Philosophy - Critical Analysis

Prompt:
“I don’t want to talk about how I feel, all right?”
“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being
human!”
“THEN – I – DON’T – WANT – TO – BE – HUMAN!” Harry roared.
-- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Materialism in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This excerpt is from J.K. Rowling’s most recent novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. From these few sentences, I infer that Dumbledore, the character speaking to Harry Potter in this passage, suggests chemical and physical reactions (such as those that cause suffering) constitute human beings. I argue from the materialistic standpoint: humans are only reactions.
Materialists maintain that everything is matter. In saying so, they stress the point that there is no “thinking matter,” and that everything that exists is in physical form. That which is not explainable in physical form does not exist. Human beings are trapped in a physical state of matter. Not only is the physical state of humans matter, but their “mental states” are physically observable—making them physical states as well.
According to the article “Is God in Our Genes?” by Jeffrey Kluger, even the idea of God is materialistic. In the article, Dean Hamer, a molecular biologist, was doing a study on 1,000 men and women who smoke. He conducted a side-study that asked participants how they would rank themselves spiritually. In his study, he found that those who ranked themselves high on Cloninger’s self-transcendence scale had nucleic acid cytosine on one specific part of the gene VMAT2, and those that ranked themselves lower had nucleic acid adenine on the same spot. Through his study, Hamer came to the conclusion that even the belief in God can be defined by science; faith, a feeling, a thought is a genetic code, is matter.
However, George Berkeley’s abstract idealism casts a shadow onto materialistic views. He stipulated that by using Ockham’s razor, one could throw out matter, because one can explain experience without it. Objects, matter, cannot be experienced without perception—they are only ideas. However, a materialist would counter with the statement that material objects can exist without an idea of them. Before we knew other galaxies outside the Milky Way existed, they still existed. Therefore, matter can exist without ideas. In fact, thoughts and feelings are only illusions. The feeling a person undergoes when having a “spiritual experience” is only the genetic code for belief in God, as Hamer deduced. This genetic pattern existed before Hamer was aware of it, perhaps before Hamer had any idea of it. Yet, the genetic pattern was still there without any idea. Matter can exist outside of ideas.
In another article, scientists conducted a study on 18 college students who claim to have just recently fallen in love. While scanning their brains using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), they found that while looking at a picture of the person they feel a romantic attraction to, the parts of the brain with excessive amounts of receptors of dopamine—the euphoria messenger—became activated. These MRIs were compared to MRIs in other studies, and scientists found that the romantic love pattern was consistent and unique. Therefore, as the studies show, the feeling of romantic love is simply a physical reaction of the brain – materialistic. A skeptic would ask what part of the body feels love – hands, blood? The reaction in the brain causes it, but where is it felt? The feeling is not felt anywhere specifically – it is simply many physical reactions throughout the entire body that occur as an effect of the physical reaction of the brain. Therefore, it is not even a feeling, for it is only what the brain allows. It is only the physical reaction to a certain stimulus. As seen in the genetic trait that codes for the existence of God, the feeling of love is also publicly observable, and is therefore matter.
Another argument against materialism, and perhaps the most famous, is Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.” This statement is a true counter-argument of materialism, which stipulates that thoughts are only matter. Descartes said that one could not rely on one’s senses for truth. To prove this theory, Descartes utilizes his “Wax Argument.” In this argument, Descartes lists all of the physical characteristics of a piece of wax. When he puts it in the fire, the wax changes; in conclusion, one cannot rely on one’s senses, because melted wax is still wax. But what changed the wax into its new state? A series of chemical reactions caused the change, and it is possible for wax to change and be observed in its new state as wax, also.
Thomas Hobbes was the most important advocate of materialism. In his various writings, he explained his then revolutionary ideas that all things could be equivocated to motion or mechanical action. He stated that “All that exists is matter; all that occurs is motion.” However, this is a rather rudimentary vision of materialism that no one believes today, because philosophers and scientists over the ages have discovered such things as magnetic and electrical fields, mass energy.
Consider spots in front of your eyes, for instance. If you reach out with your hands, you cannot touch them. Where are the spots in space? They are surely not publicly observable, but you can see them because perhaps you are dizzy, or have just had a hard knock to the head. Materialists say that because they are not publicly observable, then they do not exist. But you are seeing them, so don’t they exist? Perhaps they do exist in your own state of mind – but there is something that causes them, and this is where materialists regain composure in their argument. It is a state of physical events—the blow to the head and the following action of the brain—that causes the spots before your eyes. It is matter; the firing of neurons and the responses of the brain and body make these spots before your eyes observable by only you. They exist in the physical world in that they exist in your brain.
Immanuel Kant also throws an obstacle in the pathway of the materialists. His entire philosophy is based on the inherent “reason” that all rational beings possess. Kant maintains that in order to act morally, one must act under the presupposition of freedom. Why? Morality and freedom go hand-in-hand. One cannot be moral but also be lawless, so one must act under laws, and these laws are the laws one imposes on oneself. Where do these laws come from? The rational being’s presupposition of freedom, which gives him or her the freedom to do what he or she wants, while “reason” decides which is “moral.” Because one decides between two options, one must have reason, and one’s reason must prove that one is free. But, what causes human beings to reason, to deliberate between two choices, and to decide which decision to make? It must be something going on inside our brains that determine which way to go when one comes to a fork in the road. Once again, the brain’s complex processes occurring in the correct order give us reason (and thus a reason to act morally, of course).
Thus there is no escape from physical reactions of the brain. Even something humans have held onto for centuries as existence beyond the physical world, God, has in a study been suggested as genetic. More so than the number of people that believe in God is the number of people that believe in love as something beyond physical, but love is just another physical reaction of the brain. Everything one deems something beyond physical, a “spiritual experience,” a feeling such as “love,” a deliberation—these things are all matter. Humans are matter because they are a series of reactions, and these reactions are inescapable.

Date: 3/09/05
Words: 1051
Links with syllabus: Core Theme—Mind and Body
Bibliography and references:
Rowling, J.K. 2003. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York. Scholastic
Press.
Descartes Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%E9_Descartes
Hobbes Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
Rosen, Stanley. 2000. The Examined Life. New York. Random House.
Article: Carey, Benedict. “Feel dopey when you’re in love? Scientists say it’s all in your
head.” Los Angeles Times.
Article: Kluger, Jeffrey. 2004. “Is God in Our Genes?” TIME magazine.
Hospers, John. 1988. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis: Third Edition. New Jersey. Prentice Hall.
Lange, Frederick. 1950. The History of Materialism. New York. The Humanities Press.