Ancient Philosophical Influences

Who is Socrates?

• ‘Founder’ of philosophy

• Socratic Method = questioning commonly held beliefs and assumptions

• Encouraged people to doubt their intelligence

Plato

• Student of Socrates

• Returned to Athens to found ‘the Academy’

• Rationalist- knowledge should be gained through logical reasoning

Why does Plato create the Allegory of the Cave?

• we are not experiencing the world correctly

• WE SHOULD NOT TRUST THE UNRELIABLE SENSES

• we are shackled by ignornce so experiebce imperfect, transient, everchanging things in the Realm of Appearances

• True reality is perfect, eternal and unchaging- Realm of the Forms

• true knowledge can only be discovered in the ROTF

• Only “philosopher kings” have true knowledge so should rule

Describe the Allegory of the Cave

• Three prisoners in a cave tied to rocks- their heads are tied so they can only look at the stone wall in front of them

• The prisoners have never seen anything outside the cave

• Behind prisoners is a fire, between them a raised walkway where people carry things over their heads- animals, plants, woof, stones

• Prisoners see the shadows of the obkects on the wall and believe that these shadows are ‘real’

• The prisoners guess which will come next and are praised as clever if they correctly guess

• One prisoner escapes and leaves the cave- initially blind, so first easiest to look at shadows, then images of things reflected in water, then at real pbkects at night, then at day in the sun, then finally the sun

• Would finally be able to understand that the Sun is the source of life and light, discovers meaning and realises the past guessing life is meaningless

• Prisoner returns to the cave and tries to set them free, “his eyes ere filled with darkness”

• Prisoners don’t believe him, think all he has gotten are damaged eyes, will not leave

What does the Allegory of the Cave represent?

• Prisoners- our minds shackled by ignorance

• Cave- the realm of appearances

• Fire- a lower, deceptive source of truth and knowledge

• Shadows- Illusion, false assumptions/ the obkects we experience

• Escaped prisoner- Philosopher

• Able to escape- using a priori reason

• The real world- The Realm of the Forms

• The sun- The Form of the Good

What are the Forms?

• Everything has a Form- ideal and eternal version of itself

• Exist in the Realm of the Forms, spiritual world separate from ours

• Permanent, non-material- can be reflected many times or never in our world and still exist in ROTD

• Form of roundness- property of roundness still exists if all round things destroyed

• Source of ‘ideas’ when we imagine objects, but we are distorted by faulty ignorance of our minds

Humans and the ROTF

• souls belong in the ROTF but we exist in our physical forms in Realm of Appearances

• Souls have ‘forgotten’ perfect ROTF but recognise glimpses in imperfect things around us

• We gain a clearer understanding of the Forms the more we reflect on them- only a priori

• We cannot learn or invent things, only recall our imperfect memory of relevant forms- Argument from Recollection

Plato- Form of the Good sun metaphor

1. Just as the sun gives us light to allow us to see object, the FOTG provides order and intelligibility to know objects

2. Just as the sun provides energy for the nourishment and growth of living things, the FOTG provides the order and structure which is the source of all living things

What is the Demiurge?

• Powerful, non-omnipotent, created physical world from pre-existing material using the guide of the Forms

• Wants the best for humanity by limited by imperfect physical matter

• Good so can be measured against the Form of the Good but is not the source of Goodness

Evaluation of the theory of forms and rationalism

• Lacks empirical evidence

  • CP- Plato- evidence cannot be trusted as it is merely shadows of the ROTF which only reason can discover

• Wrong to reject evidence- Aristotle- theory of forms an unnecessary hypothesis- no explanation for our experience

  • Unchanging forms cannot explain the changes in the world- “nonsense, and evem if they do exist, they are wholly irrelevant”- lacking empirical validity

  • BUT depends on the success of the empirical theory of the 4 ccauses- Plao can only be discredited if empiricism is valid

What is the Form of the Good?

• ultimate cause of existence, truth and intelligibility of all Forms

• Non-physical, eternal, unchanging, goodness-itself

• The Sun in the Allegory of the Cave

• Top of the Hierarchy of forms, the highest form

• Understanding Form of the Good makes it impossible to do wrong

• noesis = contemplation of the forms

What is the hierarchy of forms?

• Form of the Good

• Higher forms- aspects of goodness, goodness is source (e.g. justice, beauty)

• Lower forms- forms of phenomena we experience (treeness, catness)

• Material objects

• Images

Aristotle + Nietzsche criticism of the Form of the Good

• Disagrees that the cause of immorality is the ignorance of good

• Knowing what is good is not enough to become morally perfect- need to cultivate virtue- has a morally perfect person ever existing?

• One unifiedform of the good doesn’t align with human experience- difference between unanimity of a lower form and all the very different instances of goodness

  • Good of military strategy versus good in medicine

• Nietzsche- FOTG a ‘dangerous error’- philosophers invent idea to suit emotional prejudices e.g. desire for power, supposedly discovered through reason

Aristotle’s 3rd Man argument

• Plato- of a group of things share charactersitics e.g. group of trees then they must all be partaking in a form of treeness

• Aristotle- we then have a new group of things sharing characteristics- trees and the form of treeness

• SO by Plato’s logic there must be a form in which they partake- this continues ad infinitum

  • Undermines idea of a particular single form of a quality explaining multiple instances of that quality

BUT Plato’s response

• forms cannot partake of anything but themselves

• particulars share characteristics by partaking in a form because they are imperfect copies of it

• 3rd man rests on misunderstanding of relationship between forms and particulars

The Argument from Recollection explained

• We have knowledge of perfect eternal unchanging concepts e.g. beauty, justice

• Also perfect mathematical or geometric concepts- perfect circle despite never having experienced these perfect things

• We must have a priori gained this knowledge, source of knowledge a priori

• The Meno- uneducated slave boy being prompted by a series of questions to figure out a geometry question so must have been born with these concepts

• Our soul must have apprehend them in ROTF

• Anamnesis- re-remebering forms through a posteriori experience

Plato’s soul

• Body not permanent, certain and unchanging

• Soul immortal, so escapes imperfect physical existence

• Freed from physical concerns e.g. eating, so allowed to contemplate FOTG

• The soul must necessarily be immortal as it animates a person by giving life

• Life is the essence of the soul so it would be contradictory for the soul to die

  • ??? only if the huge assumption he makes is true

Plato’s Tripartite Soul

• Analogy of a chariot with two horses- internal mental conflict

• Moral and emotional impulses (honour, courage, anger, pride, duty) versus irrational passions and appetites (physical pleasure, food, drink, wealth, sex, material gain)

• The rider is intellect/reason (seeks truth, loves knowledge, calculates)- reason must rule

The Myth of Er

• soldier returns 12 days after dying in battlefield, tells of experience in afterlife

• Souls of dead judged and punished/ rewarded, then chose a new life

• Some foolish- man rewarded chose to be a tyrant, without considering atrocities

• Only philosophers wise enough to benefit from cycle of life and death

Argument from Opposites

• cycle of opposites- everything comes to be from its opposite e.g. getting bigger had to have been smaller beforehand

• 2 opposite processes e.g. increasing and decreasing- must be equally balamced

• something dying is cycling away from coming into life so something coming into life is coming away from dying- this process must be balanced or all the world would be dead

• if the living could only be made out of living, there would be a limited stock

Argument from Opposites evaluation

• Life and death not necessarily opposites, but different states

• Huge inductive leap

• Unaware of many scientific concepts

• Plato not aware of the continual expansion of the universe

• Just describing how processes work

• Why dead and living, not existing and not existing

Phaedo: The immortality of the soul

• nothing can have a property and its opposite e.g. a collection being even and odd

• some things have a property essentially eg. three is always odd

• it is impossible for something that is 3 to be opposite to odd (even)

• it is an essential property that the soul is alive so it cannot be dead- the soul cannot die, it is indestructible

Immortality of the soul evaluation

• MANY many assumptions made…

• Assuming that the soul is essentially always living

• Uses his own beliefs as evidence of his argument- no foundation of proof

The Linguistic argument for the soul

• we use language about ourselves that suggests a distinction between us and our bodies

• “I” refers to a separate inner reality- “my body” implies something separate

Linguistic argument evaluation

• what????????????

• “My” can imply something that is a part of us- “my mind”, “my soul”

• why assume all humans are innatlky aware that they are separate??

Argument from Recollection summarised

1. we have a concept of perfect justice and beauty and perfect mathematical concepts

2. We have never experienced perfect instances of such things

3. Our knowledge of concepts must be innate

4. There must be a world of forms and we must have a soul which gained perfect concepts from it before we were born

Recollection weaknesses

• Huge inductive leap to ROTF must exist even if we are born with perfect concepts- evolution of intelligence, sense of morality and bueaty

• Justice and beauty subjective rather than absolute truths

  • BUT maths is not subjective

  • BUT mathematical knowledge from experience- we learn through mistakes- the boy had seen objects so had the concept of shapes

  • Peter Geach- learning is a process, not remembering

• Hume- we can imagine the idea of perfection in our minds even if we haven’t experienced it- the negation of our imperfect experiences

Link between the body and the soul

• assumes they interact, doesn’t specify how

• Soul “TRAPPED” in inferior physical body- death gives opportunity for soul to return to the “contemplation of the good”

Plato’s soul evaluation: Bernard Williams

• shows a disregard for our physical existence

• our identity also comes from our body and physical characteristics e.g. we couldn’t be identified without our bodies

• changes to our body affect our mind e.g. drugs, hormones- the mind depends upon the brain

• if our mind wasn’t linked to our body, things wouldn’t happen in the world

Plato’s soul evaluation: Brian Davis

• not everything has an opposite

• linguistic argument shows we CAN separate the concept of us from our bodies, not that they are separate

• very weak to argue that the self cannot be split or broken and doesn’t pass out of existence

Further Forms eval.

• Can beauty or goodness exist? subjective- but shared moral values intuitively known

• This world seems very real- sensations, emotions, pain

  • BUT Plato doesn’t condemn the physical world entirely, just less important than the forms

• Aristotle- essentially Ockham’s Razor- shouldn’t believe an unnecessarily complicated explanation

  • rejects the separation of form from things and mind-body dualism- lacks empirical validity

Aristotle’s rejection of the Forms

• implausible to claim there is one Form of Good in which all the uses of ‘good’ partake

• No difference between goodness itself and things which are called good- external existence doesn’t make things more good

• Examining things which are throught to be good (e.g. homour, wisdom), we find diverse accounts of what the goodness consists of instead of a common good

• Even if Plato was right about one ultimate Good, it cannot be achieved by man so can’t be the end of political science or be used as a guiding light

Aristotle: Empiricism

• finding understanding through detailed examination of world around us

• Per genus et per differentia- by type and by difference

• We were taught some knowledge e.g. maths and we learned some skills through practice e.g. sports- knowledge is not innate

  • we can find child prodigies in maths or music, but not history, geography which need different experience

• Concluded the Earth must be a sphere through observing the shadow passing along the moon wbhich must be a sphere and which could only be the Earth

Aristotle’s 2 states of being

• POTENTIALITY- the state of doing or becoming something

• ACTUALITY- when potential is achieved

• e.g. potential to get an A* is not actualised because it hasn’t yet been achieved

• potential to be Y13 TGS has been actualised

• Aristotle said there were 4 causes for why things were the way they were (had moved from potentiality to actuality)

Aristotle’s Four Causes

1. Material Cause- what something is made out of

2. Formal Cause- what the essence/shape/dfining characteristic of something is

3. Efficient cause- what brings it into being

4. Final Cause- the purpose it is made for

E.g. a table- Material: Wood/Screws/Glue, Formal: A Desk- Flat Top, Efficient: Craftsman, Final: The need to work on something solid and flat

4 Causes: Bacon

• purpose is unscientific- metaphysical rather than empirical

• Modern science rejects formal and final causdation- all supposed telos can be reduced to non-teleological concepts- all reduced into material cause

• e.g. evolution, atoms, photons

• No basis for being a required explanation of change when modern science can explain change without telos

• Aritsotle’s form of a human = rational soul, but most neuroscientists claim ratinality = material brain structure

• BUT science cannot (currently) explain how reason reduces to material brain processes- can’t (YET) justifiably dismiss A’s soul and form as the explanation of reason)

• BUT there is at least scientific evidence linking the brain to reason- if brain damaged, reason can be- YET is the key word- Ockham’s razor rather than Ar’s explanation which there is no evidence for

4 Causes: McGrath

• modern Xian philosophers e.g. Polkinghorne would argue science is limited to what instead of why

• Modern science argument cannot answer questions about purpose, which could be compatible

• CP- Dawkins- asking ‘why’ about purpose is a ‘silly question’- just because we can ask a question doesn’t make it valid- questions of purpose assume there must be a purpose beyond scientific explanation

• Max Tegmark- science may one day explain why the universe exists- reduces the ‘why’

• russell- ‘the universe is just there’- a brute fact

• Telos ultimately not needed

Telos: Sartre

• “existence precedes essence”- humans exist before they have a defined purpose

• People cling to false notion of objective purpose e.g. religion out of fear for not having a purpose- scared of intensity of freedom

• no purpose = feelings of abandonment from objective reality as well as anguish and despair- avoidance of existential angst

• BUT providing psychological instead of metaphysical disregard- genetic fallacy- just becayse people have a psychological need to believe in objective purpose doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist

  • BUT Satrtre reasons a posteriori that it doesn’t exist so invalidates argument- all we experience is ‘radical freedom’ because we have nothing like telos to guide our choices

Aristotle: Prime Mover

• “There will then also be something which moves them […] there must be something that moves without being moved”

• There must be an explanation for the world of flux- what eternally maintains the motion of the stars/ all movement on earth- something must provoke infinite chain of movement

• Everything is contingent- the Prime Mover is necessary, eternal and perfect- not physical because not subject to change and decay

  • no defects because badness is a lack of the ‘actuality’ the Prime Mover perfectly has

• Final cause of the universe rather than efficient- motion caused by the attraction of things to its perfection

• Imperfect things oriented to their good end are attracted to the perfect atuality of the prime mover- explains transition from potential to actual

Prime Mover’s relationship with us

1. Doesn’t think about us- only itself is fit to contemplate

2. Doesn’t interact with us

3. Isn’t affected by us- unchanging and immaterial

4. Doesn’t know about the physical world

Prime Mover: Newton

• an object will move until met by an equal and opposute reaction e.g. gravity and friction, rather than rest being a natural state requiring a Prime Mover to counter

• e.g. in space as a vaccum something pushed will infinitely move until met by anither object or force

• Aristotle only empirical observation, not empirical experiment- just as wrong by modern science as Plato

• BUT it was Aristotle’s a posteriori approach which led to Newton’s discoveries so N didn’t disprove the a posteriori apprach to understanding reality

Objections to Forms: Efficiency

• Efficient cause doesn’t tell us WHAT happens, only THAT soething happened

• naming something is not understanding it

• use of term covers so many changes- natural, chemical, ohysical, intended, accidental- too broad for significant information

Objections to Forms: Purpose

• ‘Purpose’ usually a mental intention- we choose purposes based on aims for future achievements

• Can an inanimate object have an innate purpose?

• Are purposes for which things are used the same as them having a purpose?

Objections to Forms: Fallacy of Composition

• Can’t assume what is true for a part is true of the whole

• Just because every part of the physical body has a purpose doesn’t mean the entire person has a purpose

Objections to Forms: Purpose of the Universe

• Do all parts of the universe have a purpose, let alone the entire universe?

• Brute fact/ “Just there and that’s all”

• Blind evolution/ survival of the fittest

Objections to Forms: Causes of Motion

• do we really only nneed one single reason for motion and change?

• Big Bang- Universe condstantly expanding, rather than caused by Prime Mover?

• What is the point of a Prime Mover that has no interaction or awareness of us?

Evaluation of Prime Mover: Aquinas

• refocused Aristotle’s argument on universe’s efficient cause

• avoids Newton’s critique

• we still need an ultimate explanation of causation in universe, even if it is an infinite series of cause and effect- we can still ask why an infnite series exists

• Aristotle’s ideas might still apply a special origin of motion

Evaluation of Prime Mover: Hume

• response to Aquinas- demonstrates failure through example of 20 particles

• explaining each particle explains the collection- would be absurd to demand a further explanation for whole collection itself

• Same as an infinite series- if all parts have an explanation, the whole series does to

• So Aquinas commits the reification fallacy- mistakes an abstract entity for a concrete thing

• A series is only its parts, not a thing in itself which needs its own explanation

• So an infinite series may need an explanation but that is found in its parts rather than something external

• Modern science and philosophy show neither Aristotle or Aquinas can prove anything like a prime mover

Aristotle: The Soul

• The soul is the thing which is consistent throughout a person’s life, the physical body changes- living things have souls

• the soul is the formal cause of personhood, material cause = flesh and blood- hylomorphism

Aristotle’s 3 souls

• Nutritive soul- found in plants

• Sensitive soul- found in animals

• Rational soul- found in humans

Aristotle: Soul and body

“It is not a body, but it belongs to a body”

• not a material object but not separable from the body

• no inner/outer contrast- not an independently existing substance- is the form of the body, not a substane of another kind- a capacity, not a thing that has a capacity

• has little to do with identity/individuality- no reason one human soul different from another

Aristotle: Soul and wax

• living things are distinguished from non-living things by their capabilities

• the defining feature/essence/form of a human is the ability to reason

• soul inseparable from the living body- shape stamped into a wax seal is inseparable from the matter of the wax- it is what gives the wax form

• soul dies with a person

Aristotle soul response: Bacon and science (again)

• rejection of formal causation for a scientific explanation

• If we have no reason to think formal causation exists at all, how do we explain the soul

• Why not material brain structure causing rationality?

• AT BEST material explanation hasn’t succeeded so can’t be accepted and hasn’t eliminated formal causation, however this does not prove it

• A metaphysical cause is not justified by thinsg being unexplained- undermines credibility of formal causation even if not disproved

• Question should be how to scientifically approach mystery, unless we have clear evidence for the necessity of formal causation, which, unlike material and efficient, we do not have