moral/epist bits

hedonism

the idea that as a matter of fact we pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and our actions should be motivated by hedonism, utilitarianism says only pleasure has moral value

mill proof general happiness

The only evidence that something is desirable is that it is actually desired.​

Each person desires their own happiness​

Therefore, each person’s happiness is desirable.​

Because each `person’s happiness is desirable, the general happiness is desirable.​

Each person’s happiness is a good to that person.​

Therefore, the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of all persons.​

mill proof happiness sole good

Happiness is one of the ends of conduct ​

Any other end of conduct (eg virtue, health) only become an end by association, after they have begun as a means to happiness.​

Therefore, happiness should be seen as the sole end of our conduct, ​

Therefore happiness is the sole good.

preference utilitarianism philosopher

RM Hare

rule utilitarianism philosopher

Richard Brandt

rule difference to act utilitarianism

Rule Utilitarianism argues that instead of judging the consequences of each and every action using the Utility Calculus, we should draw up a set of rules.​

So instead of one rule (The Principle of Utility) to judge all actions, we have one set of rules, which are judged according to the Principle of Utility.

good will relation to duty

the concept of the Good Will is contained in the concept of Duty. Therefore, Duty contains what is good in itself, and therefore contains all morality.

hypothetical imperative

a command that is conditional on a certain goal eg if you want good grades, you should study hard

hypothetical imperatives are nothing to do with morality - morality is universal and absolute and HI only bind us if we have a particular goal in mind. If we don’t have any desire to get good grades, we are not obliged in any way to study hard.

categorical imperatives

commands which are necessary in themselves eg do not steal ​

They are universal and describe what all rational agents would do if they were perfectly rational. They are dictated by reason and describe what is morally right.​

first formulation of categorical imperative logical form 3

3. Ask, could this maxim be a universal law for every rational being?

contradiction in conception

if the maxim were universalized, it would create a self-contradictory situation eg making promises i cant keep

contradiction in will

If the maxim were universalized, it would require us to aim for or desire two self contradictory things. The will is in conflict with itself. eg letting my talents help

second formulation of categorical imperative logical form

I am a Rational Will​

Every will emplies an end.​

The Categorical Imperative (what a perfectly rational will would will) therefore has an end​

There can be no empirical end to the CI (or else it would be a HI)​

Therefore, by elimination, (5) the end of the CI is the Rational Will itself.​

Therefore (6) the Rational Will is an end in itself.​

Therefore (7) I and every other Rational Will is an end in itself.

infallibalism condition 4

4) there is no possibility that s was mistaken in believing that p

zagzebski response to gettier and condition 3

replace the justification condition with an account of epistemic virtue, 3) S’s belief that p arises because of her exercising her intellectual virtue

zagzebski definition of virtue

excellent character trait which a person should work to acquire and then exercise in everyday situations eg curiosity and thoroughness

truth tracking conditions 3 and 4

3) if p were not true, s would not believe that p and 4) if p were true, s would believe that p

causal theory of knowing condition 3

3) the fact that p is causally connected in an appropriate way with s’s believing that p

reliabilism view of knowledge

replace the jusification condition with the condition that beliefs must be produced by a reliable cognitive process

no false lemmas condition 4

4) s’s reasoning has not passed through any false steps

infallibilism condition 4

4) there is no possibility that s was mistaken in believing that p

the good (AVE)

that at which all things aim, the final goal of human activity,

criteria for the good; final end, self sufficient, desirable, related to humans

eudaimonia

a state of flourishing, an objective quality of someone’s life as a whole and the final end for all human beings

function argument

everything has a function (ergon)

Our ergon cannot be nutrition and growth (because that would make us no more than plants)​

Our ergon cannot be sentience and perception (because that would make us no more than animals)​

Our ergon must be an activity of the soul, which follows a rational principle.​

therefore our ergon is to exercise the rational parts of our soul, the good for human beings is to fulfill our ergon well, and that is to exercise our rational capacities in accordance with virtue

pleasure relation to eudaimonia

pleasure is not the final end of human life, because it is passive (something we feel), not active (something we do). However, it is a component of Eudaimonia, because it’s impossible to flourish without pleasure.

virtue

anything in the soul must be either a passion, faculty or character trait, by elimination virtue is a character trait so virtue is a specific type of character trait that enable us to make good choices and to achieve Eudaimonia

character trait

stable dispositions, dont alter as quickly as moods, arent fixed, can change and develop over time, eg being patient or quick tempered

simulated killing

Simulated killing is the dramatization of killing within a fictional context: eg in video games, films and plays.

We can distinguish two forms of Simulated Killing:​

Where we play the role of the killer (for example in a violent video game)​

Where we witness a killing as the audience (for example, in a violent film)

aristotle on simulated killing

Virtue Ethicist might argue that by engaging in SK we are habit that encourages a vice (cruelty, bloodlust etc) rather than developing our virtues (compassion) so SK stops us achieving Eudaimonia and is wrong

the more we practise a virtue, the more we gain pleasure. Pleasure is gained from gaming etc, but tends not to increase as we do more of it, so SK may not be virtuous.​

Aristotle is offering a practical account of our moral and social lives, a virtuous or vicious act has to occur in real life to count as truly virtuous or vicious, and therefore character forming.

SK is morally neutral

error theory on lying

“Lying is wrong” is simply untrue. There is no objective moral truth about lying. We may choose to adopt the rule or not, depending on its social efficacy

Error theory says that moral judgements are beliefs that are intended to be true or false (cognitivism), but moral properties don’t exist (anti-realism) so these moral judgements are all false

simple and complex ideas

process by which we gain ideas according to locke is simple ideas then complex ideas, innate ideas are the result of this process,

simple ideas not compounded, of a single thing which cannot be distinguished into different ideas, eg yellow, cold, basis of all our knowledge

complex ideas made up of several simple ideas put together eg a man or beauty

impressions and ideas

anything which has some kind of mental content is called perception by hume, and these are divided into 2 categories,

impressions basic phenomenological experiences or feelings

ideas what the mind does to impressions, thinking/reasoning

tabula rasa claims

there is no knowledge in the mind at birth,

the origin of all knowledge is sense experience,

the mind is not passive; it can act on the ideas which it receives from sense experience to form new ideas,

the knowledge that innatists say is innate can be accounted for by the claim that has come into the mind by this process of the mind acting on the ideas it gained from sense experience

slave boy arg

aims to show that some knowledge of geometry is innate because the soul has already acquired it and can recollect it when prompted

has socrates demonstrate that one of meno’s slaves who has never studied geometry is able to work out a geometric problem and understand that ‘the square in the diagonal will be double the original square’ through being questioned by socrates, socrates leads the slave to the truth through questions and digrams and points out that the slave is retrieving knowledge from inside himself

leibniz arg for innatism logical form/aim

sense experience can only give us knowledge of particular instances and cant supply us with the notion that something is always true so we must have some innate knowledge

1) we have knowledge of necessary truths ie that something is always the case

2) sense experience can only give us knowledge of particular instances

3) particular instances can never demonstrate that something is always the case

4) therefore our knowledge of necessary truths cannot be gained directly from experience

5) therefore our knowledge of necessary truths is innate

6) we have some innate knowledge

locke criticisms of dispositional account of knowledge

unintelligible, would commit the innatist to the view that all knowledge is innate, using the notion of ‘coming to reason’ does not rescue the dispositional account

rational intuition vs deduction

descartes says all knowledge either rational intuition or deduction

rational intuition a proposition which is known non-inferentially and knowledge of this proposition is a priori

rational deduction process of reasoning whereby a person comes to know a proposition which is inferentially justified in virtue of being the conclusion of a deductively valid argument

intuition

way of knowing something through reason which means that a person grasps that a proposition is true, once they consider it they ‘see’ that it is true and cannot be false, descartes calls propositions known by intuition clear and distinct ideas

deduction

process whereby a conclusion is derived from premises in such a way that the conclusion cannot fail to follow from the premises, requires the knower to go through the stages of reasoning to arrive at the proposition

innatist objection to tabula rasa

the empiricist account of how we gain innate knowledge is deficient because the explanation that the mind works on ideas let in by sense experience is unable to satisfactorily provided innate knowledge or explain how we get our knowledge of necessary truths, may work for some of our abstract knowledge, but doesnt explain necessity

example of innatist objection to tabula rasa

eg hume on god, claims that experience and minds process of combination and augmentation can give us the idea of god, but doesnt actually provide the concept because concept of god contains more ideas than ‘goodness’ and power, but also simplicity and transcendence (not observed in nature) so where do these ideas come from

also concept of god as infinite means he isnt dependent on anything for his existence and there is nothing in the world like this so why do we have this concept

principle causal adequacy

claims that anything which is caused to exist must have been caused to exist by something which has at least as much reality as the effect it produces eg descartes example in the meditations of heat, heat must be caused by something which is itself hot

philosophical scepticism

the idea that it is impossible to know anything, it is global because it calls a whole area of knowledge into question or can be local if it refers to a specific fact or area

reliabilist response to scepticism

claims that a person s knows a proposition p if s’s true belief that p was caused by a reliable cognitive process such as sense experience or testimony

targets the sceptic’s assumption that certainty is required for knowledge, according to reliabilism knowledge is actually an objective state of affairs and if a person has a true belief which has been produced by a reliable cognitive process then this belief will be knowledge whether the person thinks it is or not

descartes 2nd wave of doubt

argument from dreaming, aims to show that empirical knowledge is limited because it cannot establish that we are really perceiving the physical objects that our senses tell us we are perceiving now when we are in the optimum conditions to perceive it accurately

locke corroboration response to scepticism

the fact that one sense can be corroborated by another one is evidence that our sense data is caused by physical objects rather than ourselves, eg if fire was a figment of our imagination we would be able to put our hand in it and not feel any pain as something which does not exist cannot produce pain, however if we put our hand in a fire would experience pain so touch confirms what is believed through sight

russell response to scepticism

phenomenon which requires explanation is that i have mental experiences which seem to be of physical objects and the rival hypotheses to explain this are 1) the external world exists and causes my experiences of it, or 2) the external world exists and we have invented physical objects. russell says 1 best as if we accepted 2 would have to claim that objects persist over time but this does not fit with our experiences

berkeley response to solipsism

could use his criteria for distinguishing between ideas of sense and imagination and argue that my ideas eg of tables and chairs are more vivid than any i could produce myself, are involuntary and also behave in a regular and law like way, which indicates that they were not produced by me and things exist which are external to me

could also claim that finite minds can only produce ideas and cannot produce minds because minds are ontologically independent substances and only god who is an infinite substance can produce minds

cognitivism (metaethics)

Moral judgements express beliefs with a truth value. They attempt to tell us something that is true or false. They can motivate us, in the way that facts can motivate us.

non-cognitivism (metaethics)

Moral judgements do not express beliefs, but another kind of mental state. They are neither true or false. Moral judgments are like desires. They motivate to do certain things, but they aren’t true or false.​

moral non-naturalism

form of Moral Realism that claims that ethical judgements are true or false, and refer to real mind-independent properties, and these properties are not reducible to natural properties

is-ought gap

we cannot move from what is the case to what ought to be the case. No facts about how the world is or how human beings are will ever imply how the world ought to be or how human beings ought to be

it is always illegitimate to try to infer moral prescriptions about how we should behave from descriptive statements about matters of fact, therefore moral realism is false

hume arg moral judgements arent beliefs

1. A moral judgement motivates us to act.​

2. Reasons and beliefs cannot in themselves motivate action. They can only tell us how the world is.​

3. Therefore, moral judgements are not the product of reason or belief.​

4. The only plausible alternative to reason and belief is emotion.​

5. Therefore moral judgements are the product of emotion.​

arg from relativity explanation a

there are objective moral values, but people’s perceptions of these are distorted in various ways (eg inadequate evidence, cultural indoctrination etc)​

issue of moral progress

(1) A good moral theory should be able to account for the idea of moral progress.​

(2) If there is no objective moral properties or facts, there is no objective moral standard that we can make progress against.​

Therefore, (3) the idea of moral progress requires moral realism to be true.​

moral nihilism issue

Moral nihilism says moral values are unreal and moral values therefore have no binding force. This would lead to chaos as people would be free to steal, murder, rape etc.

Anti-realism leads to nihilism. Nihilism leads to social chaos. Therefore anti-realism should be rejected.

john searle objection to args from illusion etc

indirect realist says intentional mental states have a content, and therefore they must have an object

our mental state does have a content (what it seems to me to be like) eg texture, colour, and an object (the physical object that caused my experience), but in the non veridical case my mental state has a content but there is no object

the args treat the experience as if it is a sort of mental object that is capable of having properties, they move from claiming that it appears to me that there is something to the claim that there is something (an object)

no reason to accept that sense data exists as a mental object as not all mental states with a content have an object eg santa

indirect realism claims

physical objects exist and are mind independent, we do not perceive physical objects directly,

mind independent physical object causes me to have a mental experience of the physical object, sense data is a representation of the physical object

berkeley objection to sense data logical form

1) Indirect realism claims that sense data is a representation of the physical object.

2) In order to be a representation of a physical object, sense data needs to resemble the physical object.

3) Mind independent physical objects do not resemble mind dependent sense data because sense data can be directly perceived and the physical object cannot be directly perceived.

4) Therefore the sense data cannot be a representation of the physical object

master arg logical form 4-7

mind independent objects can only exist if it is possible for someone to think of a mind independent object,

it is not possible for someone to think of a mind independent object

therefore mind independent objects are not logically possible,

therefore there are no mind independent objects

idealism claims

the only things that exist are minds and ideas - there are no physical objects,

in perception i directly perceive sense data,

ideas depend on minds for their existence,

sense data is not caused by physical objects it is caused by god

role of god in idealism

god causes our ideas of sense, god ensures that objects have continual existence when they are not being perceived by us

ideas are the result of god’s casual influence, because they are always perceived by god the ideas that we encounter as physical objects continue to exist even when other people are not perceiving them

issue of circularity ave

ave exemplarist - moral action is the exercise of virtue, but never clearly defines what virtue consists of, a virtuous act is the kind of act performed by a virtuous person and a virtuous person is someone who habitually performs virtuous acts. definition circular because the term we seek to define (the virtuousness of an act) is being defined in terms of itself (the virtuousness of a person)

reliabilist response to scepticism

claim that knowledge is an objective state of affairs and if a person has a true belief which has been produced by a reliable cognitive process then this belief will be knowledge whether the person thinks it is or not, if we acquire our beliefs by a process which enables us to avoid false beliefs then we can say that we know them

issue with reliabilist response to scepticism unclear

is unclear how reliable a cognitive process needs to be in order for us to say that the beliefs it produces are knowledge, would be implausible to suggest that cognitive processes such as sense perception, memory or testimony are 100% reliable as we know all of these processes sometimes produce false beliefs eg misremember, misperceive, someone may be mistaken or lying to me

reliabilists dont want to say that cognitive processes cannot ever produce false beliefs, but what percentage of true beliefs would a process need to produce in order to be reliable?

reliabilist issue with intuition response to scepticism

makes too light of the intuition that certainty is required for knowledge and/or that knowledge is a subjective state of mind. surely if i am not psychologically sure that something is the case then i do not know it

ultimately there is no way of settling these competing intuitions and that we should look instead to the role that knowledge plays in our lives. given that its role is to enable us to avoid false beliefs, the reliabilist position is sufficient

issue with locke corroboration response to scepticism

what we hear can misrepresent what we see

issue with descartes proof of external world substance dualism

descartes claim that i cannot produce the idea of something physical relies on the claim that i myself am essentially non physical, descartes thought my mind is a non physical substance which can exist separately from my body and this is proved by the fact that i cannot doubt i am thinking, however this does not entail that i am a purely mental thing

issue with kant response to descartes ontological arg

it is not philosophically settled whether existence is a predicate or not, logical systems such as free logic treat it as a property, so it is an open question as to whether existence is a property and kant is wrong to rule this out

issue with leibniz arg for innatism necessary truths

locke and hume both claim that although we dont know necessary propositions directly through our senses, this does not mean that they are innate, they are the result of our mind acting on the ideas given to us by the senses ie process 1 and 2

berkeley response to indirect realism

1) Indirect realism claims that sense data is a representation of the physical object.

2) In order to be a representation of a physical object, sense data needs to resemble the physical object.

3) Mind independent physical objects do not resemble mind dependent sense data because sense data can be directly perceived and the physical object cannot be directly perceived.

4) Therefore the sense data cannot be a representation of the physical object

issue with time lag arg

confuses what we perceive with how we perceive it. Yes, we perceive objects via light and sound waves and, yes, it takes time for these light and sound waves to travel through space. But what we are perceiving is still a mind-independent object (it’s not sense data or some other mind-dependent thing) – it’s just we are perceiving the object as it was moments ago rather than how it is now.

issue with disjunctivist response to illusion and hallucination

is implausible since different views on it provided and provides explanations of how the 2 experiences differ which are obscure and hard to make sense of eg snowdon says the persons experience envelops the object ‘cannot be made coherent’

also scientifically incorrect since neuroscientific research into hallucinations suggests they can be indistinguishable from veridical perception

time lag sound response

unproblematic in case of sound, eg we see a batter hit a ball and seconds later (because light travels faster than sound) we hear the crack of a bat, doesnt make sense to saw we are not hearing the bat strike the ball because the event no longer exists and is more natural to say we hear the event a second after it happens

time lag just proves that given the laws of physics we cannot perceive objects without a time lag

zagzebski general definition of knowledge

‘a highly valued state in which a person is in cognitive contact with reality.’

zagzebski criteria for successful definition of knowledge

• Not be circular

• Not be ad hoc

• Not be negative

• Be brief

• Only use concepts that are less obscure than the concept being defined

theoretical vs practical definition of knowledge

is possible to see purpose of a definition of knowledge as practical (i.e. it might help us to recognise instances of knowledge or tell us how to get it),

but most philosophers have accepted the need to give a theoretical definition i.e. one which shows how knowledge is related to other concepts in epistemology e.g. truth, justification etc.

issue with real essence definition of knowledge

Firstly, what if knowledge is not an ontological category like water or gold, for example? Secondly, there are competing approaches to defining knowledge. For example, contextualists such as De Rose claim that whether someone can be said to know that P is dependent on context e.g. how much it matters that she is right.

solipsism claims

the view that (1) my mind is the only thing that exists and (2) The external world is a product of my mind. Consequently (3) Other minds (e.g. other people, animals, God) do not exist.

response to arg from illusion extrinsic properties

The direct realist could deny the indirect realist claim that the object doesn’t actually have these properties.

these are properties of the physical object (rather than properties of the sense data) but they are extrinsic properties of the object not intrinsic ones.

In particular, they are a type of extrinsic property called ‘looks like’ properties. This allows the direct realist to say that a stick in water ‘looks like’ it is bent and a table in bright sunlight ‘looks like’ it has white patches on it.

issue with extrinsic properties response to arg from illusion

unlike intrinsic properties, the extrinsic properties of objects do not have causal powers. Being sweet will cause me to have an experience of sweetness when I bite into the kiwi fruit, but its having been grown in New Zealand does not cause anything to be the case. So the property of looking crooked does cause something, it causes my experience of it

however could just deny that these are properties at all and to say instead that in these cases we are just misperceiving the object as a result of background physical conditions (in the case of illusions this is the phenomenon of refraction – bent pencils or heat haze- mirages) or issues with the brain (in the case of hallucinations

why non-inferential gettier cases have no false step

perception is not inferential, dont infer the belief from anything else but perception

response of tacitly accepts something false

eg for henry accepting all barns in the area are real,

but implausible to argue this since odd to say someone assumes something they are not aware of or is false

phronesis

Phronesis an intellectual virtue, can be defined as practical wisdom, is our ability to deliberate well and make the right choice regarding moral matters