May 24, 2018 Why We Think What We Think: Final exam review

The four main branches of philosophy (and the questions they answer)

Metaphysics: What is the nature of reality?

Ontology: What is the nature of humanity/human reality?

Epistemology: What can we know and how do we know it?

Ethics: How should we act?

A (really, really brief) history of Western thought:

The first Western philosophers were Greeks, who tried to answer metaphysical questions about the world around them. Thales thought the world was made of water; Pythagoras thought the world was made of numbers. Here we see an early split between philosophers who leaned toward physical substances (water) and those who leaned toward mental abstractions (numbers) to explain the world.

This split showed up later, when Heraclitus claimed that change was constant (“You can never step in the same river twice”), and Parmenides claimed change was just an illusion. (In other words, don’t trust your senses.) The pre-Socratic Greek philosophers anticipated many ideas we hear today: Democritus and Leucippus correctly predicted that the universe is made up of atoms, while Protagoras was skeptical about knowing any absolute truths. (“Man is the measure of all things.”)

The Big Three philosophers were also Greek. Socrates advocated learning about the world through constant questioning (the Socratic Method). He was forced to drink hemlock when he offended the

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authorities, but he lived on in the writings of his student, Plato. Plato believed our minds are trapped in our bodies, that we live in a world of shadows, and that reality exists in the Realm of Ideal Forms. His student, Aristotle, disagreed, claiming that mind and body work together, and that we can trust the knowledge of our senses. Aristotle developed a set of “Four Causes” to help us understand the objects in the world around us.

After the Big Three, several minor Greek philosophies emerged. The Stoics were the most successful; their doctrine of accepting fate became the house philosophy of the Roman Empire. However, Christianity would eventually surpass it, and St. Augustine of Hippo became the first major Christian philosopher. His job was to adapt Plato’s ideas to Christian philosophy, which he did through the concept of living in two cities simultaneously – our own city, and the “City of God.”

When the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D., there was a long break in Western philosophy. During the Dark Ages that followed, monks (many of them in Ireland, which was mostly untouched by all the turmoil in Europe) kept alive knowledge by preserving and copying old texts. And some works – like almost all the writings of Aristotle – disappeared from Europe, and were preserved by Arab scholars.

Aristotle’s works were re-introduced to Europeans in the 12th and 13th centuries, and it became the work of St. Thomas Aquinas to square Aristotle and Christian theology. He did, but it was a controversial task: later medieval scholars like William of Occam would insist he’d gone too far, that Aquinas’s empirical approach claimed for man to know too much about God and his workings.

This first led to the denial that there were universals, and that we could only know God through faith. And this left the Christian church with nothing but faith to defend itself with when challenged by the rise of science during the Renaissance (Copernicus, Galileo, et al). And it led to Aquinas – and Aristotle – being abandoned. When they were tossed out, so was their insistence that mind and body worked together. Philosophers now had to go back to the drawing board to solve the mind-body problem.

What happened now, in the 16th and 17th centuries, was a split along two lines: continental rationalists like Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz argued on the side of the mind as the best source of information about the world, while British empiricists like Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke claimed

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that the senses were the best source, instead. Irish philosopher George Berkeley was such a consistent empiricist that he concluded there was no way to prove material objects exist – so he claimed the only thing we could know for sure is perception.

Even though most of the philosophers just named were Christians – Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz all resorted to appeals to God to solve the mind-body issue of how we can have any connection with other people -- the church had lost influence with the rise of science. Traditional ideas about morality were losing influence as well. Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli famously claimed that “the end justifies the means” in politics, while – a couple of centuries later – French writer Voltaire sounded just like the old Skeptics when he said that “certainty is absurd.”

Another philosopher who thought certainty was absurd was the 18th century Scotsman David Hume. Hume believed there was no way we could ever prove cause-and-effect relationships – we should only act as though they existed, because “custom is the great guide of human life.” Hume’s “problem of induction” not only cast doubt on traditional morality (he was an atheist), it cut the legs out from under science as well. (A lot of scientists failed to notice this.)

During the Enlightenment (the 18th century), the church lost power to man, as citizens began to clamor for individual rights. John Locke’s ideas helped inspire the (relatively peaceful) American Revolution, while Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his idea that man is born perfect but corrupted by civilization, inspired the far bloodier French Revolution that followed (as well as the Romantic movement in art and literature). There were a few voices of moderation: Irishman Edmund Burke argued for the power of tradition, while Scottish economist Adam Smith helped create modern capitalism by realizing that “man is an animal that makes bargains.”

After all the tumult of the 1700s, the 19th century would belong to the Germanic philosophers. It actually started in the late 18th century with Immanuel Kant, who tried to heal the great philosophical divide by combining empiricism (the phenomenal world) and rationalism (the noumenal world). Georg Hegel became a hugely popular lecturer by preaching that “history is the story of progress” – a progress achieved by the clash of ideas in the dialectical process. Karl Marx would take Hegel’s process, strip out all the mystical references to Geist, and create a doctrine of dialectical materialism. History is just the clash between workers and their bosses, who will eventually be defeated, according to Marx – the creator of communism. Finally, Friedrich

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Nietzsche gave us the most radically individualistic philosophy of all: rejecting the “slave morality” of the Judeo-Christian world, he advised man to tap into the “will to power” and become an “overman” or “superman” — creating his own moral code and abandoning the hope that there is a “God’s-eye view” that can provide universal morality. The thing that gives this pursuit resonance, he thought, is the concept of the eternal recurrence — that history is cyclical, and therefore our individual actions will continue to resonate after we are gone.

Common terms

Allegory of the Cave: Plato’s analogy, which tried to explain the difference between the physical world (shadows cast on the wall of a cave) and the “real” world (the Realm of Ideal Forms, which we can only access with our minds).

A priori knowledge: Knowledge you are born with -- innate or “prior” knowledge. Rationalists like Plato, Descartes and Leibniz believed in it. A posteriori knowledge: Knowledge you acquire after you are born, through experience. Empiricists like John Locke believed this was the only kind of knowledge – that we are born with minds like blank slates (a tabula rasa).

Cartesian dualism (relates to mind/body dualism): The idea that the mind and body are separate entities, whose communication with one another is difficult to explain.

Plato suggested that the mind is trapped in the body; Aristotle suggested instead that the mind and body work together. This view held, more or less, until the Renaissance, when Aristotle’s (and Aquinas’s) views were mostly abandoned, and the mind-body problem opened up once again.

Categorical Imperative: Kant’s explanation for how we should act. “Act as though your action might become a universal law.” If you don’t like how that sounds, don’t do the action.

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(Sometimes this could get ridiculous, as in the example we gave with the Charles Manson lookalike who was chasing your best friend. Kant believed it was never OK to lie, because to do so treated people as means unto an end, and didn’t give them a chance to act morally on their own. But most people wouldn’t go this far.)

Descartes’ Demon: The final stage of Rene Descartes’ philosophical experiment to see what he could know for certain. He imagined the worst: that a “malignant demon” was actually trying to trick him, by making him believe his dreams were reality. (He escaped by realizing that even if the demon was tricking him, he was still a thinking being. Cogito ergo sum = “I think, therefore, I am.”)

Hylomorphism: Aristotle’s idea: matter + form = an object. Aristotle believed that a person’s form was actually his soul.

Induction and deduction: Induction means reasoning from the specific to the general. Deduction means reasoning from the general to the specific.

“Knowledge is power”: The famous saying of Sir Francis Bacon (actually, “ipsa scientia potestas est”) which marked the point at which Western science became less about knowledge for its own sake, and more about using science to predict and control nature.

“Little Platoons”: Edmund Burke’s term for the small groups (family, church, voluntary organizations) that serve as a buffer between the individual and government (or “the state”).

“Machiavellian”: A term used to describe a leader who rules using Nicolo Machiavelli’s philosophy in The Prince: “The end justifies the means.”

Monads: Leibniz’s idea of the substance that makes up the entire universe. He believed that every human mind is a monad, containing a complete representation of the universe. This is why he believed in a priori knowledge.

Monism: The belief that the world is composed of a single substance. For Thales, it was water. For Pythagoras, it was numbers. For Spinoza, it was God. For Leibniz, it was monads. And for Hegel, it was geist.

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Occam’s Razor: The idea of medieval philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham). It states, essentially, that when you’re faced with two possible explanations, the simplest one is most often correct. Noumenal/phenomenal worlds: This is the way Kant combined rationalism and empiricism. The phenomenal world, he thought, is the world of things that can be perceived by the senses. The noumenal world, by contrast, is the world of things as they really are.

So he acknowledged that there is more to existence than just material things in the phenomenal world. But he claimed we could never really know things in the noumenal world beyond the senses – we could only guess at their existence.

Ontological proof of God’s existence: Usually attributed to the medieval philosopher St. Anslem. It goes like this: If I can imagine a perfect being, but that perfect being doesn’t actually exist, then it wouldn’t be perfect. Therefore, because I can imagine such a perfect being – which must be God – He must therefore exist. Rene Descartes adopted a version of this argument to get him out of the philosophical pit he dug for himself.

“Something; I know not what”: John Locke’s explanation for what lies beneath the primary and secondary qualities of any physical object.

Telos: Greek word for “purpose.” The telos of humans, according to Aristotle, is happiness, which = virtue, which = using our capacity for rational thought for the pursuit of knowledge. In other words, we’re happy if we’re good. And we’re good if we try to gain knowledge.

The Four Causes: Aristotle’s basic method of explaining the world. Everything can be said to have a material cause (what is it made of?), a formal cause (what is its form?), an efficient cause (how was it created?), and a final cause (what is its purpose?). During the Renaissance, philosophy moved away from the idea of formal and final causes, as they were unnecessary for the main goals of science: the prediction and control of nature (and not just the explanation of nature).

The General Will: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea about how people will assume the power of government. One person = one vote. Everyone has a say. But once the people have spoken (and shown the “general will”), to contradict it can make you an enemy of the state. (And introduce you to the guillotine.)

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The Golden Mean: Aristotle’s idea that virtue means choosing a path between two extremes. If I have too much courage, I’m foolhardy; if I have too little courage, I’m a coward. Neither extreme is good.

The Problem of Induction: David Hume’s famous idea about cause and effect relationships. He believed we can never establish them with absolute certainty – but we should probably act as though we can, anyway.

The Realm of Ideal Forms: Plato’s concept; he suggested that everything in the world (objects, as well as abstract ideas like “goodness”) has an Ideal Form, which resides in a Realm of Ideal Forms. We can only access this realm using our minds (which is part of the argument for Plato being a rationalist). The physical world is like the shadows thrown onto the cave wall in the Allegory of the Cave).

The Unmoved Mover: Aristotle’s concept of the “first cause” of the universe. If everything is a combination of actuality and potentiality, then the beginning of this chain must be a being which is pure actuality – one that has no unrealized potential. In other words, a perfect being. In other words, God.

Universals: Terms which describe qualities that are common among a wide range of objects/situations. (Like “redness” or “virtue.”)

Plato thought universals existed (surprise!) in the Realm of Ideal Forms. There, he thought, there is an ideal “red,” for example. Aristotle thought universals existed in individual objects. The apple is red; the fire engine is red. The redness is in the objects, but we recognize it as a common property. And medieval philosophers like William of Occam thought there were no such things. Many modern philosophers agree.

Branches of philosophy:

Rationalists believe that the primary source of information about the world is the mind. That is, we can most accurately know the world by using our capacity for rational thought.

Rationalists sometimes argue (like Rene Descartes) that our senses can’t be trusted. Rationalists have sometimes (Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz) been brilliant mathematicians – which makes sense, because

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the truths of mathematics don’t require sensory information to understand. They exist in the mind.

During the Renaissance period and beyond, the main rationalists tended to be from places like France (Rene Descartes), the Netherlands (Baruch Spinoza) and Germany (Gottfried Leibniz). In the late 18th century, Immanuel Kant combined rationalism and empiricism into a new form called transcendental idealism.

Was Plato a rationalist? Technically, yes. He argued against trusting the senses, and said that the mind is “trapped” inside the body. However, he would be better called an idealist, because of his theory of Ideal Forms, which stated that “real” reality is not in this world. Idealism is the belief that reality is essentially mental.

Empiricists believe that the primary source of information about the world is the evidence of our senses. That is, analyzing the physical objects of the world, and the laws that control them, is the most accurate way to know the world.

Empiricists sometimes argue (like John Locke) that we can’t have any real knowledge outside our experiences. They tend to argue against a priori knowledge in favor of a posteriori knowledge.

During the Renaissance period and beyond, the main empiricists tended to be from Britain (Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke). On the other hand, Irish philosopher George Berkeley was such a hardcore empiricist that he became an idealist. This is because he concluded that there can never be any proof that physical objects exist.

Was Aristotle an empiricist? Technically, yes. He argued that the world is our primary source of knowledge. However, he also argued that the mind and the body work together – so he would have disagreed with the ideas of rationalists and empiricists who said that the mind and body were separate.

Was Thomas Hobbes an empiricist? Technically, yes. He not only believed that the senses were our primary way of knowing the world, he also thought that the brain itself, and even our thoughts, were physical objects. This is an extreme form of empiricism called materialism, which states that the only things that really exist are material, or physical, objects

Minor branches of philosophy:

Cynics: Followers of Diogenes, who believed that societal norms and

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customs took us away from the pursuit of the truth. (That’s why he ate garbage, made clothing optional, and lived in a burial urn.) “Cynic,” in this case, means “dog-like.”

Epicureans: Followers of Epicurus, who believed that “death is nothing to us.” We shouldn’t fear death because we’re all just atoms; when the atoms disassemble, that’s all, folks – and there’s nothing to worry about.

Stoics: The dominant philosophy of the Roman Empire. Advanced by Zeno; the idea is to keep a stiff upper lip and accept that you can’t change fate.

Skeptics: The philosophy of Pyrrho, former solider with Alexander the Great. Since people in the different cultures he encountered all seemed to believe fervently in their own “truths,” he concluded that there’s really no way of establishing what’s “true.” Skeptics were skeptical, in other words, that we could ever know the truth.

What’s the main difference between Plato and Aristotle?

If you want to keep them separate, remember these facts:

1. Plato was Aristotle’s teacher. (Socrates was Plato’s teacher.)2. Plato was essentially a rationalist. (Technically, an idealist.) He

believed the mind was trapped in the body, and that reality could not be found in the physical world.

3. Aristotle was essentially an empiricist. He believed we could trust the evidence found in the physical world – which meant that he disagreed with Plato on a pretty important point. (He didn’t, however, claim that there’s no role for reason; just as he thought the mind and body work together, he said that knowledge is a combination of what we gain from our senses, and of rational thought.)

4. These two guys also disagreed about universals. Plato believed that there is an “ideal form” of everything, including universals like the color red, or the concept of good. These ideal forms exist – you got it – in the realm of Ideal Forms. Aristotle, meanwhile, believed that universals – like “redness,” or “goodness” – exist in individual objects. There’s no ideal “red” – there are just a number of objects (fire trucks, apples, etc.) that contain a universal quality we identify as redness, and we call them all “red.”

5. However, both guys did believe in universals. They also believed in souls (Plato thought they came from the Realm of Ideal Forms, and returned there when we died. Aristotle thought the

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form of an individual was his soul. When the form was lost, after death, so was the soul.)

What are the major differences in the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau?

          Hobbes                                Locke                             Rousseau

Man in his state of       Corrupt; “the war             Mind is a blank slate,               Perfect (civilization

nature is:                       of all against all”               but capable of reasoning         corrupts)

 

What’s the                       A “Leviathan” of                Education for all;                   The “general will”

solution?                        a government                    limited government

 

This philosophy            The police state                Liberal democracy              Pretty much every

led to:                                                                                                                        totalitarian government

How did we explain the problem of induction with our Blow-Pop experiment?

Remember that induction = arguing from the specific to the general. We tried an experiment in which I gave everyone a Blow Pop. You ate the Blow Pops because you made three generalizations/predictions:

1. An inductive generalization. You inferred that all members of a cer-tain class (in this case, Blow Pops specifically, or lollipops generally) would be similar to those we’ve already observed. Or at least almost everyone did — as soon as one person ate a Blow Pop and didn’t die, everyone else concluded it was safe.

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2. An inductive prediction. You made a guess about future events (the lollipop would taste sweet, for example) based on your past experi-ence with Blow Pops/lollipops.

3. A causal generalization. You assumed that the causes associated with the Blow Pop (the sweet taste, the increased saliva) were in fact the result of the Blow Pop, and not due to some other factor.

So Hume essentially argued that everything we think we know for cer-tain is really just a case of educated guesswork — we can’t prove these things. The million-and-first time you throw a cell phone off the balcony, it might just sprout wings and fly away.

But Hume is also famous for saying that “custom is the great guide of human life.” He acknowledged that, even if we can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, say, food will be nourishing every time we eat it, it’d be silly to stop eating, just because we can’t be sure.

Ten sample questions:

1. Explain the problem of induction as it relates to eating a lemon.

2. What was the effect of William of Occam’s rejection of Aquinas (and Aristotle) on the Christian church? What was its effect on philosophy?

3. Which of the four, post-Big Three groups might describe its philosophy as “YOLO,” and why?

4. What did Plato, Immanuel Kant and George Berkeley have in common?

5. What was the major difference between the philosophies of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas?

6. Your friend tells you that she has been asked to prom. You know the guy and know that he is a creep. However, you also know that your friend is a senior and has never been to prom – which

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has always been her dream. According to the Categorical Imperative, what should you do and why?

7. Name two main differences between Plato and Aristotle.

8. What did Thales, Spinoza and Leibniz have in common?

9. What was the difference in the conceptions of history as expressed by Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche?

10. Explain the movement in modern philosophy as it pertains to our three groups: 1) the individual; 2) the “little platoons”; and 3) the state

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