Themba asked:

Does Leibniz’s conception of the relationship between physical and mental events get rid of the Zombie and Mutant possibilities? Why or why not?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

I may be out of touch, but certainly I am not aware of real zombies existing anywhere. In fact, the last time I looked, it seemed plain and perfectly obvious to me that zombies can’t possibly exist. However, I don’t think Leibniz was responsible for this. It’s just a plain fact. So this part of your question has really got to be addressed to the sci-fi entertainment industry, where people with over-ripe fantasies dream up such creatures. But don’t get confused with what you see on TV. Zombies are fictions, and on screen they’re nothing but computer-generated images! Unless a law is passed to stop these dreamers from dreaming, zombies will continue their non-existent ‘existence’ and there’s nothing even Leibniz can do about it (and yet he was a doctor at law!).

There is another possibility, in case I’ve misunderstood. Sometimes we call a dull, apathetic person a ‘zombie’. Here Leibniz was distinctly charitable. He did not promote the idea of getting rid of them, although he wrote that no good can come of being dull and apathetic. He called such people ‘lazy sophists’, because they always have good reasons for being lazy and he warned them that God will not provide fruit unless you first plant a seed. In another of his papers, however, he wrote that no person can be so utterly stupid that someone else could not learn something from them. That’s what I mean by charitable. But what this has to do with the physical and mental events in your question is not clear to me.

Mutants are different of course. You and I and just about every living thing on this earth is a mutant. But once again you have to beware of sci-fi jargon, because when they say ‘mutant’ they have just another kind of zombie in mind. But Leibniz knew nothing of mutational theory, although he did say, categorically, that some mutations are just not possible – ‘natura non facet saltus’, or in plain English, ‘nature takes no leaps.’ But again, the only connection I can make to your question is this: That in the minds of (some) people, nature leaps all over the place – until they come back down to earth.

Apart from all this, Leibniz in the ‘New System’ (which is presumably the text you are referring to) makes the point that there is a pre-established harmony between body and soul. It works this way: Body and soul are one. Body is ensouled and the soul is embodied. So the difference between them is important only in the macroscopic environment in which you and I live. In the microscopic environment, the soul and the cells that come together are pre-programmed (by God) to work in harmony. So when you will to lift your arm, your arm goes up, because the arm was always destined to go up at that instant and providing it co-existed with your soul. This is quite a difficult idea to follow, especially if you don’t agree to God being instrumental in this action. But you could say that the arm has a disposition to go up, and your soul has a disposition to will this to happen, and so it happens at the moment when both will and action coincide. For more on this subject, however, you should read the paper – it’s not overly long and quite well written.

Of course (last word) none of this has anything to do with zombies and zombie/ mutants. They can’t will anything or lift their arm, because only their inventor can. But if this is the gist of your question then obviously Leibniz did not ‘get rid of’ but actually supports the idea you’re asking about. In fiction, mind you!

Kim asked:

Most features of Plato’s justification for his ideal republic are unappealing or even repulsive to citizens of modern democracies. Why? Do you find anything correct in his account?

Answer by Caterina Pangallo

Plato asked an absolutely basic question: Why do we need governments? Why can’t we just run our own lives as we see fit? The answer is obvious, of course: If we were all completely free, we would soon run into conflicts and society would disintegrate. Second: all societies need services to be available to the public; and these are usually too extensive and expensive for private citizens to meet. Finally, any society might be attacked at some stage and needs to defend itself.

So his plan was: (1) Install some people as rulers, but those people must not be self-interested; they must only be interested in the welfare of the State. (2) Install a defence force. These people must be trained for war. It is not a good idea to have the citizens leaving their jobs and families, because society would break down while a war goes on. (3) Install institutions for society, like schools, so that everyone has an equal opportunity for self-development.

Now if you look around the world today, you’ll find all three of these plans realised in many states. We have governments, we have armed forces and we have civil service institutions. Of course the details differ from what Plato had in mind. But the question is, if the citizens in modern societies are truly better off than in Plato’s state. For example, the Greeks believed in democracy, Plato thought this was foolish. We believe in democracy today, but in actual fact our democracies suffer from too many vested interests all exerting social and political power, and a lot of this is very unhealthy. Plato knew this, because it was happening in his own society too. So the problem you are asking about, concerns his method of dealing with the unwelcome side effects of democracy.

According to Plato the basic argument is that ruling (governing) is a skill. Plato proves this by appealing to common sense; if one possesses knowledge he will not make a mistake. Some men have a greater skill to rule than others. Plato points out, that only those who are fit and trained properly should be the rulers. And they must be incorruptible. That’s the ideal.

In our democratic society, just as in ancient Greece, anyone can be elected to Parliament. How many of those do you think are fit to govern? What training did they have? Probably very little, if any.

Is that a good way to run a society? Especially when modern societies are so big and complex? Doesn’t it make sense for Plato to say, rulers should be educated in ruling, in governing? After all, you can’t become an officer in the army without an officer’s training. Yet the government of a country is so much more important.

Effectively, therefore, we today are saying, Plato is wrong. In a democracy, the ideal is self-government by all. But consider that we must elect representatives. We assume, sight unseen, that these people we elect have the skills needed for government. Actually, most of them are doctors or lawyers, farmers or union officials. And we never ask them to show their credentials as Parliamentarians before they stand for election.

Now the point of this is not that rulers, the people who govern the country, should be aristocrats. In ancient Athens, the only people trained in politics were in fact aristocrats. But this does not mean that Plato actually supported them against the democratic spirit. In fact, if you read Plato carefully (which many people don’t do) you will find that he has school inspectors with responsibility for finding boys and girls with talent of that kind. They are then put into a special school to be trained in the art of government. No mention of aristocrats here!

Accordingly anyone who wishes to criticise Plato for arguing that philosopher-kings are the answer to the problem of government, should bear in mind that these philosopher-kings start their career as ordinary schoolboys and schoolgirls.

Plato argues further that there are good ethical values and high standards of goodness, and philosopher-kings learn what these are. Because ruling according to him is not imposing personal standards on the other members of society, but to make laws that are fair and just for everyone.

The same school inspectors also find boys and girls with the appropriate talent for organising a defence force for the state.

Both the governors of the state and the military are separated from the people in Plato’s state. They are totally dedicated to their tasks and do not interfere with the people’s lives. That’s one of the criticisms that are levelled against Plato. He wants to assume that the governors, because they are philosopher-kings, will never be tempted or corrupted. He also assumes that the military is so dedicated they will never turn against their own people. We might agree that this is a naive point of view, and certainly idealises the power of philosophy over their minds.

It follows from this separation of the rulers from the people that making laws involves restraints on the personal liberty of the people. On one hand, none of us today is completely free to do what we like. On the other hand, the way Plato frames the legislative process, it restricts all forms of personal expression. We all know that he wanted to banish most of the free arts because he thought they corrupt the population. This is definitely one of the issues where we totally disagree with Plato.

A different issue is that Plato does not want people to chase after unrealisable goals. He will not let you choose a profession that you are not cut out for. Let’s say you want to be a opera singer, but you have difficulty learning the notes. This shows it’s not your metier, but no-one will stop you, and you might still find some people who will want to listen to you. Plato would not allow this. He would say, you’re wasting resources. And again, we disagree with him on this score. We all waste a lot of energy, and mostly it does no harm, but it can actually be very useful. For example, Aristotle thought (against Plato) that sports events and theatre are good because the people can left off steam. In fact, Aristotle says something like, it’s good therapy to let people enjoy the tragic misfortunes on stage. We purify our emotions that way (which he calls catharsis).

Back to Plato. His point of view is, that everyone should strive for the good of the whole society. For him, the health of society is more important than the interests of individuals. This is a precarious balance, of course. It is probably an exaggerated point of view; but the other side of it is, that we can become too dependent on the state, and that leaves the door open for all sorts of corruption.

Modern democratic theories hold that no man is infallible; and if no one is infallible, it is pointless to have someone else making mistakes for you. That’s a pretty good rebuttal of Plato, who seemed strongly to believe that philosopher-kings cannot make mistakes.
We all make mistakes. It’s unavoidable. But we hope that we learn from our mistakes. This is not something you will read in Plato. He was a bit idealistic and ambivalent about this. So e.g. in the matter of the arts, he never considered (like Aristotle) the possibility that people can learn from watching tragedies and become better persons as a result.

But having said all this, and acknowledged that Plato tended towards a very hard and Spartan politics, nevertheless there are many points on which he was undoubtedly correct, like some that I mentioned earlier. Some of those we just don’t like, because we feel uncomfortable about having our freedom curtailed. But perhaps we already have so much freedom, that we don’t know what to do with it. How come we in this democratic world give so much evidence of unhappiness?

In the end, Plato wanted to ensure that the people in his state lived happily. To you and I it can give the impression that he is saying, ‘If necessary, I am going to force you to be happy!’ Well, he ends up by admitting that his ‘Beautiful City’ (Kallipolis) is only a dream; but says also, if anyone were to take just one of his ideas on board, that society would improve.

In a word: I think it is wrong to assume that Plato really wanted such a state to exist. He gave a model or paradigm, as he called it. And he was hoping that we, his readers, would learn some important lessons about politics and ethics and not take these things lightly or for granted. The historical fact is that many societies adopted a few or many of his principles. For example the Catholic Church was a Platonic state for many centuries and still is to some extent. Even modern democracies took many of his ideas and realised them in their laws and politics. So it’s not that repulsive after all. It’s only when we take his paradigm as a whole, that we find it unpalatable.

Tim asked:

I have been stumped as to a Confucius saying that I really need some truth and guidance on. Ok, The saying ‘Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.’ I wanted to get a Chinese written version of the first part ‘Virtue is not left to stand alone’ and I got the translation from a website, but they told me that ‘Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors’ is the ‘American Version of his quote. That the real translation is simply ‘Virtue Not Alone’. Is this true? Everything I have found over countless hours on the internet shows the longer version. I cannot find anywhere just ‘Virtue not alone’. So which is the TRUE REAL words of his quote? if their a Confucius quote, and the longer version is the Americanized version? please help, because for a year this has been bugging me to find a true answer to this.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

I don’t speak or write any Chinese but the one thing we can be sure of is ‘Virtue not alone’ is not an English sentence and therefore cannot be a translation of anything that Confucius wrote.

Confucius was a literate individual so it is not right to translate his sayings into pidgin English. He didn’t speak or write pidgin Chinese. A minimum translation would have to be ‘Virtue does not exist alone’ or ‘Virtue is never alone’.

Translation is a difficult business but translating Confucius is not as difficult as translating Chinese poetry so I see no reason to doubt the common English translations. If you are really bothered by this then the answer is to study the appropriate dialect of written Chinese so you can translate it for yourself. Alternatively do some research on English translations of Confucius and decide which one is likely to be the most accurate.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Chinese is a language full of implicit semantics. In this it is unlike European languages, where the alphabetical system of written communication tends to spell everything out word by word.

You get the same problem also when translating European languages into each other, though not as bad. But, as an example, you can’t translate ‘understatement’ into German, there is simply no word for it. So what does a translator do? Use several words to encircle the meaning. Something like happens with your quote.

The Egyptian hieroglyphs and the earlier Sumerian cuneiform pose problem like this too. Being pictorial, you could in principle read them in any language whatever, by which I mean that the actual words you pronounce when you read them are not tied to the Egyptian or Sumerian language. So in alphabetical languages, the grammatical structure may require you to speak more words than appear in the writing.

From this you can see that any language which relies on writing other than alphabetical, often contains more words than are written. The readers would generally know what meanings are implied by the way the actually written words are arranged.

So to get back to Confucius: Although there are only three words, every Chinese would understand the implications that have to be spelled out in English.

Which means, that the same Chinese expressions may vary from one translator to another, because they all have to add words not found in the original.

So, take consolation that translators from the Chinese do not usually wilfully distort their text, but do what they can to render it into English, which often cannot be done intelligibly without adding and/or embroidering.

Salma asked:

In what way can the study of philosophy in the pre-Socratic thinkers illuminate the nature of philosophy?

Answer by Craig Skinner

Here are three ways in which philosophy was, and still is, greatly influenced by the Presocratics.

1. They were the original naturalistic philosophers.

2. They exemplified the two sides in the debate as to whether the world is fundamentally made up of things (substance metaphysics) or processes (process metaphysics).

3. Discussion of time, space and infinity still takes account of Presocratic views, notably Zeno’s paradoxes of motion.

To deal briefly with each.

1. Naturalistic philosophers

Instead of seeing events as due to gods and demons, they tried to give a rational account of the origin and workings of the world, believing that this could be comprehended by humans. Explanation by mechanism (natural) replaced explanation by agency (supernatural). The former is standard nowadays (Big Bang, laws of nature). They were protoscientists, the first natural philosophers. Different thinkers came up with different suggestions as to what the basic elements (or single basic element) of the cosmos might be – fire, water, air, the infinite (‘apeiron’), the 4 elements (earth, air, fire, water), atoms in the void. Some of these seem quaint now, but are they stranger than modern views that the world is made of strings, quantum fields or information? Whilst they got the ‘conjecture’ bit of the scientific method right, they fell short on the ‘testing’ bit, hardly ever testing their views against the empirical world. Mind you, no progress was made in this direction by Socrates and the ancient Greeks, and we had to wait till medieval times for the idea of experiment and observation, and till early modern times for it to take hold.

2. Things or processes?

(a) things: on this view, things are primary and process (change) secondary. Change is due to interaction of things which remain unchanged by these processes. For example, atoms constantly interacting and reconfiguring in space (Democritus); or eternal basic units (‘no thing comes to be

nor does it perish’) producing change by ‘mixing together and dissociating’ (Anaxagoras). In short, substance metaphysics.

(b) processes: on this view, process is primary, things secondary. Change is fundamental and unceasing, whilst things are merely temporary stabilities or patterns in the eternal flux. This was Heraclitus’ view (‘all things flow’). Famously he said that nobody can step into the same river twice. A river isn’t so much a thing, as a temporary pattern in the constant process of flow, which in turn is part of the water cycle (evaporation, cloud formation, raining, flowing). Other processes include growth, decay, heating/cooling, thinking. In short process metaphysics.

Aristotle sided with substance metaphysics, and this became the Western paradigm. Aristotle was posthumously ‘adopted’ and ‘baptized’ by the Church, and his views became official, with lively debates about how the divine and earthly substances were united in the body of Jesus etc. Later, Descartes suggested there were two basic substances, res extensa and res cogitans (matter and mind). The notion of mind as a substance was controversial and has now rather faded, but matter held its ground as substance. Atomic theory supported the notion for two hundred years.

But by the 20th century the game was up. Atoms were found to be mostly empty space, and subatomic ‘particles’ seem to have no size at all, being merely loci of high energy in quantum fields, and without even definite positions, but rather existing in states of quantum superposition. Bertrand Russell truly said that the ‘matter’ of modern physics was no more substantial than anything we might be invited to witness at a seance. Modern physics supports the process view.

Russell’s colleague, Whitehead, championed process philosophy, which had continued, in a minor key after the Presocratics, in the views of Leibniz, Bergson and William James. To date, process philosophy hasn’t had the attention that substance metaphysics has enjoyed over the centuries, and so is less well-developed than materialism or idealism, but I fancy it will survive and thrive, becoming a serious rival to substance metaphysics as it was with the Presocratics.

3. Zeno’s paradoxes of motion

Zeno’s general philosophical views are hardly known but his 4 paradoxes of motion are justly famous, standard fare for Philosophy of Mathematics students, and worthy of discussion in 21st century thinking on time, space and infinity. Thus, the main change in the second edition (2010) of Dainton’s ‘Time and Space’, the standard work on philosophy of time and space, is the addition of 2 substantial chapters on Zeno and the Continuum. And the paradoxes have stimulated modern thought experiments on supertasks.

There is much more to be said on why study of the Presocratics helps illuminate the nature of philosophy, but I have tried to give a flavour.

It is a pity that we largely study others’ views on the Presocratics, since hardly anything of what they wrote survives, so that it is difficult to get a feel for what they were like as people, something we can do when we read say, Plato, Descartes or Hume.

Werner asked:

After reading about ‘transcendental’ Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, others, I am still confused.

I am looking for a down to earth explanation and I would like to get examples of transcendental things or terms and why they are transcendental.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

I would like to ask you a counter question: Why read ‘about’ Kant, Husserl and Heidegger? Why don’t you read the philosophers themselves? After all, they didn’t purposely write books for other people to write ‘about’ them, but for readers in search of philosophy to read the originals!

A good reason for reading philosophy, rather than ‘about’ philosophy, is this: most philosophers are actually very good writers and express themselves quite clearly. Men like Hume, Bacon, Descartes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Plato, Augustinus etc. belong among the most brilliant writers of their language and literature. Even Kant writes better prose than most of his commentators. So let me encourage you to open his book and discover what he says himself, about transcendental philosophy:

‘I call all such cognitions ‘transcendental’ that are not concerned with objects, but with our capacity for the cognition of these objects, to the extent that the latter are supposed to be a priori possible. A system of such concepts would have the name ‘transcendental philosophy’.’

I can’t imagine anyone writing clearer than this.

If you’re a bit dubious about the ‘a priori’, it means, simply, that we humans presuppose objects to exist (they don’t suddenly come into existence when we look). So the issue is: How come we sense and perceive them, and how do we make concepts about them after perception? So you can see that ‘transcendental philosophy’ is a philosophy of mind, perception, reason and such matters; and of course the same applies to Husserl and Heidegger.

The passage I have quoted comes from the end of Kant’s Introduction to the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’. If you have a mind for finding out what this is all about, I would recommend that this is what you should read first. By all means have a commentary to hand, to help you along. But don’t go hunting for ‘easy ways’. Anyone interested in these three philosophers is never going to find an easy way!

Answer by Tony Fahey

Wow Werner!, this is a mighty task to put to the panel and, taking into to consideration the breadth and complexity of the works of the three philosophers, something of a difficult task given the limited space this forum affords. I should add that if you have been trying to glean an understanding of ‘transcendental’ by reading through each of the above named thinkers works, I can understand why you are confused. That being said, in response to first part of your question, I would say that, for me, the ‘down to earth’ explanation is that the term ‘transcendental’ refers to that which exists in the mind prior to empirical experience. The second part is not so easily dealt with. However, I would say that whilst each of the above thinkers seems to have his own unique understanding of the term, in the following response I hope I can show that in each’s understanding of term there is a common thread.

For Kant, ‘transcendental’ means a priori or necessary experience. That is, experience that does not depend on outside influences – empirical experience. David Hume had maintained that it was only the force of habit that made us see the causal connection behind all natural processes. Kant refuted this argument: the law of causality, he held, is eternal and absolute: it is an attribute of human reason. Human reason, he said, perceives everything that happens as a matter of cause and effect. That is, Kant’s transcendental philosophy states that the law of causality is inherent in the human mind. He agreed with Hume that we cannot know with certainty what the world is like in itself, but we can know what it is like ‘for me’ – or for all human beings. We can never know things-in-themselves (noumena), said Kant, we can only know them as they appear to us (phenomena). However, before we experience ‘things’ we can know how they will be perceived by the mind – we know a priori.

The mind, says Kant, receives data of the phenomenal world through sensory perceptions. However, in order to understand this information these sensory perceptions must be processed by certain conditions inherent in the human mind. As well as the ‘intuitions’ space and time, Kant lists ten categories which were meant to define every possible form of prediction: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action, and passivity. These concepts (or categories) were reorganised to consist of four types: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. In short, everything we, as humans, experience we can be certain will be imposed within the a priori framework of the intuitions space and time, and subject to the law of causality – the law of cause and effect.

Thus, for Kant, the mind contains conditions that contribute to our understanding of the world. Everything we see, hear, touch, smell, and so on, happening in the phenomenal world occurs in space and time. However, we do not know that space and time is part of the phenomenal world; all we know is that they are part of the way in which we perceive the world. Time and space, he says, are irremovable spectacles through which we view the world. They are a priori forms of intuition that shape our sensory experience on the way to being processed into thought. Space and time are innate modes of perception that predetermine the way we think. It cannot be said that space and time exist in things themselves, things ‘out there’ in the world, rather they inherent intuitions through which we perceive and conceive our world. Time and space, says Kant, belong to the human condition. They are first and foremost modes of perception, not attributes of the physical world. Kant called this approach the Copernican Revolution in the problem of human knowledge. That is, it was just as radically different from earlier thinking as Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolved around the sun.

For Husserl meaning is neither in the mind, nor in the world alone, rather it is discovered by the a priori modes of intentionality. These intentional modes fall into three categories – perception, imagination, and signification. What this means is that intentionality is like a screen between consciousness and the world onto which objects and acts are projected; without the screen objects and acts would not exist. Intentionality, then is a conduit, a channel, between consciousness and phenomena. Consciousness itself cannot be grasped as itself because it is intentional: it is always directed towards that which is not consciousness: it is always looking away from itself. It is only by an analysis of intentionality that consciousness itself can be discovered. Thus, when we peel away the encrustations of preconditioning not only can we intuit the essence of things themselves but also the essence of consciousness – pure consciousness. To examine consciousness, we need to bracket out all objects and facts. What remains is ‘the transcendental ego’, which, for Husserl, is pure being – Absolute Being. It is important to realise that Husserl does not deny that the real world exists; rather that it is only realisable in virtue of the transcendental ego. Without pure consciousness, nothing is possible. Pure consciousness is before all acts and objects. It is only through pure consciousness that all other entities are known; and they are known as entities that appear in consciousness.

For Husserl, the ultimate truth is that all we can know for certain is that we have pure consciousness. All objects and acts that appear to consciousness must be treated with circumspection: they must be kept under constant review. Before feelings, imaginings, fears, doubts, and even thought itself, there is pure consciousness – the transcendental ego. Thus, while Husserl seems to echo Descartes, in effect he goes beyond the cogito. For Descartes the only thing we can know with any certainty is that we are thinking things – ‘I think, therefore I am’. For Husserl, it is more the case that ‘I am, therefore I think’. Pure consciousness can be grasped by thought, but it is not synonymous with thought. For Husserl, in order to think, first we must be: we must have consciousness.

Martin Heidegger was a student of Husserl and was expected to carry the phenomenological movement forward in the spirit of his former master. However, Heidegger chose to go his own way and caused great surprise in Germany when, in 1927, he published Being and Time. Heidegger’s ambition in Being and Time is to show what it means for a person to be – what is the meaning of Being? According to Heidegger we are not, as Husserl held, separate from the world – not something laid up in some realm to which the phenomenologist has some mysterious access, but are ourselves an integral part of the world; and our being cannot even be conceived of as other than in a world of some kind. For Heidegger, to be human, is to ask questions about Being. And it is in relation to his approach to human existence, or Dasein, (the German term for existence, but literally means ‘being-here’ or ‘being there’) that we encounter Heidegger’s concept of ‘transcendental’. Whilst, in Being and Time, it may seem that Heidegger is keen to divorce himself from Husserl, it should be said that in his concept of Dasein he echoes both Kant and Husserl when, in his attempt to explain his concept of Dasein he says ‘we all have an understanding of being, even if we are not conscious of it’. Thus, in the same way that Kant argues that the mind possesses, a priori, the intuitions space and time and the various categories, and Husserl argues that pure consciousness or the ‘transcendental ego’ is inherent in the mind, so too does Heidegger make the case that there exists, a priori, an awareness of ‘being’ that is unique to human existence.

In finishing, I should add that the later Kant admitted that he regretted not including a concept of self – the ego – in his list of ‘transcendental’ categories.

Johnny asked:

I was wondering about a few of the basic tenets of Transcendentalism. As far as the Oversoul, or even Mind-Body Dualism, is there a particular philosophy which challenges the idea of a soul? Also, is Occam’s Razor really a good argument against the idea of a ‘God’ or higher being, or are there stronger arguments? And who should I be studying to get a strong basis for the argument of Altruism against Transcendentalism’s idea of individualism? My goal is to contrive as much information as possible to provide an alternative dissent to Transcendentalism.

Answer by Peter Jones

As someone new to this particular ‘ism’ I find myself unable to determine quite what the word ‘transcendentalism describes. This term seems to have been coined by opponents of various views held by a quite disparate group of philosophers. This group does at least seem to have had in common an appreciation of the Hindu scriptures, but this would make the term ‘transcendentalism’ inappropriate. I cannot comment on the basic tenets that define it.

In regard to which particular philosophies challenge the idea of an individual soul, there are probably more of these than there are philosophies that endorse it. Eastern philosophy generally rejects the idea. It is rejected by Hegel, Schopenhauer, Jung, Schroedinger and many other well known thinkers. Specific philosophies for which it is rejected would include Buddhism’s ‘Middle Way’ doctrine and, of course, atheism, materialism and others. For a precise and expert description of a philosophy that challenges the idea of an individual soul I would recommend Radhakrishnan’s The Philosophy of the Upanishads.

It seems to me that Occam’s Razor is a good argument against many of our ideas of God, When we explain a steam engine we do not need to invoke Him so we do not. If we can explain a phenomenon without invoking Him then why invoke Him? This is a very big ‘if’, however, and here is one problem with the principle of least hypothesis. We cannot know whether we require another hypothetical entity in our theory until we have completed the theory without requiring it. This is not a problem for steam engines, but in the case of the universe as a whole it is may be impossible to complete a theory without God in some form or other, and even if we do hypothesise God in some form or other it may still be impossible. We may need yet another hypothetical entity, or even two or three, or perhaps far fewer, or perhaps explanations of everything can never be complete by their very nature.

Are there are stronger arguments against God than the principle of least hypothesis? They would have to be addressed to quite specific definitions of ‘God’ and to quite specific instances of His supposed powers and properties, for otherwise their generality would render them ineffective. Each person may mean something different when they use this word ‘God’ and almost certainly they do. They may mean the bright shiny thing that rises every morning over the forest to which they occasionally sacrifice a virgin or two, or they may mean what your vicar or my priest means, or they may mean what the Sufi poet Rumi means, or what the biologist Dawkins means. Without knowing which God is our target no strong argument for or against would be possible. This is not to say that there either is or is not a way to define God such that there would be no strong argument against Him.

The next question appears a little odd to my eyes, for I struggle to see how there can be any opposition between altruism and individualism. The question of which of them is correct seems to be a clear example of a category error. If Thoreau, Emerson and the others took the Hindu vedas as a common inspiration then they must have been all for altruism and individualism, and also for selfishness and society. These would not be mutually exclusive categories for a philosophy of unity, as if we must choose between them, as the terms ‘nondualism’ and advaita imply when they refer to the Upanishadic teachings.

As for the final question, I doubt you will be able to find a good argument against Transcendentalism until it is defined more clearly than in any source I have yet found. It may be more a more practical plan to attack the ideas of people like Emerson and Thoreau directly without worrying about which ‘ism’ you have filed them under. It seems unlikely that they agreed about everything. Or better still attack the Upanishads rather than their interpreters.