philosophy :(

Nagles introduction to philosophy and its main points

Nagles introduction to philosophy and its main points

The absurd!

Main points: We are but a small part of the universe, how do we justify our existence?

We cannot justify our lives, because after a certain amount of questioning life we cannot find anymore answers.

It is absurd to take ourselves SO seriously about our projects beliefs and convictions.

The real absurdity comes from the uncanny moments in life where you realize you dont have to take yourself so seriously.

We must live our lives ironically to escape the absurd. Once we realize that we need not be justifies, it is ok.

Examinization does not lead to overseriousness, but to opposite! As indiviuals we can give our own convictions and projects their value

Platos the apology and main points

So he’s on trial for spreading beliefs against god and corrupting the youth so he is sent to defend himself in court!

He discusses Socrates, who was told by an oracle he was the wisest. He decided to test this, and questions others to see if they are wise. But everyone who thinks they are wise like politicians seem to be the oposite…

He finds they have no good reasonings, so socrates says that true wisdom the oracle spoke of came from him not thinking he knew anything, which a real kind of wisdom.

Socrates sees this as a divine mission! everyone else must know this to justify their beliefs and values or else life is not worth living

Socrates also cannot be found guilty by the court ( though their ruling is that hes guilty ! ) he knows injustice is wrong so he could not have done this

and he does not believe death to be bad, so why be scared of it! he is ok dying, he does not find it immoral to encourage the youth to start justifying their beliefs

What is similar between Nagle and Platos arguments?

Both are introductions to philosophy, which center on justifying your beliefs. What makes life worth living? With plato and socrates, life is worth living once you justify your beliefs. With Nagle, we cannot justify our lives, and we can apply value once we realize this. They essentially present contrasting views on what brings meaning to life

Descartes and skepticism- the Meditation 1

descarte changes philosophy from being just about god to how you know what you know- YOU DONT KNOW ANYTHING UNTIL YOU KNOW IT WITHOUT A DOUBT. but everything can be doubted!

Knowledge is a justified true belief

Beliefs are what have, Justified logic used to prove things ( such as sight ) and true as in our beliefs correspond to reality

Descarte says many of his beliefs have been wrong in life, so everything must be doubted. He doubts his senses, as they have been wrong before, and now he cannot tell when hes being deceived.

#HALLUCINATIONS!

He does not know the probability hes being decieved

Is everything a dream? But shouldn’t he doubt his dreams? But he realizes there is no way to know the difference between dream and reality. Even what he believes he knows, such as math, could be trickes by a god! THE EVIL MATH DEMON

even necessary truths can be doubted then

So, now that he knows he does not know anything, he should just forget this and go on with life!

He must vigilant until he can say what we really know…. and we know what he knows #mediaiton part 2

What is knowledge to descartes?

A justified true belief

What is Epistemology?

The study of knowledge

The allegory of the cave by Plato

We see people who live in a cave, only observing shadows from the people above. There degrees to reality, forms and shadows.

What are Forms? They are like perfect circles, or albums. They are perfect things that make up all other things to be what they are! They are not nice ideals, or things to strive for, and we are lucky to percieve them at all!

Shadows are lower forms of reality.

We do not see these degrees, only the lowest levels. Higher reality and forms answer what everything is, and why everything is the way it is.

His allegory has the people chained inside the cave, so they only know the shadoes, lower levels of thinking. If a man escapes, sees the sun, and learns higher levels of thinking. But if he goes into the cave, no one will believe him!

Since they create our degrees of reality, knowing the higher degrees is important

SEEK OUT THE FORMS be skeptical of whats in front of us

Hume, the probkem of induction

MY LIMITED EXPERIENCES YIELD LIMITED PREDICITONS

we have impressions and ideas. Impressions are what we percieve, and ideas are the thoughts and memories we form based off these impressions. Ideas as copies of impressions. Any thoughts that do not come from impressions, even if they are two impressions mushed together ( like unicorns ) are NONSENSE

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION? HOW DO WE PREDICT EVENTS

All matter of fact are based on cause and effect

We see one event followed by another and once this is repeated enough times we can begin to make predictions on that basis, think the sun rising with the mail coming. We see the sun rise and mail come enough times, we can predict the mail will come as the sun rises.

In predicting this way, we must assume the future will be like the past. Therefore we must assume there is some uniformity in nature.

How can we know this? By using more experience to understand reality

CONCLUSIONS all our oredictions rely on something we CANNOT prove, since nature does not have uniformity

SO WE JUSTIFY PREDICTIONS USING EXPERIENCE BUT HOW DO WE KNOW THIS WILL BE RELIABLE IN TH FUTURE? WE NEED MORE EXPERIENCE. BUT HOW DO WE KNOW-

it is all circular.

nature forces us to use induction!

THERE IS NO SOLUTION! nature does us a favor and thus we forget. we make predicitons but forget the problem! life goes on

John Locke- representational realism

HE IS NOT A SKEPTIC!

how do we learn? we have ideas before the mind, our mental contents. We develop simple ideas as children which form into complex ideas! Example red as a simple idea, which when combined with other ideas will get you complex ideas like a firetruck

we start with ideas of sensation and after reflection get new ideas!

when it comes to reality, we divide it into PRIMARY and SECONDARY QUALITIES.

primary qualities are qualities an object must have to remain being what they are, without them the object cannot exist. A tv needs a screen to be a tv!

secondary qualities are based off us, and only exists because of our relation to the object and our interpretation of it, like color and sound.

THE WORLD IS MADE OF PRIMARY QUALITIES, SECONDARY ONES ARE MADE PARTIALLY BY US

but, we navigate the world based off primary qualtities, you wouldnt move because a truck is yellow, you move because A TRUCK IS HARD AND DENSE, RUN!

we see the world through our ideas, our viel of perception. but this can mislead us, and we can be wrong!

WE STILL KNOW A LOT THO we build many estimations about things, big and small ! based off navigating these primary qualities

so we are probably correct about some calculation! We have probabilistic knowledge of things

John locke is to

primary and secondary qualities

plato is to

shadows and forms ( degrees of reality )

descarte is to

DOUBTING EVERYTHING

hume is to

impressions, ideas, and experiences predicting our events

Descartes meditation2 and 6 BOO

he is a SUBSTANCE DUALIST

He realizes that he knows one thing- that he is. he THINKS THEREFORE HE IS. He knows he is existing as long as he is thinking

He has already doubted whether the mind and body are interconnected or not, his thoughts are not physical, so the mind and body have different essential properties.

Bodies and bodies as long as they are extended in space, minds are always thinking.

Since the mind and body have different essential properties. they are different things- even if they interact, like oil and water, they will be seperate. the mind is the thinking, NOT THE BRAIN.

he concludes that the mind and body are different substances and seperate from one another.

Substance dualism

Argues that mind and body are seperate and different substances, and they interact together as such

objections to the descartes meditations

from arnauld and elizabeth offer objections

maybe the mind and brain are the same

Elizabeth asks that if the mind is not really physical, how can it interact with the brain?

Only things that are physical can interact with each other

Place- is consciousnesss a brain process?

Place is a materialist or physicalist, he argues the mind and brain are the same substance. Because he is a physicalist he holds that the mind and body are both physcial.

Genes and chromosomes have different names and we tend to assume they refer to different things, but they are same. Place argues we do the same for the mind and brain.

When we affirm a mental state, we just have it. When we affirm a brain state, we use equipment, so they always seem different. We cannot affirm both at the same time.

When you think of your consciousness you observe them by having them, but you never observe your brain.

Given these two illusions, place concludes that mind and brain are probably the same

In special cases, we identify things that seem different, like lightning and kinetic energy. When they are put into a theoretical framework, we can overrule their differences.

Since we cannot observe consciousness and brain stats, we naturally assume the two are different

Thomas Nagle

He argues for property dualism, which is that the mind and body are one, BUT MENTAL AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES CANNOT BE REDUCED TO ONE ANOTHER

example, the sun. We cannot reduce our physical body feelings of being in the sun to our mental properties of being in the sun.

We only understand content of our experience from our own point of view

NAGLE IMPLIES MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EVENTS ARE LIKE DIFFERENT LANGUAGE WITH DIFFERENT GRAMMARS

the mind and brain may actually be the same but we cannot think of them as the same ( the sun example )

Chalmers

Property dualism

WE HAVE EASY AND HARD PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS easy is like how does our attention work? how is information processed? hard is llike why am i conscious. why are we conscious at all> why do we generate fields of consciousness?

Zombie thought experiment, if there was a carbon copy of you, atom by atom, something would be missing that makes it conscious. But the zombie believes it is conscious, but it is not. What is it that makes us conscious? Consciousness is something not physical

He says consciousness is like gravity, it is an unexplained part of the universe, and is not just produced by our brains.

BUT ZOMBIE EXAMPLE SUCKS! if consciousness is a part of the universe, why would the zombies not be conscious then??? they think they are conscious, so it seems like they are? and if it was a part of the universe, wouldn’t all things have it?

Determinism- baron d’holbach

we are determines, and all our beliefs are involuntary. We do not choose to think about the sun shining, you just do. We do not choose our mental states

We respond only to outside stimuli, and laws of nature have predictable effects on us and out wills. we are no different than dogs or birds, we are determined!

We are ignorant and falsely assume we have freedom of will, it is based on ignorance of causes. d’holbach sees this an illusion. We falsely assume we have free will because we ignore the causes of our decisions. D’holbach makes the distinction we are not determined by a higher power but the causes are around us.

These necessary illusions, but false even so, because systems of morality and law assume freedom of will- but are still incorrect.

Freedom of will is

our freedom to will what we want, in the degree to which we want to

Robert Kane

Freedom of will occurs in specific moments of character formation. The idea of having our thoughts be determined is appealing, but long ago in moments of character formation we decided what we would be

We must chose key things in life, but this makes there be chaos in the brain. #parralellprocessing, we harness the chaos- we harness any indeterminism in our brains. This only occurs in rare times of tension, and we make choices that form who we are.

In these moments, we can change our previous beliefs entirely. In these moments, we are really free, when there is so much stress we must make our own choices. We are free in these choices, and so everything that follows this choice was determined by US, so we are not predetermined by anyone but ourselves, therefore we are free.

We are free when we make these life formation choices, and we are responsible for these life forming decisions and the results of those decisions.

OBJECTIONS DOES ANYTHING LIKE THIS ACTUALLY HAPPEN?? WHERE IS THE NEUROSCIENCE?? HES MAKING IT UP!!!! even if we control our brains, this only happens rarely, so then we are only rarely free? and we are entirely determined?

Libertarianism

We really have free will, or the ability to think and do at any time, we could have thought and done otherwise than we did.

Henry Frankfurt- freedom of will and the concept of the person

We have degrees of desires, first order and second order desirees. We have second order volitions, which makes us human. If we do not have second order desires or second volitions, and have desires to desire our desires, we are wantons. They pursue desires without the capacity to consider why they are doing it, so they are not fully persons.

Frankfurt offers varieties in relation to addiction, addicts are conflicted. some will think about their options all the time, but will not have consistent second order volitions. If they relapse, it feels as if it is an external force.

In other cases, the addict can identify with either wanting the drug or refraining from it. They are conflicted- they have desires but do not want to feel it.

FRANKFURT OFFERS HIS CONCLUSION. we are determined, but formed volitions whereby, we as persons, odentify with this option. We are responsible for these choices.

He offers to find a middle ground where either we are never responsible or always responsible.

You cant exactly chose the thoughts in your head, but have the volitions that make you human and that you will identify with, these are our choices.

Second order volition

A second order volition is a desire that a certain desire be one’s will, i.e., a desire that a certain desire bring one to action. Willing to desire what you want to desire rather than just willing your initial desire.

If you desire to eat potato chips, this is a first order desire. If you desire to desire celery instead, this is a second order desire. You will have a second order volition if you will, or act, on this second desire, and eat the celery and your second order desire is effective.