, and thus to make its appearance in our experience appear as a miracle. (Material objects don't just disappear and reappear with an 'abracadabra' and a wave of a wand! You can't saw a woman in half and then put her back together! Natural laws cannot be suspended! It must be a miracle!) If we ever really had the experience of a perfect magic trick, one that perfectly masked its illusion, we would, in effect, have had the experience of a miracle. But, in fact, when we watch a magician do his trick, even if he is very, very good at it, we are experiencing it as an illusion, as a trick, as a simulation of something miraculous. That is why we can give an account of our experience of it as magic, and not miracle. Compare that to the experience of watching a young child in his or her first encounter with a really good magician. The child experiences the trick as real; in fact, the child does not experience it as a "trick." We adults, looking on and knowing that there is no such thing as "real" magic, can observe the total assimilation of reality and illusion that the child is experiencing, but neither we nor the child are in fact having the experience of a "perfect illusion." The phenomenon highlighted in the title of Nolan's film, the "prestige," is the production of an illusion, which is a phenomenon that stymies understanding and compels us to ask ourselves profound questions about mind and metaphysics.
Now, for some people (like Hugh Jackman's character in the film) the prestige produces not only wonder, but also madness. Like Jackman's character, most of us want to "figure it out" when what appear to be illusions are presented to us in experience-- or we want, at the very least, to believe that it can be figured out--and, if we are conscientious and reflective, leaving the illusion as a "mystery" seems unacceptable. Quite often, the unexplained (or inexplicable) nags and irritates and drives us obsessively toward demystifying the mystery, that is, reconciling it with standard categories of human understanding. As we can see in the essays by Descartes, Locke and Hume this week, our standard categories of understanding are more or less capable of accommodating mis-perceptions, illusions, simulations, mirages and trickery. What they are unable to accommodate are miracles, which upset everything we think we know about reality and our own minds.
I'd like to suggest, at the outset of our semester, that we consider the possibility that philosophers in particular need the "prestige." Perhaps what Philosophy "does" is the prestige, the presentation of the illusion that something-- perhaps everything-- can be known. And, perhaps, cinema does the same.
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