Philosophy 1010

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Philosophy 1010 Class 7
Title Introduction to Philosophy Instructor Pau
l Dickey E-mail Address pdickey2_at_mccneb.edu
Today Return Midterm Exams Mop up
Exam 1/29/13 Read Velasquez, Philosophy A
Text With Readings, Chapter 4, Sections 4.1
4.5 Watch one of the movies discussed in
Chapter Three. See p. 147, 154, 165, 179, or 186
(12e). Be prepared to discuss in class the movie
in its relation to the reading assignment.
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A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which
he cannot do, never does all he can. It is, no
doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern
teaching, to render as much as possible of what
the young are required to learn, easy and
interesting to them.  But when this principle is
pushed to the length of not requiring them, to
learn anything but what has been made easy and
interesting, one of the chief objectives of
education is sacrificed.                J. S.
Mill, Autobiography
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Electronic/Online Course/Instructor
Feedback 13/WI Availability until 2/19/14
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Chapter 3 Reality and Being (a Metaphysical
Study)
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Realism

• Realism is the view that the real world exists
  independent of our language, our thoughts, our
  perceptions, or our beliefs about it.
• Our common sense seems to demand of us that we
  believe in realism.
• But how can we know that our wonderful world is
  real? Can we prove it? Or alternately, do we
  have evidence? Can we provide reasons to
  believe without begging the question?
• And what does it even mean for our world to be
  real? If someone were to say that the world was
  NOT real, what would he mean? What would we
  understand that he was saying?

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What Is Reality?

• For now, let us assume we are realists, that is,
  we believe in realism. So what is the reality we
  believe in?
• Some might argue that reality is what we
  experience through our senses.
• Or would you perhaps argue that reality consists
  of more than the material world? What about
  justice, mathematics, liberty, freedom, truth,
  beauty, space, time, and love?
• Is language real?
• Is God real?
• Or the sub-atomic theoretical entities that
  physics asserts? Are they real?

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Metaphysics is the Study of What is Real

• The most fundamental question in metaphysics may
  be
• Is reality purely material or is there reality
  beyond the material?
• We already discussed this question to some degree
  in terms of the mind/body problem, but now we
  will begin to look at this issue in a much
  broader scope.
• We have already seen the materialism of Thomas
  Hobbes, particular in the context of the
  mind/body problem. Hobbes, however, argued for
  Materialism in a much broader sense.

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Early Views of Materialism

• The Pre-Socratics (460-360 B.C.E.)
• Democritus. Reality was composed of material
  atoms. Attributes of atoms are solid,
  indivisible, indestructible, eternal, and
  uncreated.
• The composition of reality is atoms and empty
  space. The soul (or reason) consists of atoms.
• The Charvaka Philosophers of India
• (about 600 B.C.E)
• There is only one valid source of knowledge and
  that is what we perceive through our senses.
• What we perceive is physical and material.
• What we cannot know cannot exist. There are no
  gods,
• no soul.

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Idealism Platos Theory of Forms (a refutation
of Materialism)
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Idealism Platos Theory of Forms

• The view that reality is primarily composed of
  ideas or thought rather than a material world is
  the doctrine known as Idealism. That is, an
  Idealist would say that a world of material
  objects containing no thought either could not
  exist or at the least would not be fully "real."
• The earliest formulation of this view is given to
  us by Plato.
• In Platos Allegory of the Cave, the world of
  shadows is representative of the material world
  and is not fully real.

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Platos Theory of Forms

• What is the problem with which Plato is faced?
• How can one live a happy and satisfying life in a
  contingent, changing world without there being
  some permanence on which one can rely? (The
  Ethical Problem)
• Indeed, how can the world appear to be both
  permanent and changing all the time. (The
  Metaphysical Problem)
• Plato observed that the world of the mind, the
  world of ideas, seems relatively unchanging.
  Justice, for example, does not seem to change
  from day to day, year to year.
• On the other hand, the world of our perceptions
  change continuously. One rock is small, the next
  large, the next?

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Platos Theory of Forms

• To resolve this problem, Plato formalized the
  classic view of idealism in his doctrine of
  Forms.
• In everyday language, a form is how we recognize
  what something is and unify our knowledge of
  objects. (e.g How do we say two objects of
  different size, color, etc. are both cars?)
• Permanence comes from the world of forms or ideas
  with which we have access through reason.
• In Platos view, all the particular entities we
  see as material objects are shadows of that
  reality. Behind each entity is a perfect form or
  ideal. Ideal forms are eternal and everlasting.
  Individual beings are imperfect.
• e.g. Roundness is an ideal or form existing in a
  world different from physical basketballs.
  Individual basketballs participate or copy the
  form.

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Platos Theory of Forms

• Forms are transcendent, that is they do not exist
  in space and time. That is why they are
  unchanging.
• Forms are pure. They only represent a single
  character and are the perfect model of that
  property.
• Material objects are a complex conglomeration of
  copies of multiple forms located in space and
  time.
• Forms are the cause of all that exists in the
  world.

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What is the Essence of the Form of the Good?

• Forms are the cause of all that exists in the
  world. Forms exist in a hierarchy with the Form
  of The Good being the highest form and thus is
  the first cause of all that exists.
• Forms are the ultimate reality because they are
  more objective than material things which are
  subjective and vary in our perception of them.
• For Socrates and Plato, the question What is a
  thing? is the question what is the essence of
  the thing? That is, the attempt is to identify
  what (presumably one) characteristic or property
  makes that thing what it is.

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What is the Essence of the Form of the Good?

• Further, Plato compares the power of the Good to
  the power of the sun. The sun illuminates things
  and makes them visible to the eye. The absolute
  or perfect Good illuminates the things of the
  mind (forms) and makes them intelligible.
• The Good sheds light on ideas but, the vision of
  the idea of the Good is, according to Plato, too
  much for human minds.
• When Plato emphasizes The Good as the cause (I.e.
  an active agent) of essences, structures, and
  forms, as well as of knowledge, he seems to be
  invoking the idea of the Good as God. The Good as
  absolute order makes all intermediate forms or
  structures possible.

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Galileo The Scientific Revolution Galileo
Galilei (1564  1642), was an Italian physicist,
mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who
played a major role in the Scientific Revolution.
Galileo has been called the "father of modern
observational astronomy", the "father of modern
physics", the "father of science", and "the
Father of Modern Science Galileo proposes that
physics should be a new science based on
methods of observation not just on the methods of
reason. Thus, Galileo discovered many things
with his telescope, he first saw the moons of
Jupiter and the mountains on the Moon he
determined the parabolic path of projectiles and
calculated the law of free fall on the basis of
experiment.
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Galileo The Scientific Revolution He is known
for defending and making popular the Copernican
system, using the telescope to examine the
heavens, inventing the microscope, dropping
stones from towers and masts, playing with
pendula and clocks, being the first real
experimental scientist, advocating the relativity
of motion, and creating a mathematical physics.
His major claim to fame probably comes from his
trial by the Catholic Inquisition and his
purported role as heroic rational, modern man in
the subsequent history of the warfare between
science and religion.
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Towards A Modern View Cartesian Dualism
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Descartes Modern Philosophy
René Descartes (15961650) was a creative
mathematician of the first order, an important
scientific thinker, and an original
metaphysician. He offered a new vision of the
natural world that continues to shape our thought
today a world of matter possessing a few
fundamental properties and interacting according
to a few universal laws. This natural world
included an immaterial mind that, in human
beings, was directly related to the brain. In
many ways, Descartes established Philosophy as a
modern endeavor and saw science and philosophy as
intricately linked in their pursuit of knowledge.

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Yet, Descartes embraced the Scientific Revolution
fundamentally differently that Galileo.
Descartes claimed to possess a special method,
which was variously exhibited in mathematics,
natural philosophy, and metaphysics, and which,
in the latter part of his life, included, or was
supplemented by, a method of doubt. He was still
fundamentally too much of a Rationalist in the
traditions of Plato. This method of conducting
science is quite contrary to the approach that
was gaining sway with Galileo. Galileo proposed a
methodology which did not first engage in a
metaphysical search for first principles on which
to base his science.
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For Descartes, Galileo erred by without having
considered the first causes of nature, he has
merely looked for the explanations of a few
particular effects, and he has thereby built
without foundations But ultimately, it was
Galileo (not Descartes) that pushed the
Scientific Revolution forward.
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Materialism

• With the influence of Galileo, Hobbes develops
  his social philosophy on principles of geometry
  and natural science.
• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) rejects Cartesian
  dualism claiming that Descartes Mind/Body problem
  itself refutes dualism.
• Since mind and body cannot interact, they cannot
  both exist within human nature.
• There can only be one realm of human nature and
  that is the material world.
• All human activities, including the mental, can
  be explained on the paradigm of a machine.

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Materialism

• Hobbes was reductionist in that he believed that
  one kind of purported reality (the mind) could be
  understood entirely in terms of another (matter).
  
• New scientific techniques of observation and
  measurement being used by Galileo, Kepler, and
  Copernicus were making giant strides in
  understanding the universe.
• The spirit of his century suggested to Hobbes
  that all reality would be explained in time in
  terms only of the observable and the measurable.
• Hobbes himself was unable to explain any mental
  processes in terms of the physical.
• Perhaps motivating Hobbes view was basically his
  passionate faith in the advancement of science at
  the time.

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The Prima Facie (or Self-evident) Case for
Materialism

• The argument from common sense
• If there are other realities besides the
  material, can they causally interact with the
  material world?
• If so, how can this interaction happen? If they
  can not interact, what does it mean to say that
  such a reality exists?
• Please note this may be more difficult that even
  the mind/body problem where we do seem to have
  direct evidence to believe that our own
  consciousness exists.

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The Prima Facie (or Self-evident) Case for
Materialism

• The argument from science
• Science seems to be our most developed and useful
  organized body of knowledge about the world by
  focusing on observation and measurement of the
  physical material world. In the history of
  science, discussion of any kinds of entities
  other than material entities largely have been
  blind alleys.
• The history of science is full of examples where
  entities once thought to be necessary to explain
  life and man have been replaced by fully causal
  explanations in terms of chemicals and biological
  processes. Doesnt it seem reasonable that this
  also may be the case with mental states? (458)
  

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Modern Idealism

• The founder of modern Idealism is Bishop George
  Berkeley (1685-1753).
• Berkeley argued against Hobbes Materialism that
  the conscious mind and its ideas and perceptions
  are the basic reality.
• Berkeley believed that the world we perceive does
  exist. However that world is not external to and
  independent of the mind.
• The external world is derived from the mind.
• However, there is a further reality beyond our
  own minds. Since we have ordered perceptions of
  the world which are not controlled by an
  individuals mind, they must be produced by Gods
  divine mind.
• (900)