Essay Plan Argument Summaries

Locke on Knowledge (arguments)

1. No objective criterion for belief vs knowledge

2. Vagueness: how do ideas agree? are mere mental agreements knowledge?

3. Materialism and circularity: knowledge is about ideas, we can’t know the external world, he replies due to the copy principle and corpuscularian hypothesis

4. (Berkeley, 1710, Principles of Human Knowledge)) Ideas are like nothing but ideas, rejects the copy principle with conflicting appearances

5. (A.J. Ayer, 1956) interprets Locke as believing that we don’t only obtain an idea from impression but also a cause of that idea

Locke on knowledge (conclusion)

• His account of knowledge fails because its application is vague and it doesn’t secure knowledge of the external world

Berkeley (arguments)

1. Consistency provided only be a deux ex machina, making it circular

2. Conceivability not a proper grounds

3. Causes of ideas unknown → we don’t control them like internal ideas

4. Unentitled claims about matter → he asserts it is meaningless, then makes claims like ‘matter is an unperceiving substance’

5. Perceptual errors incompatible with all things being ideas

Berkeley (conclusion)

• Provides a solution to the primary-secondary qualities problem by establishing their mind-dependence

• His account is incomplete and circular: he establishes that things are mind-dependent, but he cannot explain why this is the case and how it is sustained

• There are residual tensions: how can he claim about matter? why are there illusions?

Hume on induction (arguments)

1. Sceptical: we have no rational justification for belief and therefore are unentitled to it → induction is entirely unreasonable

2. Non-sceptical/pscyhological: Beliefs have epistemic justification (reasonableness) despite not being rationally derived, Don Garrett argues it is a claim in descriptive psychology → merely our beliefs become mind-dependent

3. Stroud argues sceptically, but points out even other forms of reasonableness are shaky; to be reasonable is to have a good reason for believing x → regress

4. That PNC doesn’t apply to cause/uniformity principle doesn’t entail that this is still not a subjectively necessary principle, if so, not circular → c.f Kant

5. For science to work the principle only needs to be assumed

6. Stroud (1977) thinks Hume believes we have NO justification for beliefs, but universal confirmation seems solid ground

7. Not habit → we can make inferences after one instance

Hume on induction (conclusion)

• The account is not without merit, but it leaves a confusing picture for reconciling him with his advocacy for empiricism and science elsewhere

• Perhaps concedes the epistemic aims too easily; it is not clear from Hume’s argument that we do need to give up knowledge

• Hume’s solution isn’t incompatible with science, it merely reveals the harsh truth that we have no pure justification and that we must carry on regardless

Hume on causation (arguments)

1. No a posteriori or a priori impression

2. Where there is contiguity and succession, there is a third thing which provides necessity, an impression of which is obtained from habit

3. Subjectivist thinks this impression concerns our ideas (there are no mind-independent causations, or they’re unknowable)

4. Error theory (Stroud, 1977) suggests our beliefs are about mind-independent reality, even if there is no referent and the belief is derived from ideas

   1. It is purely mind-dependent, not a feature of the external world

5. Sceptical realism (Strawson, 1989) argues our beliefs are about the external world and that we cannot know whether they’re true

   1. Better aligns with textual mentions of ‘hidden causes’ and ‘secret powers’ and allows us a relative idea of causes and effects

6. Anscombe (1971) argues Hume gives an incomplete account of perception

Hume on causation (conclusion)

• His account of causation fails to establish whether he believes causation actually exists mind-independently or not

• His argument is most damaged by Anscombe’s criticism of his underdeveloped theory of perception: he could save his theory of causation, but would have to explain how perception works and avoids the problems Anscombe poses

• Without this theory of perception he is unentitled to say we do not perceive causation, although it is not clear this is sufficient to grant causation necessity anyway

Hume on freedom (arguments)

1. The grounds of causation are shaky: if we can’t know of causation, this argument concerns belief

2. The grounds for believing causation in nature aren’t the same for our actions (We have to infer motives from actions instead of observing them)

3. Anscombe (1957) argues that beliefs don’t cause actions — they’re not so easily separable

4. Anomalism of the mental: mental states aren’t intelligible in action-terms

5. Hidden causes are counterexamples

6. Redefines freedom → we actually care about freedom from causal processes, the ability to do otherwise, his version entails addicts are free, Locke’s definition postulates voluntariness is necessary but not sufficient

7. If responsibility depends on determination of the will, we are in a moral lottery

Hume on freedom (conclusions)

• Attempting to save freedom from determinism is an overreach which he is not afforded by his previous arguments about causation and induction

• He doesn’t solve the dilemma — how is freedom, independent of determinism, possible — he merely redefines it in a compatibilist way which misses the referent of the problem

• His account is unsatisfying

The categories and schematism (arguments)

1. Idealism: J.G. Fichte argues that categories can’t be extended to noumenal objects because they apply only to representations — we cannot determine that our representations obtain in a causal relation with things-in-themselves

2. Accepting a weaker claim about causation qua noumena ruins his account of sensibility — representations are different from ideas because they’re caused by noumena

3. Incomplete logic, he assumes logic is complete and certain, but doesn’t anticipate changes in it offered by Hegel, Russell, and Godel

4. Derivation of concepts, it is not clear how he moves from (A = B or A = C) to the concept of community

5. Concepts and the forms don’t meaningfully differ, they both contain no empirical content and are constraints on forms of judgements/concepts

6. Strawson (1966), the non-sequitur of numbing grossness: it is not clear these rules are the ones required for the unity of the synthesis of perception

7. The schema require the imagination to have a more active role, but Kant reduces its prominence between A and B versions and leaves it underdeveloped (Heidegger, 1929)

The categories and schematism (conclusion)

• Kant does appear to offer a strong rejection of Cartesian scepticism: we can’t doubt representations themselves and thus can analyse the rules they exist by, our subjective experience is objectively grounded

• Too much dependence on noumenal affection, there is a danger of idealism

• Kant’s categories are also not obviously exhaustive, especially with later changes in logic

• Kant’s underdeveloped notion of the imagination leaves unclear the process by which schematisation occurs

Kant on causality (arguments)

1. Non-sequitur of numbing grossness (Strawson, 1966), even if objective time-determination requires rules, it is not clearly these ones, he merely shows sometimes we must apply causal concepts, but not that these are necessary

2. Doesn’t adequately respond to Hume, he merely relocates the problem: he shows our perceptions can have causal concepts applied to them, but not that representations are objectively ordered

   1. At its strongest, necessary connection is true of our judgements but nothing more

3. The irreversibility argument simply does not work, furthermore, conceivability is not grounds for establishing these principles, it is circular as well

4. Schopenhauer (1818) thinks reciprocal dependence is impossible since causes precede effects, but one might point out that Kant interprets causes and effects more as obtaining in causal relations

   1. Insofar as representations are simultaneous, none of them are causally immune to each other

Kant on causality (conclusion)

• It is unconvincing as a clear improvement on Hume’s definition: at its very best, it provides a an objective condition of our subjective experience, we care about actual objects

• The argument he actually presents doesn’t sufficiently prove necessity; sometimes we apply causal concepts

• Irreversibility fails → it is Berkeley’s ‘master argument’ all over again

• It is not clear the analogies of experience are actually required: if Kant’s deduction is successful, this entire section could be wrong and not damage causality as a condition of experience

Antinomies and freedom (arguments)

1. Arguments of 2nd are only contradictory if matter is homogeneous

2. Descartes defines simples as pure extension, not existence without extension: this begs the question, in metaphysics this is fiercely contested, existing without extension is inconceivable

3. Restriction of the phenomenological account: Kant previously says inferences can be made about representations even when we don’t see them but says here things only exist insofar as we represent them

   1. Are things infinitely divisible or not?

4. Noumenal affection (Strawson, 1966): for freedom to work requires extensive claims about the intelligible character, which he is not entitled to

   1. The noumenal is also extremely thin and independent of all empirical character and doesn’t rationally determine choices as we intend by freedom — who is freedom for here?

5. At best, he shows freedom is possible, but this relocates the problem and doesn’t solve it

Antinomies and freedom conclusions

• Kant struggles to achieve the things he wants to achieve within the framework he sets out — if he is right to say that the noumenal are unknowable, then he should leave it at this and stop making claims he is not entitled to

  • Any claims about the noumena are unsubstantiated; if he wants to say anything, he probably needs to adopt an idealist or materialist framework

• He doesn’t solve the problem in any meaningful way, and leaves himself vulnerable to stronger arguments for any thesis-antithesis which he thinks are dialectically equal

• Despite all of Kant’s manoeuvring, he seems unequipped to solve the problems of metaphysics which motivated the project, the Critique turns up a large ‘I can’t know’

Critique of rational theology (arguments)

1. No real possibility, PNC is insufficient for metaphysical possibility, to check whether qualities can be co-instantiated is synthetic

2. Poor phrasing: something’s non-existence could not contradict its definition, identifies the need for an existential quantifier

3. Existence is not a predicate: Logical (anticipates the existential quantifiers) and metaphysical (existence is a predicate, just not one which changes the concept of a thing, 100 real thalers)

4. Can’t make the inference from unconditioned necessity to unbounded reality without the ontological argument — treats necessity as a real predicate

5. Physico-theological proof only suggests an architect of reality but not a creator of it → this collapses into the cosmological argument which collapses into the ontological

Critique of rational theology (conclusions)

• Agree with Kant, but it is contingent on transcendental idealism being true: without this being true, it doesn’t seem like someone is restricted by his arguments

• Kant postulates God elsewhere anyway through practical reason