Unit 3 Philosophy Exam Review

What is metaphysics NOT

Astrology, part of the new age movement, the attempt to make direct contact with immaterial realm through deep meditation or prayer

Tight Metaphysical Tradition

Rational investigation of beings insofar as they are beings (being qua. being) in order to lay bare the universal attributes, laws, and causes of beings insofar as they are (ie. exist)

Loose Metaphysical Tradition

Rational investigation of fundamental constituents, categories, and causes of reality.

What Tradition of metaphysics does Lucretius belong to?

Loose

Context of Lucretius

Book was an address to Memmius, he was an Epicurean philosopher

What is the Goal of Lucretius’ book?

He aims to eliminate fear of death and God thereby securing ataraxia, an essential component of a pleasurable life.

Does Lucretius like Religion / superstition? Why or why not?

No, it binds us and we are confused and scared which prevents us from true happiness/knowledge

• We are slaves to religion because we don’t understand reality

• Epicureanism helps us understand reality to eliminate fear of Gods and death and have a good life

What does this have to do with medicine and honey?

We are in fear and we need medicine (like foul tasting wormwood) but his medicine for fear (his philosophy) seems to be distasteful. So he needs to sweeten his doctrine with poetry like honey and wormwood so that we can take the medicine and be cured

What is Ataraxia?

A state of supreme, uninterrupted tranquility and freedom from irrational mental fear, distress, and anxiety. It is the ultimate goal of Epicurean life.

What is the First Great Principle?

Something that comes into being always derives its being from pre-existing beings (nothing comes from nothing).

This means that all new beings and change come from the primal atoms

What is the second great principle?

A being that ceases to be leaves residue, nothing can be completely annihilated

Nature never reduces anything to nothing its only a re-distribution of the matter that constituted the being when a being ceases to be

What are the Primal Atoms?

Nature made of hidden bodies

Matter is divided into atoms and compounds

• Combination is key to difference -> compares it to the alphabet

Wind, odor, heat, cold, sound, evaporation are primal atoms

• Primal atoms are solid, indivisible, and partless therefore they are everlasting

What is the void?

Allows things to move, have change, have different weights but the same volume, have porosity

Empty space

Must exist or else all matter would be completely compacted and unable to move or change

What is chance?

It is the swerve. Primal atoms combine by randomness and chance, not by design or intellect

What is the line “a joy it is…” referring to?

The only happy life is that of Epicureanism. 

Humans have no Telos to fulfill.

Live a good life by being removed from material care and fear and only seeking  pleasure

Sunbeams and dust

Movement of anything is caused by the swerve. Primal atoms randomly swerve just as dust in the sun seems to be flying around and hitting other pieces randomly. 

Bottom up causation

Primal atoms swerve -> cause compound to swerve -> cause bigger compound to swerve -> cause dust to swerve seemingly randomly

Falling colliding and swerving

If atoms were all constantly falling downward, they would never touch or collide to make compounds. Therefore there is some invisible, intangible, and unpredictable swerve that makes them crash into each other. Swerve is also what causes free will.

Types of primal atoms

Infinite number of atoms of each kind

• Large vs. small, rough vs. smooth, round vs hooked

Earth like planets and earth’s impending destruction

Since the universe and atoms are infinite, there are an infinite number of atoms colliding out in the universe. Therefore, there are an infinite number of Earths with other beings

Just as matter comes together and inevitable breaks down, therefore so will the Earth

Mind is reducible to matter

Mind is in a distinct part of the body because you can hurt a part of the body without hurting the mind. 

Mind VS spirit

Spirit and mind are 2 separate material entities

• Mind = rational centre of body, located in one spot

• Spirit = vital spirit spread throughout the body.

Mind in relation to age injuries medicine and wine

Injuries, age, wine, medicine are all physical things that affect intellectual capacities. Therefore matter is acting on matter and the mind is matter.

Annihilation of humans upon death

• When someone dies, they stop moving and thinking but no weight is lost, therefore, the mind and spirit are made of extremely fine atoms that cannot be detected

• In death, mind and spirit dissipate therefore you are fully annihilated. 

Arguments against reduction of mind to matter

If we are just a sum of atoms, how do we get conscience, how do we get life from non-life?

We are aware of our awareness. Our intellect is capable of perfect self-reflection but matter can never achieve perfect self-reflection

Does not address the issue of the one and the many - if forms are immaterial then we need an immaterial power to grasp them

PNC (Principle of Non-Contradiction)

Something cannot be and not be at the same time in the same sense

PI (Principle of Identity)

being is being

PC (Principle of Causality)

cannot get something from nothing

PSR (Principle of Sufficient Reason)

For anything that is, there must be a sufficient reason for why it is

Substance

exists in itself and not in another. It exists per se (considered alone). Primary and fundamental  beings of realty

Accident

exists in a substance and never in itself

10 Categories (Aristotle)

Quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, where, posture, when, state or environment

Why are quantity quality and relation accidents?

they are ways a substance can be, not what a substance is. They depend on a substance for their existence

What is a cause

that upon which another thing proceeds with dependence

The why of a thing’s nature

4 causes

Material: that out of which a thing is made

Efficient: that from which a thing comes to be or continues to be

Formal: that which makes a thing be what it is

Final: that for the sake of which a thing is

Example with statue of St. Peter

• Material = bronze

• Efficient = artist/sculpture

• Formal = form of St. Peter

• Final = prayer and reverence

Do we accept formal/ final causality

Materialists do not, we do because they fill gaps in e

Ontologoical Unity

a being that is undivided in itself and divided from every other. Coheres within itself as an undivided whole, but distinct from every other being.

Numerical Unity

counted as one, but not necessarily one being

Undivided vs Indivisible

Undivided means one being at the moment, whereas indivisible means not able to be divided

Why must a being be one

by reducing a being into parts we enter an infinite spiral that disintegrates each part into nothingness so we must not do this, therefore a being is one.

Intrinsic Unity

unified within itself

Extrinsic Unity

unity with other things

Materialist Reductionism

MR claims that everything is merely a collection of smaller parts that bears an arbitrary name given by us. 

Why Clarke thinks materialist reductionism is mistaken

It does not explain how the composition of 2 separate parts can bear a new being with distinct properties from the original parts that cannot be reduced to the individual parts nor deduced from their properties.

Clarke on Being as one and the many (Problem)

lots of plurality, difference, and manyness (ontological multiplicity) in beings. But also all of it is being. This cannot be otherwise. So if all beings are the same (one, unified in being) then how can there be difference?

Clarke on Being as one and the many (Solution)

existence and essence are two coprinciples, existence is a maximum and essences limits how much we participate in it.

existence is an all encompassing thing rather than a base line

all being is connected to the source of unlimited existence (God)

Essence limits the extent that we participate in existence

5 Theses of big tent platonism (From Fr. Brent)

Anti-skepticism

Anti-nominalism

Anti-reletavism

Anti-materialism

Anti-mechanism 

Friends of the forms

Friends of the forms are inside the tent they agree with the 5 theses

Earthbound Giants

earth-bound giants are outside the tent they disagree wiht some or all of the theses

Why should we enter the tent

It is irrational to affirm a position that contradicts so many profound intuitions about ourselves without a good reason for doing so. (Ex. that we have free will, that humans have intrinsic dignity, that human beings exist and are not reducible to in-personal stuff.)

Three accounts of rationality

Augustinian-Thomistic

• Reason is developmental

• Preconditions for the possibility of a fully developed rationality, act of entrusting oneself to a teacher in a tradition of inquiry is a condition

Enlightenment

• Reason steps out of tradition and tries to get to a neutral, presuppositionless point of view to adjudicate all other points of view.

• Denies reason is developmental

• Starts a new tradition of inquiry that people entrust themselves to even though the very tradition tells them not to entrust themselves to anything.

• Fundamental contradiction of coherence

Genealogical

• Reason is a mask for the will to power, we need to unmask it and surface the sinister hidden motives and intentions found behind truth claims

• Incoherent morass of unintelligible traditions

• Recipe for sadness, despair, and destruction.

Does St Thomas think that God’s Existence is self evident?

No, we cant fully grasp divine essence so without knowledge of what it is we cannot for sure say if it is

How do we demonstrate that God exists accorinding to Thomas

Since human knowledge starts with the senses, we must demonstrate God exists through the effects we see on Earth

St Thomas’s Second Way

God exists because we need an efficient cause to have existence, God is holding us in existence.

Accidentally Ordered Series (per accidens)

earlier members can disappear and later members still retain their causal effect by virtue of what they are

• Ex. biological continuity

Essentially ordered series (per se)

causal series in which causal power of later members depends on continued existence of earlier members and entire series depends on a primary cause.

• Ex. chandelier or fire heating a pot (only fire has intrinsic ability to heat things)

Ipsum Esse Subsistems

“being itself subsisting” = God’s essence is identical to His existence

Are the PC and PSR relevant to St Thomas on Gods Existence

Yes, both are used in the explanation

Can we know metaphysical truths?

Yes