Philosophy Final Exam

Philosophy can be defined as:

• the search for self-understanding

• the love and pursuit of wisdom

• the asking of questions about the meaning of our most basic concepts

• the search for fundamental beliefs that are rationally justified

Deductive reasoning -

an argument in which the author claims the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises.

Inductive reasoning -

an argument in which the author claims that the premises make the conclusion highly probable.

Inference to the best explanation -

a form of reasoning that tries to show that a particular theory is superior to all its competitors and that it is therefore the one most likely to be true; sometimes called abduction.

Argument -

a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose is to give reasons for one’s conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persuasion.

Premise -

a true or false declarative statement (proposition)—used in an argument to prove the truth of another proposition called the conclusion.

Conclusion -

the proposition that is being argued for.

Entailment -

the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically follows from one or more statements.

Validity -

an argument is valid if and only if it takes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false. A valid, logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises.

Soundness -

an argument is sound if it both valid in form and its premises are true.

A conditional is an

if-then statement
“if” clause is the antecedent
“then” clause is the consequent

Principle of Charity

Always interpret the reasoning of others so that it makes the most sense from a logical point of view.

• The other uses words in an ordinary way;

• The other makes true statements;

• The other makes valid arguments;

• The other says something interesting

Occam’s Razor (aka “law of parsimony”)

An event has two possible explanations. The explanation that requires ethe fewest assumptions is usually correct.

Evaluating philosophical theories:

• conceptual clarity

• consistency

• rational coherence

• comprehensiveness

• compatibility

Epistemology looks at…

the extent and reliability of our knowledge, truth, and logic, whether knowledge is possible.

Metaphysics looks at…

the ultimate characteristics of reality or existence.

Ethics is…

the study of morality, asks about our moral obligations and moral virtues, our moral principles, what is morally good, and the morality of behaviors, social policies, and social institutions.

Crito: Do we have an obligation to obey the law? 1st argument:

Premise 1: Disobeying one’s government is the same as disobeying one’s parents

Premise 2: but disobeying one’s parents is wrong.

Conclusion: Therefore, disobeying one’s government is wrong.

Crito: Do we have an obligation to obey the law? 2nd argument:

Premise 1: Disobeying one’s government is the same as disobeying someone who gives one the benefits of being raised and educated.

Premise 2: But disobeying someone who gives the benefits of being raised and educated is wrong.

Conclusion: Therefore, disobeying one’s government is wrong.

Crito: Do we have an obligation to obey the law? 3rd argument:

Premise 1: One makes an agreement to obey one’s government.

Premise 2: If one makes an agreement to obey one’s government, then not obeying one’s government is wrong.

Conclusion: Therefore, not obeying/disobeying one’s government is wrong.

Human Nature - Psychological Egoism

Premise 1: always expect a self-regarding end when I act intentionally.

Premise 2: If I always expect a self-regarding end when I act intentionally, then everyone always expects a self-regarding end when they act intentionally.

Conclusion: Therefore, everyone always expects a self-regarding end when they act intentionally.

The Rationalistic Version of the Traditional Western View of Human Nature

holds that our most important features is our ability to reason. Plato claimed that reason often conflicts with out appetites or our aggressiveness, and our appetites can conflict with our aggressiveness.

For Aristotle, all living things have a purpose. The purpose of humans is to use their reason to think and to control desires and aggressions.

Is Human Nature Irrational?

• Reciprocity: I should do this for you because you did something for me.

• Commitment & Consistency: I should do this because it is consistent with something I already committed myself to doing.

• Liking: I should do this because I know and like you.

• Authority: I should do this because an authority says I should.

• Scarcity: I should do this because there’s only a few chances left and I may not get a chance later.

Judeo-Christian Version of the Traditional Western View of Human Nature

Involves the claim that humans, with the help of God, can rise above their self-interested desires and genuinely love both God and neighbor.

The Darwinian Challenge

Organisms are sometimes born with features that are different from those of their parents but that they can pass on to their own offspring.

Organisms must continuously compete with one another to stay alive.

Some variations give an organisms an advantage over other members because of its species in the struggles for existence.

The Existentialist Challenge

Holds there is no such things as human nature because humans are whatever they make themselves. This view denies any essential human nature in the traditional sense, insisting that individuals create their own nature through their free choices and actions.

People who hold this view like Sartre say there is no God to determine our nature, so humans have no purpose or nature except the one they make themselves. We are free and fully responsible for what we are; knowing this causes anguish.

The Feminist Challenge

Some of them claim the traditional view of human nature is sexist.

The rationalistic view in some of its formulations, may imply that reason is good, is male, and should rule, whereas feelings and desires are bad, are female, and should be ruled. This is sexist.

The Mind-Body Problem

How do your mind and your body relate?

I think, therefore I am (Rene Descartes).

If I am a thinking thing, therefore I am an existing thing.

The Dualist View

You Are an Immaterial Mind with a Material Body

Rene Descartes

Method of Doubt

Descartes says he can conceive of himself without a body, but he cannot conceive of himself without a thinking mind. He concludes he is not a body but he is a thinking mind.

The Interaction Problem: How can an immaterial mind control a physical body, and how can a body made of heavy, dense, spatial matter affect an immaterial mind?

Gottfried Leibniz

agreed that the mind and body can’t interact but said they run in parallel order like two synchronized clocks.

Nicolas Malebranche

also agreed that the mind and body can’t interact, but he said that God obligingly moves the body for the mind and affects the mind for the body.

The Physicalist (Materialist) View

You Are Your Physical Body

Reductionism (reductive physicalism) is the idea that we can fully understand or explain one kind of reality in terms of another kind, or that one kind of reality is actually a different kind of reality.

Mind/Brain Identity Theory

Your Mind is Your Brain

Claims that mental states like thinking or feeling pain are identical with states of the brain.

Problem: brain states are publicly observable, our conscious experiences are not.

The Behaviorist View

Your Mind is How You Behave

These philosophers argued that it is possible to explain people’s mental states in terms of their behaviors and their dispositions to behave in certain ways.

Problem: Can’t you keep a certain very personal thought or feeling in your mind without ever betraying it in your exterior behavior?

The Functionalist View

Your Mind is Interacting Functional Parts (like a computer)

Holds that we can explain mental activities and mental states in terms of sensory inputs and behavioral outputs and other mental states.

Multiple realizability/substrate independence

Searle’s “Chinese Room” experiment

Eliminative Materialism

You Have No Mind

According to Paul Churchland, our ordinary everyday way of talking about our desires, beliefs, fears, intentions, etc. is really a “theory of the mind.” So it must be judged by the standards we use to judge any scientific theory. By those standards, he concludes, it is a “radically false” theory so we have to eliminate it.

New Dualism

Your Mind Has Nonphysical Properties

Critics say that eliminative materialism denies the existence of what we all know we experience, and so gets rid of the very thing that has to be explained.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness - Functional explanations cannot explain why or how consciousness accompanies the brain events.

The neural correlates of consciousness and the “easy problems.”

Is There an Enduring Self? The Philosophy of Personal Identity

We change significantly as we go through our lives. How, then, can anyone ever say that he or she has remained the same person? In what sense am I today the same person I was when I was born?

Some philosophers say that what makes us the same person today that we were 10 years ago is the continuity of our body.

But sometimes we say that a person with brain damage has the same bodily continuity but is not the same as before.

If bodily continuity was required to make a person the same from one moment to another, then the idea of life after death should be incomprehensible.

The Soul is the Enduring Self

Rene Descartes: Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me. I am—I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be.

But we can know that a person remains the same person from one day to another without being able to see their soul.

Consciousness as the Source of the Enduring Self

John Locke proposed that what makes a person the same person from one time to another is her memory of those times.

Thomas Reid objected: Suppose at age 20 I remember myself at 10, and at 30 I remember myself at 20, but not 10. Then on Locke’s view, at 20, I am the same person I was at 10, and at 30 I am the same person I was at 20. So at 30 I must be the same person I was at 10, yet Locke’s view also says at 30, I am not the person I was at 10.

What about the fact that I am no longer conscious of everything I ever did?

The No-Self View

Buddhist view: “It is simply the mind clouded over by impure desires and impervious to wisdom, that obstinately persists in thinking of “me” and “mine.”

Buddhism holds that nothing in the universe, not even the self, remains the same from one moment to the next. Everything consists of aggregates of elements that are in constant flux.

The Buddha argues that if the body or the mind was the self, then they should be able to control what they do and what happens to them. But neither the body nor the mind can control what they do or what happens to them. So neither can be the self.

David Hume also held that there is no self. He argues that only what we perceive exists. But we never perceive a self in the constant flow of changing sensations, so there is no self.

Hume believed that we have a powerful instinct to continue to hold on to our everyday beliefs about the self and other common sense beliefs.

The Atomic Self

Many hold the view that the self is and should be independent of others and self-sufficient.

Descartes said the self exists and can be known independently of others and that only the self can judge the truth about what it is.

Kant argued that the core of the real self is the ability to choose for oneself.

The Relational Self

Charles Taylor objects that we depend on others for our very self because we need others to define for us who our real self is.

Hegel claims that each of us can know we have certain human qualities only when others recognize those qualities in us.

Metaphysics is the attempt to…

answer the question: What is real?

Reality: Material or Nonmaterial?

Materialism, the view that matter is the ultimate constituent of reality.

The Indian Charvaka philosophers said that only what the senses perceive is real, so only the physical, material world is real.

The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus said all real objects are made up of atoms.

Hobbes held that we can know only the measurable aspects of objects, so we can say only that measurable material objects exist.

Main problem of Reality: Material or Nonmaterial?

It cannot easily account for human consciousness. Matter has mass and spatial dimensions, but consciousness does not. Consciousness is the awareness of things that a person has when awake; it has intensionality and subjectivity, but no mass or spatial dimensions.

It is difficult to see how consciousness can be reduced to brain states, which, unlike consciousness, can be seen, felt, and touched.

Remember the Hard Problem of Consciousness?

Consciousness is…

the awareness of things that a person has when awake; it has intensionality and subjectivity, but no mass or spatial dimensions.

Scientific challenge to traditional materialism?

Werner Heisenberg found that we cannot observe a subatomic particle’s specific location and its momentum at the same instant of time.

He called this the “principle of indeterminacy.”

His discovery that subatomic particles are like forces that do not have both determinate locations and velocities shows they are not material in the traditional sense.

Idealism: Reality as Nonmatter

They hold that reality consists of minds and their ideas.

George Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism says that reality consists of my mind (& perhaps other human minds), and its ideas;

Objective idealism says that, in addition, reality includes a supreme mind that produces an objective world of ideas that does not depend on my own mind, although it does depend on a mind—God’s.

Berkeley says that what we perceiver are our own ideas and sensations of things; that is, that we perceive our perceptions of things.

But critics say, we never perceive our own sensations or ideas. Instead, they say, we perceive things in the world around us, not perceptions or ideas in our head.

Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism

He argued that all objects are bundles of perceptions; since perceptions can exist only in a mind, all objects exist only in the mind, and there is no independent material reality outside the mind.

He also argued that because our orderly perceptions of the world are not controlled by our minds, they must be produced by God’s divine mind, this is objective idealism.

Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism Argument

Premise 1: If we have perceptions of things whose uniformity, consistency, and continuity do not come from us, then they must come from a supreme mind.

Premise 2: We have perceptions of things whose uniformity, consistency, and continuity do not come from us.

Conclusion: So they must come from a supreme mind.

Eastern Idealism

The Indian philosopher Vasubandhu held that all our experiences of things consist of nothing more than sensations in our minds, which does not show that external objects exist. The apparent existence of an external world is an illusion as in a dream. When meditation “awakens” us, we will see that the “external world” is an illusion just as we know a dream is an illusion when we awaken from sleep.

Objecting to Idealism

An important problem for idealists is this: don’t idealists commit the fallacy of anthropomorphism? That is, don’t they project a human power—the mind and its contents—onto the nonhuman universe?

Critics of subjective idealism propose that it mistakenly claims that our perceptions are what we perceive.

Critics of objective idealism say that materialism, not God, provides the best explanation of the order and permanence of the world we perceive.

Charles Pierce defined pragmatism as:

“the opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our perception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”

Pragmatism

William James accepted Pierce’s views, but defined pragmatism more informally as “the attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards the last things, fruits, consequence, facts.”

For James, the pragmatic method interprets an idea in terms of its practical consequence and asks what difference it would make if it were true.

Objections to Pragmatism

• Some pragmatists claimed to know only their experiences, which critics argues is a claim of idealism

• Can’t we create disinterested mathematical theories or try to understand the universe in a dispassionate way?

• Pragmatism seems to erase the distinction between our knowledge of facts and the independent existence of facts apart from our knowledge.

Reality and Logical Positivism

• rejects all metaphysical attempts to understand reality

• argue that the disputes arose from a failure to consider language and its meaning. They said an understanding of language & meaning shows all metaphysical claims about reality are meaningless.

• AJ Ayer says a statement is only meaningful if it is a tautology (true by definition) or an empirically verifiable statement. Since metaphysical statements are neither, Ayer says they are meaningless.

• They also claimed that the most ethical & religious statements are not tautologies nor statements of fact

• Critics say that its criterion of meaning is unprovable and that if it is applied to itself, it implies that it is itself meaningless.

Antirealism

• heir of pragmatism & idealism

• claim that 1) reality depends on the mind or its products, and

• 2) there are many distinct external realities.

• many argue that the features of reality depend on the language or system of concepts we use to describe/think about reality. Because there are different languages, there are different realities, each dependent on the mind & its system of concepts.

• Nelson Goodman

• Putnam argues that just as different systems of counting indicate that different #s of objects are in a container, what reality is depends on the system our minds use to describe it.

Feminist Antirealism

Dale Spender argues that we cannot know “things as they really are” because the classification system of the language we use “shapes” the reality we see. Men have shaped our reality to “suit their own ends.” But there are many other equally true realities & not just one true “objective” male reality.

Critics point out that if language created multiple realities that were all equally true, then the supposedly sexist reality created by sexist male language would be as true & acceptable as any other; sexism would not be an objective reality because there would be no one true objective reality.

Objecting to Antirealism

John Searle argues that if people successfully communicate, they must assume there is one independent external reality because for people to understand each other’s statements, they must be talking about the same independent external reality. So, our ability to communicate implies that antirealism is false.

Are we really free? Hard Determinism

• Physical determinists argue that previous events and laws of nature cause all human acts, so humans are not free or responsible for their acts.

• Isaac Newton’s laws helped support this:

• 1st law - all bodies continue to move in same direction unless acted on by external force

• 2nd law (law of universal gravitation) - all bodies in universe attract all other bodies with a force proportional to their masses & their distances from one another.

• 3rd law - every action has an equal opposite reaction.

Hard Determinism Argument

Premise 1: all actions are casually determined by previous conditions and the laws of nature.

Premise 2: If all actions are casually determined by previous conditions & the laws of nature, then people do not act freely & are not morally responsible for their actions.

Conclusion: So, people do not act freely & are not morally responsible for their actions.

Theological Determinism

Divine Foreknowledge - If God knows the future exhaustively, theological determinists argue, then, all future events must be determined, directly or indirectly, by God.

Metaphysical Libertarianism

Sartre argues that human consciousness can withdraw itself from any existing situation to seek a future that does not exist, so humans are not determined by any existing situation but are free & responsible.

He says in our consciousness/mind we can freely decide which factors in our present situation are going to be the causes of our actions. He concludes that this answers the determinist who says that the factors in our present situation cause us to do what we do.

Sartre argues that our consciousness/mind has the ability to freely decide which “passion,” desire, character trait, or other factor we will allow to determine or cause our actions.

Compatibilism

Thomas Hobbes argued that freedom is the absence physical restraints, so when restraints are absent, our acts are free & responsible even though they are casually determined.

They hold that:

• 1) people act freely & are morally responsible for their actions, but

• 2) freedom and moral responsibility require that people’s actions be causally determined by their desires & character, so

• 3) people act freely & are morally responsible, but their actions are causally determined by their desires & character.

Critics say compatibilism ignores the real issue: are we unfree in the sense that our acts are causally determined?

The Two Worlds View

Immanuel Kant says when we act, we have to assume we are free, and when we try to explain our acts scientifically, we have to assume we are determined. Both viewpoints are necessary.

Augustine’s 2 Views of Time

• The present instant of time really exists (to us) because the past no longer exists & the future does not yet exist (to us). This is the “subjective view” of time.

• He says that Subjective time (A series) is as we experience it—as flowing from future to present to past. Objective time (B series) is as God might see it: a fixed line of events that are before & after each other but not future or present or past.

• McTaggart claimed, only the A series is really time. For time requires change, & the events or moments in objective time—the B series—do not change.

Eternalism

Some philosophers rejected McTaggart’s claim that the B series (objective time) is not really time at all.

J.J.C Smart agrees with McTaggart’s view that our experience of time as passing is an illusion.

Immanuel Kant: Time is a Mental Construct

Time is a mental map that each of us carries around in our minds & that lets us organize our perceptions by assigning each a position in the map of time. He called space & time mere “forms of intuition.”

Presentism - Only Subjective Time is Real

Henri Bergson argues that scientists’ objective time is just a conceptual abstraction.

He says a concept of objective time is just that: a concept. Neither images nor concepts, he argues, can get at the reality. Only what we directly experience—what we “intuit”—is real.

He says we directly experience ourselves as changing & as flowing through time. Bergson called this experience the “intuition of duration.”

The Static Theory of Time

The universe is spread our in 4 similar dimensions, which together make up a unified, 4-dimensional manifold, appropriately called spacetime…

The Dynamic Theory of Time

1. Universe is spread out in the 3 dimensions of physical space, & time, like modality, is a completely different kind of dimension from spatial dimensions.

2. - 6…

Growing Block Universe

The past & present both exist, & the future as yet does not.

1. - 5…

What is Religion?

The choice between belief & unbelief influences one’s view of oneself.

It’s difficult to define because some religions do not believe in God, some have no official beliefs, some are not institutionalized, & some do not value personal commitment.

Ninian Smart’s Criteria (for religion)

1. doctrine, set of beliefs…

2. experience…

3. myth, set of stories…

4. ritual, acts of worship…

5. morality, set of rules and precepts that believers are enjoined to follow

6. organization…

Philosophy of Religion vs. Theology

Theology, the study of religious beliefs assumes that God(s) exist & the beliefs are true.

The philosophy of religion studies religious beliefs but does not assume that they are true or that God(s) exist.

Theism

belief in a personal God(s)

Monotheism

belief that there is only one God

Ontological Argument

Anselm’s version:

Premise 1: God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived

Premise 2: That than which nothing greater can be conceived must exist in reality and not merely in the mind.

Conclusion: God exists in reality.

Cosmological Argument 1st proof

Thomas Aquinas:

Premise 1: Some things move

Premise 2: What moves must be moved by another moving thing, and so on

Premise 3: This series of moving movers cannot be infinite, for then their motion would have no origin.

Premise 4: The origin of their motion cannot be moving, for then it would have to be moved by another.

Conclusion: This unmoving origin is God.

Cosmological Argument 2nd proof

Thomas Aquinas:

Premise 1: Some things are caused by other things

Premise 2: What is caused to exist must be caused by another thing, for nothing can cause itself to exist.

Premise 3: The series of causes cannot extend back infinitely, for then there would be no beginning to the existence of the series of causes, so no causes would exist at all.

Conclusion: So, there is a first cause of existence, and this is God.

Objections to Aquinas (Cosmological argument)

• some critics say his views were disproved by the scientific laws of motion

• If everything has a cause, then God should have a cause.

• does not prove a loving & personal God exists

Teleological Arguments (Design)

Premise 1: If we find an artifact, like a watch, that is designed to achieve a purpose, we can conclude it was made by an intelligent being.

Premise 2: But things we find in nature, especially living things & their parts, are designed to achieve a purpose.

(3): So, by analogy, we can conclude they were made by an intelligent being, God.

“Fine Tuning” Teleological Arguments

Premise 1: If the features of the universe that make human life possible were slightly different, human life could not exist.

Premise 2: It is so improbable that a universe would have these features set out of an infinite range of other possible features it could have.

Conclusion: The features of the universe had to be deliberately selected by an intelligent being to make human life possible.

Atheism

They believe there are good reasons to think there is no God. Many base their atheism on the ability to of science & the scientific method to explain what we observe, & and so focus on their concerns of the world here & now.

The Logical Problem of Evil

Many atheists argue, like David Hume did, that:

Premise 1: If an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God existed, there would be no evil.

Premise 2: But there is evil.

Conclusion: So, an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, God does not exist.

The Evidential Problem of Evil

Premise 1: There is evil in our world.

Premise 2: The best explanation of the evil in our world is that there is no benevolent, omniscient, & omnipotent God.

Premise 3: Therefore, there probably is no benevolent, omniscient, & omnipotent God.

Theistic Responses to the Problem of Evil (Theodicies)

Augustine argued that God produces what is good and only what is good. Because evil is the absence of good, God does not produce evil. Plus, what God creates must be finite & lack some good. So, if God is to create a finite world, & thereby bring at least some goodness into existence, it has to contain some evil.

Agnosticism

Thomas Huxley: “It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.”

Freud claimed that people believe because they have an “infantile” need to believe someone like a “father” is still watching over them.

Feminist Theology

Mary Daly holds that the traditional concept of God is male, sexist, oppressive to women, & legitimates patriarchy—the rule of men over women. We must reject it, especially in its Christian form, and replace it with “the Goddess.”

Eastern Religious Traditions

Hinduism views Brahman as the only reality & all else is illusion; Atman is the deepest consciousness within each person & distinct from the ordinary self which is an illusion.

Buddhism emphasizes the 4 noble truths: all life is sorrow, sorrow arises from craving, stopping craving will stop sorrow, & the noble Eightfold Path will stop craving.

These forms of Eastern thought reject the Western concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing, personal God & of the moral law as something God commands.

Rationalism is the view that…

knowledge of the world can be obtained by relying on reason without the aid of the senses.

Empiricism is the view that…

knowledge about the world can be attained only through sense experience.

Rationalists claim that…

not all knowledge of the world around us is acquired through sense observation, for example, mathematical knowledge.

Knowledge acquired by reasoning alone is…

a priori: it is not acquired by sense experience, & it is necessarily true & indubitable.

Rene Descartes: From methodological to rationalism

He tried to doubt all his beliefs…concluded that what makes him certain about his I think, therefore I am idea, is the clarity & distinctness with which he apprehends the idea. Concludes that clarity & distinctness are the marks of truth.

Innate Ideas

Rationalists like Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz believe that the ideas and truths that the mind knows without relying on its senses are innate—we were born with these ideas in mind.

Western empiricists such as Locke, Berkeley, Hume, hold that…

all our knowledge of the world comes through sense observation.

Locke argued that there were no ideas that all humans share, so no “innate” ideas that all people have when they come into the world. Instead, at birth the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate), that only experience can fill.

John Locke’s account of perception

He says that every physical object has certain qualities that are in the object itself, whether it can be perceived or not, called primary qualities. Secondary qualities like color, sound, taste, are not “in” the object, but are sensations in us that the object causes us to have.

David Hume and Skepticism

He accepted Berkeley’s view that all we experience are our own sensations & ideas, which he called “impressions.” Because all our knowledge is derived from sense impressions, he argued that if an idea is not derived from a sense impression, it is not meaningless or nonexistent.