philosophy exam 2

medieval view of the world

geometric, hierarchical, humans are species not fully natural, religious, relics on authorityand church

modern science view on the world

sees nature as describable by math, scientific revolution/ enlightenment

applying reason to naturan questioning authorities

Decartes says the human body can be

studied by science

Decartes opens the first meditation by announcing

that he has set aside all distractions so he can seriously question everything he has ever believed and figure out what he can know with absolute certainty.

Demolishes his opinions by

treating traits that are dpubtful as false in order to see if he knows anything with certainty

to see if he can attain certainty he adopts

methodological skepticism

methodological skepticism

uses systematic doubt not to stay doubtful, but to find absolute certainty

Decartes doubts his beliefs by

grouping his beleifs into classes defined by their sources

Beliefs derived from his scences

it is possible that all of our sensory beleifs (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) could be false

could be a dream produced by God, nature, or a demon

decartes doesnt know with certainty that

our world isnt a dream

mathmatical beliefs

beliefs we might think can be certain even if our experience of the world is a dream or illusion

decartes says it is possible that mathmatical beliefs are false bc

God, nature, or a malicious demon could have brought it about that they only seem true when they are not

at the end of the first meditation, Decartes admits he knows

nothin. with certainty

his habitual opinions keep coming back so he imagines that a

demon is deceiving him

epistomolgy

what is knowledge

what doewe know

metaphysics

what is real

in the first mediation decartes is

trying to prove the existence of God and the immortality of life (what he says he is trying to do)

introduction to new science (what he is doing

two types of knowledge

aposteriori and apriori

aposteriori

knowledge from experience

empirical investigation

apriori

prior to/ independent of experience

purely conceptional inquiry

necessary truths that we know with certainty

basic perceptual beleifs are

reliable

for everything that exists

there is a cause

cannot doubt

his own experience as a human being

main idea of the first meditation

Descartes questions all his beliefs by doubting the reliability of his senses, the possibility that he is dreaming, and even mathematical truths to find a foundation for certain knowledge.

what is doubted=

what is certain

canot doubt everthing bc

in order to doubt you must make assumptions

doubting cant happen without a

doubter

cogito ergo sum

i think, therefore I am

he cannot be deceived about

his own existence as a thinking thing

if deception is happening,

then there must be a subject of that deception

decartes assumes that you can imagine being deceived about math and the world, but that you cannot

imagine being deceived about your existance as a thinking subject

ontology

ones idea of what things exist in the world

thinks he is

a purely mental entity that is essential composed of though and other mental operations

cortesian dualism

minds→ non-physical; not scientifically explained

bodies → physical

human beings are a combination of two things

an inmaterial mind joined to a material body

the mind is a

distinct, existing, non-material thing that cannot be identified with any part of the body

decartes thinks we have

direct and unmediate access to the contents of our own minds

implicit bias

subconcious associations that you develop from your social environment

empiricism

the idea that all of our knowledge originates in our senses

believe the mind is a blank slate when born

decartes does not believe this

the wax example

wax is an enduring substance→ using the concept to understand that even though the physical properties of the wax is changing, it is still wax

mind corrects and interprets

your senesation

mediated by thoughts and concepts

innate ideas

object permanance

main idea of the second meditation i

Descartes discovers he can be certain he exists because he is thinking, and he argues that the mind is better known than the body or the physical world.

decartes thinks god is

infinite, eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent being

thinks the idea of god is innate (naturally present in the mind)

the idea of god must be

produced by God himself bc nothing finite, non-eternal, non-omniscnent, and non-omnipotent coluld have produced a perfect God

so god exisits

god must be

keeping him in existence

since god is perfect,

he cannot be a deceiver

there is no purely human explanation for

the idea of god meaning god gave us the idea of god

Descartes believes that if you understand something so clearly that you have no confusion about it, and you can distinguish it from everything else, then

you can know it is true

clear

idea is present in your mind

distinct

idea is precise and separated from other ideas, without confusion.

clear and distinct perceptions

things we know with absolute certainty

the natural light

the faculty through which we have clear and distinct perceptions

if we grasp something through the natural light,

we know that thing with certainty

formal reality

if something has a property formally, then it really has that property

something that formally has a property can convey that property to something that it acts upon

eminent reality

something has some property eminently not when it possesses that property itself but when it possesses the power to cause something else to possess that property

objective reality

property that is possessed only by ideas

content of our idea, what they represent

degrees of objective reality

rank ideas according to the reality of what they represent

• Infinite substance — God, who is infinite, eternal, independent, all-knowing, and all-powerful. God has the highest degree of reality.

• Finite substances — Things that exist independently of other finite things. They have less reality than an infinite substance.

• Modes or properties — Characteristics of substances. They depend on substances to exist, so they have less reality than substances.

the principle of casual adequacy

the cause of something must have at least as much reality as the effect it produces.

argument of the third meditation

our ideas must have causes that are adequate to acocunt for their existance and properties

our ideas are differentied by possessing different contents or objective reality (finite substances, infinite substance)

i could be the cause of all of my ideas of finite substance, but i could not be the cause of my idea of god

idea of god actually exists outside my own mine

god actually posses properties that characterize the idea of god in my mind

god does exist

main idea of the third meditation

Descartes uses the Principle of Causal Adequacy and his idea of an infinitely perfect being to argue that God exists and is not a deceiver.

whatever must be assumed or taken for granted in order to articulate a skeptical scenario cannot

be called into qquestion by that scenario

skeptic aruges that

Everything we perceive or believe, including mathematical truths, could be an illusion created by a deceiver. Since we cannot prove this scenario is false because any evidence could also be part of the illusion, we should suspend belief in our everyday assumptions about reality.

we have no entitlement to think that

any of our beliefs are true

the skeptic has to employ

reason and logic in creating their skeptical scenario

the law of causation is also presupposed in

articulating skeptical scenarios

the law of causation

for every event their is a cause

the activity of doubting presupposes that

many things remain true and these things can perhaps be used to refute skepticism

human evil

the bad acts humans commit against eachother

natural evil

harms to humans and other animals that are the products of nature

what is true about these statements:
1. god is omnipotent (all-powerful)

2. God is wholly good

3. Evil exists

1 and 2 cannot both by true if 3 is true

3 has to be false for 1 and 2 to be true

this is the logical problem of evil

the logical problem of evil

if god made is and he is perfect, why are we not perfect and why does evil exist\

why does god allow there to be desease, wars, and suffering

intellectual problem of evil

why God didnt make us perfect knowers, when it seems that is was within his power to do so

perfect knowers

beings who never made intellectual mistakes

response to the problem of evil

theodicy

freewill theodicy

God gave us freewill and we chose to use it for evil

people will abuse freewill (Adam and Eve)

freewill makes it possible for you to choose the good

necessary for a genuine relationship with God

judgement invole the use of two metal faculties

faculty of knowledge

faculty of choice

the two facullties give us

not just cause to fault our creator

the faculty of knowledge

faculty of gathering, assessing, and reasoning about avidence

finite and linited

the faculty of choice

faculty for free will

through which we decide to affirm or deny that something is true

absolutely perfect

God has given us clear guidance about how

we should utilize our faculties of knowledge and choice

we should affirm as true only things that

we can see to be true with sufficient clarity and distinctiness

source of error and sing (cognitive sin)

when we confirm or. deny something when we dont have enough info to do so

our cognitive errors are the result of

the abuse of our freedom

god made us

free knowers who have what they need to choose rightly, but we keep screwing it up

imperfections of humans conrtibute to

a broader perfection

primary qualities

quantifiable properties

secondary qualities

sensations produced in us

The ontological argument

a deductive philosophical proof for the existence of God that relies purely on a priori reasoning and conceptual analysis rather than empirical observation or physical evidence

st anselm

explaining where it goes wrong is harder than it might seem

he notices that many of our ideas have an

instrinsic nature and that have have a certain knowledge about them iven if those ideas do no correspond to anyhting outside the mind

the idea of god is the idea of a

supremely perfect being

has all of the perfections a being can have

our knowledge of gods existence has the same level of certainty

as our knowledge of the properties we derive from the idea of triangles

the mind and matter are

distinct, completely different substances

cartesian dualism

if we genuinely do have bodies,

then we are combinations of mind and matter, a union of two different substances

our mind might survive

the death or destruction of our bodies

now since god is not a deceiver,

it must be true that there are objects outside of our minds that cause us to have sensations and ideas of them

says physical bodies

exist but not in a way the corresponds with his sensory grasp of them

material things only really have

quantifiable properties

corpeal things appear to have qualities

beyond those that are quantiifiable

products of interaction between the real properties o things and the human sensory apparatus

three types of things exist

matter, minds, and God